Good, clear, godly, biblical thinking leads to spiritual alertness, spiritual watchfulness. It leads to the ability to view things in the eternal perspective, in the divine perspective, and to establish right responses. This is indispensable. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. When you think about living in a world that, on the whole, opposes the gospel of Jesus Christ, you need to remember that God's word promises hostility toward believers. It guarantees that your way of looking at life is going to be hated and attacked.
That doesn't mean, however, that you should have a run-and-hide mentality, nor does it mean waging a cultural morality war. Today on Grace To You, John MacArthur explores the biblical strategy for making a difference in a hostile world and standing strong against whatever threats you might face. John has titled this study from 1 Peter, Faith Through the Fire. Now, to show you the habits that can help you honor Christ, encourage other believers, and love your enemies in any crisis, stay here as John continues his current study.
Here are the patterns of life that must be established. They fall into three categories – personal 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.
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. It also could imply here not to be swept away by emotion, not to be swept away by passion.
That could be part of it. It is the same word used in Mark 5.15 where it talks about the maniac, you remember, whom Jesus delivered from the legion of demons and it says he was clothed and in his right mind, same term. It is used in Romans 12.3, we are not to think more highly than we ought to think, but to think sanely, to think soundly, to bring our mind as it were captive to divine truth. And everything proceeds out of the mind, the Bible says, as a man thinks, so he acts. A sound mind, sound judgment is reflective of a holy orientation. The sinful, self-indulgent, deceiving demonically influenced world in which we live is a very easy place to lose your spiritual mindedness, is it not? It's a great place to lose your mental and moral balance. And so, Peter says, be spiritually sane.
What do you mean? Think on God. Think on spiritual things. Think on holy things.
Think God's thoughts. It takes me way back to a verse I learned as a little boy. Joshua 1.8, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. From the very beginning, way back at the start, God said you must think on My Word. In Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Saving your mind, keeping it sane, holding onto it, is vital to Christian holiness. Colossians 3.16 gives us another insight into that. It says, let the word of Christ do what? Dwell in you richly. That guards the mind, protects the mind, keeps the mind focused on pure things. Paul, writing to Titus, reminds us that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men and with it instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in this present age.
Dear people, you must bring your mind captive to Christ, to the Word of God. The great characteristic of sound judgment, the great characteristic of a spiritually sane mind is that it sees things in their proper proportions, their proper priorities, their proper perspectives. It sees what is important. It sees what is not important. It isn't swept away by sudden emotion. It isn't swept away by changing fancies. It is not unbalanced fanaticism.
It is not foolish indifference. Beloved, the only people who have this kind of sound judgment are those whose mind, as the songwriter said, has stayed on thee. This is a poised, this is a balanced Christian. Other forms of this word appear in the New Testament. One in 1 Timothy 3, 2 is translated sensible or prudent. Another in 2 Timothy 1, 7 is translated with the word discipline or self-control.
Another in Titus 2, 2 again sensible, and it's used three or four times, I remember, in that one chapter. Having a sensible, disciplined, prudent, self-controlled mind. All of these usages of this term and its various related terms carry the idea of balanced, disciplined, here comes, self-controlled thinking, or better, God-controlled thinking. This insulates the believer from being victimized by temptation and leads him to personal holiness. And when that becomes the pattern of daily living in the moment of crisis, there is Christ-likeness.
The mind is the key. Peter is not done with just that. Look again at verse 7. He says, be of sound judgment and then adds, and sober spirit.
And this is a synonym or very close to a synonym. It means basically to keep a clear head, to take serious things seriously, to be vigilant, to be alert. Matthew 24, 42, it's translated beyond the alert. Matthew 26, 40, and 41, be watching.
You might combine these two terms by putting it this way. Good, clear, godly, biblical thinking leads to spiritual alertness, spiritual watchfulness. It leads to the ability to view things in the eternal perspective, in the divine perspective, and to establish right responses. This is indispensable, and it is indispensable to one very, very essential element of Christian living that is noted in verse 7. Please come to the climax of the thought. Sound judgment and sober spirit are for the purpose of prayer.
Why? Because holiness flows out of direct communion with a holy God. And when that communion is hindered by a clut mind, an imbalanced mind, that which is most significant in Christian experience is lost. A confused mind, a self-centered mind, a mind knocked out of balance by worldly lusts and pursuits, a mind victimized by emotion or passion, out of control, a mind that is ignorant of God's truth, a mind that is indifferent to God's purposes, is a mind that cannot know the fullness of holy communion in prayer with God.
After all, you bring your mind to that communion, don't you? And so, your relationship to God in a very real sense, which is expressed in this matter of prayer, is determined by the attitudes that you bring, which attitudes are the result of your thinking. And if you are to pray effectively, and if you are to commune with God deeply and spiritually, then you must think biblically and spiritually as well. Prayer is the heart of our life.
It's the heart of our power. And I don't mean a formal prayer. I mean that unending, living communion with God, which is born out of thinking God's thoughts. You know, I find, just as a personal illustration, I find when I'm deeply involved in the study of the Word of God, and my mind is just searching deeply through and sorting out great truths about God in the times of study, that there is a flow of communion that is inexplicable. Because I am touching the mind of God, if ever so lightly.
I am touching the heart of God. And even with an unspoken communion, there is a sense of overwhelming presence. That only comes in those moments when our minds are making sound judgments and treating divine truth soberly, alertly. Then communion really flows. So, says Peter, the Christian life summed up is as simple as this. Think God's thoughts.
What does that mean? That means every day in the Word of God. Every day meditating, thinking, absorbing, drawing out, learning to think God's thoughts. As I often say, it should come to pass that you are so deeply filled with Scripture that your involuntary responses are godly because you're so controlled. And then comes the sweetness of communion. Then comes effective prayer. Then comes power. That's the vertical link in Christian living.
And then again, with the genius of the Holy Spirit, we come to the horizontal link. The second area, which is of concern to Peter in this matter of instruction, has to do with love. I don't suppose much more can be said about love that hasn't been said a thousand fold and I don't want to beg the issue, but I do want to emphasize what Peter says. Look at verse 8. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins.
Be hospitable to one another without complaint. Here Peter turns from the vertical aspect of living a holy life before God to the horizontal aspect of living a loving life before men. And he's primarily concerned about relationships with other Christians. You say, well, isn't he concerned about evangelism? Yes, but you remember the words of Jesus that if we love one another, by this shall all men know that we are His what?
Disciples. That is the substance of our witness. And so, Peter introduces us again to this matter of loving. It is an essential word for us and notice the importance he gives it. In verse 8 he says, above all, first in importance in terms of relationships is love. After you have strengthened your relationship with the Lord through developing intense times of study of the Word of God and communion with the Lord so you think with a biblical mind and a spiritual attitude and you have a flowing prayer life with God that readies you for any crisis, then your first concern should be to turn to those around you and keep fervent in your love for one another.
There's tremendous richness in this term. It sounds very much like Paul's words in Colossians 3.14, above all things put on love which is the perfect bond of unity. Paul in Philippians 2 says, love everybody the same. The verb here, by the way, is a participle and modifies the verbs of verse 7. It's as if to say that if you're sound in mind and sober in spirit and having sweet communion with God, then as you look at where that ought to flow, the first thing should be that you keep your love fervent.
This is a corollary to a biblical balanced mind and spirit. I love the word fervent, ektonos, because it's an anatomical word. It means to be stretched, to be strained. It is used of a runner who is running at maximum output with taut muscles straining and stretching to the limit. It is used in some extra biblical literature of a horse straining the great muscles in running full speed. It means intense, strenuous, reaching as far as you can reach to the limit of your capacity.
This is a fundamental Christian truth. He's not calling for a mushy kind of sentimentalism which some used to call sloppy agape. He's talking about a demanding love. He's talking about an intense love. He's talking about a sacrificial love. You say, well, how do I stretch? How do I get intense?
How do I strain? And the answer is by crossing the barriers of human emotion. That is to say loving the unlovely, the unlovable, loving your enemies, loving those who have not treated you kindly, loving when it doesn't seem rational, doesn't seem reasonable, loving to the point of sacrifice that it costs you something, costs you much, maybe costs you everything. The kind of love that requires all your spiritual muscle, stretching to love the unlovable in spite of insult, in spite of injury, in spite of being rejected, in spite of being treated unkindly, ungraciously, in spite of being treated with hostility, in spite of being misjudged, mistreated, misrepresented, that's fervent love. And why should we love each other this way? I'll tell you why.
Listen very carefully. Verse 8, because love covers a multitude of sins. And I'll tell you, beloved, if as a church we ever get to the place where we're running around poking at each other because of our sins, we're shattered. We are not perfect and as long as we are in this fallen flesh, we will sin and the only thing that is going to ride over the top of that and keep us together is love. Love is always hiding, kalupto, love is always hiding a multitude of sins.
That is its character. To put it simply, love forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives and if we don't have that in the church, we're in real trouble. Peter thinking himself to have arrived at the point of spiritual maturity and to be more magnanimous than anybody he could imagine said to the Lord, how many times shall we forgive? Seven? No doubt patted himself on the back for his generosity because the Talmud said three.
Think how far he'd come. And the Lord said, Peter, how about 70 times seven? Because love covers a multitude of sins and, beloved, we're sinners and we've got to have something to cover that, right? By the way, that statement Peter borrowed, he borrowed it from Proverbs 10, 12. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. Present tense, he writes here, I think indicates that which is constantly true. It is axiomatic.
It is a self-evident truth. Love is always, by very nature, hiding a multitude of sins. It forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives and the great, great model of that is God. Why did God show mercy to us?
Why did God forgive our sins? Ephesians 2, 4 and 5 says, for his great love wherewith he loved us. It's true of God.
It's true of us. Commentators through the years have battled with that statement, love covers a multitude of sins and some have said it's referring to God. God's love covering our sin and others have said, no, it's referring to us, us covering each other's sins because we love each other. And I believe the answer is very simple. It's an axiom. It just refers to love, true agape, true, willful, spiritual love, whether from God to man or Christian to Christian is going to cover sin. It's axiomatic.
It's self-evident. It's the nature of that love. The only way we could be saved is because God so loved the world and only love could cover our sins. While we were yet sinners, Paul says to the Romans, Christ died for us.
Why? Because he loved us. And it's only as we love one another that we can cover sins. Beloved, this is the heart of the church. To be honest with you, if we take care of this, we fulfill the whole law.
Is that not true? The whole law. You can see again the genius of the Spirit of God, how in an economy of words he says so much. You want to take care of the whole dimension of living before God? Get a biblical mind, a spiritual mind, be deep in communion with Christ and you'll have a powerful life.
You want to know how to function in the complexity of the church? Just be so full of overflowing love that you cover sin. Hatred will stir up strife. Selfishness will stir up strife.
Self-centeredness will stir up strife. Love will hide sin. Love will conceal it.
Love will pass it by in silence. And what a transformation that would bring to the church. It is that which is at the very base of all our spiritual relationships. Peter goes one step further in this matter of love. In verse 9, he says, be hospitable to one another without complaint. The word here means to love strangers. He has to add this because we tend to be lovers of our friends and we tend to readily cover the sins of our friends. And he says, would you please extend that to strangers?
Will you be affectionate towards strangers? He has here, I'm sure, a spiritual kind of love that covers. More than that, he also has in mind the opening of our hearts and our homes for those in need, for love is intensely practical. And if all there was was verse 8, we might assume that this was just some emotional feeling and so he brings it down to a very pragmatic level. And when he uses the term hospitality, he's simply saying love strangers in a practical way.
Most have associated this word with opening the home. Everybody who studies New Testament background understands that traveling Christians, traveling ministers and preachers couldn't stay in the inns of those days, which were little more than houses of ill repute. The early Christians probably couldn't have existed if there wasn't the hospitality that was offered by the church. But there's more to it than that.
Certainly that's part of it. Open your home, embrace someone. And I love what it says in Hebrews, be careful how you treat a stranger. You might be dealing with an angel, reminiscent of way back in Genesis when God and a couple of angels visited Abraham and Sarah. Hospitality was commanded in Exodus 22, 21, Deuteronomy 14, 28, and 29. Certainly Jesus emphasized giving a cup of cold water to the least of His in His name. And certainly in Luke 14 you have the call of Christ to go out into the highways and call the poor and the blind and the lame and bring them into your home and feed them.
And God certainly honors those kinds of sacrifices. But the whole spirit of this is bigger than just providing a meal and opening a door. It's embracing the fact that we are to love people outside our normal circle and to do it without grumbling, without murmuring, without grudging, without what I call the poor Richard's almanac mentality.
Poor Richard's almanac says fish and visitors smell in three days. There is to be a generous hospitality toward those we don't know, an opening of our heart to them. What then is the Christian's duty in a hostile world?
It is to pursue holiness with God, to pursue love with others so that we cover their sins, so that we meet their needs, be they friend or stranger. You've been listening to John MacArthur explain how you should respond to those who mock Christ and persecute His followers. The title of John's current study here on Grace to You, Faith Through the Fire.
Along with teaching each day on the radio, John also serves as Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John, in the early lessons, you said that Christians should be so deeply filled with Scripture that all of our reactions especially are involuntary reactions, godly responses. And yet, I know you wouldn't say that it's enough just to know what the Bible says. What else do we need? Well, obviously, we need to know what the Bible means. That's the point, right?
What does it matter if you can read the words but don't understand the meaning? The Bible is propositional truth. No matter what format it comes in, whether it's wisdom literature or whether it's historical narrative or whether it's didactic theological presentations like the Apostle Paul gives in Romans and Galatians, all of that is propositional truth.
All of it is revealing divine truth. And you want to know what the Bible says, but more importantly, you want to know what the theological truths are behind the words. And so what is most important is interpretation.
And I've said this a lot through the years. The meaning of the Scripture is the revelation. I mean, God's revelation can only be known to you if you know the meaning of the Scripture. Look, if you don't get the meaning right, you see what happens. Every cult, every false form of Christianity has the same Bible, but they don't get the meaning right.
So getting the meaning right is critical. Along that line, just to remind you that we have many formats for the MacArthur Study Bible. It is the Bible, the whole Bible, and on every page there are footnotes explaining the meaning of essentially every Scripture text. The MacArthur Study Bible comes in the New King James Version, the New American Standard Version, the English Standard Version.
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Take advantage of that and order one today. Yes, and each edition of the MacArthur Study Bible has the footnotes John talked about, plus introductions to every book, cross-references, maps, many other tools to help you understand and apply God's Word. To purchase a copy, call or go to our website today. Our toll-free number is 800-55-GRACE, and our web address is GTY.org. Our prices for the MacArthur Study Bible are probably the best you'll find anywhere.
And again, you can choose from the New King James Version, New American Standard Version, the English Standard Version, all in a variety of bindings, or from several of our non-English translations as well. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, dial toll-free 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org. And while you're at GTY.org, remember you can listen to more than 3,500 of John MacArthur's sermons free of charge, or you can download them in MP3 format. Also, you can use daily devotionals, you'll find Bible study guides, you can watch videos or comment on John's blog, or locate Grace to You television in your area, and express your financial support if you're able. All of that is available at our website, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John looks at how you can strengthen your church during times of trials and persecution. It's part of his current study, Faith Through the Fire. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-16 03:18:11 / 2023-09-16 03:27:40 / 9