Life's Most Important Question

Hi friend, this is Phil Johnson and you've tuned in to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. For more than five decades, John was the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California, and he was Grace to U's one and only Bible teacher for that entire time. Grace to U continues to be the media ministry of John MacArthur. During his decades of studying, preaching, and teaching the Word of God, some consistent themes in his pulpit ministry have been clearly seen. Call them distinctives of John's ministry, an outworking of his commitment to the clear, authoritative, God-breathed scripture.

John MacArthur recently went to heaven, and the leadership at Grace to U thought it would be only right to bring you a number of messages that highlight some of John's ministry distinctives. It would be impossible in such a short time to cover all the key themes, but we wanted to hit some of the most significant ones. And today's message is a good example.

So follow along now on Grace to You. Here is John MacArthur to show you the Bible's answer to life's most important question. Let's open our Bibles to the ninth chapter of Luke's Gospel, Luke chapter 9, verses 18 through 22. It came about that while he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he questioned them, saying, Who do the multitudes say that I am?

They answered and said, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, but others that one of the prophets of old has risen again. And he said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said, The Christ of God. But he warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things. and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes.

And be killed. and be raised up. on the third day. The heart of the passage is in verse 20. The question: But who do you say that I am?

And with that question, Jesus confronted his apostles. With the most critical issue that ever faced them or ever faces any human being. The question of the identity of Jesus Christ, getting it right, is critical to one's eternal destiny. Heaven or hell? is the result of the right answer and the right response to the answer to that question.

It's not just an issue that affects your belief. It's not just an issue that affects your lifestyle. It affects your eternal destiny. And all souls that live on this planet are accountable to God for their answer to that question. Even if they don't yet know the answer, they are accountable to the answer.

The wrong answer or no answer Dams forever. The right answer opens the door to eternal life and joy. It is the question of all questions. Philosophers have offered answers, theologians have offered answers, false religions have their answers, secularists have answers, atheists have answers, humanists have answers. Sadly, their answers are wrong.

This is one you don't want to get wrong. Too much is at stake. Eternal heaven or eternal hell. Depends on the answer. You would think that it's a complex question.

But the fact of the matter is, it's a very easy question to answer. It's only hard if you reject the Bible.

So, anybody who comes up with the wrong answer about who Jesus is has rejected the clear testimony of Scripture. In favor of that, they have placed their own rational thinking. In favor of that, they have placed the writings of some other religious. False prophet. In place of that, they have substituted human wisdom, whatever it might be.

The answer to the question is straightforward, simple, and absolutely clear. If you accept what the Bible says, if you don't accept what the Bible says, then you are hopelessly lost in your search for the real Jesus. In fact, all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Unambiguously. Answer the question of who Jesus is.

John writes the purpose, really, not only for his own gospel, but all the others, when he says, These have been written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in his name. Jesus is the Christ, he is the Son of God. If you believe in him, you'll have eternal life in his name. That's who he is. That's what comes by believing in him.

That is not ambiguous. That is not obscure. That does not take some kind of scholastic machinations to sort out. It is clear, precise. information revealed on the pages of the scripture.

clearly indicated in the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We are looking at the Gospel of Luke, one of the four writers of the biography of Jesus. And there is no way to mistake the identity of Jesus in Luke's gospel unless you refuse to believe what the Bible says. You can take all of the efforts to discover the historical Jesus, all of the confounding complexities of false religions and wrong assertions of who he is, and you can chart them all up to the fact that people refuse to believe the clear testimony of Scripture. Here then is the testimony of the apostles, the 12 apostles.

Their spokesman is Peter. He answers on behalf of all of them in verse 20 and says, The Christ of God. This isn't the first time Jesus has been so identified. This is the first time, however, you have this final, clear, precise statement from the apostles collectively that they affirm that he is in fact the Messiah. They have already affirmed that he is Lord.

They have already affirmed he is the healer, the miracle worker. They have already affirmed that he had the words of life and there was no one else to go to. They have called him Lord. They have called him master. They have called him teacher.

Here they give this singular affirmation: you are God's Messiah. That's what the word Christ means. Here their complete conviction is stated.

So this is climactic. This is climactic. And it comes immediately upon what really is the climactic miracle that Jesus did in Galilee. You remember, he ended the vast part of his Galilean ministry with this massive miracle of feeding 20 to 25,000 people, which we saw last time in verses 10 to 17. This immense miracle of feeding this crowd is quantitatively the largest miracle Jesus ever did.

At the same time, on the same day, he's teaching, he's healing people. We know also that he was casting out demons as a routine.

So, all this explosion of miracles is going on on this day. And in addition to the singular miracles, is this massive creating food for 20 to 25,000 people?

So. This is sort of the culmination of the Galilean ministry. And it's at that culmination that Luke transitions into this affirmation. This is a perfect time for Luke to say all the evidence was in. Nothing more needed to be proven.

And so Jesus then directs this question to the apostles: Who do people say I am? They give him answers, and then he says, Who do you say that I am? And they come up with the right answer. They, in some sense, have completed their education. This is the final exam, and they got it right.

They got it right. You are the Christ of God, said Peter as a spokesman for all the rest. It's important that they were not just in the flow of the crowd, they were in opposition to the crowd. In absolute opposition to the crowd. You are not who they say you are.

You are the Christ of God. That is a straightforward answer. Straightforward answer. You see, that is the issue in evangelism. You have to bring people to the reality of who Jesus Christ is.

Reading a Last couple of days, uh latest issue of uh Ligonaire's Table Talks. The wonderful series of articles in there called The Myth of Influence. The myth of influence. Listen, evangelical Christianity is is has been seduced and made drunk on the concept of influence.

Somehow we're going to influence the culture.

Somehow, if we can tweak our churches and bring in rock music and contemporary kind of lingo and And be cool and Chic and All of that.

So we can sort of influence, that's a myth. You hear people say, well, you know, if such and such a prominent movie person came to Christ, think what an influence they could have. Such and such an athlete came to Christ, what an influence they could have. That is a myth. Nobody was ever saved by anybody's influence.

The power of the church in the world is not its. Influence. The power of the church in the world is its gospel. It's the specificity of the gospel that saves, not some kind of imaginary influence. We don't have any influence.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't live a righteous life to undergird your testimony. But what do you mean influence? We're not trying to influence people. We're trying to convert people. We're not trying to sort of sneak up on them and try to make them feel good and see if we can't influence them in the right direction.

It is a myth. What saves is the gospel and the gospel alone, and it's confrontive. It's not an influence, it's a command. It is a myth to think that because I'm somebody famous or well-known, or because I'm slick or clever, or because I've packaged my little presentation in lingo and terminology that's kind of at the core of contemporary vernacular, that somehow this influences people. You know what gets people saved?

Not that kind of influence. What gets people saved is a recognition of who Jesus Christ is. and an honest evaluation of their condition and the need for the Savior. What we need is not more people trying to influence society, we need more people preaching the gospel. It's confrontation, not influence.

Now that's the kind, that is an influence, but it's a confrontive kind. Not an oblique. Kind.

So The disciples got it against the grain, against the trends, against the popular. Idea against what was, I guess you could say, a politically correct view of Jesus. They said, You're God's Christ. I love that phrase. You're God's Christ, you're God's Messiah.

Possessive in the Greek. That's just something I think maybe people overlook. But back in. Luke 2.11, I'm going to hurry here. For today in the city of David has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

The Savior has been born for you. He is Christ the Lord, the Messiah, the Messiah, the Messiah. That's been all the way through. Jesus in Luke 4:18 reads from Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me. That's the word Messiah in the Hebrew, the anointed one.

I am the anointed one, I am the Lord's Messiah, anointed by the Spirit of God. Christ is the word Christos, which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for anointed. To be anointed meant to be ordained. To be set apart. God set apart the king, the priest, the prophet, Christ, who is all three.

As his anointed one. Read Psalm 2, read Daniel 9:25 and 26. The Messiah is God's anointed. That is to say, he was anointed to be king, priest, and prophet. He is the Christ.

of God. That is a magnificent possessive. I just would Shouldn't take the time, but Luke 2, 26. This is a favorite phrase of mine. It says in Luke 2:26, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death.

This is Simeon. Before he had seen the Lord's Christ, isn't that a great possessive? The Lord's Christ. We talk about him as our Messiah. He is God's anointed, God's chosen.

We didn't anoint him, God anointed him. God anointed him with the oil of gladness, Hebrews says, above all his fellows. He is the Lord's Messiah. That's why he said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. You didn't pick him, you didn't make him savior, you didn't make him Lord.

Nobody did except God Himself. In chapter 3, verse 22. At his baptism, he says, Thou art my beloved Son. Toward the end of Luke, I can't resist this. Chapter 23.

Verse 35. The people are mocking him, and the rulers are sneering at him. And they said, He saved others. Let him save himself. If this is God's Christ, his chosen one.

That emphasized what the Messiah was: he was the anointed who belonged to God because God chose him. Christ mine elect. In Acts 3, Luke's still writing in Acts. Verse 18: The things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all his prophets that his Christ should suffer. His Christ.

And then again in the fourth chapter of Acts in verse. 26 Kings of the earth took their stand. The rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his. Christ, His anointed. Better be careful how you treat Jesus.

He's God's anointed. That's why the Bible says: if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, let him be cursed. You have just rejected God. God's choice.

So Peter got it right on behalf of the apostles, the Christ of God. The full statement: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Matthew 16, 16 adds. that in The best the crowds could do was that he was a prophet. That's all they were willing to do.

And they would become consistently disillusioned with him when he wasn't the political, economic. Later they wanted him to be. But here the apostles got it right against the backdrop of what was politically correct and what was the viewpoint of the scholastic elite in Judaism. And they said, You are God's Christ, you are God's chosen anointed Messiah. Nathaniel said, He is the son of God, the king of Israel.

John the Baptist said he is the Son of God.

So that was at the beginning clear. Here it is more clear at the end after all that Jesus has done and said.

So at last, the truth of his messiahship. is settled. The disciples will experience some ups and downs now between now and the death of Christ. It'll be hard, it won't be easy. There'll be some bewildering things.

There'll be some fluctuation in their faith. But they passed the test, they got it right. How do you answer the question? God's Christ, is that your answer? God's anointed Savior and Messiah.

The fulfiller of all prophecies, all promises, all hopes for salvation, for a kingdom, for blessing.

Son of man, son of God, true and real God by nature, not a mythical deity like Pan, not a mortal hero like Caesar, but God. Oh, by the way, Matthew says that. Jesus added a statement that's not in Luke. Matthew 16, 17, Jesus answered and said to Peter, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. You don't know this kind of truth unless it's been revealed to you by God.

The reality of spiritual knowledge is it's not available to flesh and blood. The world by wisdom knew not God. The natural man understandeth not the things of God. They're foolishness to him. He can't know them.

Flesh and blood can't know who Jesus is. That's why these people who attempt to know who Jesus is, who are doing it in their human wisdom rather than accepting the revelation of God, can't find out. The disciples believed the revelation of God. They believed the disclosure of God. They believed that what Jesus said and what he claimed.

They believe what Heaven revealed. And because of that, God opened their hearts. To receive the truth. And he still does that. Matthew 11, 27, No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.

This is the great mystery of conversion. You're called upon to believe. You can't believe unless God awakens your heart to believe. But in the marvelous conflux of those two great spiritual realities, the power of God works upon a sinner to bring that sinner to believe. And at the same time, God awakens the sinner so that that becomes a saving.

life-giving faith.

So, no matter what the world says about who he is, we know who he is because scripture is absolutely crystal clear about it. We go against the popular conventional view. We will always be a small remnant. The objective of our Place in the world, the calling of our ministry in the world is not somehow to sort of influence people into being saved because they like our lifestyle or influence people into being saved because we can solve some of their felt needs and shore up some of their weaknesses and somehow make life a little more comfortable. We're not trying to do that.

The church isn't told to influence the world in the right direction. It's told to confront the world with the truth of Christ. There will be some who believe Some whose hearts the Father awakens. To receive eternal life, others reject, become hard, and God confirms that hardness in judicial blindness and ignorance.

Now at this point, just closing. You would think that this would be a good point to really spread the word and start the movement. to acknowledging Jesus as Messiah. But that's not what Jesus says. And it's most interesting, verse 21, he warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone.

I mean, imagine you go for two and a half years of training for ministry, you get to the culmination of your training, you now get it. Yes, you are God's Messiah, and now you know what John the Baptist declared long ago. You now know that. You've seen it. You've got rampant amounts of evidence.

So you can literally fill up your life with all of the stories of the power of Jesus and the revelation that comes through his teaching. You've got it all. You get it. You got the right answer. You're ready to go.

And Jesus immediately says, keep your mouth shut about this. Don't tell anybody. What is that? It's twofold. One, it is Judicial judgment like John 12.

It's hiding the truth from people who've already confirmed their rejection of it. It's like not casting your pearls before swine. And this is very strong language, verse 21. He warned. Epi Temao to sternly charge and instructed is actually Parangelo, the military command.

He charged and commanded them: don't tell anybody that I am God's Messiah. Don't tell anybody. Why?

Well, because of course it could be dangerous. It could escalate again this revolt by the crowds who wanted to grab Jesus, like in John 6:14, and 15, force him to be king, and go. Bring a coup against Herod and against the Roman. Occupation. This isn't the time he's saying.

Don't say anything plus. This is judgment. Don't say anything about it. It's almost as if the Lord Turns the light out in Galilee. The crowd continues to follow.

But in the end. They call for his blood. Just a few days after they called. Yeah. King and Messiah.

This is really the end. They're already so hard-hearted that they're judicially. confirmed in that hardness. Bye, God.

Now remember, he had just sent out people in that area. namely the twelve to spread the gospel one last time. That's it. That's it. God has his limits.

And when the hardness is final. The message is withdrawn. He didn't want to start a revolt around a false concept of what the Messiah is and what he does. He had another thing to accomplish, verse 22.

Son of man must suffer many things. and be rejected by the elders? And chief priests and scribes. And be killed. and be raised up on the third day.

Shock of all shocks. Are you kidding me? You're going to be killed by the religious establishment. This, it's impossible to understand what was going on in their minds at this time. Who knows what expectations Peter had in his mind when he made the confession, you're God's Christ, like this is it.

We've reached the pinnacle, it's now going to happen, and immediately Jesus follows it up with a death announcement. That Jesus would be killed by the Jewish people was too bizarre to conceive. But it was true. And he told them immediately so they didn't go on with wrong ideas and wrong expectations. And I think they fought the reality of that in their own minds, and they couldn't bring themselves to believe it.

That surfaces later on. They were not to expect Jesus to rise to a throne. They were expecting him to go to the grave and rise from there. The Son of Man must suffer many things. Must, not a mistake, but God's plan.

He must suffer. That's the plan. Isaiah 53, he must be bruised for our iniquities, right? They must be Chastened for our peace. He must suffer for our transgressions.

He must bear the sins of many. That's what it said in Isaiah 53: the Messiah would do. In fact, he's going to suffer many things. The hatred of the leaders, the betrayal by Judas, the arrest in the garden, the kiss of Judas, prison, mockery, whipping, thorns. And be rejected apad Dakimadzo, which means to be rejected after investigation.

He's going to have a mock trial. Very technical word. There's going to be a real careful assessment of him. And they're going to reject him as flawed, faulty, not genuine, not the real Messiah. And they're going to.

Kill him. Who's going to do this? The elders and chief priests and scribes, one definite article: the three names, meaning they're seen collectively here. They make up the establishment of religion in Israel, they are the Sanhedrin. The ruling body.

The temple leaders. The Old Testament experts, the the uh Authority in Israel, the supreme religious court, and their verdict is: we tested him, he is rejected as the Messiah, and he is to be killed. And that's what they got the Romans to do. That's a stunner of all stunners, killed by the religious establishment of the people he came to. What a blow to messianic hopes.

They had just reached the pinnacle of affirmation that he's the Messiah, and now they're told, don't tell anybody about it. This is judicial. Don't tell anybody around here about this. plan is not that we become King now, the plan is death. Death at the hands Of Jewish leaders.

But that's because, as Mark 10:45 says, the Son of Man came To give his life a ransom for many. He came to be made sin for us who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. He came to bear the curse for us, he came to bear in his own body. Our sins on the cross. And then, verse 22 says, Be raised up on the third day.

So Jesus introduces them now at the height of their moment of confession, at the final exam of all their training, at the highest point when they now understand it clearly. He tells them, Don't expect to go from here to the kingdom. Death is coming, and so is resurrection. Yes, he will die for sinners, but as Psalm 16 says, the Lord will not allow him to see corruption, but show him the path of life. He will raise from the dead.

Psalm 16 says, Isaiah 53:10 to 12 says the same thing in messianic promise. What a moment it is. The supreme confession, the supreme moment when maybe they're ready now to go out and preach the messiahship of Jesus unwaveringly with absolute conviction. And he says, Don't say anything to anybody. It's past their opportunity here in Galilee.

We're not going to start a messianic movement because I'm going to go to be executed. Die for your sins and the sins of all who will believe, and then be raised from the dead. Thus does Jesus set us on a course. toward the great climax of his life. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm Phil Johnson. In today's special program, we showcased one of the distinctive themes from John's 56 years of Bible teaching ministry. The title of the lesson, Life's Most Important Question.

Well, friend, as we remember the life and legacy of John MacArthur, we continue to find comfort and strength in the knowledge that John is now rejoicing in the presence of his Savior, and hopefully you'll be encouraged to know that for however long God sustains grace to you through the support of his people, we will be here unleashing God's truth one verse at a time. And this ministry will always and only feature the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. And speaking of being encouraged, we've been so encouraged by the notes we've been receiving from friends like you. If you have a story about how God has used grace to you in your life, we would love to hear it. It doesn't have to be anything long.

If John's Bible teaching has made a difference in your life, just let us know when you drop us a note. today. You can reach us by email at letters at gty dot org. That address, once more, letters at gty. org.

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If you'd like to leave your message on our remembrance phone line, call us at 661-295-6288. That's 661-295-6288. Again, if you've benefited from John's verse-by-verse Bible teaching, do let us know when you write. And thank you for praying for John's family and for the Congregation of Grace Church, for the team at this radio station, and for the staff of Grace to You. Your prayers are crucial and in fact Taking us before the throne of grace really is the most important way you can support us.

So, thank you for your prayers.

Now, on behalf of the entire Grace to You staff, I'm your host, Phil Johnson, inviting you to join us for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on the next Grace to You.