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Who Can Be Right With God? Part 1 A

Grace To You / John MacArthur
The Truth Network Radio
January 6, 2025 3:00 am

Who Can Be Right With God? Part 1 A

Grace To You / John MacArthur

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January 6, 2025 3:00 am

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This is the dominant lie, as you know, in the world. The most commonly believed damning truth. It's really the most important question of all.

The ones that you suggested are valid questions. But the most important question is, who can be right with God? That is the question. Because that's the path to eternal life. Several times in the Gospels, in the New Testament, people came to Jesus and said, how can I have eternal life?

You remember the rich young ruler? You remember the lawyer in the Gospel of Luke? And they were asking this question, how can I have eternal life? And then you surely remember Nicodemus in John 3, who, in his heart, wanted to know how to have eternal life. And he knew that, they all knew, that eternal life was made available only to those who were right with God.

You're not going to enter into God's presence forever unless you have a right relationship to God. That is the ultimate question. Who can be right with God? Who can have eternal life? And how does that eternal life become the possession of an unworthy sinner? Well, we're going to answer that question. Who can be right with God?

The question of all questions. And the source for this study is Luke 18, verses 9 to 14, and it's one of those amazing parables of our Lord, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And it poses the question, what kind of person is right with God? What kind of person does God save? What kind of person goes to heaven? What kind of person receives eternal life?

And how can you be that kind of person? We're going to see the fundamental difference between Christianity and every other religion. Don't miss one broadcast on this theme, who can be right with God.

Thanks, John. Friend, if you have questions about how you can be free from the guilt of your sin and be right with God, this study provides clear answers. And if you're already a believer, I think you'll get a fresh perspective on the gospel message that will equip you to share that truth with boldness. So now here's John to begin his study, Who Can Be Right With God? Turn to Luke chapter 18 and look at verses 9 through 14...Luke chapter 18, verses 9 through 14. And he also told this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax gatherer. The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, God, I thank Thee that I'm not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax gatherer.

I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get. But the tax gatherer standing some distance away was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted. As is true of so many of our Lord's stories, they are counterintuitive. But not just counterintuitive, really outrageous, shameful by all existing religious standards. And this is one that fits into the category of an outrageous and shameful story.

For in this story, Jesus describes the unrighteous man as the one who was right with God and the righteous man as the one who was not. This is the reverse of everything the Jews believed, everything their religion at the time of our Lord taught them. It is a shameful story.

It is an outrageous story. It is an idea that has no place in their theology. It is another reason to reject Jesus.

To say that a self-confessed wicked man left the temple ground justified rather than a self-confessed righteous man is to completely overturn religious thinking. But that's exactly what Jesus said. By this parable at this time in Luke's gospel, since the 20th verse of chapter 17, all the way to the end of verse 37 and the first eight verses of chapter 18, He has been talking about the coming of the Lord Jesus and His Kingdom. And basically we have looked at the Kingdom and we have come to understand that the Kingdom is a spiritual Kingdom. That is Christ reigns and rules in the hearts of those who put their trust in Him. He will return one day to establish a literal, physical, material, earthly Kingdom and after that thousand-year Kingdom will establish the new heavens and the new earth which is the eternal Kingdom. He reigns then over a spiritual Kingdom. He will reign over an earthly Kingdom and reign forever over an eternal Kingdom. Those who are in the spiritual Kingdom will be in the earthly Kingdom and in the eternal Kingdom. The first time He came, He came to do the work that made it possible for us to be in His Kingdom, spiritual, millennial and eternal. When He returns, He will come to judge the ungodly and establish that earthly Kingdom and that eternal Kingdom. Now all this talk about the Kingdom then raises a very basic question.

How does one get into this Kingdom? How is one made right with God? How is one reconciled to God? That is the big, big question and that is the question our Lord answers in this simple story. How can a person be right with God?

This is not a new question. This is a question that plagued and haunted the people of the earliest biblical era. Back in the book of Job, written in the patriarchal period, Job chapter 9 verse 1, Job answered in truth, I know that this is so, but how can a man be right with God? How can we be righteous before God? How can we be justified before God?

How can it be? And there are some compelling reasons why the question is not easy to answer. It is not easy to answer because we know for certain that no person, no one of us can on our own achieve this righteousness. And they understood, if they understood the Old Testament at all, that this is a biblical truth. There was no way that a sinner could be righteous on his own, for the Scripture says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And the prophet also said that all our righteousness is as filthy rags. The dilemma then is, if we are sinful and God demands righteousness, how can a man be right with God? How can we be justified?

Here's the story. And verse 14 says, this man went down to his house justified. That is the most important issue that will ever face any human who ever walks on this planet and has a reasonable thought. Who is right with God and how? That's the question.

And the answer is really stunning and shocking. Remember the Jews knew God to be righteous. They knew God to be holy. They knew the book of Leviticus said, be holy for I am holy again and again and again and again and again.

They knew that. And they understood the question of Job, how can a man be right with God? And that question, frankly, in the book of Job comes up on a number of occasions. In the 25th chapter of Job, verse 4, how then can a man be just with God? How can he be clean who is born of woman?

If you're human, you're dirty. If you're human, you're sinful. How can you be right with God? That was the compelling question in the oldest spiritual dialogue recorded in Scripture, the book of Job. And the psalmist, of course, reiterated what they knew very well, Psalm 143 and verse 2, in thy sight no man living is righteous.

Now that's the dilemma. God is absolutely righteous and holy. God says you must be righteous and holy. Be ye holy for I am holy and yet all our righteousness is filthy rags and no living person is righteous.

That's a big problem. That is the dilemma of all dilemmas. That is the issue of all issues that compels every human heart, the answer to which determines every person's everlasting destiny. The word justified, you look at that word as a Christian who probably knows the book of Romans and you say, I understand that word and you give me a speech on forensic righteousness imputed to the sinner through faith in Jesus Christ, and that's exactly correct. But these people hadn't read Romans. How did they understand the word justified?

They understood it exactly the way you understand it. It means to be just. That is guiltless. It means to be right before the judge. That is right before God. The common meaning of this word, dikaiō and even the Hebrew-related word, means to be guiltless. It is to accept someone as righteous, to acquit them, to clear their name so that one stands before God approved and accepted. And that's exactly what our Lord said about this tax gatherer. God accepted him and rejected the Pharisee. Stunning, stunning truth. How can it be?

How can it happen? Well they should have known their Old Testament well enough to know, Genesis 15 says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. They should have known what Paul points out in Romans 4 that Abraham was justified by faith. They also should have known what Isaiah said, that great chapter on the Messiah. Listen to what Isaiah writes. My servant, the righteous one, Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, will justify the many.

How? He will bear their iniquities, Isaiah 53, 11. They should have known that the only way that anybody could be righteous with God would be to be perfectly holy because that's what God demanded throughout the book of Leviticus. And the only way that could happen would be if God imputed His righteousness to them by faith and the only way God could do that is if there was a suitable sacrifice to bear the punishment, the just punishment His Law demanded in place of the sinner.

All the pieces are there throughout the Old Testament. They should have remembered Psalm 51, blessed is the one to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. They should have understood the whole sacrificial system. Every time there was a sacrifice, and they were made every day, every single day, this was a symbol of substitutionary death that the violation of the Law required death and either you die or an innocent substitute dies in your place. All of those sacrifices pointed to the one final perfect Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. It's all there in the Old Testament. They had the bits and pieces. They knew they needed to be right with God.

But how? By the time you get to the life of Jesus, they've missed it all together. They don't even understand that the Messiah must suffer and die. They've lost complete sight of the meaning of the whole sacrificial system.

They don't even understand Isaiah 53 at all. And they have decided what the rest of the world has decided, that you get to God by being good. That's how you get there. You please God, you satisfy God, you achieve reconciliation with God, you get into His Kingdom, you gain heaven by being good, particularly being religiously good. There's no more important question for anybody to answer than the question, how do I reconcile with God? How can I be made right with God?

How can I be acceptable to God? How is it that God will let me in His Kingdom and into His eternal heaven? That's the most compelling question.

And this simple story, isn't it amazing? Simple story, verses 10 through 14, answers that question with amazing profundity, simplicity and clarity. And you might think that that kind of a question could lead to the most convoluted, complex massive discussion of theology and religion ever. Somebody might say, well, you're talking about how to get to God, how to be right with God, how to make it to heaven. There are so many answers to that question.

We'd have to go through every religion on the planet to cover all that ground and we'd have to sort through all that and decide, is it this, is it that, what part of this, what part of that, what are the elements and components that are universal to religion that suit this kind of thing? No, it's not complicated, it's not complex, it's just this simple. You want to know how simple it is?

Here's how simple it is. Either you can make yourself right before God, or you can't. Is that simple enough?

There are no more options than that. Either you can achieve righteousness that satisfies what God requires, or you can't. It's not complicated. You are either the means of your own justification, or you are not.

You either do it actively, or it is done for you passively. That's it. That is the simple division of all religion on the planet. It is either a religion of human achievement, or it is the truth, the religion of divine accomplishment. Every religion that's ever existed in the world apart from the true one revealed in Scripture is a system of human achievement. You get to God by being good, morally good, religiously good, ceremonially, ritually, religiously and morally. The complex of that makes you acceptable to God. And even people who aren't religious say nowadays that they're spiritual and they're really too good for God to send them to hell, that means they're good enough for God to take them into His heaven. I don't care what the name of the religion is, whether it's a massive world religion, or whether it's a private personal little concocted religion which is so popular today. If it has in it the idea that you get to God by being good, it is a damnable lie. In fact, it is a part of the big lie that dominates human history. Let me help you understand that. To give you a New Testament statement of the standard which God requires, you only need to listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5, 48.

Here it comes. Therefore you are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Jesus is reiterating Leviticus, be holy for I am holy. What is the divine standard?

Absolute perfection. The Bible says if you break the law in one place, you've shattered all of it. Jesus went on to even go so far as to say and it isn't just the external law that must be obeyed, it also involves attitudes of the heart so that if you lust, you violated the law of adultery and if you hate, you violated the law of murder, etc., etc. You have to be as perfect as God. That's absolute holiness. Well if that's the standard, what hope is there for anyone?

What hope is there for anyone? And that was the very question on the disciples' mind in Matthew 19, a rich young ruler comes to Jesus and Jesus says to him, you need to keep the law. He says, oh, I've done that.

Kept the law from my youth up, all those things have I kept. And he went away from a conversation with Jesus that started with a question, what do I do to gain eternal life? And he went away without eternal life. He walked away from that conversation because he thought he was perfect.

He didn't understand the standard at all. And their response of the disciples is this, who then can be saved? If a fastidious Pharisee who gets elected to be the leader of the synagogue isn't in the Kingdom, who can be saved? And Jesus responds by saying this, with men it is impossible...impossible.

But with God, a different story, all things are possible. So what you have in this story is a division of the only two religions that exist, the religion of human achievement, self-achievement and the religion of divine accomplishment. And the Pharisee is self-righteous, aloof, contemptuous, standing as near as he can to the holy place without touching any of the people who would contaminate him in his mind. He seeks no mercy, seeks no grace, seeks no forgiveness, wants no sympathy. He is thankful that he is not unrighteous, self-exalted, he goes away unjustified. And the other character is the tax collector...sinful, outcast, object of contempt, guilty, standing far away as he feels so unclean and unwanted, seeking mercy, desperately needing grace, distraught that he is not righteous and he goes home justified. He's humbled, so he ends up being exalted. What a powerful story. Two men, two postures, two prayers, two results.

Now we're going to break it down. Point number one, the comprehensive audience. I want you to see the audience as comprehensive because it covers everybody...everybody outside those in the true faith. It's a very comprehensive audience to whom the story is directed. Verse 9, and he also told this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt.

So immediately you get the target audience here. Now his audience is certain ones...certain ones, literally whoever the ones in the Greek, whoever the ones, very, very broad, anybody and everybody who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. That's everybody who has any inkling at all about going to heaven based on works, religious ones and or moral ones.

But in particular, who did he have in mind? Who were the real leaders of this religion in Israel of trusting in yourself that you were righteous? Pharisees, scribes. Go back to chapter 16 verse 14, the Pharisees, says Jesus, well first of all says Luke, the Pharisees who were lovers of money were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him and He said to them, and here are the words of Jesus, you are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men. You make yourselves righteous in the sight of men but God knows your hearts.

That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. So the Pharisees were the great architects of a system of self-righteousness that dominated life in Israel. They had the greatest influence on the populace because they had power in the local synagogues everywhere which were basically ruled by their theology and even local Pharisees. And so the people believed that trusting in yourself to become righteous was the way that you gained a place in the Kingdom of God and the way you eventually would get to heaven.

The benchmark of their system, self-confidence in one's ability to achieve righteousness by their own power and works. How in the world could they get to that point from the Old Testament? What did they do with the heart being deceitful above all things and desperately wicked? What did they do with that our works are nothing more than filthy rags? What did they do with the fact, Psalm 143 2, that no one can live righteously before God?

What did they do with all of that? Conveniently setting it aside in sinful pride, trusting in their own righteousness. These are the Pharisees, for sure. These are the people who followed the Pharisees. But these are also all the people of all time who have developed any kind of self-styled approach to God in which they believe they have the power to live a life that satisfies God, that somehow they are good enough to be acceptable to God into His Kingdom, into His goodness and into His heaven. These are all the people in the religion of human achievement.

Basically that's how people think in the world. You can go do the man on the street thing, walk up and down the street, start a conversation with anybody and ask somebody, how do you get to heaven? How do you be reconciled to God? How do you please God?

How do you get into the Kingdom of God? Well you need to be good, you need to do good. And if you follow that up, rare that you'll ever find anybody who will say anything other than, I think I'm good enough, I don't do this.

And they can always think of some things they haven't done, qualifying themselves at the lowest level by comparing themselves with other mass murderers and assorted people. This is the dominant lie, as you know, in the world, the most commonly believed damning lie that you can be good enough to go to heaven if you're just moral enough and religious enough. But remember, the standard is absolute perfection. Be holy as I am holy.

You have to be as good as God and God is goodness personified in perfection eternally. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, looking at how Scripture answers the critical question, who can be right with God? That's the title of his current study here on Grace to You.

Keep in mind, if you'd like to review this study, you can download it free of charge in MP3 and transcript format. This would be a great series to go through with an unbeliever or with your midweek Bible study group. To get the series Who Can Be Right With God, go to our website today, our web address, gty.org.

And keep in mind, there's a lot of material from these messages that we don't have time to air on the radio. So to take in these lessons at your own pace, download them from gty.org. And while you're at the website, make sure you download the Grace to You Sermons app if you haven't done it already. The app allows you to hear Grace to You whenever your schedule allows right from the palm of your hand. You can also listen to all of John's sermons from his extensive sermon archive, including popular titles like The Fulfilled Family and The Believer's Armor, right from your tablet or your smartphone. To learn more about the Grace to You Sermons app and to take advantage of the thousands of free resources available to you, visit gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. What would you say if a friend asked how he could be right with God? John MacArthur helps equip you to answer that question with clarity. When he returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-06 05:40:01 / 2025-01-06 05:49:11 / 9

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