Making the Hard Decisions Easy

If I choose to do something, it must fit within what I believe is the will of Christ, my Lord, right? I don't want to violate that.

To violate that, in my mind, would be to take the control of my life, wouldn't it? To usurp the Lordship of Christ. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You probably know the Bible commands you to work, to be part of a church, to stay faithful to your spouse. But does the Bible give you any specifics, like which career you should pursue, or what church you should join, or what person you should marry?

Bottom line, how can you know you're doing God's will when faced with a decision that isn't specifically addressed in Scripture? To help with that, John MacArthur is going to look at ten biblical principles for decision-making, continuing his study titled, Foundations Volume Two. But before the lesson, John, it's been a busy few weeks for our staff since getting back from the Christmas break. Take a moment to tell our listeners what was waiting for us when we returned to the office here.

Well, the wonderful reality of the gift that we all receive when we come back from Christmas break is mail. Stacks and stacks of mail have accumulated over the last few weeks of the year, and we get to dive in and read every single letter and touch base with what's on the heart of our listeners, as well as receive their generous gifts to our ministry. And I can tell you now already, as we're still in the process of going through all the mail, the Lord has provided, again, in remarkable ways, an overflow of email, thank-you notes, financial gifts to get us into the new year. Your outpouring was, again, humbling to us, and your giving sacrificial. And I can't express thank you strong enough, and I have to trust the Lord to reward you for your faithfulness.

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So thank you and thank you again. Now, I encourage you to follow along with John as he shows you how to make the hard decisions easy. These are the things that I ask myself periodically whenever I'm faced with making a decision that isn't black or white in Scripture. Number one, I ask this question, will it be spiritually profitable? Principle number two, and it's a very close parallel, will it build me up? And let's ask a third question. You ready for this?

Will it, and this is the negative side of the two we just mentioned, will it slow me down in the race? Number four, number four, will it bring me into bondage? Number five, this is a very practical one, will it, number five, will it hypocritically cover my sin? Will it hypocritically cover my sin? You say, what do you mean by that, John?

Well, I mean this. Am I doing it in the name of freedom when the truth of the matter is I'm really pandering my own evil? Look at 1 Peter 2, 16. You know that we want to say, boy, I'm free in Christ, I'm free to enjoy this and I'm free to enjoy that and I can do this and I can do that. The truth of the matter is you are free, but you are simply covering over your lust or your evil desire. The man who says, oh, I'm free to do that, I'm free to go here and see that movie, why, I'm certainly free to do that. I have that liberty, I'm very selective, but when he goes there, he goes with the purpose in his heart of having his own evil desire pandered to by what he sees. He merely speaks of freedom as a cloak over his evil. Look at verse 16 of 1 Peter 2, don't use your freedom for a cloak to cover your evil. Avail over your evil intent.

Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself, is this really something that benefits me spiritually as for my spiritual profit? Is this something that builds me up?

Is this something that is not unnecessary bulk but something helpful? Is this something that will not lead me into bondage or am I really cloaking over my evil desire? Look at your motive.

Look at your motive. People say, young people say, well, the Bible doesn't say you shouldn't dance. David danced before the Lord. Well, I can tell you one thing, he didn't dance the kind of dance people do today. But people say, what's wrong with dancing? Ask yourself the question, am I advocating dancing because I know it'll build me up spiritually, because I know it's not unnecessary bulk, it's very important to my spiritual progress and there's no way it can enslave me, or am I desiring to do that in the name of liberty, in the name of freedom, but the real motive is because of my own lustful desire.

You see, I've got to get down to the motive and ask myself the real question. You see, Galatians 5 13 says that it's a very common thing to turn liberty into what? License. And you have to guard that.

You have to guard that. Let's call this the principle of, so we can stick with our E here, equivocation. E-Q-U-I-V-O-C-A-T-I-O-N. That means to lie or falsify. And there are people who literally falsify their motives. Well, I'm free to do that.

I certainly am. And they're equivocating, they're lying, they want to cover their evil intent. The guy who says, hey, God made horses, I'm free to go to Santa Anita. Boy, I go out there and enjoy God's creation.

Those horses just run and I say, praise you, Lord, look what you've made while I'm dropping money all day long. And what you have there is a cloak of liberty put over the top of an evil intent, which is to gamble, which of course is to take the stewardship that God has given and throw it into the air at the discretion of chance. So we ask ourselves, will it hypocritically cover my sin? That's the principle of equivocation. Am I falsifying a true motive?

Number six. Now this is very important. Will it violate the lordship of Christ in my life? Will it violate the lordship of Christ in my life? And for this one, I need you to turn to Romans chapter 14. Will it violate the lordship of Christ in my life? Now listen to this basic thought, all right?

Grab this one. Every Christian should live in submission to the lordship of Christ. Everybody agree on that? All of us are to live in submission to the lordship of Christ.

True? Do you understand that? Then do you understand the second point, that not all of us agree 100% on what the Lord would have us to do?

Is that right? Some people think the Lord says no to this and other people think the Lord says that's okay. Some people think the Lord says it's a sin to do this.

Some people think it's okay. Now listen, not all of us, we would know the explicit things in Scripture, sure, but not all of us agree the same about what the Lord would have us do. Some people think the Lord wants you to read your Bible every morning of your life and if you don't, you've sinned against God.

Some people really believe that. Some people believe if you don't go to Sunday morning, Sunday night church and Wednesday night prayer meeting, you've slipped spiritually. Other people are not bound in their conscience to do that. They can go Sunday morning, they can go Sunday night.

Whether they go Wednesday night may be a matter of convenience. There are some people who want to read the Word as often as they can, but they're not bound in their conscience to read it every morning of their entire life. There are people, you see, who sense the lordship of Christ in different ways. Now please notice in Romans 14, verse 2, one believes he may eat all things, another who is weak eats only vegetables. You've got people that are vegetarian.

They think the Lord wants them to eat only herbs and somebody else says, hey, you can eat anything you want. The one who eats, don't let him despise the one who doesn't eat. The one who doesn't eat, don't let him judge the one that eats. For God has received both implied. Who are you to judge another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls and he'll be held up.

God's able to make him stand. One man esteems one day above another, that is, he wants to keep the Sabbath, make something special out of Sunday. He's what we call a Sabbatarian or one who sets the Sunday or the Sabbath aside. Another esteems every day the same.

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regards the day wants to keep that day sacred. He does it unto the Lord. He that doesn't regard it, he does it unto the Lord too because he thinks the Lord is the Lord of every day. He that eats, eats to the Lord. He gives God thanks.

He that doesn't eat to the Lord, he doesn't eat and he gives God thanks and he doesn't eat. Nobody lives to himself and nobody dies to himself. We live, we live to the Lord. We die, we die to the Lord. Whether we live, therefore die, we are the Lord's. In other words, whatever may be the restrictions in a Christian's life, he does them because he believes that's what the Lord wants.

You got that? He believes that's what the Lord wants. Now listen to me. As long as you believe that, then do it or don't do it. And ask yourself the question, is this something I believe the Lord would want?

Is this something I believe the Lord would not want? And that's a matter of what? Conscience. You say, well, what if your conscience is wrong? Don't violate your conscience. You'll never know if your conscience is wrong because if your conscience tells you that, it's because you think it's right. You've got conscience only reacts to the mind.

And in your mind, if you believe a thing is right, your conscience will stop you or your conscience will impel you. The conscience is only a flywheel. The mind is the engine.

The engine produces the action. The flywheel only engages behavior. And the conscience only takes what's in the mind, engages the flywheel as it were and generates behavior. If you violate your conscience, you're going to train yourself to do a very bad thing because as your mind grows to understand better what is right, when your conscience then tells you if you've trained yourself to violate your conscience, your conscience isn't going to do you any good. So don't train yourself to violate your conscience.

And that's exactly what he's saying. You ask yourself the question, will this violate my understanding of the lordship of Christ? Some brother might come to you, and this happens all the time, and say, you can do that. Go ahead, you can do that.

You're free, you're free, you're free. Well, you can do that. That's not wrong.

It's perfectly all right. If it violates your conscience, what? Don't do it. Don't train yourself to ignore conscience. Paul says, I never do anything against my conscience.

I don't want to sear my conscience with scar tissue so it's insensitive. The person who keeps the Sabbath, if a person wants to sit on a couch and that's his way to keep the Sabbath, don't bug him about that. Don't reprimand him about that. Don't push him.

I'll never forget the most classic illustration of that. My father told me. He was in Michigan on a revival, and on a Sunday night he said to the pastor after the meeting, they started off for a week of revival meeting. The pastor said to him, what are you going to do tomorrow? And he said, well, I thought we'd get up in the morning and play golf.

And then in the afternoon, we'll do some visitation. The pastor said, golf? During a revival? Aren't you committed to the work of God? Did you come here to play or to minister? He got very eloquent.

My dad said a little of both. He said, in fact, I'd like you to come and we could have some fellowship in the morning, get acquainted. He said, never. I commit myself all week long to prayer, all week long to the revival. And my dad said to him, no, I think it would be great if you'd come.

And the song leader's going to go and it would be nice if you came along. No, I would never do that. I would never do that.

Well, Monday morning they were at the golf course and guess who showed up? The reluctant pastor. And he said, as the story was relayed to me, I'm going to do this, but I know I shouldn't do it.

I'm doing it out of hospitality. I know it isn't right. Now, mark this. First hole, they teed off. Halfway down the fairway, somebody yells, four!

The pastor looks up and loses two teeth. My dad said he fell down beside a tree saying, I knew it. I knew it.

And you want to know something? If he believed golf on Monday morning during a revival was wrong before that, you can be sure he believed it was wrong after that. So all you did for that man was push him deeper into his lack of freedom, his bondage. Don't do that. Don't do that. He read that as the judgment of God. And you want to know something?

Well, it may have been. God doesn't want any man to violate His conscience. So we don't want to do things that are going to lead people to ignore the lordship of Christ, which they perceive coming through their conscience.

Let's call that the principle of encroachment. That means you're encroaching on the sovereignty of Christ in the life. If I choose to do something, let me sum that one up.

If I choose to do something, it must fit within what I believe is the will of Christ my Lord, right? I don't want to violate that. I don't want to violate that. To violate that, in my mind, would be to take the control of my life, wouldn't it? To usurp the lordship of Christ. I don't want to do that. That's encroaching.

Number seven, this is basic. Will it help other Christians by its example? Will it help other Christians by its example?

Boy, that's so important. We really do have to govern our lives by how other Christians will feel. 1 Corinthians 8, 9, you remember this one? Make heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours become a what?

Stumbling block to them that are weak. Somebody sees you sitting in an idol temple, shall not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat the things which are offered to idols and so forth and so on, and then he's going to be destroyed because he followed your example. He's going to violate his conscience, wound his weak conscience, and you've sinned against him and sinned against Christ?

Don't do that. Paul says in chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians, I have a right to be paid for my ministry. I choose not to be paid. I don't want anybody offended, right? So I set that aside. In Romans chapter 14, where we have been, from verse 13 on, that's the whole thing. Don't put a stumbling block or occasion to fall in your brother's way. If your brothers grieve with your food, change your food.

That's what it says. Follow after the things, verse 19, that make for peace and build each other up and don't destroy the work of God in his life because of your food. Don't eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble, be offended or made weak. It's so important. We have to ask ourselves the question, will it help other Christians by its example? Am I doing something that sets an example for them? You know, even just little things in life, the discipline of your life, the fact that you watch your diet or your weight or you have a certain discipline, time of study, says volumes to people who are checking in for patterns to follow.

Those little things in life can be so important. So, do I want weaker Christians to follow my pattern? Let's call this the principle of example, of example. The principle of example. So, what have we got? The principle of expedience, edification. What's the next one? Excess, enslavement, equivocation, encroachment, example. Let's go to number eight.

I love this one. Will it lead others to Christ? Will it lead others to Christ? Let not your good be evil spoken of, the Bible warns. Will what I do lead others to Christ? Boy, that's so important. Will they see a difference in my life?

Will there be something unique about my life? Let me give you a classic illustration. Turn to 1 Corinthians 10.

This is so practical. 1 Corinthians 10. Now, it's a little bit obscure in the text, the English text, but the background is so great. Here's the picture. Now, just listen for a minute.

Here's the picture, right? Two Christians. Two Christians. One is a very strong, mature Christian. We're going to look at verse 27, 28, 29, right in there. 1 Corinthians 10. The first Christian is a very mature, very strong, very liberated Christian. He can eat meat offered to idols. He knows what 1 Corinthians 8 said is true. An idol is nothing. That's the difference.

Well, you know what the process was, right? You go to worship some idol, right? Let's say you go to some great temple and you bring your offering, which is food, and you put your offering on the altar. Well, you know as well as I do that the God is a dead God. He's a dead idol and He doesn't eat it.

It just sits there. So after it sits there for a while and hundreds and hundreds of people keep bringing the food in, the priests take it away and they keep what they want to eat. Now, they can't eat it all because there's less of them than there are people making offerings, so they run the temple butcher shop out the back door. What they don't want, they take out, sell on the street at the best price because there's no markup for them.

They got it for nothing. So you want to buy cheap meat, you buy it from the temple butcher shop. That makes sense.

Your wife would shop there, so would mine. So the two of them, the strong and the weak, they have a friend in common who's an unbeliever. They want to win them to the Lord. So the friend that's unbelieving invites the two of them to dinner, and they go to dinner.

That's the idea of verse 27. If any of them that believe not bid you to a meal and you be disposed to go, whatever is set before you, what? Don't say, sir, sir, sir, where did you buy this? Just eat it.

Don't ask questions for your conscience sake. But if the man voluntarily says, hey, this is bargain meat offered in sacrifice to idols. Oh, brother. The guy comes out and says, how do you like this beautiful roast? Boy, is that good. Yeah, I got it down at the temple butcher shop.

What a bargain. And the weak Christian goes, huh. The guy goes back out to get the rest of the meal.

What's going to happen in the conversation? The strong Christian is in a dilemma. The weak brother says to him, I can't eat that.

I can't eat that. The strong brother says, but if you don't eat that, we'll offend the guy we're trying to evangelize. But if they go ahead and eat it and don't offend the guy they're trying to evangelize, then he will have offended his brother, caused him to stumble. So the dilemma is this. Do you offend another brother or do you offend an unbeliever?

That's the question. Do I offend a weaker Christian or do I offend a non-believer? What does it say? If any man say to you this is offered in sacrifice to idols, what?

Don't eat it. For his sake that showed it and for what? The conscience of that weaker brother.

Wait a minute. You mean when you're trying to evangelize an unbeliever, you're better off to offend the unbeliever than you are your Christian brother? Yes. Isn't it obvious? If you offended your Christian brother, the unbeliever would say, it's better to be an unbeliever than to be a brother. They offend each other. They don't offend me.

I'll stay where I am. See the point? Well, when you offend that unbeliever and say, you know, this meat offered to idols would so offend my brother that I just can't eat for his sake, that unbeliever is going to say, now there is a brotherly love that I would like to experience. And the attraction of your love may be the greatest testimony that you have in evangelism. So I'm asking myself, and there's one illustration, the question, will it lead someone else to Christ? As I restrict my freedom, am I doing it with a view to winning someone to Christ?

Showing him a different life, showing him something that he doesn't see in his world, a purity and an honesty and a love and an integrity. In Romans 14, it tells us that we are to be approved. We are to live lives, at the end of verse 18, that are approved by men.

They say, boy, that's a different life. That's the principle of, here's another one, evangelism, the principle of evangelism. In doing this, is this enhancing my opportunity for evangelism? Number nine, number nine, here's another question you ask, will it be consistent with Christ-likeness? Put it another way, would Jesus do it?

Well, that's a heavy-duty one, isn't it? I've used that since I was a kid. Would Jesus do this? Would Jesus say that? Most of the time in our lives, we're saying, I know Jesus wouldn't have said what I just said, or Jesus wouldn't have done what I just did. I ask myself that before, not after, and prevent things that otherwise might not be prevented. Simple. Would Jesus do it?

Well, that'll really help you with a lot of decisions. Would Jesus do this? Would Jesus say that?

Let's call that the principle of emulation. We want to emulate Christ. We want to emulate Him. First John 2.6. First John 2.6 says, He that saith He abides in Him, that is in Christ, ought Himself also to walk even as He walked.

If you say you belong to Christ, you ought to live like Christ lived. So I ask myself the question, would Christ do this? Would Jesus do this? Is this consistent with Him, with Christ-likeness? That's such a provocative question. Would Jesus do this?

Principle of emulation, number 10, the last one. Very simple, will it glorify God? Will it glorify God?

And you know as well as I do that these kind of overlap. You ask yourself, will this glorify God? And the reference is 1 Corinthians 10.31. 1 Corinthians 10.31, whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatever you do, what's the rest? Do all of the glory of God. That's the sort of total covering principle. Will it glorify God?

And let's call this the principle of exaltation. Now you ready for the wrap-up? Did you notice something?

You couldn't have missed it all. Begin with what? Now listen, I call these the ease of decision-making. Not bad, right? This is the ease of decision-making. This takes something very difficult and makes it what? Easy. You got it. Very good.

Now the point is we can make the hard decisions easy if we use these principles. Will it be profitable to me spiritually? Will it build me up?

Will it slow me down in the race? Will it bring me to bondage? Will it be simply a covering for my sin? Will it replace the lordship of Christ in my life? Will it set a helpful example for others? Will it lead others to Christ? Will it be like Christ?

And will it glorify God? That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's lesson is part of a unique study here on Grace To You. It's a collection of some of the messages that have stood out most in decades of John's teaching ministry.

We call it Foundations Volume Two. Now, friend, if I could ask a favor. If John's teaching has been a benefit to you, would you let us know? Your letters encourage John and the whole staff.

So when you're able, write a note and send it our way. Our address is grace to you, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Or you can send an email to letters at gty.org. And be sure to visit our website, that's gty.org, and tap into the thousands of Bible study resources that are available to you, including the Grace To You blog, with articles written by John and the Grace To You staff.

And as a supplement to the lesson you heard today, look for the series of articles titled Finding and Following God's Will. Also at gty.org, you can catch episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed, or you can download any of John's 3600 sermons free of charge in audio and transcript format. Our web address again, gty.org. And follow Grace To You on social media. You'll find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace To You television Sundays on DirecTV channel 378, or check your local listings for times. And tune in again tomorrow as John continues his study, Foundations Volume 2, showing you how you can protect your children from a corrupt society. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.