God is far too complex for you, and He only lets you know what you need to know. And what you need to know is this, that He is marked by compassion, kindness, grace, mercy, forgiveness, fatherly love and care for His own children. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Perhaps you're struggling with sickness or job loss, or you're watching a loved one battle a terminal disease. In the troubled world in which we all live, it's easy for worry to move in. The danger is worry can quickly control you if it's not checked.
How do you keep that from happening? Let me encourage you to bring that question to the message you're about to hear. The Bible speaks clearly and powerfully to the trials you face. You're going to see that today as John shows you what Scripture says about finding security in a troubled world. That's the title of today's lesson. And while John originally preached this message during the COVID-19 pandemic, I trust you'll find the principles he discusses as timely as ever.
And now here's John MacArthur. We're rejoicing in our hearts for the opportunity to open the Word of God together. The Lord has revealed to us enough truth in His Word basically to cover any of the issues of life, and certainly that includes the one that we're all involved in. As I look back over, well now, about 51 years of ministry here at Grace Church, I remember that through the years, basically, we have gone book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, sometimes word by word. We have worked our way through the entire New Testament, gone back to pick up some books for a second time, basically in the early years preached through the Old Testament, got as far as about Psalm 72 if I remember, a series we were doing on Wednesday nights.
And so basically expositing the Word of God verse by verse. But occasionally through the years we have also had some very important times in our church when we addressed a doctrine, a theological category, a theological truth, and those series have been helpful as well. Occasionally beyond the normal expository preaching and even those doctrinal series that we have done, we have been forced to address sort of rare events, I guess you could say, things that so dominate the society that everybody becomes aware of them. And I think back to those kinds of times when I stepped into this pulpit and addressed an issue that had somehow become so widespread that I couldn't ignore it.
I think the first time that happened was on March 2nd in 1988. There was a very famous television evangelist known basically to anybody who had a television in those days by the name of Jimmy Swaggart, and there was a massive fall that occurred in his life, so much so that it was picked up by all the media. And I remember giving a lesson from the fall of this evangelist, a lesson around the idea of moral shipwreck. It was something I couldn't avoid because it was so much in the news. It was a couple of years later on January 20th in 1991 that the United States engaged in the opening of what is known as the Gulf War, and people were asking all kinds of questions about how do Christians relate to war, what does the Bible say about war, should we go to battle. And so I did a brief series on war, what the Bible says about war. It was only a year later that here in Los Angeles, in fact it was in May, on the third of May of 1992, that we had an event that scarred our city for a long time. It was known as the Los Angeles Riots. It was, of course, on the global media as well, and I needed to address that from a biblical perspective.
So I did. We had a message on the biblical perspective and what that reveals about mankind. Two years later, it was January 23rd, 1994, when we had a massive earthquake known as the Northridge earthquake, and it was important for us because everybody out here felt that shaking to look at that from a biblical perspective as well. And I remember that the church received a lot of new people coming into the church in the next few weeks after the earthquake because people were so terrified. There was a little bit of time that went by, and then it was September, and it was September 16th when I stepped into this pulpit in 2001 and gave a message on 9-11 on terrorism, jihad, and the Bible.
The 9-11 event happened on a Tuesday, and I had to figure it all out, at least from a biblical perspective, and be ready to explain it to our congregation on that following Sunday, September 16th of 2001. Now here we are, 2020, and our nation is facing something that has circled the globe, the coronavirus epidemic, and it has created fear, confusion, doubt, questions everywhere. And we haven't seen the end of it yet.
It's still moving at a rapid rate. We don't know the final outcome of that, not just the physical outcome of the illness itself, but the implications that have hit everyone from an economic standpoint. And even though 99-point-something percent of people who receive this will recover from it, there is still mounting fear, not just from the illness itself, but from all that's happening around it that is changing people's lives. And to be honest with you, it's something that you haven't experienced. Most of you who are listening to me won't get this likely.
It's a very small number of people, and as I said, the vast majority of those recover. And yet the implications of this are frightening to people because it's taken life out of their control. Now if you were with us last week, you remember that our Lord said, "'Stop worrying about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.'" Matthew 6, stop worrying. We talked about that from Matthew 6, stop worrying. Have you forgotten who your Father is? You belong to the Lord. Have you forgotten what family you're in?
You're not a part of those people in the kingdom of darkness, you're a part of the kingdom of God. Remember your future, we talked about that last time. You have enough trouble today, without projecting trouble that may never come in the future. We all have enough trouble for the day. We understand that. Health, jobs, money, marriage, children, difficult people.
I mean we understand all the categories that bring us trouble. The world can be a difficult place. Isaiah 8, 22 says, "'Look to the earth and behold, distress and darkness and the gloom of anguish.'"
We understand that. On a more personal level, Solomon writing in Ecclesiastes chapter 2 said, "'I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me, because everything is futility and striving after wind, because all of a man's days his task is painful and grievous. Even at night his mind does not rest.'"
Now that's a man with no media. That's a man just saying life is vain, just in my own circle of experience. Jesus said in John 16, 33, in the world you will have tribulation, you'll have trouble.
The word in the Greek is actually pressure. The Bible, however, always tells us this, that God is in the trouble, God is in the trouble. He's not just looking at the trouble, He's not just allowing the trouble, He is in the trouble. Listen to Isaiah 14, 24, "'The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, "'Surely, just as I have intended, so it has happened, and just as I have planned, so it will stand.'" Again Isaiah says in chapter 46, "'My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass.
I have planned it, surely I will do it.'" And what is God speaking of? Everything, actually everything. In the prophet Amos there's a statement made, actually a couple of statements made in the third chapter of Amos that I want to read to you. Amos is a very brief book, but a very rich book, and this particular portion of it is very helpful to us as we think about our current stress. Amos chapter 3, verse 6, "'If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it?'" Some people want to sort of divest God of responsibility for what goes wrong.
That's not the right approach. "'If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it?'" The next verse, verse 7 of Amos 3, "'Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets.'" So God is the one who does things.
Even calamity is done within the framework of the Lord's will. And He says He doesn't do those kinds of things unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. What that's telling us is that in ancient history recorded in the Word of God when God brought about a calamity, it was inevitably a judgment, and that judgment had a warning, and the warning would always come from God to the prophets. The prophets would warn the people, and then God would bring His judgment where there was a failure to repent. God is not hiding from His own judgments. God will declare His right as a just and holy God to judge sin and iniquity, and when judgment comes, God takes full responsibility for it. Again, people want to exonerate God from trouble as if somehow that made Him less than holy and pure, when the fact of the matter is His holiness, His absolute purity and righteousness demands justice and judgment. The question is not, why does God allow these things to happen? The question is, why doesn't God allow them to happen more often or even terminally?
In Lamentations, chapter 3, we read in verse 37, who is there who speaks and it comes to pass unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth? Why should any living mortal or any man offer complaint in view of his sins?
What an amazing statement. So you see calamity come to pass. It comes to pass because the Lord commands it.
It is from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth. And why should any living mortal or any man offer complaint in view of his sins? All of us are sinners. We have no right to complain against the holiness of God.
We can't complain. We are sinners. There was a book written by Rabbi Kushner years ago called Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, and he went chapter, after chapter, after chapter trying to discuss why bad things happen to good people. And the book could have been very simple. The title would have been Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? You open the book and it should have said one thing, there are no good people, there are no good people. Why do bad things happen to good people? There are no good people, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Bad things will always happen because there are no good people, we are all sinners. Now in ancient times, as we read earlier from Amos, God would reveal His coming judgment by His prophets. God would reveal His purpose so His people would know what was coming and why it was coming. That happened many times in Scripture. But that's not the case in all of God's judgments, and it's not the case now because there are no real prophets, as Old Testament prophets were. There is no new revelation. God is not revealing things. That is all completed at the end of the book of Revelation in Scripture. So we're looking at the world and we're seeing things happen, but we don't have the prophets as the Old Testament people did. So we can say with Isaiah 45, 15, truly you are a God who hides yourself. We don't get a word from heaven now.
We're not hearing from God as to why this is all happening. That puts us in an interesting situation that puts us in a place very much like a character in the Bible, and that character is Job. Go back to the book of Job with me for a moment. You're going all the way back to the patriarchal period of time with Job, all the way back to the time of Genesis is when Job was living. He's introduced to us in the first chapter as a man in the land of Uz, blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. That's the best could ever be said about anyone, which is to say salvation and sanctification were already operating in the patriarchal period.
And we all know the story. He had great wealth, he had large family, and all of a sudden everything began to go wrong in his life, and he doesn't know why. We know why because in chapter 1 and 2 of Job, Satan comes to God and Satan says to God, hey, does Job fear God for nothing? In other words, the reason Job fears you, the reason he's righteous, the reason he's such a good man, the reason he worships you the way he does, is because you have blessed him so greatly. But put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. Job only worships you, serves you, because you've blessed him. Take away the blessing, he'll curse you.
So this is a test. Will a faithful righteous man be faithful and righteous when he has everything taken away? And the story unfolds from there. God says, I'm going to prove the character of saving faith. I'm going to prove the power of life, spiritual life.
I'm going to prove the power of sanctification. And so God allows Satan to unleash all kinds of horrors on Job. And Job loses everything. His friends come around and give him really bad advice, and he's struggling with all of this. He's struggling because he doesn't understand. He doesn't know about the conversation between God and Satan. God is hidden. The conversation is hidden. He doesn't know why it's happening.
His friends give him wrong answers. They give him good theology in a generic sense, but badly applied and irrelevant in his case. Finally, after hearing bad advice and poor insights and condemnation from his friends that is not legitimate, God speaks. That's in chapter 38 of Job.
You might want to look at that for a moment. And what God does from chapter 38 to 41 is just a barrage of questions that essentially say to Job, you don't even have a right to ask this question. The Lord says, "'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Now gird up your loins like a man, and I'll ask you, and you instruct Me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Where were you,' verse 6, when its bases were sunk? Where were you when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Speaking of the angels, most likely at creation. Where were you when I made the sea? Where were you when I made clouds? Verse 12, have you ever in your life commanded the morning, caused the dawn to know its place?
It just goes on like this. Verse 16, have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Verse 19, where is the way to the dwelling of light and darkness?
Where is its place?" He's asking him questions that say, you're not even entitled to know anything. Who do you think you are to question Me? This is so far above you.
What I do is so far above you. It is so infinitely above you, it makes no sense that you would even question Me. Down in verse 31, he even refers to the fact that God has designed and put in place the constellations and He identifies them. Verse 39, he talks about the animals, and goes into verse 1 of chapter 39, talking about more animals. Talks about animals all the way through chapter 39, chapter 40, verse 1, will the fault finder contend with the Almighty? Let whom who reproves God answer it. Job finally gets the message and says in verse 4, I am insignificant. What can I reply to you?
I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, I will not answer. Even twice, I will add nothing more. Okay, it's too far beyond me.
You couldn't give me an answer that I could even comprehend. God's not done with him. Chapter 41, he starts it all over again.
Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord, speaking of great sea monsters? And he keeps going with that same approach all the way through chapter 41. And Job finally, in chapter 42, says I know you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. What came out of all that? You are sovereign. You are sovereign. I get it. I don't understand.
I get it. This knowledge is hidden. It's too wonderful for me. I don't know it. I can't understand it. And he says in verse 5 of chapter 42, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, and now my eye sees you.
For the first time I see you in a new way, therefore I repent in dust and ashes. Job asked forgiveness for even assuming that he could understand the purposes of God. You don't need to know, Job. Trust me. Trust me. I do. I repent.
I trust you. Knowing the divine mind in all of its infinite complexities is not possible to us. The innumerable, incalculable, infinite complexities and contingencies that function in the mind of God that cause Him to do what He does and the way He does it and where He does it are far beyond our capacity to grasp. God is far too complex for you, and He only lets you know what you need to know. And what you need to know is this, that He is marked by compassion, kindness, grace, mercy, forgiveness, fatherly love and care for His own children.
That's what you need to know, and that's really all you need to know. Trust me. Trust me, God says. What God wants you to know is He is in charge of absolutely everything at a complexity level that is so vastly beyond your comprehension that explaining it would be useless.
But He wants you to know this. It's all according to His will that everything operates. That is to say, He is absolutely sovereign in the world. He is in control, and what He purposes is exactly what comes to pass. And He wants you to know that if you belong to Him, it's all working together for your good. And then there's a third thing He wants you to know, and that is that in the end it is all for His glory. He is doing what He wills, what He purposes in everything. He is accomplishing your good in everything, because He loves you and you're His child, and He is to receive the glory in the end for all of it. So what I'm trying to do, I guess, in a measure is to put you in the place of Job and let you know that God is hiding in this event, and there are no prophets to declare what He's doing.
So what are we supposed to do in response to that? Know this, that everything that is happening is in His will, that everything that happens is going to turn out for good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose, and ultimately for His own glory because all things are by Him and for Him, Romans 11. He doesn't tell us why He does everything. Again, it's too complex.
He doesn't tell us the future because we can't possibly even handle the present trouble, compounded by knowing the world's trouble. God wants us to know this. You're Mine. I love You. I sent My Son to die for You. You're My child. Trust Me.
Trust Me. God is in charge of everything. He's not revealing everything, but He is doing something, and that is He's teaching us to trust Him. He's teaching us to trust Him. We're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His lesson today is titled, Finding Security in a Troubled World. Now, again, today's lesson was preached during the COVID-19 pandemic, which basically caught the whole world off guard. It caused a lot of anxiety for a lot of people, and four years later, the trauma still lingers in the minds of many people. The stress, the worry, the anxiety, these are perennial problems, and even believers are not exempt from the struggle. Right, John?
Well, no. I mean, obviously, we are subject to all the foibles of human weakness, and stress is one of them. But we know where to go for the answer. That is the monumental difference. You know, so many people in this world are, I would say, almost existentially stressed.
It's almost that there's at the end of their possible options. And I think that shows up in the anger and the disappointment and the angst that people have, and ultimately, for many people, suicide and things like that. It isn't that Christians don't feel the issues of life and don't suffer the stresses of life. It is that we know where to go to be relieved. We know where we find strength in the midst of our suffering.
And it's because of our relationship to the Lord, and He provides for us everything we need, including hope, even in the midst of the darkest hour. A number of years ago, I wrote a book called Anxious for Nothing. That's a phrase out of the Bible, be anxious for nothing. And I want to offer a free copy of that to anyone who has never contacted us before. I suppose of the many books that we have distributed over the years, this one would be in the probably the top five of all those books, because anxiety is an issue that we all struggle with, and we live in a troubled world, and it's not getting better. Again, the title Anxious for Nothing, we would like to send it free of charge to anyone who has not contacted our ministry before. It's biblical, it's practical, it features study questions to reinforce what you're learning. It gives you helpful suggestions for prayer, a listing of good Psalms to meditate on. And through the years, this has been one of the most important books that this ministry has ever distributed. And here's what we want to do again. We want to put a free copy of this book in your hands if you've never contacted us before.
Obviously a limited time offer. So connect with us today and request your free copy of Anxious for Nothing. Thanks Jon. Friend, this book is a must-have for anyone who is tempted to worry. Request your copy of Anxious for Nothing, free if you've never contacted us before. Our email address is letters at gty.org, and be sure you include your name and address along with your request for Anxious for Nothing.
Our email address one more time, letters at gty.org. You can also let us know you'd like a copy on our website, that's gty.org, or when you call us at 855-GRACE. Again, Anxious for Nothing is free if you're getting in touch with us for the first time, so call or write or go to gty.org. If you have contacted us before or if you'd like multiple copies to give away, you can purchase Anxious for Nothing for $10.50, and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or shop online at gty.org. Now for Jon MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, or you can watch anytime at gty.org. And be here tomorrow as Jon continues to lay out a biblical blueprint for a life free from worry, bringing you the second half of this practical message, Finding Security in a Troubled World. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
