There will be a barrage of persecution. These are going to be very challenging days. We will not bow. We will be gracious and we will be loving. But we will render to God what is God's.
Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. About 10 years ago, the Supreme Court handed down the decision to legalize homosexual marriage in the United States. Maybe you wondered what that reality would mean for those who held to biblical standards and what it would mean for your church.
Well, at that time, John MacArthur stepped into the pulpit and addressed that pressing moral issue, and that sermon instantly became one of the most popular in Grace TU's history. We're going to air that message today as we continue a series of lessons chosen by our staff as their favorites by John MacArthur. This series is titled John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon. And so, with his lesson, Titled, We Will Not Bow. Here's John.
A lot has happened in our country. A lot is happening at a very rapid rate. And with all the discussion that's been going on, I've been kind of eager to get to you and maybe help to give you a perspective. This country talks a lot about terrorist attacks. And rightly so.
Almost anybody in America can give you some kind of a listing of the. uh the most uh destructive acts of terror that have happened in our country. But let me suggest to you this. The two greatest attacks of terror on America were perpetrated by the Supreme Court. The first one was the legalizing of abortion.
Subsequent to that, there have been millions of babies slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers. It's incalculable to even comprehend that. The the the blood of those Lives cries out from the ground for divine vengeance. on this nation. The second great act of terror perpetrated by the Supreme Court was the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The destruction of human life in the womb. In a sense, the destruction of motherhood. And now the destruction of the family itself. No bomb. No explosion.
No attack and no assault. on people physically. can come anywhere near that kind of terrorism. Our country is being terrorized by the people most responsible to protect it. Those who are to uphold the law.
The President, leaders of the nation, Supreme Court. All affirm. The nobility of this, the morality of it. The people in our country tasked with the responsibility of thinking clearly for everybody else. The President, the leaders, the Supreme Court, those who are supposed to be the most clear minded, clear headed, who have the greatest responsibility to protect this nation, they literally can't think straight.
The reprobate mind has ascended the bench. The reprobate mind has now reached the highest levels. And that level will demand the reprobate mind everywhere else. There isn't a judge, there isn't a sitting judge on the Supreme Court who doesn't know what the Bible says about homosexuality. But they affirm it anyway.
That's the reprobate mind. And it's now going to dominate our society.
So we as Christians are the minority. We are the target now. We're in the bullseye. And there's no deception. This is how It really is.
Now, just to make it clear. We don't bow down. To Caesar. We bow to our king. Reading about a Christian college.
That was confronted on this issue and told you will lose your accreditation. If you do not immediately Provide Complete acceptance for homosexuals and allow them. to conduct themselves any way they want in your dorms. The school? When it was founded in 1885, the name of it was The Boston Missionary Criminal training school.
Here we are 130 years later. And that school proudly came up with 14 pro-homosexual initiatives to keep their accreditation. What happened to the Boston Missionary Training School? They bowed. You know, I ran through my Bible the other day just looking everywhere I could find the term bow down.
Bow down, bow down. It's all over the Old Testament. People bowed down before a superior. There are many of those illustrations. Look at the life of Joseph, and you'll remember how his brothers bowed down to him.
But the faithful people didn't bow down. The unfaithful people bowed down to idols. They bowed down to monarchs. They bowed down to Godless kings. Faithful people didn't bow down.
Mordecai didn't bow down. Daniel didn't bow down. His friends didn't bow down. Jesus didn't bow down. Paul didn't bow down.
There will be a barrage of persecution. These are going to be very challenging days. We will not bow. We will be gracious and we will be loving. But we will render to God what is God's.
God pronounces judgment. on all who blaspheme him. All who pervert his law pervert his word. He pronounces judgment on them. Not only in a temporal sense, Such as in Romans 1, where you have an outworking of wrath in the very society itself.
But but in an eternal sense. In Isaiah 5, We have a series of Woes A series of severe Condemnations. One of them is in Chapter 5 and verse 20, listen to this.
Well to those who call evil good. and good evil. Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Whoa. Damnation.
Cursing on those who reverse morality. who reverse righteousness, who swap good for evil. It was the calling of the Old Testament prophets to pronounce damnation on sinful people, sinful nations. To declare coming judgment. We know that.
We read the prophets. In the New Testament, Jesus pronounced judgment. And the epistles of the New Testament are full. of warnings. of judgment.
I'm hearing an awful lot from evangelical Christians these days, and reading a lot of articles, that we need to be compassionate. toward people in gender transition, which does not exist. We need to be compassionate toward people caught up in homosexuality. I agree. I agree.
And the most compassionate thing you can do for those people. is in love to warn them of eternal damnation. to warn them of eternal judgment. That's compassionate. That's compassionate.
Preach the gospel. Proclaim the gospel. Proclaim grace and forgiveness, but Preach. Judgment.
Now I want you to turn to the passage that I'm going to talk to you about. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. 2 Thessalonians, this is a group of believers. And they're going through some very difficult times. Verse 4.
identifies them as model Believers. Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy. Speak proudly about the Thessalonians. everywhere they go. They rehearsed their testimony.
And what is it? It's about their perseverance. And faithfulness. In the midst. of all your persecutions.
and afflictions. Which you endure. There is gratitude to God. Here. Verse.
Three, we ought always to give thanks to God for you. It is God who is at work in you. It is God who is greatly enlarging your faith. It is God who is calling your love for one another to grow greater. God is at work in your midst.
Your faith continues to increase. Your love continues to grow. We thank God for that. And all of that is happening in the midst of. Persecutions and afflictions, and you continue in the midst of that to persevere in faithfulness.
I'm just telling you, we better get ready because we may be living this very soon. And by the way, it's not going to take a long time for this to unfold. Once the Supreme Court made the decision, they were ready. They were standing in the wings with everything ready, and it's going to come like a blitzkrieg. The end of verse 5 says they were suffering.
Suffering. Suffering. and worthy of the kingdom of God. for the way in which they suffered. Here is a church then.
That in the midst of persecution, In the midst of affliction, In the midst of suffering, is flourishing. Strong in faith and greatly enlarged in faith. Strong in love and loving in a greater and greater way. Persevering faithfully in the middle of all that is being unleashed against that church. How could they hold on?
What was it that they clung to? Go down to verse 5. This is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment.
So that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which indeed you are suffering. For after all, It is only just. for God to repay. With affliction, those who afflict you. Did you hear that?
It is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you. And to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well. When? When is that going to come? When the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. When he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed. For our testimony to you was believed. To this end, We pray for you always that our God will count you worthy of your calling and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in Him according to the grace of our God and in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has great hope for this church.
Because Christ is coming. The key here is at the beginning of verse 7. The middle of verse 7, when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven. That's our focus. It's ever and always the Christian's hope.
No matter how bad it gets, Jesus is coming. Lord Jesus, now at the right hand of the Father, exalted as the sovereign Lord of the Church and faithful high priest, interceding for his people. Shall be revealed. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed. The apocalypsis, the unveiling, the appearing of Jesus.
Sometimes the Apostle Paul uses parousia, which means presence. Here he uses apocalypsis, which means the unveiling of something that is hidden. Jesus who is As far as the world is concerned, hidden. will be unveiled. At his coming.
And he's not coming alone. Verse 7 says, He will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. Matthew 24, 30 says, You will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds in power and great glory. Matthew 25, 31 says essentially the same thing. The next time he comes, there'll be no Bethlehem, no stable, no manger, no infancy, no carpenter shop, no humble Nazareth, no poverty, no dusty roads, no sinners to grieve him, no false religious leaders.
to oppose him, no hellish fiends to attack him with their demonic power, no soldiers to pound nails into his hands or a crown of thorns into his head. No, when he comes the next time, he will come as the sovereign of the universe. This is the apocalypse. Three prepositional phrases modify The revelation from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire. From heaven, where he now is seated at the right hand of God interceding.
Back in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 10, it says, As believers, we wait for his Son from heaven. We wait for his Son from heaven. He will come from heaven. He will come with his mighty angels, the angels, literally the angels of his power. We will come back.
with 10,000 times 10,000 angels. The whole world will see that event, those that are alive at that time. He will come in flaming fire. Do you know that the Bible says that the stars go out, the moon goes out, all the lights in heaven go dark, the universe is pitch black, and then comes the blazing fiery return of Christ? It's the fire of judgment.
The Lord comes and fire goes before him. That scene in Revelation chapter 6 is About as dramatic as You could imagine Verse 12, I looked when he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood. The stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
Then the kings of the earth and great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and every free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they said to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come and who is able to stand. There are two words here in this passage that define the The characteristics of his coming. One is retribution, the other is relief. One is retribution, verse eight.
The other is relief, verse seven. For the believer, this is relief. For the unbeliever, this is retribution. Look at verse 8 for just a moment. When he comes from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, verse 8, dealing out retribution.
What does that mean? Punishment. Full vengeance. Deuteronomy 32, to me belongs vengeance. Romans 12:19, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
Vengeance. Vengeance on who? Those who do not know God. And those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Folks We have to warn this generation, don't we?
It's enough to know you're going to die. Then seal forever your eternity in hell if you don't believe. But one day Christ himself will come to bring retribution across this entire globe. They will suffer punishment. They will pay the penalty.
They will pay the penalty. What is the penalty? Verse 9, they will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. And by the way, verse 6 says. It is only What's the next word?
Just It is only right. It is not unloving of God to do that. It is just of him to do that. It is righteous. They will pay the penalty.
From the Psalms, we read things like this: The righteous will rejoice when he sees. Vengeance. He will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. God will shatter the heads of his enemies. Add to them punishment upon punishment.
Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors the taunts with which they have taunted you, O God. Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any pity to his children. Do not I hate them that hate you, O Lord. Do not I loathe them that rise up against you? I hate them with a perfect hatred.
says the psalmist, The godly in the Old Testament understood the justice of God's wrath. When God reveals to Jeremiah that some are plotting his death. Jeremiah prays, O Lord of hosts, who judges righteously. who tries the heart and the mind. Let me see your vengeance on them.
For to you I've committed my cause. And God replied to Jeremiah, I will punish them. The young men will die by the sword, the sons and daughters will die by famine, and none of them will be left. Later we find an even more terrible prayer. Give heed to me, O Lord, and hearken to my plea.
Is evil a recompense for good? Yet they have dug a pit for my life. Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them, to turn away your wrath from them. Therefore, deliver up their children to famine. Give them over to the power of the sword.
Let their wives become childless and widowed. May their men meet death by pestilence, and their youth be slain by the sword in battle. Blot out their sin. From your side. God responded to Jeremiah.
I'm bringing such evil on this place. that the ears of everyone who hears of it will Tingle. Because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. and built the high places of Baal. Mother, the Bible is very clear on judgment.
You say, well, that's the Old Testament. What about Jesus? Jesus was a judgment preacher. He said far more about hell than he did about heaven. Started with John the Baptist.
John the Baptist announced to the leaders of Israel that judgment was going to come with an unquenchable fire and consume them all. Jesus told a story in Luke chapter 20. about divine judgment that would take the unfaithful and shatter them into pieces. Jesus announced in John chapter 5 that he would come in the end. that there would be a resurrection under damnation.
The Apostle Paul said, If you don't love the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be damned. 1 Corinthians 16:22. When Jesus described his own part in the judgment day, He said Depart from me. into eternal fire. Into eternal fire.
He said Woe to you, Khoraz and woe to you Bessaira. Woe to you Pharisees. Woe to you lawyers. Woe to the one who has betrayed me. He preached judgment all through his ministry.
That's loving. That's compassionate. That's necessary.
So I'm just getting you ready. We're not going to do some kind of dance into marginal realms where we don't say anything. We will preach the gospel. With loving hearts, To a nation of sinners, a world of sinners. But at the same time, we will preach judgment.
We will proclaim Judgment. Jesus is coming. And he is coming. to repay With affliction that is everlasting. Those who have inflicted his people.
It's not vindictive. It's right. It's just. Beyond that, Just to conclude. When our Lord comes, it's not just retribution, it's also relief.
And this is so hopeful for us. Verse 7. to give relief. To you who are afflicted. To us as well, meaning the apostles.
Paul was afflicted, wasn't he? And those who traveled with him. And all those early believers were afflicted. And they were looking for relief. Those who don't know God, those who reject the gospel.
will be afflicted. Everlastingly. They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, and forever they will be away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power. They will know neither his person nor his power. They will live eternally in a realm without God's presence and without God's power, totally dominated by all that is godless.
But that same event brings us Relief. Relief. Verse 6, it is only just for God to repay with affliction, and implied, it is only just for God to give relief. He will give relief. to his own Affliction will end, persecution will end, suffering will end.
That's his promise. And it will end for those that belong to him. Those who have been afflicted by a God-rejecting, Christ-rejecting world.
Now what does that relief look like? Verse 10. We'll be glorified with him. On that day. To be marveled at among all who have believed.
I'd love to think of that. We're going to look at each other and say, Whoa, did you turn out? Amazing. I never could have imagined. We're just passing through, aren't we?
We're just passing through. He's going to be glorified in his saints, his saints glorified in him. This is how we have to live, people. We live above the world. We're in the world.
We're not of the world. We're in the world. We love the world with a gospel love. We're in the world, and we love them enough not only to preach grace and the gospel, we love them enough to tell them about eternal judgment. Hell.
Fire. That's not what you're going to see happening in the evangelical world. Already, I'm seeing all kinds of responses that we need to be sympathetic for people who are going through gender transition. Which doesn't exist. It's a perversion.
It's a corruption. It's a deviation. It's a blasphemy. Yeah, our hearts break. that they have no power to resist that temptation.
Our hearts break that now it's everywhere. And I saw the other day Some parents of a three-year-old saying they were so happy that this three-year-old was making a gender transition. Tragic. Let me give you a little hint. If you got boys.
You better be sure they've become men. If you've got girls, you better be sure they become Women. Don't let them be tempted. To this deviation and corruption. You never thought you'd have to fight that, did you?
That's where we are. Our Lord is coming. When we think about things the way they are, we would all say, even so come Lord Jesus, right? We're ready. Get us out.
Let's pray. Such a joy to be together, Lord. know the truth and love the truth and hear the truth, embrace the truth. Make us not only people who know it, love it, believe it, but proclaim it. Give us courage, give us boldness.
Protect us, protect your gospel, your truth. We don't want to say we've given up. You can do anything, and you will build your church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. You will call out your people. You will preach your gospel.
You will draw your own to yourself. Use us for that. Make us a light in the darkness. May we be known for our love and our truthfulness. May we be faithful to preach the gospel of loving grace.
and the threat of eternal judgment. And Lord Jesus, Be glorified. in your church and Lord be glorified in the world. Come quickly. Come quickly.
Amen. You're listening to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. John's message today, titled We Will Not Bow, was chosen by a Grace to You staff member as John MacArthur's most memorable sermon. That's the title of our series. And with only about two weeks until Christmas, shopping is on the agenda for lots of people, and perhaps you're still looking for some perfect gift ideas that can benefit your loved ones long into the new year.
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Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace TU Television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And be back tomorrow for a look at an ugly truth about Christmas that you may never have considered. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
