I like kids, but I'm not interested in a teeny bopper church. We need the life and energy that the kids have, but we need the power that the mature believers have. But if you can hear the truth and walk out and carry on the same pattern of living without ever a conscious effort in the power of the Spirit to apply that truth, what happens is you just get old, that's all.
You don't get more powerful. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than liver disease, pneumonia, diabetes, stroke, and car accidents combined. What is this plague responsible for so many deaths? Heart disease.
A healthy cardiovascular system is essential to your physical life. And where the spiritual life of your church is concerned, there are internal systems, certain attitudes that your church cannot survive without. So what are these attitudes that are critical to the health of your local church? And how can you promote the spiritual health of your church?
What is your role in that? John MacArthur answers those questions today as he continues his study, The Anatomy of a Church. And here he is now with the lesson. I want to continue what we started last time, and I guess we could say that this is sort of a brief bit of spiritual archaeology. And so what I'm trying to do is to dig up a little bit of foundation for you and let you see the basics of what this ministry is really committed to. And in order to help us see that foundation, to kind of dig down and find out what's really at the bottom of Grace Church, I wanted to borrow Paul's wonderful analogy of the body. And we're talking about the anatomy of the church, and I suggested that there are four features of the body that we want to look at, the skeleton, the internal systems, the muscles, and the flesh.
That's a rather simplified perspective, but it will serve us well, I think. We said last time that the church must have a skeleton. That gives it form. That gives it a framework.
That allows it to stand. That is the non-negotiable substantial basic foundation upon which everything else hangs and through which everything else moves. And we said that our non-negotiable foundational principles are these five, a high view of God, the absolute authority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and an understanding of spiritual authority.
Those are key things. We must continue to lift up God, to exalt His blessed Holy Name. We must continue to prioritize the Word of God, to make it everything, to study it, to preach it, to teach it. We must also be committed to draw from it doctrine that is clear, precise, and applicable to life. We must also pursue with all of our strength in the Holy Spirit holiness, virtue, godliness, righteousness. And we must understand spiritual authority.
There is a great responsibility in being a spiritual leader and being one who follows those who lead. And so if from time to time you hear me speak about God and Scripture and doctrine and holiness and authority, you'll understand that I have to keep putting in the structure, the skeleton, the framework. And so these are themes to which you return again and again and again. And sometimes if it sounds like the same sermon, it may be, but most of the time it may not be.
If it is, once in a while I always try to yell in different places so it looks different on the surface. But it's just that there are these things that have to be reaffirmed. So that as we saw last time where Peter said, I want you to remember those things so that after I am gone you will still remember them. You will still remember them. It's the same thing Paul had in his heart when he wrote to the Philippians and said, I'm glad for what I see when I'm with you, but I'm even more glad for what I see when I'm absent from you that you're working out your salvation with fear and trembling.
I don't know how long the Lord will give me or how long I'll be in this place, but the greatest satisfaction I could ever have would be to be gone if that is in God's purpose and to look back if that is possible from wherever I might be and I don't know if I can look back from heaven and to say they're going on and they're still committed to the things that they were committed to in my presence. In order to help us to reaffirm those foundational things, we've been sort of structuring ourselves. Now I believe that it's essential in the life of the church that these non-negotiables be emphasized, which is to say that they will be a part of the preaching ministry again and again and again and again. Secondly, they must be a part of the teaching ministry. If you teach a fellowship group or a flock or a Bible study or a children's class or a young people's Bible class or whatever, wherever you are, if you're discipling somebody, these are the things you have to go back to to continue to put the skeleton in, to have the foundation, to have the form that is necessary for the body to be what Christ would have it to be. And so we must preach it and teach it and then also example is key.
We must model it. There must be a demonstration of commitment to these things, not only in what we say but in the life we live. I have to be just as committed to personal holiness, doctrinal clarity, the authority of Scripture and so forth in my living as I am in my preaching or it'll all get lost.
And so we're committed to these things. Now that leads me to a second category, the internal systems. I believe that the church must have flowing through it certain spiritual attitudes. A physical body has organs and fluids that flow through and cause that body to be able to be alive and function. And so we are not only a skeleton.
A skeleton is not alive. It gives form but it isn't life. There has to be a flowing through of certain spiritual attitudes. And that is what I see as the internal systems of the church. The pastoral endeavor, the goal of the elders, the goal of leaders in the church is to generate in the hearts of people certain spiritual attitudes. We're not just trying to get you to do certain things. We're not just going to hit you with you need to do this and do that and do this and so forth, but rather to generate the proper kind of spiritual attitudes which themselves will motivate proper kind of behavior. You see you can do the right thing outwardly and have a bad attitude, but if you have a good attitude you'll do the right thing outwardly coming out of a good attitude.
And so we work on the fruit of the spirit, if you will, the internal motivation, the internal attitude. Sometimes young men go into a pastorate and they come to a church and they see that the church maybe isn't organized the right way and maybe they don't see all the things they would like to see going on so their temptation invariably is to reorganize the church. And sometimes they'll call or talk to me and say, well, we want to get elders and we want to reorganize this and reorganize that. And I often say to them, you know what you're going to have when you reorganize the church? You're going to have the same people with the same attitudes and a different structure. That's all. And the problem is going to be they're not going to know why you're changing the structure.
And it might be very difficult to change. I remember when I first came to Grace I had a whole new idea for how to run the Sunday school. It was about the first month I'm here and I get this brainstorm and I wrote the whole thing out and presented it to the education committee and they unanimously turned it down. They said, who are you kid? We've been here a long time. Where did you come from?
Prove yourself. In effect, years later they came up with that same system. It was just a question of developing the spiritual attitudes that brought about the right kind of responses. On the other hand, you cannot worry about the structure of the church and if you build in the right spiritual attitude structure has a way of taking care of itself. Because spirit-controlled people are going to do spirit-led things.
And they're going to find themselves moving toward conformity to the biblical pattern of the church. So we have to have an emphasis in the church on attitudes. We have to work on what's going on inside of you.
We're not interested in just getting you to behave in a certain way. Make sure you give your money. Make sure you show up Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Make sure you pray five hours a week or whatever.
Make sure you read your Bible every day devoted in a dutiful way. That isn't the idea. Now those are not the approach. We're not approaching things on a legalistic or superficial basis but the effort of the ministry has always been to generate attitudes. And sometimes you fight a battle because there are some people who don't come along with right attitudes and you want to say to them, do it anyway.
Even with your bad attitude. But you have to back off of that because you don't want to play into the hands of the satisfaction that comes from legalism. And so we work on attitudes. And over the years these are the attitudes that I have been concerned to see in the hearts and lives of my own personal life as well as all of the people here. First of all, and foremost is obedience. An attitude of obedience. Now this is the overarching attitude of all attitudes. This says, if God says something, I do it. This is no compromise. I mean if God says it, that's it. It is not debatable.
It isn't something you argue about. You do it. Obedience. That is the overarching attitude and so week after week, month after month, year after year, we have just kept pounding the word of God into the minds and hearts of all of us with the implication this is what God says and you must respond. You must do it for the glory of God and for your own blessedness and the salvation of souls and the example to other Christians. For all those reasons we obey because it's right and it glorifies God because it puts us in the place of blessing because it allows us to be filled with the Spirit so that we can reach others and set an example for those who watch us to see how we live. Obedience.
You say well it seems pretty obvious. Sure it does because you were saved by affirming the Lordship of Jesus Christ, right? And that simply is saying you're in charge, right?
I'm going to follow. You're Lord, I'm servant. Why do you call me master and do not the things I say, Jesus says?
I mean that doesn't make any sense. Don't call me Lord and then don't obey me. So if I am Lord then that means you do what I say, right? Right.
That's obvious. That's what he meant in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 7 when he said it's a narrow road and a narrow gate and a narrow way. The way is narrow because it's confined by the will of God and the law of God and the Word of God. And so we came in affirming Jesus as Lord, Romans 10, 9, and 10. We came in submitting ourselves to his Lordship and basically that is to a life of obedience.
And so that's the first and foremost attitude. Phil Johnson was eager to share with me this week down at the radio ministry a tape that he'd received from one of our listeners who wrote and said that, I guess he sent a letter along with the tape, but his tape was basically communicating his heart's desire. For 10 minutes he talked about how he listened to the program and appreciated the study of the Bible and whatever and whatever. And then he went into his problem. He had a lot of sins in his life the Lord was working with, but one thing in particular he was curious about and wondered what our view was. And that was this, that he didn't feel he ever in his life had a normal feeling toward women. He didn't seem to feel as men should feel toward women, but he did feel very strongly toward farm animals.
That's right, farm animals. And he wondered what we thought about that. And he said that he thought that that was not a problem. He didn't feel any guilt when he was doing things like that and he thought the Lord was sort of refining him in other areas and that area was not a problem.
So a letter was sent back to him four pages long expressing to him that it indeed was a problem. In fact, if he were living in the Old Testament he would have been dead because if a man lies with a beast he's killed. And went on to express in kind terms that God doesn't compartmentalize life and say these sins I'm going to deal with these I'm not too worried about. All sin is an affront to his holy name. And so all kinds of scripture was sent back to the guy and then we received another tape. And Phil played this tape for me and here's a quote right off the tape. I don't think anybody understands Christians are so tangled up in the Bible and so tangled up in the Word and so tangled up in what God says that they don't really understand how God works sometimes or how God feels. End quote.
It's unbelievable. Christians are so tangled up in the Word and the Bible and what God says they know how God feels. How else are you going to know how God feels? You don't read the Bible. What the guy is saying is look don't lay any Bible trip on me. I don't feel any guilt and I'm not going to get hung up on what God says. My question about that fella is is he a Christian? I don't care if he goes to church.
All the time. It says in 1 John 2 that the one who keeps my commandments verily in him is the love of God perfected and by this we know that we know him, right? If we keep his commandments. I mean if you can cultivate that kind of abomination in your life and say it doesn't bother you at all and then just say well you don't want to get all tangled up with Bible stuff independent of the Bible you know how God feels you got a problem. But sin is that kind of thing.
You see it becomes very self justifying. Obviously that's an extreme illustration but it simply points up the fact that God has called us to obedience to his word. We know how he feels because he gives us how he feels in his word right?
And that's the issue. And the great objective and the great goal of the ministry listen this is so clear in scripture is to build an obedient people. That's what God intends to do with his people.
In the Old Testament that's what he intends to do in the new is to produce an obedient people. God speaks we obey. But sad to say very often when confronted with divine truth that convicts us of something in our life that isn't right instead of obeying we just sort of shove it out and we go on in our pattern of disobedience. Maybe there's a message unforgiveness and you haven't forgiven somebody well instead of taking care of that you just push that message out of your conscious mind go on with your bitter unforgiving spirit and so nothing really happens and that is disobedience and that is diametrically opposed to all that God wants to accomplish in your life. You say well I go to church I do my part. Well remember 1 Samuel 15 22 where God said to obey is better than what?
Sacrifice. Ritual will never replace obedience. And in 1 Peter chapter 1 Peter writes that we are to gird up the loins of our mind in other words get our act together pull yourself together get your priorities right as obedient children not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.
Don't live like you used to live. You are to be obedient children. Luke 11 28 Jesus said happy is the person who hears my word and keeps it.
Who hears my word and keeps it. Paul commends Christians in Romans 16 19 for your obedience has come abroad unto all men and I am glad. That makes the heart of the pastor glad when the obedience of his people is made manifest. Now you know some things if you come here because you're being taught them but if you don't apply those things in an obedient way you don't mature.
I turned on the radio this week and I was driving someplace and on came Howard Hendricks and he said some things I thought that were very interesting. He said that Christians over 50 should be the most turned on the most excited the most committed the purest the most enthusiastic and the most available for service. Why? Because they've been hearing the word the longest they've been applying it the longest they've been maturing the longest and they ought to be showing the fruit of that process right? I mean the most turned on enthusiastic excited available dynamic and powerful people in a church the very energy of that church ought to be the people who are over 50 over 55 over 60 they ought to be the life the joy the thrill the energy the dynamic of that church they ought to be the people out on the cutting edge in evangelism they ought to be the people out on the cutting edge in prayer.
Why? Because they've lived with God the longest they've applied the word so their obedience pattern has gone on longer therefore they're mature more so than those with fewer years because of constantly applied truth. But how often have you heard this? And I agree with how exactly how often have you heard this? Well the wonderful thing about our church is that it's it's it's got so many young people you know they're the energy and the dynamic of the church now I like young people I'm one I am and I agree with that I mean there there's a certain dynamic about young people I've always said I like to speak to young people because at least if they're not interested they have the courtesy to talk so you know right away they're not interested and there's a there is a dynamic with young people but listen that's a sad commentary on a church when you look at a church and I hear young pastors say this all the time well it's full of old people I hear that well it's a it's a nice church and a nice service just full old people that ought to be the dynamic of the church but you know the truth is that if you're a Christian and you continually fail to apply what you know you'll just be one of the old people and by constant non application of divine truth you're going to get over 50 or whatever and you're just going to fold up your tent and steal away into the night you're going to want to retire spiritually well I've served for a lot of years I don't know I don't want to get in D.E. I'm older let the young people do that or I you know when we look at the Old Testament we see the leaders in Israel were the hoary heads the white haired men and women who were godly we look at the early church and the dynamism and dynamic of those mature saints and we look at the contemporary church and it has to find its life in young kids I like kids but I'm not interested in a teeny bopper church I think there's more to the church than that we need the life and energy that the kids have but we need the power that the mature believers have who have lived lives long of applying the truth but if you can hear the truth and walk out and carry on the same pattern of living without ever a conscious effort in the power of the spirit to apply that truth what happens is you just get old that's all you don't get more powerful you don't become more dynamic I mean it ought to be that you almost go to heaven by just taking off you know it's almost a blast off experience because you got so much energy rolling by the time you get near that point in life I wish that were true but I see so many people who go to church and as they grow older because they don't really apply the things they hear they hear them they get doctrinally egg headed they learn a lot of stuff it's never been applied so their life hasn't changed they've hardened into kind of a spiritual coldness full of facts and without power I don't want that to happen in my life I mean I just want to keep firing out if it means I have to keep picking up my false teeth off the pulpit until I finally you know maybe one of those days I'll get so carried away I'll leave but I'm not about to look back on my life and say all the power and all the energy and all the dynamic was gone by the time I was 45 or 50 I'm not looking to retire from the service of Christ and I really feel that what happens when people sort of fade away is that they've they've been able to hear the Word of God without its application now in some cases they haven't really been able to hear it they haven't been fed it haven't been taught but not in this case and so we must be committed to obedience oh how very basic this is obedience to God's Word if there's a truth and you hear it consciously in the power of the Spirit start applying it when you're confronted with conviction don't pass it off to somebody else don't go away saying boy I wish so and so to heard that sermon you apply it you apply it because you're under the Lordship of Christ and as you obey you progress along the path of maturity to a greater usefulness to God let's bow in prayer Father I ask that you would start with me rekindle in my heart the dedication to obedience help me to by the grace of the Spirit of God experience the humility that looks on others not on myself and sees others better than myself help me to make sacrifices in meeting needs for any in my path whose need I am able to meet and seek nothing in return you're listening to grace to you with John MacArthur Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary John's current series is titled the anatomy of a church John this idea of the anatomy of a church it raises a question should every local fellowship of believers do church quote unquote the same way would you say that there is only one way to operate a church that every local body should pretty much look alike in terms of how it functions no if you're talking about style if you're talking about whether worship is traditional or whether it's non-traditional whether it's formal or whether it's informal there's room for all of that those are not the hard and fast things what you're driving at in a church that has to be consistently demonstrated in every faithful church are the very things that we've been talking about in this series a high view of God understanding of the importance of scripture as dominating the church exalting Christ teaching the Bible preaching the Bible applying the Bible and I would even say things like confronting sin and church discipline things like that so you can have a lot of uniqueness culturally speaking you can have some style variations but the non-negotiables are not optional and the scripture lays them out you could start in the simple second chapter of acts the believers came together on the day of Pentecost and they gave themselves to the apostles doctrine to prayer to the ministry of the word and to the Lord's table and fellowship that's it and so you you look at those categories and then you look into the scripture and see what scripture says that defines how those areas are to function in a church all we've ever done at Grace Church is try to conform to the Bible we have never tried to conform to the culture I just want to do what the Bible demands us to do and we want the Lord to build his church around the scripture and the church then takes on a biblical identification I want to remind you about a free booklet your local church and why it matters that's the title of it your local church and why it matters we will send you one free of charge all you have to do is ask us all right it examines biblical truth about church membership keeping the church pure church discipline the believers baptism the Lord's Supper discipleship giving and again it's free if you just ask it'll inform you and make you a better church member and that'll be a blessing to your congregation thanks john and again friend this booklet can help you identify the kind of church that you would want to be part of and if you're already in a good church it offers practical encouragement for how you can serve the body request your copy of your local church and why it matters when you contact us today you can email your request to letters at gty.org or call us at 855 grace and ask for your free booklet titled your local church and why it matters that number again 855 grace you can also request your free booklet at our website gty.org there you will also find thousands of free resources including full sermons from john daily devotions grace stream that's a continuous broadcast of john's preaching that begins in matthew and goes verse by verse without stopping through the entire new testament so whether you have a few minutes during your commute or a couple of hours to study log on to grace stream and start learning that website one more time gty.org and thanks for praying for the staff of grace to you and the people we're reaching that is vitally important in fact there is no more important way to strengthen this ministry now for john mccarthur i'm phil johnson watch grace to you television this sunday on direct tv channel 378 and be here tomorrow to consider how to evaluate a church is it all about sermon length or music style or youth programs or what join john for another 30 minutes of unleashing god's truth one verse at a time on grace to you
