Bible Questions and Answers, Part 22

The Word of God is the source of all spiritual truth. Everything we need to know for salvation, sanctification, and the hope of glory is given us in the Scripture. From time to time, John MacArthur, pastor, author, and the featured Bible teacher here on Grace to You, will set aside an evening service to answer questions from his congregation at Grace Community Church. Well, today you get to listen in on one of those Q&A sessions, so stay here as John answers questions that more than likely you have had as you've studied God's Word.

The first question comes from a man in John's congregation, and then you'll hear John's answer. The Scripture I'd like to have explained, it's 1 Peter 3 21, the part where it says, and corresponding to that, baptism now saves you. Not the removal of dirt from flesh, but the appeal to God for a good conscience.

Right. What that verse is saying is that, uh, Peter's just talked about first, we're talking about 1 Peter 3 18, Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, they might bring us to God and so forth. And, um, it talks about their Christ's provision of salvation. And then it says that when his body was on the cross dead, his spirit was alive, not the Holy Spirit there in verse 18, but his spirit. And he went and preached to the spirits in prison. And I believe these were demon beings.

And the word preach is not to preach the gospel, but to proclaim a triumph. I believe that when that, when he was dying on the cross, this is a marvelous truth. When he was dying on the cross, it looked to hell and the demons like perhaps they had won the victory.

And so at the very moment when his body was dead during that period of time, his spirit was alive. It says in verse 18, and he went right down into the prison where the spirits are kept. And you want to know what spirits they were. Verse 20 says they were the ones disobedient during the time of Noah. And you remember in those days, the time of Noah, God sent the flood because the sons of God commingled with the daughters of men. So they were spirit beings who cohabitated with women, um, creating a sort of a Rosemary baby race of people and God destroyed them all in the flood. So these are demon spirits.

That's all you really need to know. He can, he went into the place, proclaimed a triumph over the demon spirits, even in the midst of his death. And then it talks about the arc in which people were saved by water. The arc then becomes a symbol. And in verse 21, the light figure under which even baptism doth also now save us. But it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh. In other words, he is saying that as that arc was saved in water, so are we saved in water, but it is not external water. You see that? It's not the water that washes the flesh, the physical body.

Not that at all. But it is that purification of the conscience. It is the purification of the conscience that he's really referring to.

In other words, it's symbolic. As the ship was saved by the water, it floated on the water, the water was its salvation. So we are saved by a certain kind of being in water. But it is not the water of the physical baptism.

What water is it? Titus 3 5 tells us. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, here it comes, by the washing of regeneration.

Okay? It's that washing of the heart. Now you go back with Peter and you go back with Paul to a Jewish concept that really starts in the New Testament with Nicodemus, doesn't it? Jesus says you must be born of what? Water? John 3. Spirit.

Now what water was that? Well what would Nicodemus understand? Nicodemus was a Jew. He was the teacher in Israel.

He was an erudite scholar of the Old Testament. And he would know that back in Ezekiel's prophecy in chapter 36, Ezekiel said someday God is going to come in a unique way and he is going to wash you with clean water. Take out the stony heart of flesh and give you a heart of flesh and put his spirit within you. So Nicodemus knew that someday the Messiah would come and he would do a washing work in the heart and plant the spirit. That's the water and the spirit of John 3. And so water which always in the Old Testament outward cleansing symbolized inward cleansing always does the same in the New so that the ark then becomes a figure of being saved through a water and that water is not an external baptism.

This verse in Peter argues against baptismal regeneration but rather a washing of the heart through the working of God and forgiveness through Christ. Okay? Thank you. Good question. Yes? My question is did God establish salvation on the basis of faith because of Adam and Eve's lack of faith? Did God establish salvation on the basis of faith because of Adam and Eve's lack of faith?

No, I don't think so. Now you're into a very difficult area of theology which is known as Lapsarianism, right? Sub-Lapsarianism, Supral Lapsarianism or Infral Lapsarianism. Doesn't that bless your heart? And what it basically means is you're really asking the question did God establish salvation because of what Adam and Eve did or did God establish salvation before Adam and Eve did anything and what did God establish first and what is the sequence and what is the order and the answer to all of that is I don't know.

But some people are Sub-Lapsarian, some people are Infral Lapsarian, some people are Supral Lapsarian and then there are Labrador Retrievers and I really don't... I'm really not able to tell you what God did first. So, I tend to say that God didn't do anything as a reaction to what men did. I believe that the reason God has given us salvation by faith just simply is because it most exalts him.

Because it eliminates anything that we might do, right? Okay. Hi, my name is Alan Gordon and I just moved here from Florida and before I moved a lot of people said that if I came to this church that they believe in election and I don't understand it completely and I'd like to get it cleared up because so far what I do understand it seems right. Okay, welcome. We're glad to have you from Florida. God bless you.

Thanks for coming. Election. Well, this is easy. Let's see. In other words, what people always ask and I'll frame the question for you. Are we chosen to be saved or do we choose ourselves to be saved, right? Right.

Did I come to Jesus Christ because I was irresistibly drawn by God and had nothing to do with it or did I come to Christ because my heart said I want to come to Christ? And the answer is yes. Isn't that simple? Now, let me see if I can explain it to you simply, okay? The Bible teaches election.

It uses that word many times. It says we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God. It says we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. It says our names are written in the Lamb's book of life from before the foundation of the world. It says you have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you. In the book of Acts, it says that God said I have much people in that city, people who weren't even saved yet but He had His name on them to be saved. You cannot deny election.

Ephesians 1, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. We know we are elect. So when you come to a passage on election, you preach it with all your heart. You just preach it with you just preach it.

It's there. You can't argue with it. We're elect, chosen by God. Nobody ever came to Jesus Christ except the Father did what?

Draw Him. So we are saved because of God's predetermined love and that's it. I mean we are elect of God and what a marvelous thing that is and that's so important in the doctrine of security because if He elects us, He's going to hold us, right?

All right. So we teach that and we preach that and when you come across a passage on election, you just preach it fully and completely because that's what the Bible teaches. But the Bible also teaches human volition. Jesus said you will not come to me that you might have life. Jesus said oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem how oft I would have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood and you would not. In other words, Jesus on the one hand said you can't come to me unless the Father draws you and on the other hand if you don't come you're to be blamed. Now in our minds those seem like opposites don't they? Paradox is unresolvable and they really are. Over here if you're saved it's by God's election and over here if you're damned it's your own choice. Now let me tell you something.

That shouldn't be a problem for you because of this. God's mind is greater than our mind, right? If I could understand everything I'd be God and if I was God the world would really be in bad shape. But man loves to think he's God. He wants everything to fit into his mind so what he does is take those kinds of things and try to find a truth in the middle that accommodates both and in the end he destroys both. And so you come up with this thing where well you see God looks down the road and he says oh I see the way they're going.

I know what's going to happen. Boy they're going to go over there and so I just won't elect them because I can see that and so God becomes the victim of the things that men do. That isn't what the Bible teaches. If you deny election you've denied something in the Bible. If you deny the choice of man where it says whosoever will let him come taking the water of life freely.

Revelation 22. You can't deny either one. You leave them there and if you try to harmonize them in the middle you've destroyed both of them. See just leave them there. You say but I don't understand.

That's good. You know what? That proves you're not God and that makes us all very comfortable.

And I'll tell you another thing. There is John Murray the theologian in Westminster Seminary says there is an apparent paradox in every biblical doctrine. Every major biblical doctrine.

For example I'll ask you a simple question. Who wrote Romans? Who wrote Romans? Paul? God? Holy Spirit?

Who? Did Paul write a verse and then God write a verse then Paul write a verse and God write a verse? You say was it all the Holy Spirit? Is every word in Romans from the mind of the Holy Spirit? Yes. Is every word in Romans from the mind of the Apostle Paul in his heart in his vocabulary?

Yes. Who wrote it? Well it's all God and it's all it's all Paul. Well how can it be all God and all Paul? Well it can't be in our human thinking.

That's paradoxical but it is. Let me ask you this. Was Jesus God or man?

Yes. Half God half man? What's half a man? What's half a God? A nothing. He was 100% God 100% man. You can't be that.

That's right. It's paradoxical but if you try to make it in the middle and mix it and and take away a little of his deity and a little of his humanity to come up with a hybrid what have you just done? You've destroyed the person of Jesus Christ. So you leave it alone and you say to yourself I can't know that. The secret things belong to the Lord.

Deuteronomy 29 29 I will not play God and assume that everything has to fit into my computer to be true. I'll ask you another question. Who lives your Christian life? Who does?

Do you? Are you out there saying I'm going to live my Christian life if it kills me? You say no it's Christ in me. I don't do anything.

I just flop and he does it all. No no no. I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live. Yet not I. But Christ lives in?

It's the same paradise. See whenever you try to reduce the truth of God down to the human brain you're going to have some stuff left over. You understand that? And consequently you've got to be able to allow for what we call divine tension.

Just leave it there. Bible teaches election. Bible teaches human choice. Let it teach both. God understands how it all goes together. We don't. That's a matter of faith isn't it?

Don't come up with something in the middle you destroy both. So people who want to say oh we can't believe in election because it messes us up on this end are really doing what they have no right to do. They're saying we've got to reduce God to our own thinking processes and assume he's going to do only the things that we can fully understand. And that's not so.

Okay good. John concerning last week's teaching on the illumination of the spirit of the scriptures. How is it that how do we understand that so many spirit filled and studious men come up with so many different doctrines about. Yeah that's a good question. Why is it that good men disagree right? If it's the spirit of God who's our teacher. Okay let me tell you and this is hard to you know to clarify in a simple way but look at this. We're all going to be wrong somewhere because we lack perfection.

True? I know I have errors in my theology. I just don't know where they are.

If I knew where they were I'd change them. I'm working real hard and I believe everything I say. I really do and I preach it that way.

Don't you get the idea that I really believe what I say? Now I know that I'm imperfect and so I to start with no no one person is the repository of all divine truth. And I say that to say this that all of us are made to some extent incapacitated because of our humanness. And so there will be times for example when we're working on a passage when we're interpreting a passage that it'll go into our permanent file and we've done less than adequate scholarship on that passage and so that part of what we've done may not be truly representative of what that text teaches.

So you're dealing one with the human element. Secondly the reason there's disagreement is because of background and presuppositions. In other words that men are raised in a certain environment with certain definitions and parameters in life and certain presuppositions. The hardest thing in bible study is to divorce yourself from all your presuppositions and take every text purely on its own merit. We tend to go into the text with all of our preconceived ideas and then fit this thing into the system that's already been developed.

Rather than to keep the system open enough to take what that thing says. Thirdly I think there's a very important reason why good men don't agree and that's because many good men don't really dig deep enough and they're too superficial. And if they really were and if they really were faithful to dig with great diligence they'd find themselves coming together much more than they do.

And that's important. The fourth reason that good men don't agree is because some texts are obscure and difficult to interpret. And since you can't really be utterly absolutely dogmatic about them there is room for latitude at that point. But the thing that is so wonderful in all of this is that those who are those who represent the word of God and who believe the word of God and who teach the word of God as the word of God and love the Lord Jesus Christ will have differences but they will inevitably be peripheral differences. The core of the main line of God's revealed truth will be there. And the differences will come through their background, through their scholarship adequate or inadequate, through their presuppositions, through their diligence or lack of it, through the fact that this text doesn't have enough information for us to really know. But I think that good men basically agree right down the line.

I stand in a historic context. I'm basically teaching you what has been the main line doctrine of the church since Jesus Christ. And I haven't deviated from that. Oh there may be some passages where I'll go off a little bit here and there from somebody else's teaching but the heart and soul of the message of the word of God is intact. And the other reasons that I gave you will explain why those variations appear.

Really what we need to do is work harder and get rid of our preset presuppositions. That really helps. Yes. I've never really understood the passage in Luke 5 36 to 39 about the new wine and the old bottles. So I'd like some explanation.

Okay. Luke 5 36 he spoke also a parable to them. No man puts a piece of new garment on an old. If so then both the new makes a tear and the piece that was torn out of the new agreeeth not with the old. No man puts new wine into old wineskins else the new wine will burst the wineskins be spilled the wineskins perish. New wine must be put in new wineskins and both are preserved and so forth. Okay. What it's saying is if you ladies know about this you get an old piece of garment you put a new patch in it and it'll rip the old up won't it can't put a new patch in an old garment you put you get an old wine skin that's had wine in it for a long time in those days in that culture we don't do things like that anymore but what would happen is once it was emptied it would sit and it would dry and crack if you then poured liquid into it what would happen well it would leak you have to have a new supple soft wine skin to handle that and I think this is so important because now I also did a tape on that Tom in Matthew 9 by the way because his parallel is there but what Jesus is saying is so vital he says when he came into the world he is saying look I am not here as an addendum to Judaism I am not here to put some new wine in old wineskins I am here with a new covenant and I think he's he's representing his ministry not as something that in any way on in the earth can fit into Pharisaic Judaism as it existed in the land of Israel that's really what he's saying there's no way that that I can accommodate the system that is and he was really calling men to come out totally from that self-righteous legalistic works centered system that was Judaism he wasn't accommodating himself to that in any way shape or form what he brought was something new and it had to come in a new package didn't it it couldn't be contained by that old self-righteous works system that's the essence of what he's saying I think in that parable yes I have a question that's been racking my mind for a while and that is did the prayer of Moses on behalf of the people in Exodus 32 change the mind of an omniscient sovereign immutable god no no it didn't change his mind what you have to understand in the scripture is that god relates to us in human terms okay in other words when it says it repented god that he made man did god really repent no but we understand that that that means that on the surface it appears as though god was sorry about something that he had done he felt sorry that it even made man what that means is that god is not ipso facto saying I am sorry I made man like he did something wrong but he's relating to us in a human emotion that helps us identify with what god was feeling when he saw people turning their back on him okay now when Moses prays to god on Israel's behalf or to spare the people you know if there's just a few righteous Abraham did the same thing you remember in Sodom and Gomorrah the same kind of thing if you can just find a few will you spare them and so forth and so on god is not changing his mind god is not altering his behavior god is not changing the plan but from the human viewpoint prayer appears to have that effect on god and so god talks to us in those human terms so that we can perceive that that that that can be understood that way for example the bible says the eyes of the lord run to and fro throughout the earth does god have eyes no but if it said god uses his glips to frick us we don't know we don't know what that is but if it says he uses his eyes to see we perceive then that he is able to take in information or it says the arm of the lord is not shortened he can't heal he doesn't have arm says his ear is not deaf that he does not hear in fact it even says that he covers us with his feathers and it doesn't mean that god is a chicken or a duck or whatever but god reduces himself and this is a very important it's what's called an anthropomorphism that comes from two greek words anthropos man morphe body terms of the body of a man god reveals himself to us in terms that are understood in human life so that we can perceive what is what is happening from the only vantage point that we could ever perceive and that's on human terms so it is not to say that god changes his mind or alters his position or alters his view it is to say that it appears that way from the human viewpoint when for example in any time you pray right let's say a sequence is going on and you pray and the lord heals somebody did god change his mind would god have healed the person anyway that's a very difficult question because the will of god ultimately was to heal the person so whether you prayed or not what would god have done healed the person except for the fact that you're praying was part of the process for god to heal the person so that was in the plan too very difficult now you're trying to unscrew the unscrewable so so when god told moses that i will destroy these people even if moses had not prayed god would not have destroyed the people no because there were you know you can't say if he hadn't prayed because he did pray in other words god god is talking to moses in human terms to draw him to pray for the people that's part of the plan god knew what he would do in the end but again god is reducing himself to a conversation perceivable to the human mind it's the only way we can understand god okay and it leaves some dan i grant you it leaves some tough areas out there but someday we'll know as we're known right this is grace to you with john macarthur thanks for tuning in we broke from our regular schedule today to air a special time of bible questions and answers well john i love these q a sessions and one thing our listeners need to know is you don't know what questions are coming at you you don't get to review a list of these ahead of time you're just up there and these come at you blind and yet always it seems to me you have an answer that draws on some biblical principle or some key text in scripture it's it's a really good illustration of how sufficient the bible is for whatever question we might have ultimately the bible has some truth that gives us an answer yeah i enjoy the q a sessions and i feel comfortable doing it because of the fact that all the answers are in the one book so i i might not be able to answer philosophical questions because i would have to be widely read to understand philosophy but when it comes to biblical questions having spent my life in in the bible i know essentially what god's word says about most people's questions uh the point of writing the macarthur study bible notes well now what 25 years ago was to put the answers in the bible so the people don't need to ask the questions right they ask them anyway though well they always want to go beyond what you give an answer in the notes in the macarthur study bible and that's fine as far as it goes but that leads to other questions and that's that's great i love that as well but a good place to start with all your questions and if you're if you're reading the bible you will have questions a great place to start getting answers is with the copy of the macarthur study bible there are 25 000 footnotes on every single page explaining what you're reading in the scripture giving you background culture geography language that all is part of getting to the meaning of the text explaining hard to understand 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