We need to know that this is God's calling for us. There are a lot of things we don't like about the people in power over us. We would do an act of disobedience against our calling if we did not pray for our ruler's salvation. And that goes for all rulers all the way to the presidency and across the world. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. I trust you'll be encouraged by the messages this week. In light of the upcoming election in the United States, John is going to help you cultivate a biblical mindset as you seek to honor God as a citizen of whatever nation you live in.
Well, John, presidential elections always put a spotlight on social problems, economic problems, the things that elections are supposed to fix. And of course, even we as Christians can get frustrated by what's wrong in the world. But again, I think the messages this week are going to give people a very helpful perspective, certainly a biblical perspective.
And that's always what we want to do. I mean, we're here to give the biblical perspective on everything. And that gets to the point of civil life, civil government, even an election. I think the one thing to keep in mind as we look at the issue of elections and as we look at a declining society and a sinful culture and things getting worse and worse is that God has ordained government. Government is designed by God to punish evildoers and to protect those who do good. That's its function so that you can have well-ordered society. God also ordained marriage for the very same reason on the microcosm level. In our society, government is falling apart. Marriage is falling apart.
It's all breaking down. And we need to remember that God judges nations. God judges nations. In fact, in the book of Acts, it says He has allowed the nations to go their own way. He allows them to go down the same cycled path from knowledge to ignorance to sin to judgment through human history. And when society seems to be getting more and more wicked all the time, as they inevitably do, and when governments clearly are not doing what governments were designed to do, but they actually reverse those things, what in the middle of all of that is the right response for the Christian?
Does the Bible give us definitive answers? Well, it does. And this week's broadcast will give you answers to questions like how do I find security in a troubled world? How do I find hope in a doomed nation? And the message you'll hear today, calling rulers to repentance. These messages have immediate application to the situation in our nation as we live it outright at this very time. So wherever you are, you have authorities over you.
And wherever you are, you have responsibility to your government. You want to understand what's going on, how you can see these things from a biblical perspective. And that's what we're going to endeavor to give you in this series. This is going to be an important week of broadcast. Don't miss a single one. That's right, friends.
Stay with us. Now, a bit of context for today's message. It was preached in response to the California governors having put billboards across the United States advertising abortion services here in California.
Even worse, the billboards blasphemously implied that Jesus himself applauds abortion. And so, burdened for the governor's soul, John MacArthur preached the following message titled, Calling Rulers to Repentance. I want to give you a kind of a biblical framework for confronting rulers, and I want to show you how this is the calling of the church as it has been for God's people throughout redemptive history. And we need to start at the beginning. And for us, the beginning would be then, what is the mission of the church in the world?
What are we supposed to be doing here? You might think that we're supposed to be providing entertainment for unbelievers if you just took a look at the church superficially. You might think that we're supposed to have some kind of manipulative power on the levers of authority and influence in the world if you looked at the political preoccupations of Christians and churches.
But you would be wrong on both counts. The church exists in the world really with one mission, and that is defined for us in the Great Commission. Listen to the words of our Lord Himself. He defines for us our responsibility, and I'll use three passages that are familiar with you. First, Matthew 28, 19, and 20. The command to His followers is this, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you, and behold, I am with you always even to the end of the age. That is the Great Commission to evangelize the nations, bringing them the gospel so that they believe, trust Christ, are baptized, start on the path of discipleship, which is defined as being obedient to all that the Lord has commanded. So we are in the business of proclaiming the gospel by which people are saved, become disciples, and live and serve in obedience to God.
That's our mission. Our Lord's words in Luke 24, verses 46 and 47 give us another angle on the same commission. He said to the disciples, it is written that Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all nations. There is our commission to proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins in His name, the name of Christ. And then there is another wording of the commission in Acts 1-8 where we read, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.
In all three commissions, we have a global responsibility to the ends of the earth, to the end of the age, and to all nations. And summing it up, it is to proclaim the gospel, the gospel of forgiveness of sins by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that makes one a disciple who lives in obedience to the commands of God. That is the gospel. That's why the church is in the world.
That's what we need to be doing. That is our whole calling. A couple of familiar passages are important for us to understand in the light of that. One is in Romans chapter 10, and you're familiar with it, but let me read a few verses from Romans 10 starting in verse 13. For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. As we go preaching the gospel, we're encouraging people to call on the name of the Lord to be saved. The next verse says, verse 14 of Romans 10, how then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent?
Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things. However, they did not all heed the good news, for Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed our report? So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. Fulfilling the Great Commission means we have to be sent, we have to preach. We have to preach the gospel so that people can hear and in hearing believe and be saved. So primarily when we think about the Great Commission, we're talking about the preaching of the gospel.
That is the priority, obviously. Those texts that I've just gone through make that clear. But there's another text that I want to add to those that is very important and belongs right alongside of them. And it's found in 1 Timothy chapter 2, so turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2. And at the beginning of that chapter, I want to read a number of verses down through verse 7. 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 through 7. Because here is another responsibility to which the church is called.
First of all, 1 Timothy 2, 1, here's the priority. I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all men. And so we are going to be pleading with God for all men. In what exact sense is that prayer directed? For what purpose?
Keep reading. For kings and all who are in authority, and that's shocking, and I'll comment on that in a moment. We're to be praying on behalf of all men, but the one sample group that he identifies as kings and all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
If you want to live a quiet life, if you want to live a peaceful life in human society in all godliness and dignity, pray for the rulers, because so much of what a society is, as we know very well, is a direct result of its rulers and leaders. And God wants us to pray for those who rule over us. Verse 3, he says, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
Why? Because He desires all men, all kinds of men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator, also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.
For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. Now the context here is salvation. Since God desires salvation, if He desires salvation from all kinds of men, if He desires them to come to the knowledge of the truth, that is why He has provided salvation through the ransom of verse 6 for all provided by Christ Jesus. So the context is salvation. One God and only one, therefore only one true religion. One mediator and only one, the man Christ Jesus, therefore only one Savior.
One ransom for all, the only ransom, and thus one gospel, one way of salvation. Because of God's salvation plan and because God desires all kinds of men in all stratas and nations and tribes and tongues and peoples, as heaven will show in the book of Revelation, we are to pray for the salvation of all men, but especially for those who rule over us because that conversion at that level changes culture dramatically. So when things aren't the way you would like them to be, yes, we recognize sin has consequences. Yes, we recognize divine judgment is operating. But still, the promise here is that we should pray for the conversion of rulers because it will change life as we know it. So we need to know that this is God's calling for us. Though it may seem hard, though there are a lot of things we don't like about the people in power over us, we would do an act of disobedience against our calling if we did not pray for our rulers' salvation. And that goes not only for governors, but all rulers all the way to the presidency and across the world.
It's a challenging thing to confront them. Let's go back to the preaching responsibility. You remember the story of John the Baptist, of course. John the Baptist, chapter 3 of Luke, confronted Herod the tetrarch.
John was preaching the gospel, Luke chapter 3, verse 18, to the people, John the Baptist. And when Herod the tetrarch was reprimanded by him because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the wicked things which Herod had done, Herod also added this to them all. He locked John up in prison. Herod was the king at the time. He was a wretched man.
His connection to Herodias, his brother's wife, was incestuous. He had stolen her away from another, and John confronts him for his wickedness, which he had done. And John was summarily locked up in prison. If you go to Matthew 14, you read the rest of the story, and over this, John lost his head. His head was served on a platter to Herod. It cost John his life to be honest with a ruler, to present the truth to a ruler. It cost Jesus his life to present the truth to a ruler. He spoke to Pilate. He spoke to Caiaphas.
Collectively, they all came together and had him executed. And then there was Paul. In the ninth chapter of the book of Acts, where we have the account of his conversion, there's a comment there that is tied into his calling. It's a very direct comment, chapter 9 and verse 15. The Lord said to him, to Ananias after the Damascus Road conversion, the Lord says about Paul, "'He is a chosen instrument of Mine to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for My namesake.' He was called to go in front of kings."
Was this new? Was this something new to the New Testament? No, because John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets, and his confrontation of Herod cost him his life. The Old Testament gives us many illustrations. I could give you 40 illustrations of Old Testament godly men confronting rulers.
Let me just remind you of a few. In Exodus, Moses confronts Pharaoh to the face, let my people go. In 1 Samuel 13, Samuel confronts Saul the king over his sin. In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan confronts David over the sin of having Uriah murdered so that David can have an adulterous relationship with his wife Bathsheba.
And Nathan says to David, you are the man. Ahijah the prophet confronted Jeroboam in 1 Kings and said, "'You have done much evil, much more evil than those before you.'" In 1 Kings 18, Elijah confronts wretched, wicked Ahab. Later, 1 Kings 21, he confronts Ahab again for basically murdering Naboth so he could steal his vineyard. He said to him, "'You have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of Yahweh. Behold, I will bring evil on you.'" This was a role that prophets took throughout the Old Testament. Elijah denounces Ahaziah for consulting Baal in 2 Kings 1.
He says, "'You will surely die.'" Isaiah prophesied the doom of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. In 2 Kings 19, Isaiah taunted the king of Babylon. In Isaiah 14, Jeremiah pronounced judgment to Zedekiah in Jeremiah 21 and 34. Hosea declared judgment on Israel's evil rulers in chapter 4 and 5.
This was routine. And I read earlier Psalm 2, which is David's contramundo, David against the world of rulers, kings of the earth, taking action against God while God laughs at them. So it's nothing new that John the Baptist did, Jesus did, Paul did, or any of the other apostles did. They had forebears who showed them the pathway of the confrontation in the faithful, godly men of the Old Testament. Turn to Deuteronomy 17, which sets up the responsibility of the ruler to expect to be confronted if he is unfaithful. In Deuteronomy chapter 17, just go down to verse 18. As the Lord is describing now that you're going to have a king, here is the responsibility of a king. This is the duty of the king. Deuteronomy 17, 18, "'Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, when he comes to reign, he shall write for himself a copy of this law.'"
The whole law of God. He's to write it out, every letter, every word, himself. And he's to do it on a scroll, and he's to do it in the presence of a Levitical priest so everyone knows he's written every single letter. And the reason for that is if he's going to rule, as you heard in that beautiful anthem, he that rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
So there can't be any ignorance. He can't claim that he didn't know something. And to make sure that he has basically affirmed his responsibility, he has to write out every single letter in the law of God in front of all the priests. "'It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life.'" He's got to continually be reading the law of God so that he stays on track. "'That he may learn to fear the Lord his God by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.'"
You want to have a long reign? Stay faithful to the Scripture. You have to write it all out. You have to continually read it, and you must obey its statutes. Well, they got in the promised land, and it didn't go that way, did it? King after king after king in both kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, forsook the law of God. They forsook the law of God, and they led the people into idolatry in all manner of sin and evil, which then set up an inevitable confrontation by those who were the stewards of the revelation of God to confront those disobedient kings who had violated their oath. The king's oath was to be faithful to the Word of God. In fact, the Word of God disappeared, and it wasn't discovered. We find in 2 Kings chapter 22 until King Josiah many years later found the law and restored the law to its place, and Josiah brought righteousness back.
So this has always been God's plan. So in the Old Testament, you had prophets confronting unfaithful kings over and over and over and over and over again. And as we saw, you had the New Testament model of John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, the other apostles doing the same with authorities. But even in church history, and here's a little from church history, around the year 150, the Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote an open letter to the Roman emperor Antonius Pius. And in that letter, he defended the truthfulness of Christianity and argued that the Roman government should stop persecuting believers, 150.
Just say 50 years after the death of the apostle John. Around the year 155, there was a renowned pastor in Smyrna who knew John by the name of Polycarp, who stood trial before a Roman governor. He was accused of being a Christian, and he was urged to recant. Polycarp refused to do that, reiterated his allegiance to Christ, and urged the governor to repent or face the eternal fire of God's judgment. In the generation after Polycarp, an author named Tertullian wrote an apology of the Christian faith also. They called the Roman government to end their unjust persecution of the church.
In the fourth century, another famous pastor from Alexandria named Athanasius Boley defended the doctrine of Christ's deity. He was banished by the Roman powers for at least 17 years, but he refused to be intimidated or to compromise because of governmental pressure. In the fifth century, the golden-mouthed John Chrysostom, the great preacher of Constantinople, confronted the empress for her worldly, sinful lifestyle.
He was banished and on his way to exile died. If you come up to Reformation times, you have people like Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus who all denounced corrupt authorities and were willing to pay with their lives. In 1521, Martin Luther took his stand, telling Emperor Charles V, the most powerful man in Europe, that he must repent and that Luther would never recant because to do so would be to go against the Word of God, which Luther would never do. As a result, Luther was declared a notorious heretic and would have been executed if they could find him. In 1603, a thousand Puritan leaders wrote a letter to King James I, calling him to reform the Church of England. He ignored the petition and continued to persecute the Puritans. And then in 1638, Scottish believers signed a national covenant resisting the efforts of King Charles to interfere with the church and with true worship, and so it's gone through history. You can go all the way back and start with Moses concerning Pharaoh and come all the way through church history.
In fact, it's only in the modern era that the church has not done this. How sad is that? How sad is that? That's our calling.
It doesn't go well, I understand that. They killed the prophets. They killed John the Baptist. They killed the Lord Jesus. They killed the apostles. They killed the faithful preachers through church history.
It doesn't change the mission or the responsibility. That's John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's focus today on Grace to You, calling rulers to repentance.
Well, in an age when right and wrong have been turned upside down, it has never been more important to take sin seriously and to keep yourself unstained by the world, as Scripture says. To help you in that, John has written a classic book called The Vanishing Conscience. To order your copy, contact us today. The Vanishing Conscience is available for $11 and shipping is free. You can order by calling 800-55-GRACE or by visiting our website, gty.org.
The title again, The Vanishing Conscience. To get your copy and perhaps a few extra copies to give to friends and family members, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. And if you missed part of today's message, you can listen again at our website, gty.org. You'll find that broadcast along with 3,600 other sermons, free to download in both audio and transcript format. Again, the title to look for, Calling Rulers to Repentance. Vote it now, and if you know someone else who would benefit from hearing today's message, be sure to point them to it. And speaking of today's lesson, tune in tomorrow as John continues to show you biblical principles for living a godly life under ungodly government leaders, and principles that can inform your decisions any time you vote. Now on behalf of John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on tomorrow's Grace To You.
