Deliverance: From Sin to Righteousness, Part 2 B

If you were ever born of God, the principle of sin has been broken and the practice of sin has been interrupted.

If somebody looks like they're a Christian and all of a sudden wanders off into sin and stays there, they never had that new birth because if they had a new birth, if they were born of God, no one who is born of God practices sin. The story is told of some people who lived along a coastline that was notorious for shipwrecks. They put up a small building, a life-saving station, where volunteers could watch for shipwrecks and bring in the people they rescued. A noble endeavor, and yet over time the station became a mere social club, a place to enjoy each other's company, not a place that had a serious mission.

Its original strategic purpose, saving lives, was forgotten. Well, with that story in mind, how focused is your church on its God-given mission in your community? Is your church known more for its social gatherings or for its commitment to the life-saving gospel of Christ? Practical questions to consider today as John MacArthur continues his series called Delivered by God.

Now here's John MacArthur with the lesson. JOHN MCCARTHY It has been of grave concern to me that the evangelical church has seemingly been willing and content to abandon sound doctrine. I'm not talking about liberal churches, I'm talking about those that would be confessedly evangelical. Many popular evangelical leaders and writers, pastors, professors, people who are the influencers are content with a lack of discernment as if it were some spiritual virtue. They have entered upon what I suppose if we were living in Spurgeon's time would be called a downgrade. The church is on a slippery slope.

The evangelical church is progressing down away from the heights of truth and the honor of God. It is willingly abandoning its discernment, willingly abandoning literal exposition and therefore a deep and accurate understanding of truth. Luther in 1533 said, the Word of God is the greatest, most necessary, most important thing in Christendom.

It is. And I'll tell you what, you turn away from the book and you have endless problems. You turn away from the book and Jesus becomes a clay toy, you can shape Him any way you want.

Truth becomes a clay toy, you can shape it any way you want. John Piper says, Luther had one weapon to rescue Christ from being sold in the markets of Wittenberg. He drove out the money changers, the indulgent sellers with the whip of the external Word, the book, end quote. I don't think you can do ministry in this climate today the way God wants it done without a radical commitment to the Bible. And I say radical because it's resisted even within the framework of evangelicalism. And as I said before, the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture. As you clear the fog and reveal the meaning, that is the Scripture. And that's the truth of God and that puts God on display and that gives people discernment and it gives the church power.

And, you know, I just think there are people who don't want to do the hard work. You know, you look at Calvin, he wrote prolifically, he wrote his institutes, he wrote his commentaries, several shelves of my study are filled with his volumes. He preached ten sermons every two weeks, all of it Scripture exposition. Same with Luther. Between 1510 and 1546, he preached three thousand sermons, many days a week and many times a day he preached.

And all that with family struggles. His wife, Katie, gave him six children, some of them died, the rest of them he catechized on Sunday afternoon. You want to hear a typical Sunday for Martin Luther?

Five A.M. was the first service. It was an exposition of an epistle. Ten A.M. was the second one, it was an exposition of a gospel. In the afternoon he taught the Word of God to his children.

At five o'clock he came back to exposit a book in the Old Testament. On Monday and Tuesday he taught more exposition. On Wednesday he taught on Matthew. On Thursday and Friday he taught on an apostolic letter. And on Saturday he exposited the gospel of John. You know, people don't roll out of bed and lead a Reformation.

You understand that? There's a reason why these people had the influence they had, consumed with Scripture with its understanding and its proclamation. All he did was preach and preach and preach and preach and the people worshiped.

He went down and they went up. It's better to be deep and not shallow. It's better to be thorough and not superficial. Back to John Calvin, he never wavered from expository preaching for almost twenty-five years from 1536 to 1564 in Geneva. And he even ignored Christmas and Easter and every other event and just kept doing his exposition.

He didn't give any special messages, he just stayed with his expositions. The scope of his pulpit is really amazing, just amazing. He preached for six years on the book of Acts. He gave 46 sermons on Thessalonians, 186 sermons on Corinthians, 86 sermons on 1 Timothy and Titus, 43 sermons on Galatians, 48 sermons on Ephesians. In 1559 in the spring, he started a study of the gospels, expositing the gospels in a harmony fashion, and he didn't finish when he died 1564 in the month of May. That was on the Lord's Day and in the middle of the week, he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353 on Isaiah, and 123 on Genesis, and so on and so on and so on.

And all that took preparation and study. He was preaching on Easter, 1538. After his sermon, he left the pulpit of St. Peter's Church and they threw him out of town. City Council banished him. They had enough of him. They had only been preaching for a couple of years there, but he was so strong, so powerful that they threw him out of town after his sermon. He came back just a little over three years later and picked up his exposition at the next verse.

As I was saying. Biographers tell us that Calvin believed the Word of God was the only lamp and that the lamp had been taken away from the churches, and that's what I believe. And Calvin had a horror of those people who preached their own ideas in a pulpit. He believed that expounding the Scriptures was the only thing that God wanted done.

And Calvin believed that God's majesty was revealed in His Word, and if you didn't preach the Word, then you didn't give glory to God. And you know, it wasn't easy for Calvin, preaching ten times in two weeks, lecturing three times in theology, having a Friday Bible study, visiting the sick, counseling people, reading and writing. He had a weak stomach. He had severe migraines, and the only way he could control his migraines was by eating one meal a day. He worked night and day with scarcely a break. That's why he died young. In 1564, when he was 53 years old, he wrote his physician describing colic, spitting of blood, ague, gout, excruciating sufferings of hemorrhoids, kidney stones, etc., etc. At the same time, his wife gave birth to children.

They died one after another, and she died, turned the world upside down. This literally turned the world upside down because of the power of bringing the Word of God to bear. Back to Luther for a moment, just to show you how prolific they were in the Word. Luther in 1520 wrote 133 works. In 1522, he wrote 130 works.

In 1523, he wrote 183 works, one every other day. And the same in 1524, all the product of intense scrutiny of the Word of God. And this is what turned history. Contemporary evangelical church, sad to say, is not interested in biblical depth, and therefore it doesn't experience biblical height. It tends to be shallow and worldly and weak and self-deceiving, deceiving itself with superficial success. And at the heart of this is this tragic thing of embracing non-Christians as if they're Christians. Without a deep grasp of biblical truth, there's no discernment. And with no discernment, then you just can't tell who's a Christian and who's not, so Satan comes into the church, comes into the leadership, comes in to teach at colleges and teach at seminaries and write books and get on Christian TV, and on and on it goes. And as I told you, when you don't have the truth and you don't have the preaching that brings clarity and discernment and the glory of God, you have terrible problems. And the first one is, people no longer distinguish between who's a Christian and who's not. This was the...this is one of the great realities of the Reformation. The Reformation said, you're not Christians...period. You're not. They said, well we're Christian.

No, you're not. It's time for us to take the stand at the same point in this day. The way you distinguish a true Christian from a non-Christian no matter what they claim is found in this category that we're calling deliverance, right?

And what have we been saying? You can tell who's a Christian because they've been delivered. The ministry of the Lord is to deliver, to rescue, to save. And a Christian isn't known by some act, some event, some prayer, some signing of a card, some going forward, some being baptized, some joining a church. It's not identified by an event, but by deliverance. True Christians are those who have been delivered. And deliverance is this general truth that contains the realities of salvation. And first we said, true Christians have been delivered from error to what? To truth.

And that was a big issue and it's an issue we need to be clarified on. Nobody is a Christian, folks, who doesn't believe the true gospel. That's a pretty sweeping statement. You have to believe the true gospel or you're not a Christian. You can't believe a false gospel. You have to believe the true gospel.

You can't believe the liberal message of good works and social change. You can't believe some aberrant kind of thing about who Jesus is. You can't be a non-Trinitarian and believe in a God who's not a Trinity and be a Christian. Christians believe the truth because what we saw clearly in Colossians 1, 12 and 13, we've been delivered out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. We've become saints in light. We've gone out of the darkness of ignorance and error into the light of truth.

And I'm being specific with you because I feel like we have to do that. Who is a Christian? Somebody who's been delivered from error to truth. You've come to understand, to believe, to embrace the truth. And secondly, we said, true Christians have been delivered not only from error to truth, but from sin to righteousness. Turn to 1 John 3...1 John 3.

John is just giving us a very black and white look here. 1 John 3 and verse 2, he says, beloved, now are we children of God. All right, we're children of God.

How do you know that? How do you know when somebody is a child of God? How do you know when somebody belongs to God when they are a true believer? Go down to verse 4. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness and sin is lawlessness, okay? Verse 5, you know that He appeared in order to take away sins.

Now stop right there. Why did Jesus come into the world? To take away what? Sin. So what should be characteristic of a Christian? Sin is taken away.

How clear is that? Matthew 1 21, you know, He came to save His people from their sins. So John is simply saying, He appeared to take away sins. So what's true about a Christian is sin has been replaced by righteousness.

And he goes on to explain that. Verse 6, and no one who abides in Him sins...present tense...continues in sin. In that same pattern doesn't mean we never sin because back in chapter 1 He said, if you say you don't have sin, you're making God a liar. Of course you have sin, but you do not continue in that constant pattern of sin.

That's a present tense verb in the Greek which indicates continuous action. No one who abides in Christ continues in that same pattern of sin. And no one who continues in that same pattern of sin has seen Christ or knows Christ. People say all the time, you know, well I know, I know they're living like this and they're doing this, but I know they're Christians, I know they're Christians because I remember when this happened and that event. Look, Christians don't continue in a pattern of sin that's unbroken. Verse 7, here's the key, little children, let nobody...what?...deceive you. Don't let anybody deceive you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous.

Is that difficult to grasp? Come on. Who's righteous? People who do righteous things. It's a matter of nature.

It's a matter of the life principle, the life power. And he makes that very clear. The one who practices, verse 8, sin is of the devil. He's got the old nature under the control of Satan. The devil is a sinner from the beginning, but the Son of God appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil.

And what are the works of the devil? The second time, verse 5, verse 8, the Son came to destroy that pattern of sin, to destroy that principle of sin, that power of dominant sin. And so in verse 9, no one who is born of God practices sin, practices that idea of constant unbroken continual sin because he has a new seed in him. He uses the analogy of birth, human birth. A baby is the product of its parents. It bears the life of its parents. The seed, the egg, the parents have create the essence of that child.

That child is literally the coming together of the two lives that produced it. And the child will manifest characteristics. It will be shaped like its parents. It will look in the face like its parents. It will have physical mannerisms like its parents. It will have some intellectual capabilities like its parents and maybe some other capabilities as well. It will reflect the genetic structure inherited from parents.

And that's essentially what he's saying. If you're born of God, you're sure you're going to be a product of that new birth and you're not going to continue to practice sin, but what's going to happen is you have a new seed in you and you can't continue in sin because you're born of God. Look, if you were ever born of God, the principle of sin has been broken and the practice of sin has been interrupted. If somebody looks like they're a Christian and all of a sudden wanders off into sin and stays there, they never had that new birth because if they had a new birth, if they were born of God, no one who is born of God practices sin.

It has to do with what you desire. We sin as Christians, but we hate that sin. We love righteousness like Romans 7, I want to do things and my flesh gets in the way and I don't do what I want to do and I do what I don't want to do, but I know that's a wretched thing and I despise that and I cry out to be delivered from it. One of the great reasons to go to heaven, you know, you talk to people about going to heaven and they say, oh well, you know, streets of gold and blah, you know the best thing about heaven? No sin. That's the most appealing thing about it.

Don't you get sick of it? I'm not talking about sin in your spouse, I'm talking about yours. And no one who is born of God continues in an unbroken pattern of sin.

It can't happen. Why? Because His seed is in you. You have an incorruptible seed, Peter says, a new life, a new nature, a new creation.

And then verse 10 sums it up. Here's how you distinguish the children of God and the children of the devil. It's obvious. I like that. How obvious is it? Anyone who doesn't practice righteousness is not of God.

That's enough for me. How do you know who's a Christian? Somebody who loves what is right, who loves the law of God, who hates sin, who has a pattern of righteousness interrupted by sin. That's sin that he hates. It's the residual of his old self, his old disposition. Galatians 2.20, Apostle Paul talks about this and he says, I have been crucified with Christ. What do you mean, Paul? I'm dead. The old Paul's gone. The old life has died. It's no longer I who live. That old ego, that old I is gone. But Christ lives in me.

Wow. And if Christ lives in you, everything is different, everything. There's a new life principle that produces a new life practice. If we don't understand who a true Christian is, we're confused at the most critical point, aren't we? Because we can't tell a person their true spiritual condition. They may be lost on their way to hell.

It doesn't help them to tell them they're Christians. And we've also invited Satan's tears into the church. People who do not love God's truth, who do not love His righteous law, who do not hunger for what is right, don't have a new heart, don't have a new birth, don't have an incorruptible seed, don't have Christ living in them.

They haven't been delivered. If the heart hasn't been changed to love God's Word, if the heart hasn't been changed to love God's law, if the heart hasn't been changed to desire to obey the law of God, as Ezekiel 36 puts it, if the heart hasn't been changed to pursue virtue, not sin, then that heart hasn't been changed at all. The hallmark of salvation, folks, is you understand, you believe, you embrace the truth of the gospel. You love that truth and you love righteousness and you hate sin. True Christians worship God, love the Word of God, and obey the Word of God. They are like the deer we read about in Psalm 42, who pants for the water brooks, their sole pants after God. The psalmist says, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

The psalmist says in Psalm 119, 97, oh how I love Your law. So if you have a child or a spouse or a brother or a sister or a friend or an acquaintance who really wants to sin, plans to sin, finds fulfillment in sin, doesn't have a passion for righteousness, doesn't have an interest in the truth, the person hasn't been delivered, not a Christian, no matter what they claim. Real deliverance produces changed life.

Let's pray. Father, what clarity, what precision Your Word provides, thank You for the examples of men of the past that we talked about whose testimonies are instructive to us because of their faithfulness, the power of their lives which You so mightily use. Give Your church a restored confidence, a restored passion, a restored hunger for truth, for the Word of truth. We pray, Father, that You will give us the discernment so that we can truly judge a person's spiritual condition.

Protect Your church from the downgrade of truth, the downgrade of Scripture. We just pray, Father, that You will awaken pastors and leaders to be faithful, to preach Bible truth in Bible dress, relentlessly and passionately for all the years of their ministry that You might do a mighty and a true work in hearts. Thank You for the deliverance You have provided us by Your grace, in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is pastor of Grace Community Church, he's chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and he has titled our current series, Delivered by God. Now, thinking about everything John said today about how to recognize a Christian, what really comes down to is this.

A Christian is a sinner who has come to God on God's terms. And of course, John, the shocking truth is, within the church, there's been a great amount of debate over what exactly are God's terms, what the gospel and its demands entail. Talk about that debate.

I have said this for many, many years. When I came out of seminary, I thought there would be some battles I would have to fight, you know, battles over the inerrancy of Scripture, battles with the bizarre elements of the charismatic movement, and battles over other doctrinal issues and forms of baptism, whatever, whatever. I never, ever thought that the greatest battle that I would be engaged in for all the years of my ministry would be a battle over the clarity of the gospel within the so-called church. There is so much chaos in the professing church today over what the gospel really is that it is frightening.

And it's also deadly. We need to get the gospel right. Well, I wrote a book called The Gospel According to Jesus. That was really a bomb dropped in the evangelical world, and it continues to have a life.

In fact, the 20th anniversary edition of The Gospel According to Jesus came out. This continues to be at the very foundation of the life of the church. Folks, we can get some things wrong, we can be confused about some things, but the gospel is not one of them.

Furthermore, there is no need to be confused about the gospel. What does it really mean to turn from sin? What does it mean to follow Christ? What does it mean to confess Jesus is Lord? What is true faith?

What is saving faith as opposed to false faith? Well, nothing that I've ever written in all the years of my ministry has generated the response of the book The Gospel According to Jesus. It's critical. It's available. We'd love to get one in your hands. The new edition has a great deal more information than the one that came out in 1988, including a new chapter that explores the issue of being a slave to Christ. You can order one today from Grace to You.

That's right. The title again, The Gospel According to Jesus. Make sure you know what true saving faith in Christ really is and what it's not. Order a copy when you contact us today. Call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org. The Gospel According to Jesus costs $15 in hardcover and shipping is free.

You can also order the book in Spanish. Again, to pick up The Gospel According to Jesus, call 800-55-GRACE or order at our website gty.org. And thanks for remembering that Grace to You is funded by people like you, listeners who depend on us for verse-by-verse teaching. Giving to your local church comes first.

We believe that. But if you've benefited from Grace to You and you want to help people like you benefit as well, consider making a donation. To express your support, write to us at Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Or you can call us at 800-55-GRACE or donate online at gty.org. That's our website. One more time, gty.org. And thanks especially for your prayers. We know they make a difference. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff. I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to listen again tomorrow when John looks at the world's temptations and the power God gives you to overcome them. It's another half-hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.