What is an encumbrance? Ankos in Greek, bulk, that's what it means. It's not sin, it's like a well-trained sprinter getting in the blocks with ankle weights and an overcoat on.
Why would you do that? It slows you down, weighs you down, dampens your enthusiasm for the things of God. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. What types of movies and TV shows are okay to watch? How involved should you be in politics? And should your kids go to public school or a Christian school, or should you homeschool them? Christians debate those issues, and many more, because those are topics where the Bible does not give us point-by-point answers. But as John MacArthur will show you today on Grace to You, even if the Bible doesn't directly answer a specific question, Scripture is filled with clear principles that can help you know what to do and how to make wise decisions that honor God. Keep in mind, today's lesson was originally preached during a chapel service at the Master's University. But no matter your age, this message can show you how to live wisely. We've titled this series of chapel messages, A Course for Life, with a look now at the liberty you have in Christ.
Here's John MacArthur. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's exactly what are we free to do. There are things that are very obvious in the Scripture, clear commands, clearly things that God forbids us to do, spelled out in no uncertain terms.
There are also not only negative commands, but positive commands, things we are to do and they're very clear to us as well. But there's a whole world of things that are not talked about in the Bible. And that always poses the issue of how do I make a decision, how do I make a choice about what I will do regarding something that's not in the Scripture? Things like, well the Bible talks about these things in this category, food, drink, alcoholic beverages, recreation, sports, television, music, movies, Sunday activity, poker, other kinds of games, smoking, smoking dope, hair styles, clothing styles, and it goes on and on and on. Now I know there are some things in the Bible about these kinds of issues. In fact, I heard a preacher many years ago who preached on the fact that women should never have their hair piled up on their head because the Scripture says, top not come down. That's in a verse that says, let those on the housetop not come down.
It's an adaptation of that verse, having to do with the coming of the Lord. You could twist the Scripture around a little bit and some of you can't still figure out what I'm saying, but it will dawn on you later. There are those kinds of issues and we all ask those questions.
We really do ask those kinds of questions and we generally ask them every day. And the easy thing to do, and this has kind of been the history of what we could call fundamentalism, you know, no fun, too much damn and not enough mental. So we understand the history of fundamentalism. They want to make a rule about everything and so they'll make all the rules for you. I went to a college like that where we didn't have to decide anything about anything because everything had already been decided and a rule had been made. There were rules about what time we got up, what time we went to bed, what hours we studied, who we could talk to, how far we could walk in terms of feet with a girl beside us before we had to separate.
There were rules for everything and it simplified life on a superficial level but compounded it hopelessly on an internal level. How are we to make decisions about things that are not clearly indicated to us in Scripture? How do we develop criteria to make those kinds of decisions in a way that honors God, in a way that benefits us, in a way that causes the growth of the body of Christ and in a way that makes the gospel believable and attractive to the unconverted? So let me give you a little list, all right?
I'm going to give you a couple of handfuls of things if we have enough time and hopefully I'll get through them even if I have to kind of whack them up a little bit. Number one...number one, we ask a question, will it be spiritually beneficial? Will it be spiritually profitable? We're not looking for those kinds of things that we can get away with minimum damage. We're not looking for high-risk Christian living. We're not looking for how close can we get to the edge and still not get burned?
And there are a lot of people who think that it's their freedom to live on the edge and try to avoid the disaster. That's never the question. The question that starts our thinking is, will it be spiritually beneficial? What can I do that is going to have a positive spiritual impact on me? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6...1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 12. And I'm just going to be picking out some scriptures as we go.
You can write them down and study them for yourselves later. In verse 12, Paul says this, all things are lawful to me. And obviously we have to qualify that. All things that are not unlawful are lawful. Paul is just saying, I enjoy a great measure of freedom, things which Scripture does not specifically forbid. All things that are lawful are lawful for me.
All things that are not forbidden are lawful for me. But not all things are profitable. I'm not looking to invest my life in the things that don't return a spiritual dividend. If it doesn't promise to give me some positive spiritual benefit, then why would I engage in it?
Obviously the verb there, translated profitable, is sumpero, it means to bring together, pulling everything together for one's advantage. Will it assist in direct fashion my spiritual development? Does it cultivate godliness? All things are lawful if they're not forbidden by God, but the world is filled with things that promise absolutely no real spiritual advantage.
You could ask a question about, for example, sleeping. That's not forbidden in the Bible. But sleeping too much is not to your spiritual advantage, obviously. So let's call this the principle of expedience, okay?
The principle of expedience. I'm going to ask the question, is this expedient for my spiritual development? If I go there, if I do that, if I view that, if I experience that, if I engage myself in that activity or that relationship, does it have immediate and long-term spiritual benefit?
Say it a second way, here's the second point. We'll call the first one expedient, that is it is profitable for me spiritually. The second one, will it contribute to my spiritual development?
Will it build me up? If the first one is expedience, this is edification. Turn over to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and hear the Apostle Paul speaking along the same lines in very similar words. It says in verse 23, 1 Corinthians 10, 23, all things are lawful again. He's talking about freedoms. He's talking about things that are not forbidden. But not all things are profitable, it's exactly what he said in 6 as we just read verse 12. But then he adds this, all things are lawful but not all things edify.
And here's oikodameo, to build a house, to build a foundation, to put up the structure. In 2 Corinthians 12 19, Paul said, we do all things, dearly beloved, for your edification. 1 Corinthians 14 tells us in verse 26, let all things be done for edification. So you're not only asking the question, does this activity promise in the present moment my spiritual advantage, but long term does this cause progress in my spiritual development?
Am I going to grow? If you would just go back to the end of chapter 9 in 1 Corinthians, you have a little illustration of this taken from the athletic world. Paul says in verse 24, do you not know that those who run in a race all run? Everybody in the race runs but only one receives the prize, run in such a way that you may win and everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. So if you're going to win, you're going to have to be better than everybody else.
Being better than everybody else is basically being in better condition, better shape, better training for the event than everybody else. That's going to back itself up into self-discipline and self-control. Then they do it, he says, with a view toward a perishable crown, we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not without aim, I box in such a way as not beating the air, I buffet my body...that's buffet, not buffet, same spelling, different idea...I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly after I preach to others, I myself should be disqualified. He's talking about self-control, he's talking about self-denial, anything that is going to strengthen him and build him up to be more successful and more efficient in the race.
To buffet, by the way, is a very interesting word, hupopiazo, it means to strike somebody in the face. To blacken their eye, I beat my body, I subdue it, I don't feed its lusts and its desires, I do the very opposite. So I'm always asking the question, will this event in itself be to my spiritual benefit? And secondly, will it continue to move me on the path of upward spiritual development? Let's call that principle then edification. There's a third principle following along the line of the athletic metaphors, we sort of link these together. Go to the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 12, very familiar chapter, the great cloud of witnesses from chapter 11 who demonstrate to us the viability and blessing of a life of faith. But here in chapter 12 verse 1, we come across a third principle.
Will it slow me down in the race? This is another way to view anything I choose to do. First of all, will it advance me spiritually? That's a positive. Will it continue to progress in the path of edification? That's a positive. Here's a negative approach to it. Will it slow me down in the race?
If I do this, will it slow me down? Let me show you the language. Therefore we have so great a cloud of witnesses who have testified as we saw in chapter 11 to the life of faith and its benefits. Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. The race is agon, by the way, agon, a race is a kind of agony. I ran track in high school and college and there's no sport that I've ever participated in my life that is as agonizing as running. And there's such a minimal reward for running. That's why I don't understand jogging. At least if you're in an actual race, you could have a chance to win. Nobody ever wins when you're jogging.
It's like playing basketball with no hoops. But the word agon is a grueling kind of word. It has to do with demanding the most intense self-control, self-discipline, determination, perseverance and it takes endurance. You notice there that in verse 1 it also talks about endurance, hupomone, steady determination.
It means to remain under. What that means is to stay under the pressure, to stay under the pain, to stay under the agony of the event until you run it to the end. We need to run with endurance.
This brings up a very important point. And it's a sad thing to think about but I've lived long enough to see a lot of people who run fairly fast at the front but they somehow collapse in the middle of the race. And I think the thing that's so wonderful among many things about my dad was that he ran all the way to the very end. He ran the race to the very end.
He was still reading when he was ninety years old, preparing to teach the Word of God. That's amazing kind of endurance. I'm often reminded of an event that I was in when I was in my university days. I was in a relay in the Orange County Invitationals, our college was there, we got in the finals, we had a four-man...four by four hundred relay and I ran second man, first man gets the lead, second man loses it, you have two to make it up. I was basically a baseball player converted into a sprinter. First guy...our first guy ran a great leg, came through, gave me the baton, I ran the best leg of my life, came in leading which was exciting, handed it to Ted, the third man, put the baton in his hand, perfect pass in the lanes and we got an absolute blur for four, so we're in a spot to win the whole thing.
Ted goes around the turn, gets to the opposite side of the track, halfway down the straightaway, stops, walks off and sits on the grass. It was done. It was over.
I was in shock. I ran over to him and I said, what happened? He said, I don't know, I just didn't feel like running.
Oh, I wanted to irrigate him with my track shoe, you know. Something wonderful about endurance. Now how are you going to be able to run a race with endurance? How are you going to be able to run the race in such a way that you don't collapse, that you don't embarrass the Lord, that you don't bring shame upon yourself, you don't dishonor the church in the name of Christ with some great failure?
How do you run with endurance? Two things you have to deal with. You have to lay aside two things, every encumbrance and the sin. Now listen, because those two words are there, encumbrance and sin, we understand that they don't mean the same thing. So sin we understand clearly.
We know what sin is. But what is encumbrance if it's not sin? It's anything that slows you down. It's anything that weights you down. It might be the Internet, might be Game Boy, or one of those other Xbox...I don't even know what I'm talking about, but it's...if it's not physical, I don't understand it.
If it's digital, I don't get it. What is an encumbrance? Ankos in Greek, ankos, bulk, that's what it means. It's bulk. It's not sin, it's like a well-trained sprinter getting in the blocks with ankle weights and an overcoat on.
Why would you do that? It's not wrong. It's not disallowed. It's just unnecessary bulk. Slows you down, weighs you down, takes away your attention, sucks your energy, dampens your enthusiasm for the things of God.
I wrote a blog about a popular pastor who every time I hear him preach demonstrates his knowledge of South Park, like he knows all the episodes of that very base and Christ dishonoring kind of program and can rattle off the lyrics of all kinds of contemporary songs and I wonder to myself, isn't this like at best if not sinful, isn't this in trying to identify with the culture, isn't this really like running the race with the weights still on your ankle and a full overcoat on? Do you really need that bulk? Do you need to carry around that stuff in your mind, have it occupy the space that could belong to the things that are really precious and life transforming? For the Jews, it was the Old Testament ceremonial law, they needed to learn to dump that bulk.
It was a process but they needed to get past it. Anything that slows you down, anything that retards you, restrains you, anything that sucks your energy needlessly, that makes no contribution to the race. Let's call this the principle of excess. So we have a principle of expedience and edification and excess.
Let me give you a fourth one. Go back to 1 Corinthians 6 again...1 Corinthians 6 again. And here's another very helpful insight and the same verse, actually. 1 Corinthians 6 and 12, all things are lawful for me but not all things are profitable. We already talked about that.
But look at this one. All things are lawful for me but I will not be mastered by anything. So here's the question, will it bring me into bondage? Does this thing develop such an appetite that it becomes habit forming? It takes over. How ridiculous is it for man by God's design, the King of the earth, God's pinnacle of creation to become a slave to a computer, or a slave to a game, or a slave to a hobby, or a slave to a television set, or a slave to anything...drink, drugs, smoking, stuffing weeds in your face and setting them on fire makes no sense to me.
And then blowing smoke through your nose, for what purpose? You can become addicted to anything. We're creatures designed for habits. We are habitual sinners before we are saved and it's hard to become a habitual righteous person even after the Spirit has done His mighty work and continues to do it in us cause we're creatures of habit and those habits are deeply ingrained. But we're made for habits. We're made when we're saved for good habits.
It's what Ephesians 2, 10 is talking about that we have been literally remade unto good works. And we need to make sure we give our maximum effort to creating the kind of habits that are good. Some people are addicted literally to music. Some people are addicted to certain styles of music, clothes, doing the latest fashions, addicted to shopping.
Well, you know, there's all kinds of these things. And we're not talking about those things that are immoral kinds of addictions, we're just talking about the things that get into your life and take over your life so that when you make decisions about what you do, those decisions are influenced by the need to fulfill this controlling desire. It doesn't take long usually though for somebody who has habits that are draining, even though they're in themselves not sin, to fall over into sinful habits. Let's call that the principle of enslavement...the principle of enslavement. I don't want to do anything that has the power to take over. You know, in my own personal life through the years, it's constantly in the back of my mind not to do what I'm free to do for the sheer purpose of establishing the fact that I am still in control of what I do. There are times when I want to do something, I just don't do it because I want to say to myself, it's not wrong to do it, but I just want to make sure I'm still able to turn it down.
It might be a steak, it might be a hot fudge sundae, something real simple like that. There are other times when I'm compelled and I enjoy that. But I don't ever want to get myself into a pattern where I've lost the control because I think that spills over into how you live your life on a spiritual level as well.
Number five in my list, and a very important principle, kind of turns a little bit of a corner here. This is a question you have to ask, will it really be a cover up of my sin? Will it really be a cover up of my sin? What do you mean by that? Turn to 1 Peter 2, 16. You hear people all the time say, well I'm free in Christ. We don't have any rules against that. That's not wrong to do that. I'm free to do that.
Listen to what Peter writes in 1 Peter 2, 16. Act as free men, he says, and you are, you've been made free in Christ. Act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil.
Wow! I'm free to go to the movies. I'm free to do that. I'm free to do that. Nothing in the Bible against that. That is a wonderful thing and this is reality and this is the way the world is and I need to be informed on that and I'm selective.
Really? Is that why you're going? Are you going as an art appreciator? Or is this freedom that you are espousing really a cloak for your evil desire? And when you go there, what is it that you're looking for?
What is it that you're waiting for in the film? Are you turning liberty into license as Galatians 5 13 says? Let's call this the principle of equivocation.
It's where you say one thing but you really have another thing in mind and you've used your freedom as a lie, your freedom as a false cover to engage in a sinful activity. That's John MacArthur with a helpful look at the issue of Christian liberty. John originally preached today's message during a chapel service at the Masters University where John serves as Chancellor. It's part of a series of messages here on Grace to You that lays out a course for life. Now John, several times over the past couple of weeks we have talked about habits. And today you made a point that because we are creatures who are designed for habits, we need to give maximum effort to creating the kinds of habits that are good. So when you think about feeding on the Word of God, which is the healthiest of all habits, what have you personally found helpful in building a habit and making it stick?
Well I think you have to start simply. I learned when I was very young that it's the repeated reading of the Word of God that is the habit that is most effective in spiritual life. And I started with 1 John and I thought I'm just going to read that brief book every day for 30 days. And every day it got richer, and every day I saw something more, and every day I remembered passages that connected with that.
And then I thought, I'm not done. I read it another 30 days, and I read the book of 1 John 90 days in a row. And to this day I can tell you what's in 1 John, I can tell you what page, where on the page, what column, because I visualized it.
And that became my own. Then I went to the Gospel of John and I took seven chapters and read them for 30 or 40 days. And then the next seven, the next seven and 21 chapters. And in a matter of 90 days plus another 90 days, six months, I had read the Gospel of John and 1 John. And because John is the author of both, I connected the books together, and my understanding grew. And I kept doing that through the whole New Testament. It was a powerful, powerful, all-consuming, all-controlling experience for me, because I was planting the Word in my heart.
There's no substitute for that. I received a question recently in a Q&A, and it was a young guy who said, how do I prepare for seminary? And I said, read the Bible.
Read the Bible. Just know your Bible, because that is the greatest asset you will have in seminary. If you're going through seminary and you're learning all kinds of things about ministry and theology and all of that, if you already know the Bible, well, you really are far advanced. You don't want to be learning the basics of the Bible while you're trying to learn all the other things that come in seminary. So this is true for a seminary student. This is also true for every believer.
We can help you with that. There is a volume called the MacArthur Daily Bible. Daily Bible, that's right, takes you verse by verse through the entire Bible in a year and establishes the habit of daily Bible reading. Every day there's a reading from the Old Testament, one from the new portion of the Psalms, and a little bit out of Proverbs with some daily comments to help you as you read. You can read through the Bible in a year.
I know, you say it's September. We'll start now and just keep going and establish a life-transforming habit. Don't put off cultivating the habit of daily Scripture reading. Get a copy of the MacArthur Daily Bible. As always, affordably priced, and we have them here at Grace To You.
Let us know if you'd like one. The MacArthur Daily Bible is especially practical for family devotions or to read through with a Bible study. The reading guide makes it easy to keep yourself and others on track. It also provides a list of 52 key Bible passages to help you build a habit of committing God's word to your memory. To pick up a copy of the MacArthur Daily Bible for yourself or to give it to a friend, contact us today. The Daily Bible costs $16 and shipping is free. To get yours, visit our website, gty.org, or call 800-55-GRACE.
The title again to ask for the MacArthur Daily Bible. Once more, our phone number, 800-55-GRACE, and the website gty.org. As I mentioned earlier in the broadcast, today's message was originally preached at the Master's University where John serves as Chancellor. It's a four-year liberal arts university committed to the authority of Scripture, discipleship, and strong academics. This fully-accredited institution is located in Southern California. To learn more about degrees offered, student life, athletics, all the details, you can link to the school's website from our website gty.org. That's our web address.
One more time, gty.org. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff. I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, that's NRB-TV. Also be here tomorrow when John continues his look at foundational wisdom for the Christian life. It's part of his study called, A Course For Life. Don't miss the next half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
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