Why would you trust the Son of God? Why would you trust Jesus? Why would you trust him totally with everything? His answer, because he loved me enough to die for me. And as Paul said in Romans, if while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, how much more now that we belong to him shall we be saved by his living intervention?
Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In baseball, you need to know how to catch a fly ball. Behind the wheel you'd better know which pedal is the gas and which is the brake. And of course, excelling in the classroom means, first, that you master reading and writing.
Those are fundamentals, basic qualities that you need to be successful.
So, what are the fundamentals? What are the basic attitudes you need for successful Christian living? How do you cultivate them, and what does that process look like?
Well, John MacArthur is going to help you answer those questions in a series we're starting today titled The Pillars of Christian Character, here on Grace to You. Make sure you're building your life on the right foundation. Here's John with today's lesson. The life of the church comes from spiritual attitudes. That is to say, what's inside people.
What's inside people? Outwardly, we can sing the hymns and we can pray the prayers and we can go through the worship and we can sit and listen to the word and we can outwardly submit to those who lead us. But the real life of the church comes from inside the church. That's why the goal of everything we do is transformed lives. As Paul said in Galatians 4, his passion, his prayer, his travail, his pain was that Christ would be fully formed inside them.
That is the same idea when Paul in Colossians says that he wants the word of Christ to dwell in them ritually. In other words, that's the inside that God wants to work on. Spirit-filled people. do spirit-led things. And they conform to the biblical pattern for the life of the church because it's in their heart to do that.
And that's the hard approach. That's the long approach. I mean, you have to work at that, but you work at that by the consistent. Teaching and preaching of the Word of God and holding people to a biblical standard and watching them grow spiritually.
So, if a church really wants to do what is right, it works on attitudes. Not externals. You can use fear to motivate people. You can use fear.
Some churches do. There are churches, if you don't show up on a Sunday night, the elders come to your house. If you don't turn in your envelope every week, they come to your house. If you missed the prayer meeting, they're over there to see you and they want to know what the sins are. You can be motivated by pride, you can be motivated by legalism, the idea that if I go there somehow, God will like me better.
But all of that stuff is counterproductive because It allows people to derive satisfaction from a wrong motive. You don't ever want to make people do something because then, when they get the satisfaction of doing it, they're satisfied with doing something for the wrong reason. If you're going to be Changing a church, if you want to be moving a church to what it needs to be, you work on the heart. And what works on the heart? The truth and the spirit, right?
So we start with attitudes. Let's talk about some of those attitudes. Number one: attitude. And these are not necessarily as we flow through them in any. particular order, although I think the first few sort of belong at the beginning.
The first issue of the heart, the first heart attitude. That we want to see in the life of God's people is faith. Faced. Trust. in God.
I mean, if that's not there, it's going to be very difficult to get you to believe anything that God says. or to rely on his promises. I mean, it's clear that the Bible says that If you obey the Lord, your life will be blessed. If you listen to his word, you'll be happy and fulfilled. If you obey His Word, you'll prosper spiritually and And uh you'll have good success, Joshua 1.8.
And God has made a myriad of promises. You stay in the circle of obedience, you'll experience the fullness of his love. You'll enjoy his protection. You'll enjoy the assurance of your salvation. You'll have peace and joy and love and all of those things.
And the Lord will meet every need of your life. And he'll take away all your anxiety and bear it. for you and all of those promises of scripture. But they mean nothing if you don't believe him, right?
So the first attitude is an attitude of faith.
Now, how do you engender in people an attitude of trust in God?
Well, there's only really one way to do it. You trust someone. You know, right? You have to know him well enough to trust him. You should be constantly being exposed to the character of God revealed in Scripture, and as you come to know your God, with that knowledge comes trust.
Let me show you an illustration of this. Let's go back to the little minor prophet Habakkuk. Happiness is sitting next to somebody who knows where Habakkuk is. Habakkuk. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Naam, Habakkuk.
Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah, Malachites. fifth from the last in the Old Testament, Habakkuk.
Now Habakkuk has a problem. A big problem. Judah, the people of God, the southern kingdom, Judah. The people of God are unfaithful. To God.
They're not just unfaithful, they're downright sinful. They're hypocritical. They're wicked. And the prophet Habakkuk does not understand why God doesn't intervene. And so in verse two, his oracle or his sermon or his burden.
is how long, O Lord, will I call for help? And you will not hear. I cry out to you about this violence and you don't save. Why do you make me see this iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me.
Strife exists and contention arises. The law is being ignored, and he means by that the divine law. Justice is never upheld. The wicked surround the righteous, and that means for evil purposes. And justice comes out perverted.
Now that's his basic burden here. He's saying, look. This is Judah. This is the southern kingdom. Made up originally, of course, of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
These are your people. And they're defecting and they're wicked and they're iniquitous. And I keep telling you this, and I keep crying out to you, and you don't do anything. It might have been that Habakkuk's first request was that God would come down and Bring a spiritual revival, and they'd all repent. But he also must have included in his petition that God ought to step in and judge.
Because people shouldn't be getting away with this. And he's got a real dilemma. Because God isn't doing either. He's not coming down. With a great move of salvation and restoration, and he's not coming in judgment, and he doesn't understand how God can just look at this and not act.
And here comes the answer in verse 5. Look among the nations. A backup. Observe. Be astonished.
Wonder, because I am doing something in your days, and you wouldn't believe it if you were told. In other words, he's saying to him, I can't tell you about it because you wouldn't believe it. I have to wait till you see it. But I'm doing something. I am doing something.
What is he doing? Verse 6. Behold, I'm raising up the Chaldeans. That fierce and impetuous people, and they were a vile and wretched and wicked people. And I'm raising them up.
Those people who march throughout the earth. To seize dwelling places which are not theirs. They were plunderers. They were murderers. They were wicked.
They were marauders. They slaughtered people. In verse 7, they are dreaded and they are feared. The only justice and authority they have is that which they invent. It originates with themselves.
They were vicious and efficient warriors. Their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping, their horsemen come from afar, they fly like an eagle, swooping down to devour. Very graphic terms. descriptive of the fierce and formidable work of devastation wrought by these Chaldeans.
All of them come for violence. Their horde of faces moves forward. They collect captives like sand. They mock at kings, and rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress and heap up rubble to capture it.
You know what that means? When they had a fortress with all the stone walls, the way you took the fortress was to pile up rubble. and make a ramp out of it and just march right up. And that's what they did. And at the end of verse 11, he says, well, verse 11 says, they'll sweep through like the wind and pass on.
They will be held guilty. They whose strength is their God, they worship nothing but their military might. They are a wicked, vile, vicious people.
Well, that's not the answer he wanted, I don't think. I really don't think that's what he wanted. I think he wanted A revival. And if he couldn't get a revival, He wanted God to sort of step in supernaturally and and do some judging that would d would cause the people to repent. But not the Chaldeans.
Then now he's got even another question. First question: God. Why don't you act? Second question: God. You're gonna do that?
He didn't understand why God didn't act, and when God said, I'm going to act, he couldn't understand why God would use the Chaldeans. Why? Because the Chaldeans were far worse. The Nejudeans. How could God use a far worse people, not a covenant people, to come in and slaughter the covenant people?
That didn't make sense in terms of how he understood the covenant people's relationship to God, which he thought was a saving, delivering relationship. And it certainly didn't make any sense that God would make. The judge, a worse people. He's got a major dilemma. To put it in simple terms, He didn't understand why God was doing what he was doing.
Ever wondered about that? Didn't make sense. Why are you doing this? Why aren't you doing this? Why are you doing this?
I suppose you could ask the same question in our environment. You could say The church in America America itself is in iniquity and wickedness and it escalates and it escalates and it escalates. And now you're lifting up into authority. People who are at the heart of the problem rather than solutions. Why?
This is the problem of history that he has. He doesn't understand why it's all unraveling, particularly with regard, uniquely so, to the covenant people.
Well, how's he going to solve his dilemma? Gonna solve his dilemma. By his theology. Verse 12. He starts Amusing.
starts talking. to himself really. And actually what is a prayer to God, but it's his own thoughts. Art thou not from everlasting? First thing he does, he is on quicksand right now.
He is sinking into the quicksand of his dilemma. He can't solve his problem. He doesn't understand it. And he starts sinking, and he's looking for a rock, and he finds that rock in what he knows to be true about God. First thing he says: Art thou not from everlasting?
Oh, yes. God? You're eternal. You were here before this problem started. You're going to be here after this problem is over.
You are bigger than this problem. This is a small little deal. This is a little period of time in the middle of. History And you are the eternal God from eternity past to eternity future, who always existed and always will. You are far greater than this little moment in history.
See, what he's doing is reaffirming what he knows to be true about God, and that becomes the rock on which he can find his footing. You're bigger than this problem. You obviously understand how it fits into the eternal plan. And then he says, Oh Lord. Yeah.
And he uses the term here for sovereign one. Not only are you transcendent and eternal, and this fits within the full eternal scheme, and it's a little tiny moment in the midst of eternity. You are far greater than this. And you also are omnipotent. You are in charge of this.
Nothing is beyond your control. And then he says, My Holy One. What does he mean by that? You don't make mistakes. Whatever you're doing.
Fits your perfection. And then he says, we will not die. What does he mean by that? God is faithful. You will not destroy Judah because you have a covenant to fulfill with them.
God had made a covenant with Abraham that must be fulfilled with God's people. You have made promises to them of a kingdom and a future and salvation. And so what is Habakkuk doing? He's reaffirming that God is eternal. God is sovereign.
God is perfect, and God keeps all his promises. And on the rock, of his knowledge of God, he finds secure footing. And he says, I see. You've just appointed them. to judge.
And thou old rock. See? He's on the rock. You establish them. to correct.
I understand. Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and you can't look on wickedness with favor. And so you are going to use them to judge. I see it. And the real sum of it all.
Comes at the end of verse 4 in chapter 2. Look what he says. The righteous or the just We'll live by what? His faith. The just We'll live.
By faith. That is such an important statement. You ought to underline it. Put a little asterisk by it or a check or something, because that becomes a key statement in the New Testament, doesn't it? Romans 1.17.
Galatians 3.11, Hebrews 10:38. Repeated in the New Testament: the just shall live by faith, the just shall live by faith. And that's where he was. He was anchored by his faith in God. He knew God was eternal.
Far beyond any event in time. He knew God was sovereign, in charge of everything. He knew God was holy and never made a mistake. And he knew God was faithful and wouldn't violate his promise. God was doing what had to be done.
Now you know, Habakkuk feels a lot better now. And the circumstances haven't changed? I love the way he wraps it up. Go to the end of the book. Verse 17, chapter 3.
Verse 17, chapter 3. Yeah. This is language that would mean so much to people then and doesn't mean as much to us today until we understand the background. Though the fig tree should not blossom, guess what? Fig trees always blossom.
And there be no fruit on the vines. And there was always fruit on the vines. And though the yield of the olive should fail, and I'll tell you one thing about an olive tree, they last. When you go to the Garden of Gethsemane, Now They will point to some trees they believe were saplings when Jesus lived. And they're still producing olives.
And the fields produced no food, and the fields did produce food. Though the flock should be cut off from the fold, in other words, animals stop calving and there aren't any more. And there's no cattle in the stalls. In other words, if everything that is common, ordinary, everyday, dependable, kind of natural happening all of a sudden stops, in other words, if everything goes upside down and everything you can always count on stops happening. If the whole world goes nuts upside down, inside out, and backwards.
Verse 18. Yeah. I will rejoice in the Lord. That's what exalt means. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
In other words, he's saying this: when I don't understand the circumstances, I do understand my God. You understand that? And then verse 19, the sum of it all. The Lord God is my what? Strength.
I know my God. He's my strength. And he has made my feet like hinds' feet. Hines are mountain goats. You ever see a mountain goat?
Flying around in Alaska. Right close to those mountains and those rugged rocky cliffs, you see these white. Kind of Call them sheep, but they're really more like a goat. And they're standing right on the edge of a ledge with absolute safety and security. And he's saying God is my strength.
And I might be on the precipice. in my ignorance. And I might be in an unsolvable dilemma, and I might be in a circumstance from which it looks like there's no escape. But the Lord makes my feet like the feet of a mountain goat, and he makes me walk all over the high places. With safety, security, and confidence.
You can walk on any precipice that you ever face in life if you have enough confidence in your God, right? And how do you get that confidence? By getting to know your God and learning that He is eternal, He is sovereign, He is holy, never makes a mistake, and He always keeps His promises. That's faith. That's faith.
And that's the inner heart attitude that God's people must have. That's crucial to the internal systems of the church. Give me a people that believe they're God. That's one of the reasons that we don't have Lots of people in our church. falling apart.
As somebody once said years ago. In fact. A Bible that's falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn't. When you Know your God. You can ride out the storms.
You can walk on the high places. in complete safety. In Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. But Christ lives in me.
I love this. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and Delivered himself up for me. Oh, this is so rich. On the one hand, I live by faith in God. And on the other hand, I live by faith in Jesus Christ.
And what is Paul saying here? I live trusting The Son of God. Oh what? Why would you trust the Son of God? Why would you trust Jesus?
Why would you trust him totally with everything? His answer? Because He loved me enough. To do what? to die for me.
And as Paul said in Romans, if while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, How much more now that we belong to him shall we be saved by his living intervention? I live by faith. In my great God, I live by faith in my great Savior who is personally devoted to me as the one for whom he died. I know my God. And I know my Lord.
And I know my Lord. As promised. that he will Sustain me. that he will protect me. that he will guard me He is the shepherd, isn't he?
He is the one who protects his own sheep. My God, sticks closer than a brother. My God will never leave me or forsake me. and neither will his son, who has taken up residence in my heart. I have faith in God, don't you?
I have faith in the greatness and the power of my God. The faithfulness of my God and the perfection of my God and the holiness of my God, and I have confidence and faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and I have faith to believe that what He began, He will finish. I have faith that when Jesus said, That all that the Father gives to him will come to him, and whoever comes, he will receive, and whoever he receives, he keeps, and whoever he keeps, he raises. I have faith that Jesus will bring me to glory, don't you? I have faith that he'll supply my needs.
I have faith that he'll never let anything come into my life that I cannot bear, but always will make a way of escape. I have faith that he'll pour out a blessing upon my obedience. I have faith that he will use me. I have faith that he'll overcome every trial in my life victoriously if I am obedient to him. I have faith in him.
I trust in him. I believe in him. That's the beginning attitude. It starts at salvation because salvation occurs when you trust in God, doesn't it? You trust him to forgive your sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
That's the beginning of faith. It's not the end. That's just the start. And then the just shall live by faith. That's the first great attitude.
So What does the preacher, what does the leader want to produce in your heart? The confidence of the Apostle Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 5:7 said this: We walk by faith, not by site. We don't evaluate life by what we see and feel and... smell and touch. We evaluate life through the eyes of faith.
And faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, but it's not wishful thinking. It's built on the rock of the character of our God and the character and work of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you have that faith, You can face anything in life. When you know that God works all things together for good to them that love Him. then you can accept anything.
When you know that nothing shall ever separate you from the love of Christ, absolutely nothing. Not life or death or things present or things to come or height or depth or any other creature, not anything. When you know that and believe that, you can trust him in every situation. And that's the initial That's the beginning attitude. Faith becomes the shield, Ephesians 6:16.
You quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one with faith. When Satan tempts you to do something, It's quenched by your trust. Sin is what you do. when you're not satisfied with God. And if you're not satisfied with God, it's because you don't know him.
So what shields you from temptation is faith. James 1 says, ask in faith. And you'll receive. Hebrews 10.22 says, Draw near in faith. Hebrews 12 says, run by faith.
Romans 4 says, be strong in faith like Abraham.
So the first attitude is to trust in our sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, wise, loving, gracious, and just God and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has promised to save you eternally. And that attitude is the attitude upon which you build your life. Let's pray. Lord, we We do want to know you, know you so well. that there is unequivocal trust.
We know that knowledge comes through the word. It also comes. Through a life of experiences. The reason Paul could say nothing separates us from the love of Christ. is because Every imaginable difficulty had entered into his life.
And he was speaking from experience. He had faced demons. He had faced death. All that life could bring. Principalities and powers assaulted him.
None of it ever separated him From you. And so, Lord. As we come to know the word and As we go through life and enjoy the fulfillment of your promise of protection in every situation. May our faith increase. Grow stronger and stronger.
so that truly we are the just who live by faith. May that be the dominating attitude of our hearts. Total trust. in the one who is absolutely worthy. of our trust.
And in your Son's name we pray. Amen. You're listening to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur and the series we call the Pillars of Christian Character. Today John looked at the pillar that really all other attitudes are built on. Faith.
It will sustain you and even strengthen you during life's greatest trials. John covered a good bit of ground in today's lesson, and there's a lot more to come in the days ahead. To help you grasp all of it, let me encourage you to download the Pillars of Christian Character at our website, gty.org. It's available free of charge. Also, let me remind you that from now through Friday, October 17th, nearly all the resources we sell are discounted by 25%.
To see everything that's available and place your order, contact us today. Our website again is gty.org. You can also give us a call at 80055GRACE. And with Christmas just around the corner, this is a great time to get some gifts for loved ones, gifts that will give spiritual encouragement long into the new year. Our phone number again, 800-55 GRACE.
and our website gty.org. And when you visit our website, gty.org, You'll find a variety of free resources to encourage and equip you, including MP3s and written transcripts of John MacArthur's sermons. Podcasts of our daily radio program. multiple daily devotionals and the Grace to You television program on demand. And as I said, you can find all the lessons from John's current study, The Pillars of Christian Character.
all of them available free of charge in MP3 and transcript format. Take advantage of all that free content at our website, gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today. Be here tomorrow as we return to John MacArthur's study called The Pillars of Christian Character. John will continue to help you build the foundation you need for your life. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.
on Grace to You.
