Deliverance: The Neglected Doctrine

The word deliverance is not a part of Christian vocabulary but really should be. The fact that it isn't is a serious failure on our part because the word opens to us a category of truth that pointedly clarifies God's redemptive purpose.

The right answer isn't talked about much, even in Bible-believing churches. I'm talking about the idea that salvation is a rescue operation. The question is, what are we delivered from when we're saved, and how good a job are churches doing at communicating that truth? Well, that's what John MacArthur is going to talk about here on Grace to You as he begins a study titled Delivered by God. John, as you get started, I'll leave things wide open and simply ask, what made you decide to focus on this concept of deliverance? Well, as I was thinking about the concept of salvation, when you look at the Greek word soter, saved, it is a word that essentially means delivered, rescued.

And I think sometimes words can kind of become so familiar that we don't ask the definition and therefore we really never know the definition. Salvation is a word that Christians throw around all the time. They talk about being saved.

Well, what do you really mean by that? Well, what the word is talking about, the actual biblical word, is rescued or delivered out of danger. And I thought to myself, you know, I think if I did a series on delivered by God, it might take on fresh new meaning for people who are familiar with the word saved but unfamiliar with what it really means.

So that's why I decided to do that. I remember when I launched it at the church, it had an overwhelming response. People still tell me to this day that in some cases it's the favorite series that I've ever done in all the years of ministry at Grace Church. That's the very series we're going to begin today, Delivered by God. You're going to find yourself looking at salvation in a brand new and fresh light. That's right, friend.

This study is going to answer two of the most important questions you could ever consider. What does it mean to be a Christian and how does life change when you become one? So stay here now as John shows you what it means to be delivered by God. One of the great words in the Bible is the word deliverance. It is, however, not commonly used in the Christian vocabulary. I don't recall in my life ever having heard a sermon on deliverance. I don't recollect in any part of the world where I have talked with Christians who speak my language that they have used the word deliverance unless it has been used in some context related to demons or exorcism. The word deliverance is not a part of Christian vocabulary but really should be. The fact that it isn't is a serious failure on our part because the word opens to us a category of truth that pointedly clarifies God's redemptive purpose. In fact, deliverance may be the best.

It may be the most comprehensive and it may be the most clarifying word to explain God's gracious powerful work in our lives in spite of its infrequent use. I have searched some theology books, looking even in the subject index at the back of the book to find any discussion of deliverance and have found it very rare. It's a great word biblically and it's a great word in the English language. We all understand the English word deliverance.

In fact, that word has in it a certain tone of adventure, doesn't it? There's a certain drama in the word deliverance. Even in English we think of deliverance and if you are asked to give a synonym, the immediate word that probably would come to your mind would be rescue. When we think of deliverance, we think of somebody being rescued out of a situation of grave danger and that is what the word does, in fact, mean. It connotes somebody in an impossible dilemma from which they don't have personally the power to extract themselves, somehow being rescued by some greater power. The word deliver is a much more common term in the concept of deliverance, much more readily understood in English than is the term salvation.

In fact, we rarely use the word saved, it seems, unless we're talking about something that's put away for safekeeping, something like an account somewhere or something you're holding back for future usage. We don't use the word saved for the most part to speak of being rescued from danger. For that we tend to use the word rescue or deliverance. So we're talking then about God as a rescuer, God as a deliverer, God bringing a plan of deliverance. And that's why Psalm 68 verse 20 says, God is to us a God of deliverances, plural. There are many facets to God as our deliverer. Psalm 40 and verse 17, Thou art my help and my deliverer, O my God. The same is quoted in Psalm 70 verse 5.

In the familiar words of Psalm 144 verses 1 and 2, Blessed be the Lord my rock, my lovingkindness, my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer. Now whenever in the Bible you're reading in your own Bible, you come across the word saved, save, salvation, or Savior, you can substitute some form of the word deliver because that's exactly what is meant. Now this will help us emphasize what salvation really is.

It is deliverance. When someone becomes a Christian, they are delivered from certain very dangerous and deadly matters, things that pose a fatal danger to the eternal soul. True salvation then, the work of God, is deliverance. It is the dramatic rescue of the sinner from the elements of life that threaten to destroy and damn him. Ours then in the work of evangelism is a work of rescue. We on behalf of God have been sent out to tell sinners God has a rescue plan. God who is by nature a deliverer, the only deliverer, has a deliverance plan by which he will deliver the sinner from all those things that damn him. In fact, there may be no better way to understand the power of God's Spirit in the believing sinner's life than to understand that the Spirit is working a work of deliverance.

When we talk about conversion, when we talk about regeneration, when we talk about new birth, being born again, new life, transformation, when we talk about these matters of grace, we are really talking about being delivered from certain things. In fact, deliverance, as we will see in the series, defines what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is a person who has been...listen...permanently delivered from certain deadly, damning realities. This is what defines a Christian. A Christian is not someone who says they believe in Jesus. A Christian is not someone who prays a certain formula prayer. A Christian is not a person who goes to church or belongs to some quote-unquote Christian institution. A Christian is not someone who feels good about God or good about Jesus. A Christian is a person who has been...what?...delivered. This is absolutely critical to understand because there's so much confusion about who is a Christian. The answer is, Christians are the people who have been delivered. Now we're not talking here about justification which is a forensic thing, which is a declaration on God's part, which is obviously an essential. It is an accounting of God by which He credits righteousness to our account and puts our sin to the account of Christ who pays the penalty for it. That is forensic, that is a judicial act of God.

We're not talking about that because that's not manifest, that's not visible. We can't know a Christian by a forensic declaration of God. The only way we can know a Christian is by a transformed life. And so for us to assess who is a believer, we have to look and see if that person has been delivered.

Now let me put this in a current context. I think you know me well enough to know that my passion is to teach the Bible, but at the same time I have a passion to teach the Bible, I have a passion for the church. And the big picture of the church is the church is in serious trouble. I'm not talking about our local church, I'm talking about quote-unquote the evangelical church. It is a grave, grave blight that strikes the church in our day and it is a tremendous grief to me.

I'm certain that I'm grieved in my own heart because I understand enough about the Bible to know what the Lord wants the church to be and it's not that. Always I'm asked, and let me see if I can work my way into this context, always I'm asked questions when I travel around. You people ask me a lot of questions and when I go other places, people ask me questions all the time, questions about the Bible and about issues in regard to Scripture. And I am always asked this question, what do you think is the main problem facing the church?

I'm always asked that question and I always answer basically the same way. The main issue facing the church is the lack of discernment. That is the main issue facing the church. The church doesn't distinguish between truth and falsehood. It has a defective immune system.

It has a case of spiritual aids. It does not have the ability to fight error because it doesn't know the truth. It doesn't have enough truth antibodies to fight off error. The church is ignorant. It is blissfully ignorant and consequently it is victimized easily by error.

This is a serious, serious problem. Weak theology, shallow superficial knowledge of Scripture, all kinds of uncalled, unqualified people standing in pulpits who were not sent by God like the false prophets Jeremiah talks about, and don't have the Word of God and don't understand it are inventing all kinds of things that the church is buying into. The superficial knowledge of Scripture, weak theology, all kinds of error flooding into the church, cripples discernment. And what makes it worse is that there is a movement to say that the tolerance of all of this is the purest expression of Christian love, right? And if you call these people into question and you call what they're saying into question and say, it's not true, it's error, you are unloving, you are divisive and you are striking a blow against the unity of the church. And so you have error flooding the church, the church is by its theological and biblical ignorance, unable to fight against that error and tolerance is being elevated as a supreme virtue which aids and abets the problem. And this is in contradiction to the command of 1 Thessalonians 5, 21, examine everything carefully and hold on to what is good and put away what is evil. The church has gotten itself into a position where it cannot distinguish between God's Word and Satan's lies.

That's sad...that's sad. Now let me go a little deeper into this issue. Of all the issues of discernment, and there are many, there's a lot of confusion in the church, there's a lot of error in the church about a lot of things.

There are all kinds of views of the work of the Holy Spirit, the person of the Holy Spirit, all kinds of views about various passages in the Scripture, paradigms for sanctification, forms of baptism, spiritual gifts, views about salvation, about the purposes and work of God, about the sovereignty of God, about the human volition, all kinds of views about all kinds of things. And the church not only lacks discernment but lacks the will to be discerning. But of all of the issues that are important, there is one that is at the top of the list. If we're going to be discerning about anything, there is one thing we have to be discerning about and it's this.

Who is a Christian? That's the most critical one of all. That is the most critical issue of all. At the top of my list in this matter of being discerning is we need to know who the true Christians are because if we don't, then we've invited the enemy into the camp. Now I've been all over the world, as you know, and I've had lots of discussions with lots of Christian leaders and I've read lots of things about the church and the history of the church and the theology of the church.

I've been all over everywhere and I can just tell you this. Right now in this day, and it's been this way for a long time through this 20th century, the biggest problem in the church is its inability and unwillingness to distinguish true Christians from false. It's literally killing the church. And I guess it's time to just stand up and say that there has to be a line drawn. The issue of who is truly a Christian is at the very center of the church's life and ministry.

This has to be protected. There isn't any fellowship between light and darkness, is there? Second Corinthians 6. There isn't any concord between Christ and Satan.

Two can't walk together unless they be...what?...agreed. You have to come out from among them and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. And here is the church absorbing all of this.

And now it's so confusing that the church itself doesn't even know who's a Christian and frankly, I don't think they particularly care as long as you say you believe in Jesus. A friend, Ian Murray, who was a gifted theologian and a great biographer wrote the massive two-volume biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, has also written on Jonathan Edwards and many others. He is a very esteemed Englishman and has been here many times.

We've spent many hours together. He's written a book called Evangelicalism Divided in which Murray is tracking the 20th century decline of evangelicalism and it's a book of history that is very, very revealing. And Murray says, and I think he's absolutely right, he says the inability of the evangelical church to distinguish between a Christian and a non-Christian is, quote, the greatest failure of professing Christianity in the English-speaking world in the 20th century, end quote. He understands the implications if you redefine non-Christians as Christians, you obliterate the distinctiveness of the church and you therefore create an environment in which you have to tolerate error because these people represent error. He further writes, this is very important and insightful, the health of the church, and he's speaking as a historian here, having tracked it very carefully, the health of the church has always been in proportion to the extent to which the difference between Christian and non-Christian has been kept sharp and clear. Absolutely right. The starting point for the church is to be absolutely clear about who is saved and who is not.

If we're not clear about that, then we don't know who's on our side and we don't know who we really need to reach. From the time that God began to form a people for Himself, Satan endeavored to intrude. From the time that the demons cohabitated with the daughters of men in Genesis 6, Satan has been trying to pollute and mix all the way down to sowing tares among the wheat.

It's really true. Murray says, the most insidious opposition to the gospel has come from within worldly churches. For most of the last part of the twentieth century, the last fifty years, there has been a sustained effort to invent and promote a popular definition of Christianity, which is neither biblical nor legitimate, and to fill the church with non-Christians. Now we have to recover the identification of a true Christian, and that means we have to get back to the doctrine of deliverance.

That's the connection. Because if you understand the doctrine of deliverance, then you have a criteria by which to understand who's a Christian. Now we can't obviously know the heart. We can't be sure about everyone.

That's not within our capability. We can't always distinguish between the wheat and the tares, but it is true that even Jesus said by their fruit, you can...what?...you can know them. So there is...there is marked demonstration in the life of a person as to whether or not they have, in fact, been delivered.

And such deliverance, listen, is the common experience for all believers in Christ. There is a dramatic change in their personal life. We're not talking about, again, forensic things, we're talking about actual transformation. There is a dramatic change in their personal life, their personal nature, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit.

They are new creations and they have been delivered from some very specific dangers into some very specific new patterns of behavior. Ian Murray again writes, When churches have recovered from apostasy, historically, such as at the time of the Reformation and the eighteenth century evangelical revival, that's from Wesley through to Jonathan Edwards, when churches have recovered, it has always been...I love this...by a return to such discriminating preaching and practice. What he means is, when there's ever a recovery from a time of apostasy, it has come when preaching has become discriminating. And what does it mean to discriminate? If you say you discriminate, what does it mean? If you say...you hear people say, be a discriminating buyer, what does that mean? That means that you can choose the best out of the lot, right? You know how to discriminate. It means to discern. The only hope for the church is discriminating, discerning preaching.

I don't think there's any organizational answer. I don't think we need more meetings, more seminars. We need preachers who will stand up and preach discriminating messages. And Murray says, given the great decline in the English-speaking churches of the twentieth century, the chief need again was the reassertion of the meaning of being a Christian.

Wow! The chief hope for the church is discriminating preaching, primarily directed at the issue of who is a Christian. And sometimes I wonder if those who can't discern the true church can't discern it because they're not a part of it. I know people who aren't a part of it can't discern it because the natural man understands not the things of God. I don't expect non-Christians to be discerning about the church, but I do expect Christians to be discerning about the church. And yet you have people who have risen to prominence in evangelicalism, who have defined evangelicalism on a large scale, who lack that discernment.

And what we need is exactly what Murray says. We have to have some discriminating preaching. It's time to draw the line again. And that means to be unpopular, I hate to say. In fact, if you try to be the discriminating preacher, if you try to bring the truth into the situation, you're a problem.

But this is not new either. John Wesley in Volume 8 of Wesley's works said this, In our days to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal. There was Wesley in the midst of apostate church in England in the eighteenth century, a true Christian preaching a true gospel and being so scandalized that it ultimately led to persecution of the true Christians.

It may have to be that way. But isn't it interesting that it's the church that persecuted the true believers? You know, when the people came and founded America, they were coming here for religious freedom, did you know that?

Because they were being persecuted not by the secular world, they were being persecuted by whom? The church, the apostate church. So how are we going to draw this line about who's a true Christian? Well the simplest way that I know to do it and the biblical way to do it is to realize that the true church is the living society of the delivered. I don't think that's necessarily a great name for a church, the first church of the delivered, but that's the idea. The true church is the living society of the delivered.

Now how do you know if somebody's delivered? Well, first of all, I'll start with categories of deliverance. True Christians have been delivered from lies to the truth, from error to the truth.

I think that's pretty obvious. Secondly, they have been delivered from sin to virtue, or from ungodliness to godliness. Thirdly, they have been delivered from fear to joy. They have been delivered from the love of the world to the love of the church. All of these things are manifestly noticeable in the life of a true Christian.

You see, it's not the issue of when and where you made some decision. It's not that you belong or that you believe in Jesus somehow. The church is the living society of the delivered. You know, this gets us back to the gospel, and this is really a battleground. You know, it's been...many years ago I wrote the gospel according to Jesus. And I wrote what I thought would be just a nice book to state that Jesus is Lord. If you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you're saved, Romans 10, right?

That's safe enough. Confess Jesus as Lord. I wrote that book and it started a firestorm and hasn't stopped because there are so many people in the church who think you can be saved without confessing Jesus as Lord.

And that's rising again. When you try to be discriminating or discerning or biblical or clear, theologically precise, you really do expose the vulnerability of those in error. But you must do it for the sake of the truth and the sake of the souls of men and the sake of the purity of the church. It's been a long siege, you know, for the truth, but we continue to proclaim it and shall continue by talking about what the delivered people are like so that you can be able to tell who's a true Christian. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is a pastor, an author and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His lesson today was the first installment of his study titled Delivered by God.

Now, even though we're devoting three weeks to this theme of deliverance, there's plenty of material we won't have time to air. And you're going to want to hear all that John has said on the subject, especially on a significant trend in the church teaching that says, in effect, you don't have to be delivered to be saved. Download this series for free or order the CDs when you contact us today. Our web address, gty.org, or if you would like this study on CD, you can call our toll-free number. It's 800-55-GRACE and order it. As John mentioned, Delivered by God is one of the most impactful series he ever preached at Grace Church. It opened his congregation's eyes to the many glorious blessings of salvation. Delivered by God and all of John's other sermons are free to download at gty.org. And of course, to dig deep into the truths of salvation and really any biblical topic, I would encourage you to get a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. It gives you the full text of Scripture in the New American Standard, English Standard or New King James versions. And it features 25,000 footnotes written by John that explain virtually every passage of the Bible. The MacArthur Study Bible is reasonably priced in a variety of bindings.

Get yours when you call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and join us tomorrow when John looks at Christ's power to deliver you, me and every believer from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.