To convert one sinner from his eternal doom is an event of far greater significance than the deliverance of an entire nation from temporal evil. We're not here to deliver a nation from temporal evil, we're here to say with the apostle Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to anyone who believes, Jew or Gentile. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Let's finish the job. Make America Great Again. A New Way Forward.
Slogans like that are typically based on a simple premise. The government isn't fulfilling its basic responsibilities and only one person, the candidate asking for your vote, can make government work the way it's supposed to and fix what's wrong with the United States. But the question is, will electing the right candidate solve our nation's fundamental problems?
And more important, what are our nation's fundamental problems? And what can you do, if anything, to help bring hope for a doomed nation? Consider those questions with John MacArthur as he brings a never before aired message titled, Hope for a Doomed Nation.
And here's John with a lesson. I have some things on my heart that I want to say with regard to the nation in which we live. And as I think about all that's been sacrificed through the years to give us our freedom, and as we watch those things that we love and those freedoms that have been purchased for us at the price of blood beginning to disappear and things changing dramatically, it's important for us to have a perspective that is biblical and God-honoring. Let me take a look at what is driving this nation's terrible demise, what is causing us to run so fast at the edge of the cliff, kind of a spiritual pathology. What is on display?
Let me give you a dozen things that you'll already recognize. Number one, what we're seeing that mark a doomed culture, that mark a doomed nation. One, fascination with living for pleasure, fascination with living for pleasure. Do I need to explain that, or is this not the most pleasure-mad society in the history of the world? Thrills, cheap thrills, mindless kicks, adventure, danger, entertainment, sports, you name it.
People with too much time without work, without self-discipline, without control, media feeding them a frenzy of entertaining devices by which they can waste their entire lives. The pursuit of pleasure – personal lusts, just feeding the very essence of fallenness. First Timothy 5.6 says, "'But she who gives herself to want and pleasure is dead even while she lives.'" You kill yourself chasing pleasure. It's the death of dignity, it's the death of respect, it's the death of potential, it's the death of achievement, it's the death of refinement, it's the death of individuality, it's the death of development, it's the killing of your life, it's the killing of your future. You've got to get past being endlessly entertained and fulfilling your lusts and your pleasure desires and matter in the world. That's hard for this culture to do, very hard. A second thing that I would mention – I don't need to go beyond what I'm saying.
You understand all this because you see it. Secondly, we have to understand the dominance of selfishness, the dominance of selfishness. The fascination with living for pleasure and the dominance of selfishness. Has there ever been a society as self-centered as this? Has there ever been a society this egotistical, this consumed with its own agenda? Pride and self is elevated and exalted, has been for years and years and years. Psychologists have created this thing called self-esteem.
That is a satanic idea. You're not as important as you think you are. You're far less important than you think you are, and so am I.
So are all of us. You're not better than you think you are, you're worse than you think you are. You are far worse than you think you are, and so am I. In God's eyes, you are inconceivably sinful.
In your own eyes, you're something wonderful. Has there ever been such an egotistical culture? God hates pride. He hates haughty eyes. It destroys love. It destroys relationships, all of them. What is the killer of all relationships?
Pride. Pride kills all relationships. It kills care.
It kills sacrifice. It kills kindness. It kills the supreme virtue of all virtues, humility.
Only humble people love. That's why Proverbs 8 13 says, "'Pride and arrogance I hate,'" says the Lord. Proverbs 11 2 says, "'When pride comes, then comes dishonor.'" It does the opposite.
You notice that? "'When pride comes, then comes dishonor.'" Pride doesn't honor you, it dishonors you. Proverbs 13 10 says, "'Through pride comes strife,'" because it destroys relationships. Proverbs 16 18, "'Pride goes before destruction.'" Proverbs 29 23, "'A man's pride shall bring him low.'" And then it says honor belongs to the humble. James and Peter both said in the New Testament, God exalts the humble and abases the proud. Only humble people love.
Only humble people build meaningful relationships. We have a total society consumed with people chasing their own personal exaltation and elevation. So the sins of loving pleasure and loving self cause disaster. Number three, the evil of materialism, the evil of materialism. In 1 Timothy 6, we're all familiar with this, verses 9 and 10.
I'm just giving you some biblical context to kind of hang these thoughts on. First Timothy 6, 9, "'Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction, for the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.'" Love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. Let me tell you something, you can love it and have very little of it. It's not money that's the source of evil. Money can be the source of good. It's the love of it. Things are more important than people.
You kill people over a parking space. Materialism wants everything and wants to give nothing. Jesus said, "'Man's life does not consist in the things he possesses,'" Luke 12, 15. Jesus said in Mark 8, 36, "'What will the profit of man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What's he going to give in exchange for his soul?'" Sinful people are consumed with pleasure, self, and stuff.
They will even kill for the stuff. The fourth thing that I think is part of the pathology of a culture that is doomed is immorality, immorality, or in our case, amorality, the absence of any morality. First Thessalonians 4 and 5 says that, "'The nations that know not God are driven by lust and passion. The nations that know not God are driven by lust and passion.'" That is part of not knowing God.
You become totally dominated by lust and passion. The legacy of that in our culture is obvious everywhere. This is a corrupt culture morally. It doesn't show up any more clearly than consuming preoccupation with pornography. At every level, in every possible format, in every possible way, delivered by every possible means incessantly and at all times to this culture.
And they consume it faster than it can be propagated. The loss of all moral sense, the shattering of all purity, the loss of all morality, fornication rampant on every level in every direction, infidelity, adultery, homosexuality. Just to remind you that Genesis 19, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality. They were so driven by the passion of homosexuality in Sodom that they tried to rape the angels who came to Lot's house. And in Leviticus 18, 22, and Leviticus 20, 13, it says if people engage in homosexuality, they're to be executed.
That was the Old Testament law. First Corinthians 6 says no homosexual will enter the kingdom of God, along with no adulterer or any other sinner. That is a sin that keeps people out of the kingdom of God. But First Corinthians 6 says, such were some of you, but you're washed, you're sanctified, you're justified. We have to tell those people that sin is a sin that will keep them out of heaven unless they repent, and they can be washed and justified. When you see that kind of thing happening in the culture, you know we're in Romans 1, don't you, that God has given us over to homosexual revolution, men doing what is unseemly with men and receiving in their own bodies the due reward, AIDS, women with women. Romans 1 says that, spell it out.
That's the very evidence of it. A population driven by sexual deviation, perversion, and lust, TV, music, films, every day exacerbates the problem. So these are the things that mark our society, love of pleasure, love of self, love of things, and sexual perversion. Number five, the deadly danger of anger. Anger was once recognized as a sin.
Everybody recognized it as a sin. Just a normal healthy culture recognized that anger had no place, that anger ate up the person who was angry and damaged the relationships of everybody around that person. Self-control used to be something socially valuable. It used to be valuable if you thought something and kept your mouth shut and didn't say it. It didn't all of a sudden become a virtue for you to vent every angry thought you have as if that's some kind of psychologically freeing experience. It isn't itself damaging. Psychologists say anger is healthy.
I've heard it all the time. People have a right to be angry. They have a right to be angry. They have a right to do what they want. They have a right to react the way they react.
They have every right to do that, really. Ephesians 4 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and evil speaking be put away from you with all evil, along with all the rest of the evil. James 1 20, the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God. Ecclesiastes 7 9, anger lives in the heart of a fool. Read Proverbs, all through Proverbs there are Proverbs that warn us against the deadly danger of anger. Anger is the venting of the flesh. The works of the flesh are anger, Galatians 5 19 to 21. Anger destroys. You say, well, what about somebody who treats you unjustly?
Well, Jesus is the model. First Peter 2, when He was reviled, He reviled not again. Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. Following on the heels of that is the deadliness of vengeance, vengeance. You have a culture that loves to feed on vengeance.
This is another dominant sin in our day. It's hailed as a virtue, retaliation, getting back. Chain reactions of evil, you get them back, they get you back, you get them back, they get you back, and that's how life is lived. And you have an amoral, antisocial, destructive, murderous culture, all because of vengeance. Vengeance is in the human heart.
It's in the human heart. We want to get it, we want to get our pound of flesh. We want vengeance when somebody does something wrong. It's in the human heart to take vengeance. Remember this, 1 Thessalonians 4, 6, the Lord is the avenger, the Lord is the avenger.
It's what it says. Vengeance is destructive of the avenger, destructive of the avenger, destructive of the culture, glorified in movies, glorified in video games. We have furious, angry, vengeful, retaliating people filling up this culture, shootings every day. The Bible absolutely forbids this, absolutely forbids it. In Leviticus 19, I'll just read this to you, verse 16, "'You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you're not to act against the life of your neighbor.
I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. You may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, you shall not bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" That's the context for love your neighbor as yourself, not taking vengeance.
How would that change our culture? Massive problem. Number seven in my list, the absence of forgiveness. There's an utter absence of forgiveness, and that kind of goes along with it. Whatever happened to I forgive you, my brother-in-law, Patricia's sister, had a wonderful son in our church and he was working up at a market near here a number of years ago, and a guy came in to rob the market and Tim tried to intervene and shot him dead.
I remember when his dad, Duane, went to the hospital to tell the killer he forgave him and give him the gospel. Number eight, the divisiveness of prejudice, the divisiveness of prejudice. I could say more about that.
I won't. The divisiveness of prejudice. Prejudice is shredding this country. It's a dishonor to God. It's a dishonor to the body of Christ. It's a horrible dishonor to the culture. As Christians, we love everyone all in Christ are one, right?
Neither Jew nor Greek nor male nor female nor bond nor free nor rich nor poor, black or white or brown, or anything like that. We love the way God loves. The divisiveness of prejudice which runs deep in the heart is destructive. Number nine, the seriousness of loss of respect for authority, the seriousness of loss of respect for authority. We have an entire culture that hates all authority, parental authorities, teachers' authorities, police authority, any authority. Undermining respect for authority is a deadly, deadly sin. There are even things that our government does to undermine its own authority and to undermine other government's authority. You don't accomplish anything good when you create distrust of authority. And number ten, the disaster of civil rebellion. Civil rebellion is just collective anger against authority, collective anger against authority.
We're seeing that more often now than I can ever remember. And just two more. Number eleven, the decline in swift and severe punishment, the decline in swift and severe punishment. There's a very interesting verse in Ecclesiastes 8.11. Listen to this. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil. You want to turn criminals loose? Just delay their sentence. Just delay the process. Just delay the consequences.
And if you push the consequences out far enough, you literally encourage them to crime. We're pretty good at that in this society. A desire for weak, impotent, and immoral leaders. A desire for weak, impotent, and immoral leaders. I don't think this country cares about the character of its leaders.
Some do, we do. Proverbs 16, 12, it's an abomination for rulers to commit wicked acts, for a throne is established on righteousness or justice. Proverbs 29, 2, when the wicked rule, people groan. Proverbs 29, 12, if a ruler pays attention to lies, all his ministers become wicked. If a ruler pays attention to lies, all his ministers become wicked.
What is the principle there? You allow lies and you'll attract liars. You're corrupt and you'll be surrounded by more corrupt people. So where are we? What are we facing?
What do we do? Turn to Exodus 20. Just be patient for a few minutes, because I want to bring this to its necessary conclusion. Exodus 20. This is the Ten Commandments. The most important commandment of all has to do with God. I am the Lord your God, verse 2, Exodus 20. I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. No other gods, no idols. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.
Okay? You worship Me and Me alone, Me and Me alone. Or I will be visiting the iniquity of the fathers, plural, the leaders, those in responsible positions. The fathers represent those who lead the society. I will be visiting the iniquity of those leaders on the children, plural, on the third and fourth generations, plural, of those who – notice this – what?
– hate Me. Listen, any other god but the God of Scripture, any god that anybody devises, the God of Islam, the God of Mormonism, the God of Judaism, any other god but the God who is the Trinity, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Scripture, Old Testament anew, the God of the gospel, any other god is an idol. Any other god is an idol. Whether you're an atheist or you worship a false god, that's idolatry. If you're an atheist, you worship yourself. But any other god means you hate the true God.
That's what it says. Those are those who hate Me. And that's what we're seeing in this country, folks. You have to see they hate God. They hate the true God. And Jesus said in John 15, they hate My Father and they hate Me, and they will hate you. We just have to set the record straight.
This is how it is, okay? This society is not your friend. They hate God. They hate Christ. They hate you. This is going to create generational impact to the third and fourth generation. What does that mean?
Please. It doesn't mean when a father sins, his kids pay. No, it's not a father, it's fathers. It's not a child, it's children. It's not a generation, it's generations. What this says is when you have a corrupt generation, it will take three or four generations with the best conditions to change that.
So here it is. You're not going to fix it. Don't try. Neither will your children, neither will your grandchildren, and probably neither will your great-grandchildren. This is your world and their world and the next world and the next world, and it may be the last one.
Jesus may come. But you're not going to change it. So stop trying. You can't change it politically. You can't change it financially.
It's how it is. So what do we do? Well, first of all, remember this. This culture is not going to help you in anything that is God-honoring. Don't look to the culture for any help in your personal holiness. In order for you to be personally holy, you need to separate. This culture offers you nothing.
The less exposure, the better. This raises the stakes in personal holiness and raises the stakes in parenting. They're not going to help the church. They're going to come against us really strong. They're going to come against us maybe with taxation and who knows what, against Christian colleges and those who hold to the things of the Word of God. They're not going to help. The culture is destructive.
It is the enemy of God. Now here's my message. Okay, that was the introduction. Okay, this is it.
Now listen, wake up. Turn to Matthew 5, 43. Okay, let's be like the Jews in Jesus' day.
Matthew 5, 43, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor, your fellow Christian, and what? Hate your enemy. Is that what we do? Is that what we do?
No. What did Jesus say? You don't hate your enemy. I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. Listen to me, you're never more like God than when you love your enemies, because you were one of the enemies God loved. Romans 5, 10, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God, right?
Listen, here's the message. Your enemy is your mission field. Your enemy is your mission field. The world of enemies was God's mission field.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Don't hate the enemy. Love the enemy as God loves the enemy and sent His Son for their salvation. And remember this, to convert a sinner from his eternal doom is an event of far greater significance than the deliverance of an entire nation from temporal evil.
Did you get that? To convert one sinner from his eternal doom is an event of far greater significance than the deliverance of an entire nation from temporal evil. We're not here to deliver a nation from temporal evil. We're here to say with the apostle Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to anyone who believes Jew or Gentile.
So what's our job? Go into the mission field, love them the way God loves them and preach the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, and let the kingdom advance one soul at a time. Amen?
That's John MacArthur, chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. Today's lesson here on Grace to You is called Hope for a Doomed Nation. John, you made a powerful point in the closing moments of your message. You said that the people we're trying to reach are not our enemy.
They are the mission field. In other words, our job is not to try to make a doomed nation more moral. We're not going to change the culture, but we need to strive to rescue people out of this doomed culture. We are in a battle for people's souls.
And if there's anything we need to keep in mind, it's that we need to stay vigilant. I think it's very easy for Christians in a rapidly declining culture to become the enemy of the people who are evil in that culture. And you can sort of justify your anger and hostility toward them because you're upholding righteousness and they're tearing righteousness down. But that's a very, very delicate balance that God requires of you. You have to hate the sin, but you have to love the sinner.
And that's what you meant when you said that they're the mission field. They're not the enemy. The people who are doing everything they can to destroy our culture and our society and make life as unrighteous as possible, while they are the enemies of God, they are the mission field for the church. I want to mention a book titled Stand Firm. Its subtitle is Living in a Post-Christian Culture. This is a book about the spiritual battle that every Christian faces.
In particular, Stand Firm is a primer on how to hold your ground against a culture that is increasingly hostile to the Word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, see the enemies of God as the mission field. The book focuses on what it means to be called to holiness, how to love your neighbor, how to love your enemy.
You're never more like God than when you love your enemy. How to devote yourself to prayer, loving others till it hurts, communicating the truth of the gospel. All those things are part of this book. Again, the book titled Stand Firm will help you respond to the world's hostility with holiness, humility, love, and proclamation of the gospel. It's a hardcover book, 150 pages, affordably priced from grace to you. You can order it now. Do order it.
And thank you, John. Friend, when the world becomes more hostile towards you because of your faith, Stand Firm will show you how to remain steadfast in your convictions. Order a copy when you contact us today. You can order Stand Firm from our website, gty.org, or you can order when you call us at 855-GRACE. The book costs $10 and shipping is free.
Stand Firm. It's a concise battle plan for maintaining your witness in an ungodly culture. Again, you can order a copy at gty.org or call us at 855-GRACE.
And by the way, that number translates to 800-554-7223. Also keep in mind there is a wide range of free Bible study tools available at gty.org. You can download 3,600 sermons. You can listen to Q and A's with John. You can read the Grace to You blog. You can also download an app that gives you access to John's entire sermon archive.
Again, 3,600 total messages wherever you take your mobile device. Look for the free sermons app and much more at our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and then be here next week when John shows you how to keep Jesus at the center of your Christmas celebrations and every day after. John's launching a study titled, The Jesus of Christmas. Don't miss it. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
