Deliverance: From the Temporal World to the Eternal Kingdom B

One very good way to understand who is a true Christian is to understand this great truth of deliverance. If you understand deliverance, you will understand this issue.

You can know who a true Christian is because they've been delivered. How would your life change if you had a near-death experience? Would you see each new day as a gift? Would you worry less?

Would you spend more time with family and less time at work? Well, if you're a Christian, do you realize that until God saved you, you were not just near death, but you actually were dead. You were a spiritual corpse, and God made you alive, delivering you from the eternal consequences of your sin. So how should that deliverance affect the way you live your life both today and in the future? Consider that now on Grace To You as John MacArthur continues his study called Delivered By God. JOHN MCCARTHUR Evangelicalism is in a desperate situation and that desperation is made manifest by its inability to distinguish who is a true Christian. We have abandoned any clear understanding of what it means to really be saved, we in the sense of broad evangelicalism. This kind of evangelicalism pervades today and it's being systematically developed and spread. And people are reluctant to call it what it is because you're viewed as unloving. Now I have to ask the question, is the gospel that unclear?

Is it that fuzzy? Is it that hard to understand the gospel? Is the New Testament not clear on the subject? Does it not give us enough light to know who is a Christian and what it means to be in the body of Christ and what is necessary to go to heaven? I mean, doesn't the Bible say go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature?

Doesn't the Bible say that if anybody doesn't love the Lord Jesus Christ, he's cursed? Doesn't the Bible say that salvation is by faith and faith comes by hearing the Word of God and hearing the Word about Christ? And how are they going to hear without a preacher and how are they going to have a preacher unless somebody goes? Are we really supposed to call all the missionaries home? Are we really supposed to stop evangelizing because anybody anywhere who thinks good thoughts about God and tries to be a little different than his society is going to be in heaven?

They're cutting the heart out of the church here and out of our ministry. If the New Testament, on the other hand, does settle the issue, then we have no right to ignore the New Testament. We have no right to redefine it on our own terms in order to be popular, in order to be accepted. True and historic Christianity has never been confused about what it means to be a Christian, never. True and historic Christianity has always known that the New Testament is crystal clear on this issue. The New Testament tells us everything we need to know so as to be unmistakably certain as to what it is that a person must believe to be saved.

There is no lack of information in order to discern. There is no lack of information, truth, in order to distinguish between true and false, nominal and real Christians. And we have said that one very good way to understand who is a true Christian is to understand this great truth of deliverance. If you understand deliverance, you will understand this issue. You can know who a true Christian is because they've been delivered. They've been delivered.

And first of all, they've been delivered from error to what? To truth. Nobody is a Christian who doesn't believe the truth about Christ. Muslims don't believe the truth about Christ. Buddhists don't. Non-believers don't. Mormons don't.

Pagans and tribes don't. If they have a heart that seeks God, if the Spirit is prompting their heart, believe me, God will deliver that truth about Christ to them so they can believe. But apart from that, there's no salvation.

There isn't salvation in any other name, is there? Anybody who is a believer has come to know the truth, understand the truth, believe the truth, embrace the truth and love that truth and reject everything else as a means of salvation. One thing can be said about a Christian, he knows the truth, he knows the truth, he loves the truth, he worships the God of truth, exalts the Christ of truth, is indwelt by the Spirit of truth, and obeys the Word of truth. Truth is the heart and soul of the gospel that saves.

Transformation begins with a transformation out of darkness into light. Darkness is a metaphor in Colossians 1, 12 and 13 for error and light is the metaphor for truth. You can tell a true Christian. A true Christian knows the truth, understands the truth, loves the truth, lives for the truth. Nobody is saved who doesn't. That's the truth about who God is, the Trinity, holy, the eternal sovereign of the universe, who Christ is, God incarnate in human flesh, who lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, though He was innocent of any sin, rose the third day in a physical resurrection, having conquered death, ascended to heaven from where He sent the Holy Spirit, now interceding for us someday to return and establish His eternal glory and kingdom. And to believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone apart from any works.

It doesn't matter that you're trying to be a little better than the people around you. That's the truth. And apart from that truth, nobody is saved. And if somebody is a Christian, they know that truth, they understand that truth, they believe that truth, they embrace that truth. Secondly, Christians have not only been delivered from error to truth, but from sin to righteousness.

Remember in Romans 6, go back there for a moment, Romans 6, 17 and 18 is a very critical verse because it captures the essence of this deliverance doctrine. Romans 6, 17, middle of the verse, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered, is what the Greek says. You became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching, that body of doctrine, that body of truth to which you were delivered. That was your salvation. You went out of the darkness into the light, out of error into truth. You from the depth of your heart obeyed that doctrine, that body of teaching regarding Jesus Christ and the gospel.

You believed that. You were delivered into that. Now go back to the beginning of the verse. So, thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, drop down to verse 18, you have been freed from sin, become slaves of righteousness, the second thing from which you were delivered, not just from error to truth, but from sin to righteousness. There's another element of deliverance. The Christian has been delivered from the temporal world to the eternal kingdom. The Christian has been delivered from the temporal world to the eternal kingdom. Listen to Galatians 1, verse 3, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, I stole the name of our radio program from Paul, grace to you. Verse 4, who gave Himself for our sins, here it comes, that He might deliver us out of this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.

That's a great...that's a great doxology, isn't it? We have been delivered out of this present evil age into the eternal kingdom. By the way, this is what we call a Greek subjunctive which indicates purpose. The purpose for which Jesus died was to deliver us out of this present evil ion. That's what is inherent in His salvation. The very purpose of our salvation was to deliver us out of this present evil age.

The word age is ion. It doesn't refer to time, but it refers to a system, an era. And the present evil age started at the Fall and it will go on until Jesus comes back and establishes His kingdom of righteousness. In between the Fall and the establishment of the kingdom of Christ is this present evil age. It is characterized by lies. It is characterized by deception. It is characterized by Satan's agenda.

It is characterized by what is temporal, what is for time only, what is physical, what is passing, what ultimately will be destroyed. The Lord rescued us from that. Another way to say it is over in the sixth chapter of Galatians. Look at that, 6 verse 14. He's sort of talking here about how the Pharisees boasted in their works, were proud about their self-righteousness.

And Paul is not like the circumcised who boast about their fastidious attention to the Law. Verse 14 he says, May it never be that I should boast. I'm not going to boast about anything in me.

I don't have anything worthy in me. But if I do boast, I will boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And what did that cross accomplish? Through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. What does it mean to be crucified?

To be dead. It's just a dramatic way to express the thought of death. Paul says, Jesus Christ went to the cross and through His work on the cross, the world is dead to me and I am dead to the world.

What does it mean? It simply means that the world has no relation to the believer and the believer has no real relation to the world. And what we mean by world here is not food and sunshine and just the normal matters of life which God has given us, but he's talking here about ideas and ideologies and thought patterns and values and honors and achievements and accomplishments and all the stuff that everybody is in to, the pleasures, the treasures, the honors, the values, the ideas. If you go back to 2 Corinthians 10, 5, a very important passage, he talks about the ideologies, the logismos. Paul says, we are destroying ideologies and then he further describes them as every lofty thing lifted up or exalted against the knowledge of God, any anti-God idea, any anti-God idea. Look at Colossians 2, just a thought in verse 20, since you have died with Christ, would be a better way to translate it, since you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world. Stop right there. Hey, when you died with Christ, you died to the elementary...and I love that because what he's saying is anything the world comes up with compared to the truth of God is elementary.

It's baby talk. We are the truly profound people. We have transcendent truth.

The most literate PhDs, the most brilliant philosophers and thinkers of our time, elementary school compared to what we know. We know the origin of the universe. We know how it came into existence. We know who made it and why he made it. We know how it's all going to end. We know what true understanding is.

We died to that baby talk, that elementary stuff. One other passage, and I'll close, 1 John 2. This will be the last text we'll look at, 1 John 2, and it's brief.

Well, one more brief one added to that, but it will only take a comment or two. 1 John 2, verse 15. World is the word kosmos, it's the opposite of the word chaos. Chaos means disorder in Greek, as it does in English. Kosmos means order. That's why we call them cosmetics, they sort of take the chaos and put it into order.

I didn't invent the word, that's the word. But kosmos is the order. It's the present evil age system. It's a system, an exalted system of ideas and theories and viewpoints and values and honors and treasures and pleasures that have been designed by Satan and appeal to the sinful. In verse 15, he says, Do not love the world, this kosmos, this present evil I own, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is...what? If you love it, you're not a Christian. You can't love the world and love God. I enjoy God's creation.

I see it as His handiwork, don't you? I don't look at the mountains and say, Isn't evolution amazing? I don't look at a baby and say, Thank God for that amoeba one day in a pool of something or other that decided to split. Thank God for natural selection.

I heard a person say that, Thank God for natural selection. But when I see a person, I see a creation of God. I see a person made in the image of God. When I see a mountain, I see the handiwork of God. The heavens declare His glory, don't they?

Affirmament shows His handiwork. And I enjoy the world and I enjoy what He's made and I enjoy the wonderful, rich pleasures that He's placed in the world, but it's all Him to me. It's all Him. He's in every flower. He's in every hill. He's in every pleasure. He's in every everything.

His hand is there. I love Him and I love His world because, as the hymn writer said, this is my Father's world. But if you love the world, the love of the Father's not in you. If your love is this passing world, you're not a Christian. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world and the world is passing away and also it's lust, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.

You have two different people here. You have the people who love God and live forever and you have the people that love the world which is going to burn. We don't love the world.

We've been delivered from it. My life is not consumed with what happens in this world. Frankly, my life is consumed with what happens in the next world. In Colossians 3 I've set my affection on things where?

Above and not on things on the earth. Things on the earth are simply things which for this time and place give glory to God and I can enjoy them and thank Him for them, but they have no lasting value. They are temporal expressions of His common grace and His love. We don't love the world, first of all, because of what it is. It is the world. It is Satan's system.

We don't love it because of what it does. It incites to sin. Satan uses the world to pander to our flesh, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. It passes its material pleasures, its sexual pleasures, its educational achievements, its honors, its accolades, its power, its philosophies in front of us. It enamors us and it draws out our sensuality, our covetousness and our pride.

Those are ascending categories of temptation. Sensuality is the corruption of the lower being, abuse of the body. Covetousness is the corruption of the higher being, abuse of beauty that turns to covetousness.

Pride is the corruption of the highest being and that is self-exaltation where we become God. And the world panders to that. We don't love it because it is the world. We don't love it because of what it is, and we don't love it because of what it does. It just panders to our fallenness.

We don't love it also because of where it's going. Verse 17, it's passing away. It's in the process of paragetai, disintegration.

The system is in the process of dissolution. It will self-destruct. It is self-destructing.

And the death principle is already operative in it. It is smitten by the fatal disease of sin that is killing it. And people always say, it seems like things are getting worse and worse.

We got to reclaim America. Look, folks, things are getting worse and worse and they will continue to get worse and worse. That's the accumulative impact of sin. It is smitten by a fatal disease that is killing it. That's why 1 Corinthians 7, 31, Paul writes that the form of this world is passing away. But we are part of a kingdom, end of verse 17, that abides how long?

Forever. Our affections are set on things above. That's how you can tell a Christian. One last look at 1 John 5, 4. 1 John 5, 4, 4, whatever or whoever is born of God, I love this, overcomes what? The world.

The world no longer has that attraction. And what is the victory that has overcome the world? Our faith. You put your faith in Jesus Christ and He delivered you from this present evil age, this world, delivered you from this temporal world into the eternal kingdom.

You have overcome the world. And who is the one, verse 5, that overcomes the world? The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Look, folks, you can't overcome the world which is the mark of a Christian unless you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. You can't believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Unless somebody tells you about Jesus. Nobody is a Christian who doesn't know the truth because the only way that you can ever be delivered from this world into the eternal kingdom is to believe the truth about Jesus Christ. If you don't believe the truth about Jesus Christ, you can't be delivered.

And we're right back to where we started. That's why we have to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature because it is the only way of salvation. We are the overcomers. We are...the word is nikē from which the word Nike comes.

It's the Greek word for overcomer, victor, conqueror. And one of the things that our faith conquers is the system of evil dominated by lust and pride, sensuality, covetousness and egotism. We are not sensual in practice.

We are not covetous in practice. You know, greed is good in the world and sensuality is good in the world and egotism is really good. But to us those are sins, aren't they?

This society running in a mad dash for every sexual fulfillment with materialistic passion, coveting and clinging to everything they can see, turning beauty into self-indulgence and in the midst of it all doing everything they can to elevate their self-esteem, that's the world and that's sin. But we have overcome the world so that we see that for what it is. And our passion is that which honors God and our self-assessment is that of humility.

And when we see something beautiful, we give Him praise for it. We are the overcomers. In fact, in Revelation 2 and 3, the letters to the churches, seven times believers are referred to as overcomers. Well, how can there be so much confusion about who's a Christian? Christians have been delivered from error to truth. They've come to the full understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. From sin to righteousness, they live in obedience to the Word of God as a practice. And they've been delivered from this present evil age, this system of Satan, into the eternal kingdom.

Their affections are heavenly. Their desire is for that which is eternal and not for the passing things of this world. This is God's truth and this must be proclaimed that He may be glorified and people may come to true salvation and to the praise of God for that gift. Let's pray. We close these thoughts with a plea, Father. First, that You would extend the truth and that it would conquer the lies, that You would extend the truth and it would conquer the error, that it would unmask the deception that is leaving so many souls confused and hindering the true work of evangelism. And, Father, that You would raise up many faithful proclaimers of the truth and that You would call away from error all those who've fallen victim to it. May people have the truth and may they have the courage to speak the truth because it honors You, the God of truth and our Savior, the Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life and the blessed Spirit of truth who inspired for us the Word of truth. May Your truth be exalted, Your Word may it be exalted even to Your own name, and may deception be exposed, that people might indeed be delivered from error, from sin, and from this passing word. And we will thank You and praise You for Your glory in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's been our featured speaker for over 54 years now. He's also Chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary, and our current series that examines the blessings of salvation is titled Delivered by God. John, you talked today about the world system and how it's designed by Satan, so a question along that line. In areas where we might see satanic influence, maybe government, academia, or the entertainment industry, does Satan exercise direct control? Does he call the shots in all the evil that's in the world today?

Well, the answer to that question is both yes and no. If Satan wasn't here, the world would still be full of evil. In fact, in the future, Millennial Kingdom, Satan will be bound for a thousand years, four thousand years, and there will develop in the world an entire worldwide population of people.

Now remember, Satan and his demons aren't there, but there will develop a worldwide population of people who will attempt at the end of the Kingdom of Christ to overthrow him and fight him, and they will be destroyed. So that's because human nature is fallen. Human nature is corrupt. The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and man's nature is marked by lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life, and you don't need the devil for that. So in one sense, if the devil isn't around, the world is still going to be corrupt.

There's going to be evil everywhere. What Satan brings to the picture is he structures that evil. He formulates that evil. He motivates that evil. He escalates that evil. He develops that evil into religious systems that are false and damning.

He develops it into philosophies, views of the world, psychologies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, evolution, a godless view of the way things are. So Satan is a wily, wise, crafty angel of light, at least he wants you to think that he is, designing the systems of the world. He oversees the systems in which the fallen creatures play out their sin. So in the sense that we describe it that way, not every act of evil in the world is directly influenced by Satan.

They are acts of the flesh. But the overarching system, yes, governments, yes, institutions, academia, entertainment, whatever, they are directly under his influence as he orchestrates his own ends with his demon assistance. The whole world, wrote John, lies in the lap of the evil one in that sense. And another way to look at it is Jesus said to the Jewish leaders, you're of your father, the devil. You either belong to the kingdom of Satan or the kingdom of God. You're either under the rule of God or the rule of Satan.

Thank you, John. And friend, to help you understand what Satan and his demons can and cannot do, let me recommend John's book, Standing Strong. It will show you how to resist the enemy of your soul effectively and biblically. Order a copy of Standing Strong when you contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org to order. Again, the title to ask for, Standing Strong.

Take a look at the origins of spiritual warfare and how it's being waged today and what role you play in the battle. Our order number, again, 800-55-GRACE and our web address, GTY.org. And friend, if John's verse-by-verse teaching, like today's lesson from Delivered by God, has helped you and your family better understand what the Lord Jesus Christ has saved you from, if you've seen your family spiritually strengthened, or if God has used this ministry to draw someone you know to faith in Christ, we would love to hear from you. You can reach us by mail, Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Or even quicker, email us at letters at GTY.org. And thanks for contacting this radio station. When you're able, let the team here at this station know that you appreciate hearing Bible teaching programs like Grace to You. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here at the same time tomorrow when John looks at how to effectively communicate the truth about Christ to an unbelieving world. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.