If you're not applying the word of God in your life, you are deceived about your spiritual condition. This certainly applies to a non-believer, a non-Christian who hears the gospel, hears the gospel, and never puts it into practice. It can also be true of a Christian who hears teaching about a certain area and he will not deal with that, he will not apply that in an area of his life, he becomes totally deceived about his true spiritual condition. Yeah. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you're a Christian, think about the many ways Christ shows His love for you every day. He strengthens you during trials. He meets your physical needs, and most important, He paid for your sins. and at this moment he is preparing a home for you in heaven.
How should you show your love for him? What does he require? John MacArthur points you to the answer today on Grace to You, so stay here for a study that can help you understand perhaps more deeply than ever. The importance of obeying God, not legalistically, but out of a wholehearted devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. And now here's John to continue his series, The Pillars of Christian Character.
Now, what are the essential heart attitudes? What are the essential heart motives and convictions? I gave you the first one: faith. Faith. In the back at 2-4, Repeated in Romans 1, 17, Galatians 3, 11, Hebrews 10, 38, the Lord's repeated it all through Scripture.
It says this: the just shall live by Faith. At the heart of everything is believing God. He that comes to him must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And Paul in Galatians 2 says, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. We live by faith.
That is the compelling heart attitude. We walk not by sight, but by faith. And we trust God and we believe God. We believe in Him. We believe Him to be the God revealed in Scripture.
We believe He's the God who faithfully keeps all of His promises and covenants. We believe He's the God who knows best and never lies and tells us the truth. Sin is what we do when we believe the flesh or the world or the devil, not when we believe God.
So faith then becomes the shield that thwarts every temptation. God says, do right and you'll be blessed. Do right and you'll prosper. Do right and you'll enjoy peace. And when you believe God, You resist temptation.
Faith is the important foundational attitude. But right alongside that is obedience. The perfect companion to faith is obedience. In fact, the hymn says, trust and obey. Trust and obey really sums up the two foundational Attitudes.
Obedience Simply means to submit. Do what the Lord says. Do what he tells you. And what he tells you is revealed in Scripture. How foundational is it?
Go back to the Great Commission, the last verse. Of Matthew. Matthew 28. Verse 20. Jesus is commissioning his disciples to go out and Make disciples.
Of all nations, to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's the salvation part. You go out there, you preach the gospel, they believe, they become disciples, you take them and baptize them, public confession of their faith. And then, verse 20: once they're saved, here's what you do. Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.
That's what we do. We teach people to obey God's word, to obey God's commands, to submit to Him. That is the foundation. of Christian living, of sanctification. Faith and obedience.
And where you say there's faith and there's no obedience, we will question your faith. John 8:31, Jesus said. Whoever continues in my word is my real disciple. Jesus said, The one who keeps my commandments is the one who loves me. 1 John, John repeats this same emphasis.
In 1 John chapter 2. By this, we know we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. The one who says, I have come to know him, does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has been truly perfected. In other words, you say you love God.
You say you believe in God, you say you belong to Him, then it'll show up in your obedience. We're talking about heart obedience here. From the heart. Obedience without equivocation. Obedience without resistance, obedience without compromise.
This is part and parcel of the original commitment we made. Turn to First Peter, and I want to show you a very important. Part of this first chapter in 1 Peter. 1 Peter describes salvation as an act of obedience. It says, you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls.
He describes the same Reality in verse 23 is having been born again. Through the the word of God. When you were born again through the Word of God. That also could be described as obeying the truth. That purified your souls.
What truth was that? The gospel. What was the gospel? Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And that's a command, so you either obey it or you don't.
God said, This is my son, hear him. Jesus said, repent. Repent, repent. The apostles, remember on the day of Pentecost, Peter says, repent, be baptized for the remission of sins and so forth. Always they preach the gospel, believe, believe.
That's a command. It's always in a command mode, and it calls for obedience.
So Peter says. You obeyed the truth. And you were purified. You were saved. You were born again because you obeyed the truth, the truth contained in the Word of God.
The word of God was preached. You heard it. You believed it. You obeyed it. It said, believe, you believed.
It said, repent, you repented. It said, cast yourself on Christ, you cast yourself on Christ.
So the point is that at the moment of salvation, you engaged in an act of obedience. But you did more than that. You pledged yourself that that obedience was only the beginning. Not some isolated event. In other words, at the time when you committed yourself to obey the gospel, you also affirmed Christ as Lord, right?
You came and You recognized that he was your savior and there was no other way to be saved from your sins. And you were on your way to hell and the burden of your sin was overwhelming. And so you said, I can't save myself. I can't deliver myself from sin. And only you can.
You alone are the savior. And please forgive my sin. I cast myself on your mercy. I cast myself on your grace. Please forgive my sin based upon the fact that you died in my place.
And you recognize Jesus as Savior. But at the same time, you also acknowledge that He was Lord and Master, and you said, I'll follow you. I'll follow you. I'm confident that no Christian at the time of salvation has a grasp on the full implications of what that commitment meant. You don't know what that means at that point, but the commitment is there.
Why? Because the Holy Spirit has produced it. The Holy Spirit is produced The sense that you are now becoming a servant of God, and you are now becoming a servant of Jesus Christ, your master, and acknowledging Him as your Lord. And you have stepped into a place of obedience. That's part of the covenant of salvation.
God's part, I save you, I forgive your sins, I give you eternal life through the work of Jesus Christ, your part. You repent. And you submit to follow me. That's salvation. When you came to salvation, that's what you did.
That's what you did. You committed to obedience, though you didn't fully understand all the implications involved in that. But go back to 1 Peter again, moving back from verses 22 to 23 to verse. One and two. This is a very, very important portion of Scripture.
As Peter starts writing, at the end of verse 1, he starts to talk about this matter of salvation. He starts with election. He talks through the The aliens. The scattered believers who are chosen.
So he's starting to talk about salvation here, and he starts with the election. Back at eternity past, God chose who would be saved, and He did it, verse 2, says, according to His foreknowledge. Foreknowledge doesn't mean that everybody acts independently, and God way back looked ahead and saw what they were going to do and said, Oh, so that's what they're going to do. If that's what they're going to do, this is what I'll do. Foreknowledge is a predetermined relationship.
Four means before we were ever born, before we ever had a choice, before we ever did or didn't do anything, God predetermined to know us. In the same way that he says, Israel only have I known, it doesn't mean that they're the only people on the planet that he knows, it means they're the only ones with whom he has a personal relationship. It's the same knowing as. Cain knew his wife. It's the same knowing as Mary is pregnant and Joseph has never known her.
It's the same knowing as in John 10, where my sheep hear my voice and I know them. It is the knowing of intimacy. And God in His plan chose based upon a predetermined relationship. He predetermined to have an intimate relationship with certain ones before the foundation of the world. That's the past part of salvation.
The present part moves in in the phrase, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. That which was in the decree of God in eternity past moved into time through the work of the Spirit. In what sense? We were sanctified by the work of the Spirit. To put it another way, we were begotten of the Spirit.
To borrow John 3, born of the Spirit. That's our salvation there. That's the initiation of the sanctifying work. Sanctify means to separate. When the Spirit.
Separated us from sin, separated us from death, separated us from hell, separated us from Satan in the sense that we were saved.
So, first, eternity passed. We are chosen based upon God's predetermination to have a relationship with us. We are saved as the Spirit of God moved in and separated us. Unto God, that's the sanctifying work of the Spirit. It started at our salvation.
And then notice this, next statement. In order that We were chosen and saved in order that you may do what? What's the next word? Obey Jesus Christ. We were saved unto good works, Ephesians 2:10.
We were saved unto obedience. That's the point.
So the past Chosen on the basis of the foreknowledge of God. The present saved by the separating work of the Spirit of God. The future, a life of what? Obedience. I mean, that's the redeeming purpose.
A life of obedience. And then this most interesting little statement there. and be sprinkled with his blood? That's strange. Strange.
What a strange thing to say. and be sprinkled with his blood. What does it mean? to be sprinkled with his blood. Isn't that more of a of a salvation issue?
It's referred to in Hebrews 12, 24, the sprinkled blood. What is that? There is an answer to that, and it's in Exodus 24, and that's what Peter's alluding to. Go to Exodus 24. It is.
A very important text. and a very interesting one. In Exodus 24, And we're going to find out what that sprinkling of the blood is. In Exodus 24, Moses has been up on the mountain and received the law of God. God has given man his law.
It includes the Ten Commandments and all the rest of the law that God gave. And in that law, God has revealed his will in very specific terms. Obviously, prior to the Mosaic law, God had revealed his. His ways and his will. in many different manners.
But now it's all going to be written down in absolute specifics in the law of Moses.
So Moses went up the mountain, you remember up Mount Sinai, and was given the law of God. Then Moses came down. Let's pick it up in chapter 24, verse 3. Moses came. And all of this law, it's this massive law, all of the law that came through Moses, ceremonial law, and moral law and all the laws of social life, the whole thing.
Moses came, recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances. And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do.
Now this is a very important moment. Moses comes down. And I guess by the work of the Holy Spirit, he was able to remember everything, and he recounts the whole thing. All the law of God to the people. And unilaterally, with one voice, they say, We will do all of that.
And they make a public. Vow. They make a pledge, they make a promise, and it is a promise of obedience. It is a promise of obedience. There's a covenant being made here.
God's part of it is I will Send you my moral law. I will provide in that moral law my standards. I will provide in that moral law for when you violate those standards. Because in the moral law, I mean in the Mosaic law, and it certainly has moral implications, spiritual implications, but in the Mosaic law, there was the sacrificial system, and they were instructed as to how to deal with their sin as well.
So God even revealed His grace and His mercy through that law.
So God says, My part of the covenant is: I'll show you my will, and I'll show you what I want you to do, and I'll give you a path of righteousness, and I'll give you a means of grace and mercy. And He gave all of that. And the people said, and our part is we will obey. You have a parallel right there. to salvation.
At the point of salvation, God says to the sinner, Here is my law, here is my means of grace, I will bless you, I will care for you. And the believer says, and I will what? Follow you. I'll obey you.
So it's a very similar Scene. Follow along then in verse 4. Moses, after having recited all this, again, no doubt under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote down all the words of the Lord. And then he arose early in the morning. The implication is that it was a full night.
of writing And he built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel.
Now, he's going to get ready to. to publicly symbolize the covenant that has been made between God and the people. God revealed his part, the people declared their part, God spoke, they spoke, and now he's going to demonstrate a ceiling symbol.
So he builds this altar. out of stones no doubt. And puts 12 stacks of stones representing the 12 tribes as a symbol of everybody's participation. He sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. The sacrifices being an indication of the people's pledge.
in response to God's law. And then he did a most interesting thing in verse 6. He took half the blood, and believe me. Burnt offerings, sacrificing young bulls, there was blood everywhere. It was a real bloodbath as they were bleeding all of these animals, cutting the jugular in most cases and capturing all the blood.
Moses took half the blood, put it in basins. Collecting it all in these big basins. And the other half of the blood, he splattered across the altar. That was, the altar represented God. And so The covenant was going to be ratified in this sort of demonstrable way, and he splattered some of the blood across.
The altar. Then he took the book of the covenant, that is what he had written down all night, and he read it in the hearing of the people. He read it all over again. This would be the fact that they had heard it once and now they hear it again. And all the people responded the same way, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be what?
Obedient. That's the covenant. made between the people and God.
So Moses verse 8 took the blood. and splattered it on the people.
Some of the blood on the altar symbolizing God's part in the covenant, the rest of the blood on the people symbolizing their part. Behold the blood of the covenant. which the Lord has made with you. In accordance with all these words, he said He said his part. You said your part.
The blood. is the physical demonstration that you've both made that commitment.
Now with that in mind, go back to 1 Peter. And in 1 Peter 1, You read this. That you may obey Jesus Christ. and be sprinkled with his blood. Peter is borrowing from that graphic, graphic ceremony of Exodus 24.
And Peter is saying, when you came to Christ. When you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you accepted His part of the covenant. I will write my law in your heart, new covenant. I will write my statutes in your heart. I will forgive all your trespasses and all your iniquities.
I will grant you mercy and I will grant you grace. And at that point, when you were receiving all of that from Him, you were responding by saying, Yes, Lord, and I will follow you. And that was the covenant of salvation. I confess you as Lord. And Lord means the one in charge.
And that's what you confessed. And at that point, In God's eyes. The blood that had been splattered on Christ, the sacrifice. was then splattered on you. Because of your part of the covenant.
That's a beautiful picture.
So when you came to salvation, my friend. You made a simple covenant of obedience. The sad story of Israel is that they did what? They violated it. And so do we.
And so do we. If there's anything that has to be the companion of faith, it must be obedience. Because those two were the companions when we were saved, right? Faith in the Savior. is the only one to save us.
Commitment to obey. The Lord as our king. Obedience. That from the heart. is what we desire in the church.
Give me a church. full of people whose hearts are devoted to obedience. And I'll show you a church with power. Enjoy. Look at Romans 6, 17.
Let me give you a few more and we'll be done. Romans 6.17. on this issue of obedience. But look at verse 16, first of all. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves For obedience.
You are the slaves of the one whom you obey. That's pretty obvious. If you become somebody's slave, the main word is obedience. When you present yourselves as a slave to somebody, the issue is you do what they tell you. And then he makes that simple illustration.
a spiritual doctrine in verse 17. Thanks be to God. that though you were slaves of sin, You became obedient from the heart. I love that phrase. You ought to underline it.
Obedient from the heart, because it's your desire, because you love to be obedient, because it's from the inside. You became obedient from the heart. to that form of teaching to which you were committed. In fact, verse 18, you became a slave of righteousness. When you came to Christ, you entered into a new obedience.
You had been obedient before to the flesh, the world, the devil. You had been obedient to sin. And now you're obedient to him. You're obedient to righteousness. It's not just a question of hearing the word, it's a question of obeying it.
In Matthew 7, there were people who heard the word and didn't obey it, and they were building their house on sand, and when the judgment came, it would collapse. Obedience means hearing. And putting into practice one last scripture, very important, James 1. We'll close with this one. James 1, 22.
Prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. You know what happens if you hear the word and don't apply it? You're living in a. Delusion. You are deceived about your true spiritual condition.
If you're not applying the Word of God in your life, you are deceived about your spiritual condition. And then he gives an illustration of such deception. The very interesting one, verse 23. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, He's like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. Literally, the word looks is glances.
You go in there in the morning and you've decided you're going to shave off your mustache. And you get half of it shaved off. You got half your hair combed and half your teeth brushed. And the phone rings. And you go out of there, and you've just barely gotten started, maybe, and you go out of there and you get on the phone and you forget.
what you look like and you go off to the office to the hilarity of everybody who greets you. Because you forgot what you looked like.
So it is with an individual who merely glances at the Word of God. Who doesn't apply it? He really doesn't understand the condition he's in. He thinks everything is fine, but everything is not fine. He is deceived about his true condition.
And when he goes away, he forgets because he doesn't apply. This certainly applies to a non-believer, a non-Christian who hears the gospel, hears the gospel, and never puts it into practice. Never really looks very deeply at it, just water off a duck's back and Is deceived about his true condition. This can be true about a person who comes to the church, makes a profession of Christ, might even in his own mind think he's a Christian, think he's a Christian, listens, never applies anything, never applies anything. He's in a state of delusion about his spiritual condition.
It can also be true of a Christian who hears teaching about a certain area and he will not deal with that. He will not apply that in an area of his life. He becomes totally deceived about his true spiritual condition.
So the point is this. You better take more than a passing glance if you want to know your true condition. And verse 25 says that the one who looks intently, that's a Greek verb that means you look very closely and for a prolonged period to rightly assess your condition. You look in that mirror, which is the perfect law, the law of liberty. What's that?
The word of God. It's the perfect law. It's the law that sets you free from sin and delusion, and you abide by it. You are not a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer. This man shall be blessed.
It's obedience that brings the blessing. And people who don't obey are self-deluded. Maybe they're not even Christians. Maybe they're Christians who Mistakenly think all is well when all is not well.
So, we want to deal with attitudes from the heart, and that means faith. And that means obedience. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. the title of John's current series, The Pillars of Christian Character.
Now, an important point from today's lesson, God's Word doesn't simply command believers to obey, it also explains why obedience is so important. In other words, it not only teaches believers how to obey, but it provides the motivation for that obedience, and really a motivation to know God's truth more. John had a perspective on that, so let's hear what he had to say. You know, I think that the Word of God, when read thoughtfully and carefully, With understanding. Does accelerate our motivation.
It increases our love to Christ because He's revealed there and we see His glory revealed. We see God and his attributes demonstrated there, We see God and His promises and their fulfilment there. We see all that we need of spiritual riches laid out for us there.
So yes, when you are exposed to that in the Word of God, that drives your love for the Lord forward, and that becomes a motivation to know even more about Him, and that drives you deeper into the Word of God. But let me back up and say at the very outset. The motivation The powerful motivation only comes If you understand what the Bible means, a superficial reading of the Bible. It isn't going to make a difference. You have to understand what it means by what it says.
It's about understanding the message of God. There are people who can read the Bible almost in a perfunctory way, just kind of passing over the words and think they've engaged in some spiritual exercise and maybe think a few good thoughts about what was said, but never really understanding the profound supernatural character of the words just read. And that is why A number of years ago I put together the notes in the MacArthur Study Bible. That's a Bible with about 25,000 footnotes below the text on each page explaining the meaning of the text from Genesis to Revelation. Involves background, culture, geography, language, comparing scripture with scripture.
Bringing you the truth behind the words in Scripture, the true interpretation. And friend, just a reminder that from now until Friday, October 17th, you can get the MacArthur Study Bible at 25% off the normal price. In fact, nearly all the resources we sell are discounted 25%. To order the MacArthur Study Bible or any other book by John, contact us today. Call us here at 80055 GRACE or visit our website gty.org.
And again, for a limited time, we have cut the prices on nearly all our resources by 25%. To take advantage of the reduced prices and to place an order, go to gty.org or call us at 80055 GRACE. And if you haven't visited our website in a while, be sure to take advantage of all the free content available there. You can watch Grace to U television, you can catch episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed, You can read multiple daily devotionals and listen to Grace Stream that takes you verse by verse through the entire New Testament in one continuous loop. and it resets about every two months.
Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours, GraceStream helps keep your mind fixed on God's Word. To listen to GraceStream and to take advantage of the thousands of other free resources, visit gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You Television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And be here tomorrow for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time. on Grace to You.
