How to Think and Act in Evil Days, Part 1

These days, it seems there's always a new story about a terrible crime or perceived injustice followed by a national conversation about the event and what we should do about it.

But the fact is, the world has problems that politicians and academicians and popular media cannot solve and can't even explain. Thankfully, if you're a believer, there are answers and hope. And today on Grace to You, John MacArthur looks at how that hope can change not only your life, but the lives of those around you. John is continuing a series he originally preached during chapel at the Master's University.

It's titled, How to Think and Act in Evil Days. And now here's John. We live in a society unlike any in the past. We live in a world of electronic media and mass communication, relentless visual images and enhancements. We see everything.

We see everything that happens in the world of any significance and we see it again and again and again and again. We're not isolated from anything. In fact, we're overloaded with absolutely everything for the first time in the history of the world. Most of these things have nothing to do with us. We're not there.

We're not involved. We might occasionally experience some tragedy. But we have to bear the weight of the whole world now. And I guess part of the coping mechanism is you eventually become a little bit insensitive to all of that and we forget that life is dangerous on this planet, very, very dangerous and life is very, very brief.

How do we as Christians absorb that, take that in, turn that into motivation to be effective for Christ in the world in which we live? Now we know everyone dies. It's appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment. We know that. The Bible says that, Hebrews 9.

We get that. Everybody's headed for death and everybody's headed for heaven or hell. That ought to be enough motive for us to be serious about using the time and opportunity God gives us to bring the gospel to people, realizing everyone dies, everyone lives forever in heaven or hell. And the only way to get to heaven is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Should be enough compulsion for us. But, of course, we're caught up in a strange kind of paradox where on the one hand we're overexposed to these massive calamities that catapult large groups of people into death. And on the other hand, we live in a very self-conscious, self-satisfying, personally fulfilling world of people who are trying to suck everything they can out of this life and live temporal life to its max and elevate themselves to the highest level of comfort and prosperity they can.

It's a strange paradox. But as believers, we need to understand the world the way the Lord wants us to understand we need a biblical view. So that takes me to the thirteenth chapter of Luke, verses 1 through 5.

This is a very, very important and very foundational way to view the world. Some Galileans were in the temple and they were offering sacrifices and Pilate soldiers came in and slaughtered them so that their blood was mingled with the blood of the sacrifice. Very dramatic scene. And some other Jews, 18 of them to be exact, were minding their own business and walking in a construction zone and a tower fell on them and crushed them to death. Now the question that is on the mind of these people who are in the presence of our Lord is, did this happen to these people because they were worse sinners than everybody else? That's the point. Verse 2, do you suppose these Galileans were greater sinners? Verse 4, do you suppose those 18 on whom the tower fell were worse culprits? That is the question.

It's a question that's in their minds. And the question is that simple question, what about calamities? It's not about death in general. What about calamity?

Is this singled out for the worst of people? Is God doing something that we could actually call judgment? Actually call judgment. Well let me back off of that question for a minute and just say, God would have a right to kill us any time, any of us any time, right? The wages of sin is what? Death. The soul that sins, it shall die. Certainly God would have the right to kill every sinner any time He wanted and that would be a just act on God's part. God is just to judge sinners, we are worthy of that judgment. But God is merciful, God extends grace to us and sinners live and they get used to living and they get used to not being judged. So when something happens like some calamity, then the question arises, why is this happening? Why is this happening? The better question is, why is this not happening?

Why is there not more of this? Because God is patient and kind and gracious and merciful, God giving sinners gospel opportunity, we can say, in this life. So the question then, go to verse 2, do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? And the Lord says in verse 3, I tell you no...I tell you no.

They're not greater sinners than anybody else or everybody else. And again I go back to what I said earlier, life in this world is a very dangerous thing and there's only one group of people who have any truth that can deliver people from the danger of being alive and that's Christians. There is no other message. There is no other truth. How important is your life? How important is your testimony?

It's more important than anything else on the planet. Children are killed in a school, politicians get together and they talk about gun control. But nobody died that wasn't going to die. People in Colorado just passed laws against guns because a person massacred people in a theater, but nobody died that wasn't going to die.

The answer is not new laws. The answer is only available for the world from you. You're going to die. You don't know when you're going to die.

Just dodging traffic can be a deadly experience, as you know. You have no control over that. So that makes you critical to the world in which you live. But the only thing that makes you critical is that you have the gospel which alone can rescue people from the eternal damnation that is the consequence of dying without repenting. So what is the message that Jesus gives at the end of verse 3 and at the end of verse 5? Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. You're going to die and it's going to be the end. You're going to be literally destroyed, a very familiar word used there in the New Testament to speak of eternal destruction. You need to change your mind about your sin.

You need to come to the only Savior, the only one who can rescue you from judgment. You will all likewise perish, apollumi, to be lost, destroyed, killed. The intent of the warning is that divine judgment comes after death.

You have to be ready to die. You know, once you get a vision of this and you see all humanity as people on the brink of death, and you have the only message that can rescue them from hell, your life takes on an importance that transcends every president, every king, every monarch, every ruler, every great mind on the planet. So I think it's a fair assumption to say that all the people killed at the altar and all the people crushed by the tower went to hell. They perished.

I don't know that we could conclude that any of them were true believers in the true God. And it was over for them in this life, but it just begun eternally in the next life. So in a sense, everybody's living on borrowed time.

Everybody lives on borrowed time. And with that thought in mind, pick up the parable with which Jesus draws this sermon to a conclusion in verse 6. He began telling this parable, a man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard. And he came looking for fruit on it and didn't find any. And he said to the vineyard keeper, behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down.

Why does it even use up the ground? But he answered and said to him, let alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer. And if it bears fruit next year, fine.

If not, cut it down. Pretty dramatic. Fig trees were common in Israel, valuable, excellent for shade, used for gathering. You see one in John chapter 1, the fruit, useful, delicious.

Everybody understood that. The farmer comes and he looks to the fig tree to find fruit, didn't find any. By the way, fig trees have fruit every year.

Apparently this had been planted as a grown tree and should have produced, kept coming back for three years, disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Interesting that three years is used here because that's the length of the ministry of the Lord Jesus to Israel. Was this Jesus saying Israel is the fig tree?

That would certainly fit a biblical picture. I've given enough time to see some fruitfulness. I see none. The tree has been around long enough to prove itself worthy. Nothing coming from it. Why does it even use up the ground?

What a waste. Cut it down, cut it down. Judgment on Israel, but not just Israel, judgment on any fruitless life, any fruitless life. At that point in verse 8, the farmer responds by saying, let it alone, sir, let it alone for this year too until I dig around it and put in fertilizer. Digging around it, a verb simply means to loosen the soil, better irrigation. Let me put some coprion on it, some manure.

Let me do whatever I can to help. And if it bears fruit next year, fine. If it bears fruit in that duration, fine.

If not, cut it down. That tree is living on borrowed time. And that's exactly what our Lord is saying about every human life, not just Israel, but every human life. Everybody lives on borrowed time, everybody. You're moving through a world as a possessor of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as a believer knowledgeable of the gospel, you're living through a world, moving through a world in which you alone have the truth that rescues dying people.

You are the most important people on the planet. Judgment is near next year. Judgment is imminent. Life is short.

It appears for a little time like a vapor and fades away. God is patient, but He will not always strive with man. So as we think about life in this world, as we think about what matters in this world, I think we have to go back to this very basic reality that really only one thing matters and that's what has eternal implications. You know, when I was a college student, I was thinking about athletics, that's what I did, that's what I loved, and that's what I enjoyed. And I had the opportunity to play football and thoroughly enjoyed it and opportunity to go to a pro football camp after my junior year and get into the mix of being drafted and all that after my senior year.

And I had an experience. I was speaking at an event as a senior football player. The season was over and I had received some kind of an award and so I went to speak to this group that invited me to come and talk about football. It was a secular kind of thing. So I just gave my testimony, talked about Christ.

By then I knew kind of in my heart that I wanted a minister, that I wanted to give my life in ministry. But out of that event, somebody told me about a girl and this is a kind of an important point in my life, really important, who had been shot through the neck by her boyfriend and severed her spinal cord. She's a quadriplegic. She was a head cheerleader at Thousand Oaks High School in those days. And somebody asked from that event if I would go talk to her in the hospital because they heard me give a testimony.

I'm like you, you know, I'm a college senior. I'm not sure I'm ready to give profound answers to people who've just been shot through the neck by their boyfriend at the age of 17, a lifetime quad. But I went and I talked to her and I just said, it's not what happens to your body that matters, it's what happens to your soul. And I even said, fear not him who destroys the body, but fear him who destroys both body and soul in hell. And I just gave the gospel and told her that God could give her reason to live, purpose in life. And I remember the occasion very, very vividly.

It was in a hospital in Glendale, a Venice hospital. And she responded by saying, I would kill myself if I could, but I can't move anything. And I said, well then you are hopeless.

You can't live without hope. And we began to talk some about that. Eventually she opened her heart to the Lord. She prayed a beautiful prayer, acknowledged Christ, responded to Christ, and I was shocked. How that kind of desperation and anger and fear could turn into a heart open to Christ was a work of the Holy Spirit and I saw it. Anyway, she gave her life to Christ and that totally shifted my entire life thinking.

Why would I do anything other than that? What else would matter? Certainly football didn't matter.

That mattered. And the wonderful part of the story is she recovered and of course quadriplegic in a wheelchair, a young man came along, fell in love with her, married her, a Christian young man and God graced her life in that way. That was a monumental event in the life of a young guy about your age. And that answered all the questions that I ever had about what should I do because what was the most important thing you could ever do with your life? The one thing that only Christians can do and that makes them the most important people in the world and that is to communicate the gospel to a dying people who are all living on borrowed time.

They're going to die, they don't know when, they're not in charge of when, whether it's here or anywhere around the world. That's why we're here, that's why we exist. That's our great high calling. Nothing but that really matters in the big picture. We can't get caught up in the trivial, we can't get caught up in the superficial and the temporal. We're too important. I guess the irony of it is the world is trying to marginalize us, trying to shut us up and you may see that happen more in the next ten to fifteen, twenty years, thirty years of your life if the Lord tarries.

This is how it flows. Reject the Bible in a culture, we've done that, we're there. That's first, reject the Bible. Second, turn morality upside down. Fornication is good.

Sex is recreational. Abortion is good. Woman's right to choose. Woman's right to choose. So you've rejected the Bible, now you've turned morality upside down.

You've substituted good for bad, light for darkness, bitter for sweet, to borrow Isaiah 5's words. Third, demand tolerance. Demand that all of this morality be turned on its head, be tolerated, all of it. It has to be tolerated.

We have trouble with that because we understand that immorality on any level, sex outside marriage between a man and a woman is wrong, it's sinful, it's dishonoring, it's destructive, and a lot of other issues of morality. But we're going to be forced to be tolerant, which then turns to intolerance. So first you reject the Bible, then you turn morality upside down, then you demand tolerance and then for the people who don't provide that tolerance, you become intolerant so that the message of Christianity becomes hostile. And that leads to the final step, which is persecution...persecution. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to look down the road and say we are the only people in the world who have the message and we're liable to be persecuted for it, which is going to raise the stakes on your commitment.

The price is going to be higher. It's not going to be a benign sort of Judeo-Christian tolerant culture that you work and live in ahead of you. It's going to be hostile. It's going to be aggressively hostile. And when you speak the truth, they're not going to like to hear it because you're going against the grain. And that can be even in some ways the most self-righteous people. So hostility will come even from those who want to be our friends, but it's liable to come in greater measure from those who are anti-Christian.

I think it's going to be tough for us in the future. In a sense, I wish this could be more like a boot camp here because I think you're not just going to be going into the world of your parents, you're not going to be going into the world of my world where I grew up, my parents' world which was favorable and open to Christianity and affirming of a biblical morality. That's all changed. So now you have a message that is the truth, the only hope of the world, and they're not going to like you for it, which raises the stakes on your commitment. Just look at the world the way our Lord told us to look at the world. Everybody's gotten their way to death. Everybody's going to die. They're not in control of when. When they die, they do face judgment. They're all living on borrowed time.

You're their only hope. Make your life count for the gospel. Father, we are so grateful that You've given us insight, simple insight, memorable, unforgettable to the urgency of life. We live in a world that is mad over recreation, entertainment, trying to satisfy itself with very little concern about an eternal hell. But You have said much about it, and may we see people the way You see them.

It made You weep, and You were in control of it. May we, with equally sad hearts, live in a dying world of people on borrowed time, making sure we do everything we can with urgency to make Christ known, the only hope, the only Savior. Use us, Lord, for the gospel's sake, we pray. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's lesson today was on how to think and act in evil days. Now, this study is a timely reminder about our high calling as Christians that we are commanded to communicate the gospel to a dying world. And of course, it's really no secret that the world is growing less tolerant of God's word and more hostile to Christ and to the church. And so, John, as Christian ministries likely face even greater challenges in the years ahead, what role do you think what role do you see Grace to You having in a culture that tries to silence people who publicly teach biblical truth? Well, we know the enemy of our souls, the enemy of God, the archenemy of God, Satan, and all his demons and minions and all of his human agents who make up the kingdom of darkness in this world are set against the truth. Satan is a liar and the father of lies, and he's a murderer, and all of his kingdom and all of his children buy into the lies and the murder. So we expect assaults on the truth.

They've always come. But I think it's fair to say in the day in which we live, there's an escalating hostility toward the truth. I think we were protected for some generations by a kind of cultural Christianity, kind of a cultural morality that was sort of baked into our country and our heritage. And so what we have is just this existential generation living in a vacuum where they've cut themselves off from the past, dominated by their own sin, and without any cultural Christianity, any sort of external expectations to conform them to some kind of normal standards of good behavior, they run amok. What that means to me and to Grace to you is pretty simple.

We have to keep doing exactly what we're doing because the stakes are higher now. And I even believe churches are capitulating to the expectation of this generation to soften the biblical truth, to set sin aside, to not confront evil. I was reading some things about John Calvin and how urgently Calvin and all the 120 pastors and ministers in Geneva were engaging in church discipline. They were involved in the details of people's lives to make sure they were living holy lives.

That doesn't seem to be an interest in many, many churches. So what Grace to you does is bring back the unmitigated, unadulterated, unaltered truth of God's Word, because we know this is what people need more than they need anything else. So on behalf of all of you who support us, thank you for standing with us as we continue to unleash God's truth one verse at a time. That's right, friend. Thank you. We are seeing God's Word draw people away from God. Thank you. I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here when John continues his series titled How to Think and Act in Evil Days, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on the next Grace to You.