The Christian's Duty in a Hostile World, Part 2

The only way that you are ready for the crisis is when you have been prepared by the spiritual discipline of walking in obedience to the revealed principles of Christian living. In the day-to-day spiritual disciplines are built the strength and the courage that makes us perform in the moment of crisis. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. Today John's going to help you navigate a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to the God of the Bible and to those who love Him.

Our current study from 1 Peter is titled, Faith Through the Fire. Now John, before today's lesson, I want to ask you some questions about the medium of radio. I know your father was on radio. Grace to You has been on the radio for more than four decades now, and during that time technology has shifted.

We use the internet. People can get Grace to You on their cell phones and listen to it in their cars. Other ways, I often get asked, why is Grace to You still on the radio?

What would your answer to that be? Well, because radio is still viable. Radio is still high demand. There are plenty of people in line who would love to have their ministry fill a slot that Grace to You holds now, because they know how important radio is. Radio is sort of the entry level for people who connect with Grace to You. Literally tens of thousands, if not millions, of people, tens of thousands connect with us actually, but millions of people listen to Grace to You on the radio. They may not be looking for it, but there it is.

You don't have to Google anything, and it's there. It's in the air. No, radio is tremendously important. It is viable.

The way that we can catch somebody unaware, so we love that about it. Also, because of the technology today, somebody can talk to whatever device they use and say, play Grace to You radio, and it'll pop up immediately. No, radio is very, very viable. We know people who enter at that point and then become very, very involved in our ministry at deeper levels with all the material that we have. With millions of people downloading sermons from Grace to You website, we might say, well, why would we produce a half-hour broadcast Monday through Friday and once on the weekend? The answer would be because there are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who hear Grace to You. When you support Grace to You, you help us pay the bills to keep us on the radio, not only in the United States, but all across the world.

We think this is vital. This is available for us, and we want to take every opportunity to see this as a God-given gift and a God-given partnership with Christian radio stations to proclaim God's Word from Grace to You. So, stay with us and pray with us on radio. Dave- Yes, and friend, the Lord is using you and people like you to bring about real and profound spiritual transformation through Grace to You.

Thank you for your prayers and for all you do. Now, let's get back to God's Word. Stay here as John continues his study, Faith Through the Fire. We are going through the great text of 1 Peter, and so I invite you to take your Bible with me and turn to 1 Peter chapter 4. We are looking again at verses 7 through 11 and considering the theme, Christian Duty in a Hostile World.

Before we dig into the text at hand, let me try to introduce the theme by referring to yet another text taken from the Gospel of Luke, the words of Jesus, chapter 14 and verse 26. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace. So, therefore, no one of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions." Without going deeply into that particular text and reserving such depth for another occasion, at least we can discern from that text that no one should become a follower of Jesus Christ without counting the cost.

And it is apparent from that text that the implication is the cost is very high. Being an authentic Christian demands a willingness to pay the price. And when we talk about being a disciple of Jesus Christ, it is with that in mind we need to encourage people to count the cost, to measure the price, to consider what it is that Christ asks of us. It is costly to follow Jesus Christ.

We remember in the parable of the treasure in the field and the parable of the pearl of great price that in each case it says the man sold all that he had to purchase the treasure or the pearl. In the case of the rich young ruler, Jesus asked him to take everything he possessed, sell it, take his money, give it to the poor and then follow him. Jesus told some would be disciples that he expected them to drop everything and immediately follow him at the cost of whatever other enterprises they might have involved themselves in.

They were reluctant and said they had to do things like take care of family affairs, bury my father and so forth. Jesus also, confronting those who became his disciples, simply said to them, drop your nets and follow me. Give up your way of life, the matters of your life, in exchange for following me. We will not argue the costliness of salvation any further, but what I would like to remind you of is a truth that was articulated at least once by a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard, a philosopher who said this, it costs a man even more to go to hell. Proverbs 13.15 puts it this way, the way of the transgressor is hard. The way of the disciple may be costly, but the way of the disciple is not hard. For Jesus said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke is what? Easy, and my burden is light. The real price is paid by the one who will not pay the price of discipleship.

The hardness belongs to the way of the transgressor, and all of Scripture and all of human experience merely records the reality of that fact. To reject righteousness, to reject salvation, to reject being a disciple of Jesus Christ is to choose the hardest way, a life of crushing guilt, a life of unanswerable questions, a life of hopeless disappointment, a life of endless and unsolvable problems, and after all of that, to spend forever in hell. And so we should conclude and be reminded I think regularly that though the cost of discipleship is high and though it demands a willingness to give up all we are to follow Christ, it is small when compared to the high cost of refusing to become a follower of Jesus Christ. To follow Jesus Christ is costly, but easy, and that is the wondrous paradox of discipleship.

In fact, in 1 John 5, 3, John even reminds us that His commandments are not burdensome. We are called to follow Christ. We are called to be His disciples. We are called as such to obey His commands. We are given clear instruction in the Bible and we are also given direct enabling power by the Holy Spirit to fulfill those commands and the result is joy. And if we are willing to obey the foundational doctrines of Christian living in the power of a Spirit-filled life, then we will find the yoke is easy and the burden is light. And so while we must talk of the cost of discipleship, we must also talk of the ease of discipleship because of the great grace of Christ given in the Spirit. We live in a complex world. Nobody would argue that. However, contemporary Christianity seems bent on assuming that because the world is complex, the solutions to the problems of Christians are also complex.

That however is not the case. The yoke is easy. The burden is light. The wayfaring man, though he be a fool, need not err.

The wise and the prudent are not privy to this. The common, the ignoble, the base, the weak, the infant know the things of God. The foundations of the Christian life, I believe, are not complex but simple, direct, and I believe that what Peter shares with us in this text takes us to the simple, basic, foundational elements of living a Christian life. It is one of those great summary texts which says so much in so few words.

Follow them as I read. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins.

Be hospitable to one another without complaint as each one has received a special gift. Employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks, let him speak as it were the utterances of God. Whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So as we approach this text and we approach, as it were, the ease of discipleship, the easy yoke, the light burden made so by the provision of Christ in His Spirit and through the revelation of His truth, we come to the basics for Christian living, a wonderful summation.

But before we look again specifically at that summation, let me encourage you with another sort of introductory thought. I believe that one of the characteristics of the Christian life, one of the manifestations of the new nature, one of the things that is implanted in the heart of a believer is a longing to be what God wants you to be. We find that expressed in Romans chapter 7 as Paul sees sin as something he doesn't want to do or something he does when he shouldn't do it or something he doesn't do when he should do it. In other words, there's a sense in which in Romans 7 as Paul chronologues his spiritual experience, we get very clearly the message that he wants to obey the law of God which is holy, just, and good. And when he doesn't, it is that infernal flesh that hangs on to his redeemed nature and causes him not to do the things he wants to do and to do the things he wants not to do. And what I draw from that among many things is the fact that there is within the believer a desire for what is right, a longing for what is right, a longing for what is best. We could sum it up by saying believers by virtue of the new nature hate sin and love righteousness. Now that may get clouded because of our fallenness, but that's the basic impulse of the new creation.

We want to do what's right. But, beloved, that is not enough. That longing is not enough to bring to fruition what God would desire of us. To assume that it is is sort of like the child, you know, who decides he wants to be like somebody else. Maybe he has dreams of being a major league baseball player.

And so he has his own little bat and he stands in the backyard and he's got a picture of his baseball hero and he tries to stand exactly the way that hero stands and he tries to hold the bat the way that hero holds the bat and he tries to swing his little bat the way that hero swings his big bat. Or maybe he has an uncle who is a great medical doctor who has perhaps provided healing for hundreds of people. And this little fellow is enamored with the capability of his uncle and longs someday to be like his uncle and so he has his own little stethoscope, one that his uncle no longer uses which he drapes around his neck as he parades around the house and plays doctor. Or maybe there's that little child who wants to be the great musician and so he squeaks and squawks interminably on a violin that you wish somehow could be destroyed. I submit to you that wanting that does not get that. Wanting that is not enough. Somehow that little child has got to begin with the ability or the capability and then pursue an overall life of preparation. During that life he spends his time and energy building a foundation of habits, of responses, of strengths, of timing, even a memory that will produce the performance of greatness that he wants. But wanting it is not enough. It may be born in the wanting but it has not come to fulfillment in the wanting. We all know that a successful moment at bat in the crucial time in the World Series that turns the tide and wins the series, that ability to perform in the crucial moment, in the time of crisis when everything is on the line, is not determined by a strong wish but depth of preparation.

Is that not true? Being able to perform in the moment of crisis in the emergency room when life hangs in the balance and it depends on you to keep the patient alive does not happen by wishing. It happens because of a depth of preparation that has made you ready for the moment of crisis. Being able to stand before that critical audience with an eye to discerning mistakes does not happen by wishing it will happen but by depth of preparation, yes, a life of preparation.

And I submit to you, beloved, that there are many Christians, maybe most Christians, who have the vision as it were because they can see the image of Christ in the Word of God and they have the desire for spiritual excellence but listen carefully, have not the daily discipline which is required to produce it. And the wishing will not allow them to meet the moment of crisis. That is why many well-wishing Christians come apart at the seams in the crisis. As they get close to the crisis, they would like to find a shortcut. They would like to get a quick course in spiritual strength as the crisis moment descends.

It doesn't happen. The only way the yoke is easy, the only way the burden is light, the only way that you are ready for the crisis is when you have been prepared by the spiritual discipline of walking in obedience to the revealed principles of Christian living. And there are no shortcuts.

And there are no quick fixes. And the day-to-day spiritual disciplines are built, the strength and the courage and the boldness and the depth that makes us perform in the moment of crisis. Christians seem very, very hard-pressed to learn that you can't have a life out of control and then when the crisis moment comes, grab control of it and instantaneously live and react like Christ would.

You can't do it if in the rest of your life you're not living as Christ would want you to live. But it is just that kind of shallow Christianity that feeds the shallowness of our time. Dallas Willard, writing in a book entitled The Spirit of the Disciplines, says, and I quote, "...the on-the-spot episodes are not the place where we can, even by the grace of God, redirect un-Christlike but ingrained tendencies of action toward sudden Christlikeness.

Our efforts to take control at that moment will fail so uniformly and so ingloriously that the whole project of following Christ will appear ridiculous to the watching world." He further says, "...some decades ago there appeared a very successful Christian novel called, In His Steps. The plot tells of a chain of tragic events that bring the minister of a prosperous church to realize how unlike Christ's life, his own life had become. The minister then leads his congregation in a vow not to do anything without first asking them the question, What would Jesus do in this case? Now, as the content of the book makes clear, the author took this vow to be the same thing as intending to follow Jesus to walk precisely in His steps. It is, of course, a novel, but even in real life we would count on significant changes in the lives of earnest Christians who took such a vow just as it happens in that book."

Then he writes this, "...but there is a flaw in this thinking. Asking ourselves, What would Jesus do when suddenly in the face of an important situation simply is not an adequate discipline or preparation to enable one to live as Christ lived? It no doubt will do some good and is certainly better than nothing at all, but that act alone is not sufficient to see us boldly and confidently through a crisis and we could easily find ourselves driven to despair over the powerless tension it will put us through." The secret of being ready for the crisis, of having the yoke be easy and the burden be light, is to learn how to live the Christian life all the time so that we have developed the habits, the resources, the responses, the timing, the strengths, the memory, the faith, the spiritual courage to handle it.

That's the issue. To behave like Jesus Christ is our goal. But to be able to do that is not the result of wishing, it's the result of daily spiritual discipline. Jesus said in Luke 6.40, "...only after he is fully trained will a man be like his teacher." The novelist Leo Tolstoy once wrote, "...man's whole life is a continual contradiction of what he knows to be his duty. In every department of life he acts in defiant opposition to the dictates of his conscience and his common sense." Now there is a comment on the tragedy of fallen man. He is unable even to do what he in his fallenness thinks is right. It is part of fallen human nature to be debilitated.

The only way a Christian, even in his regenerate life, can overcome that impact of fallenness is by the cultivation of godly habits. And so, beloved, all of that to say this, what Peter presents here, gives us patterns for daily living, summarizing how we are to live as believers. Three points in the text that I want to draw you to. Point number one, the incentive.

The incentive is in verse 7. The end of all things is at hand. When he says end, tell us, he does not mean the cessation.

It is not a chronological idea. It doesn't mean the termination. He means the consummation, the reaching of the goal, the achievement, the purpose realized.

Destiny is fulfilled. And I believe he has in mind the return of Jesus Christ. The incentive for holy living is to live in constant expectancy of Christ's sudden return. Let's go to the second point. From the incentive then come the instructions. The instructions. Verses 7b through the first part of verse 11 give us the instructions for godly living. How to conduct your life on a day-to-day basis so that you build the kind of habits that will stand you strong in the crisis. How to live the kind of life that though the cost of discipleship be high will cause you to say the yoke is easy and the burden is light.

That will cause you to say the commandments of God are not burdensome. Here are the patterns of life that must be established. They fall into three categories. Personal holiness, love, and service. Those are the three dimensions on which we concentrate in our Christian living. The first, personal holiness, has to do with our relationship to God and His revealed Word.

The second, love, has to do with our relationship to others. The third, service, again expresses responsibility to fulfill God's plan for us in terms of ministry within the body of Christ. Holiness, love, and service. Let's talk about holiness. Notice verse 7. Therefore, he says, because the end of all things is near, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. This really does sum up holiness. Sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer would mean that my life is so pure and so right that my communion with the living holy God is unhindered.

What about that statement be of sound judgment? The term comes from a word that means to save and a word that has to do with the mind. And I suppose we could extrapolate from that that the basic idea is to keep your mind safe. Save your mind. Guard it. Protect it.

Keep it clear. Another way to put that would be to fix it on spiritual priorities. Fix it on holy things. To borrow Paul's statement to the Colossians, set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. He has titled our current study from 1 Peter, Faith Through the Fire. And friend, as John mentioned before the lesson, we're committed to using our resources wisely so that we can take God's Word to more and more communities. If you want to be part of that mission, help strengthen believers with biblical truth wherever they are in the world, you can make a tax-deductible donation when you contact us today.

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And thank you again for standing with us. You never know who you're going to help reach, maybe a friend or even someone in your own family. Again, to make a donation, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. That's our website, gty.org. While you're there, make sure to take some time to enjoy the thousands of Bible-related resources we have available there free of charge. You can read articles on a wide range of issues at the Grace to You blog. You can catch episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed, and you can download any of John's sermons for free. That's 3,500 messages covering every verse in the New Testament and many parts of the Old. Our address again, gty.org. 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, or check your local listings for Channel and Times. And then join us tomorrow for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.