SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/20/2016
9:28 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction
to John 3:11-21
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 3:11-21
Message of
the verses: “11 “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of
what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our
testimony. 12 “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will
you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13
"No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven:
the Son of Man. 14 "As Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
15 so that whoever believes will in Him
have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal
life. 17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but
that the world might be saved through Him. 18 “He who believes in Him is not
judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “This is the judgment,
that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than
the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the
Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21
“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be
manifested as having been wrought in God.’”
As I was preparing to look at these verses I have
done what I normally have done in my study of the New Testament, and that is to
listen to at least one sermon by John MacArthur, and most of the time listen to
two sermons and then look at his commentary along with the commentary of Warren
Wiersbe to help me to understand what the verses that I am studying mean. Last night I listened to a sermon by John
MacArthur on the introduction to this section and it has turned out to be one
of the most informative sermons that I have ever listened to on a subject that
has caused much controversy to believers throughout the church age. The best way that I can explain what we will
be looking at is to talk about two different men who have brought forth their
views on the subject at hand. The
following is a quote from Wikipedia: “Arminianism is based on theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus
Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as the Remonstrants.” Next we look at another quote from
Wikipedia: “Calvinism (also called the Reformed tradition, Reformed
Christianity or the Reformed faith) is a major branch of Protestantism that
follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice of John
Calvin and other Reformation-era theologians.” There are
people who are in both camps of these men and I have been in one or the other
at different times of my walk with the Lord.
For many years I have followed the Calvinist view and I still believe
that it is true, but over the past several years I have begun to believe both
of these views as both are taught in the Scriptures. In our study of John 3:1-10 we see the
Calvinist view and in verses 11-21 we see the Armenian view, both are true, and
this is the conclusion that I have come up with, especially after listening to
this sermon by John MacArthur on this subject.
He does not mention either man’s name in the sermon, but what they both
believed comes out in this sermon and as he says in the sermon it is important,
in fact most important that we understand this as we work our way through the
gospel of John. Here is the point that
we need to understand, and the point is that we will not understand it; however
we need to know it and believe it. I
know that this sounds strange but because we are human, we will never nor do we
have the ability to understand what the Bible teaches about this so we just
have to accept it as being truth. He
spends almost an hour in this sermon to talk about this subject and I will not
quote all of what he says, but will quote several different sections to help us
understand what we cannot understand. Sounds strange I know but there are many
things in the Word of God that sound strange that we as humans cannot
understand. MacArthur entitles his
message “Twin Truths: God’s Sovereignty
and Man’s Responsibility.”
“Now if there’s any one word that jumped off the
page as I was reading that, it had to be the word “believe” because it appears
seven times. In the first ten verses, we notice that the term “born again”
appeared five times—“born again, born from above,” speaking of that divine,
supernatural, sovereign, miraculous, gracious work of regeneration done by God.
That was the theme of 1 to 10, the new birth, regeneration. The theme here is
faith, believing. And so we have identified this message this morning as “Sola
Fide,” Latin for “faith alone.
“Now why do I choose to use Latin to title a
message? Because that is a classic term used to describe the doctrine that is
taught in verses 11 to 21, going all the way back to the Reformation. If you go
back to the sixteenth, seventeenth century when there was a clarification of
the gospel, when the Reformation happened, there were five solas that
the Reformers identified. Those five solas became the identifying
benchmarks of the Reformation, and they are really the solas on which
Protestantism is founded and a true understanding of the gospel.
“The Reformers came up with, first of all, sola
Scriptura as over against the Roman Catholic Church. They affirmed that
there’s only one divine revelation, Scripture alone, sola scriptura. Not
what is stated ex cathedra by the pope, not the product of church
councils, not the collective magisterium of the Roman Catholic tradition—those
are not divine, inspired, and authoritative revelations. Sola Scriptura,
and then they came to sola Christus. Mary is not a co-redemptrix, only
Christ. Christ alone, the only savior.
“Salvation is not by grace and works, it is by
grace alone—sola gratia, sola gratia. And it is appropriated not by
works or any effort of man, but sola fide, “by faith alone” and the
final sola, soli Deo gloria, “the glory of God alone.” So those solas
define the Reformation and when you read any Reformation literature, you’re
going to be running into the solas. In fact, through the years, many
times I have spoken on these subjects at conferences designed really to give
the solas, and a number of speakers would come in and address sola
Scriptura, sola Christus, sola gratia, sola fide, or soli Deo gloria.
Great, great themes.
“So we’re looking at sola fide, the aspect
of salvation that declares that one is saved by faith alone, not by faith and
works, for by grace are you saved through faith, it is not of works. That’s
Ephesians 2:8 and 9. It is not of works. It is by faith alone. Or Romans 3, “No
one is justified by behavior, by the deeds of the Law.” Or Romans 4, “Abraham
is justified by faith and not by works.” Or Romans 10, “One is saved by
believing in the resurrection of Christ and acknowledging His Lordship.” The
Word of God is crystal clear on that. I read earlier from Hebrews 10 an Old
Testament statement, “The just shall live by faith.” That is to say,
justification comes by faith and faith alone. And we all know something of the
history of that. That was the great discovery that Martin Luther made that
launched the Reformation. And he was kind of the trigger point to get it
rolling, and it roared against the Roman Catholic Church and Protestantism,
named as a protest against Catholicism, was born and the true gospel was
recovered. Salvation comes by faith alone, not by faith plus works—by faith
alone.
“That is what John is saying in verses 11 to 21.
He is telling Nicodemus and beyond Nicodemus using those plural pronouns, “I
say to all of you,” that is to anybody else who was standing there with
Nicodemus, including His own disciples, “And I say to all who will ever read
this that you will be saved only by faith.” Verse 15, “Whoever believes will
have eternal life.” Verse 16, “Whoever believes will not perish but have
eternal life.” Verse 18, “He who believes is not judged.” It is about
believing. It is about faith and faith alone.
“This is consistent with John’s purpose. If you
remember, John gave his purpose at the end of his letter, John 20:31, “These
have been written,” meaning the entire letter, the entire gospel, “These have
been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing you may have life in His name.” John consistently says
eternal life, that is, the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God. The hope
of heaven comes to those who believe. It is by faith alone.
“Now what is so fascinating about this is the fact
that it comes on the heels of verses 1 to 10. Just think about this. Jesus is
talking to a non-believer. He’s talking to a man who is in a defective,
heretical, apostate religion. He is desiring to bring that man to a knowledge
of the truth and consequently He says to him three times in this conversation,
down through verse 11, “Truly, truly,” which is a way of saying, “In contrast
to all the error that fills your mind, error which you have learned and then
taught as the teacher in Israel, “I want to tell you the truth. And the
first truth I want you to understand is that salvation is a divine work that
God does from heaven down, that doesn’t depend on you.” We saw that. It’s
absolutely crystal clear in verses 1 to 10.
“And then without any explanation, without any
transition, our Lord takes the next part of the conversation, turns it into a
monologue and says this, “Anyone can be saved who believes,” and explains that
in these verses. Anyone can be saved who believes. So on the one hand you have
the doctrine of divine sovereignty. On the other hand you have the doctrine of
human faith, human belief, or human responsibility. There are warnings that I
just read you. If you don’t believe, you’ll be condemned. If you don’t believe,
you’ll be judged, which means that if you don’t believe, you’re responsible for
your unbelief, you will be held guilty, and you will be punished. This is human
responsibility. Consequently you need to believe. You need to believe and in
believing in the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, you will not perish; you
will have eternal life. So here is human responsibility, both negatively and
positively. You will bear the full weight of judgment if you refuse to believe.
On the other hand, if you will believe, eternal life waits for you no matter
who you are.
“So you have then as clear a presentation of
sovereign salvation in verses 1 to 10 as anywhere in Scripture, and right
against it you have a clear presentation of human responsibility. And the
question that if I don’t answer today, you will be asking in every verse, is
how do those two things fit together? I’ve done questions and answers through
the years in every place I’ve ever gone in the world, and every time there is
an open question and answer session, I am asked this question: “How can
salvation be solely a work of God and me be held responsible for believing or
not believing? How can those two go together?”
“Now I want to say this to you, first of all. Most
people in doing evangelism would avoid that question all together, assuming
that Christians who have been Christians for a long time don’t even like to
face that question. They would do everything they could to keep a non-believer
in the dark about it, and they would be doing exactly the opposite of what
Jesus did. Jesus is talking to a non-believer and He presents to him the twin
parallel truths of divine sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility,
and He does it at the very beginning of the conversation. This is a work of
God, solely a work of God, but
you will be held responsible if you do not believe, and you are called to believe
and eternal life awaits you if you will believe. Those are twin truths that run
parallel.
“May I tell you? They will always run parallel.
They will always run parallel. They will never come together. They will never intersect. They
will never be diminished; legitimately, they are what they are. The fact that you don’t
understand how they go together only proves that you’re less than you should
be. It doesn’t say anything about God. Your inability to harmonize those things
is a reflection of your fallenness, my fallenness. People ask me all the time, “How
do you harmonize those?” And my answer is, “I don’t. I can’t.” They can’t be harmonized in the
human mind. But realize this, you are a puny mind and so am I, and collectively
we are puny compared to the infinite, vast, limitless mind of God. All I can
tell you is that in the Word of God, these truths run parallel. And the
answer is to believe them both with all your heart. And the one, divine
sovereignty, will inform your worship and the other, human responsibility, will
motivate your evangelism.
“So how are we to understand these things? Well,
we’re going to get into the text and I’m going to show you the condition of
unbelief, the commendation of belief, and the condemnation of unbelief, but we’ll leave that for next time.
I want to talk about this particular issue ’cause, as I said, if I don’t, in
every verse you’re going to have this dilemma in your mind about how does this
work? How could we be saying these things about you must believe, if you
believe you can be saved, and make that square with what we already know about
divine sovereignty in salvation. How do those things come together? They don’t. I say it again, they are
parallel truths, they are both true. I’ve been around a long time and I
have seen every imaginable, every conceivable effort to harmonize those things
done by people, well-intentioned people, very gifted people, well-known
preachers, theologians, writers, commentators who tried to harmonize it. Anybody whoever tries to
harmonize those two things destroys one or the other of them, or both of them.
You can’t change them, you can’t tamper with them. You must be content to
believe them both.
“Now how can I help you to deal with that? I can’t
harmonize it. I can’t bring it all together. I can’t solve your dilemma. I
can’t answer the apparent paradox. So what am I left with? I want to make you comfortable with your inability not to
get it. Okay? That’s my objective, okay? I just want you to be completely happy that you
don’t get it. Okay? Just put you to rest, stop fighting that. That’s where
we’re going today. I want you to be comfortable with the fact that, wow, you
just might not understand something. I know that’s a big pill to swallow
because of human pride, but get over it and be content not to get it.
“Now I want you to understand that when the Bible
deals with these things, it doesn’t explain itself. It isn’t self-conscious.
You don’t read—I know this is really tough to get—you don’t have caveats like
that. You don’t have underlying statements. You don’t have efforts to make
explanations. These things are stated in Scripture as parallel realities and
never really explained or harmonized because they both exist. And the fact that
we can’t understand them leaves us with one option, and that is to believe them
both and be content with that.”
From this point on MacArthur gives examples of
these truths from different sections of Scripture and I will only copy one of
them as I think the first one that he gives is very informative for us as we
look at this difficult truth that as he says we are to be made more comfortable
with.
“Let me give you a couple of illustrations to help
you with your comfort. Turn to Isaiah 10, and this might seem a bit of a
different angle on this but I want you to show, to be able to see how God shows
us these things in maybe surprising ways.
“God has a will. We know that. God will do His will, or
whatever the Lord wills, He does; whatever He purposes, He brings to pass.
The will of the Lord cannot be thwarted. He is absolutely sovereign. He does
what He wills in every life. He does what He wills among men. He does what He
wills in the world. He brings His own purposes to pass. That aspect of the sovereignty of God is clearly
revealed all over Scripture.
“But here’s a very interesting illustration of how
that goes together with responsibility. In the tenth chapter of Isaiah, God
introduces Assyria, the nation of Assyria, the people of Assyria. And he
introduces that pagan, idolatrous nation in a very interesting way. Verse 5,
Isaiah 10, “Woe to Assyria.” Okay, a judgment is coming on Assyria, a judgment
from God: “Woe.” “Woe” is
an onomatopoetic Hebrew term. We say, “Woe” in English. It actually in
Hebrew, oyeeyaa,; it’s
that kind of groan. That’s why I mean onomatopoetic; that’s a word that
sounds like its meaning. So it’s a word of terrible distress that signifies
destruction and judgment. God
is going to destroy Assyria. God is going to bring divine judgment on Assyria.
“Then from there we read, “The rod of My anger and
the staff in whose hands is My indignation.” God says I’m going to judge Assyria, and then He
identifies Assyria as the rod of His anger and the staff of His indignation.
In other words, Assyria is
a weapon in the hands of God. Assyria...God is picking up Assyria like a weapon
to use Assyria to unleash His wrath.
“On whom? Verse 6, “I send it against a godless
nation and commission it against the people of My fury.” That’s a sad designation because
He’s talking about Israel. God, and it happened in history, picked up
Assyria and sent Assyria as a destroyer against an apostate idolatrous Israel.
God says, “I am going to pick up Assyria, the rod of My anger, the staff of My
wrath, My indignation, and I’m going to send it against a godless nation,
against Israel.” And that’s what He did. Assyria was God’s tool. You know the
story of the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom in 722—took them
captive, massacred them, and they never returned from captivity; the northern
part of the divided kingdom. Assyria was the weapon. And He says in verse 6,
“To capture booty, to seize plunder, to trample them down like mud in the
streets,” and that is exactly what happened.
“Then you come to verse 7, most interesting. “Yet,
it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.” I’m going to use Assyria to do
this and this is not Assyria’s plan. This is not what Assyria is
choosing, this is what I am choosing for Assyria to do. This is not Assyria’s
intent. This is not its plan. Rather, it has its purpose—to destroy and cut off
many nations.
“Assyria is targeting all kinds of nations and
their names in the next verse, verse 9, that identify some of those. Assyria
has its plan, but I have My plan, and I without their planning it, or intending
to do it, I’m going to pick them up and use them as My weapon.
“Well, this is amazing. Assyria has no intention of doing this. God
literally, sovereignty picks them up, drives them at Israel to accomplish His
will, and then He says in verse 5, “Woe to Assyria.” Woe to Assyria, a nation
to be destroyed for doing something they didn’t choose to do, doing something
they didn’t plan to do, doing something that was not their intention to do.
“Assyria had its own plans. God had different
plans. But Assyria will be destroyed. Verse 12, “It will be when the Lord has
completed all His work on Mount Zion, representing Israel and Jerusalem, He
will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria
and the pomp of his haughtiness.’” And then He goes on to quote what the king
of Assyria said when he became proud and launched against Israel. God says,
“I’m going to destroy him.”
“Verse 16, “I’m going to send wasting disease.
Under His glory a fire of kindle like a burning flame. The light of Israel will
become a fire, his Holy One a flame and burn and devour his thorns and briars
in a single day. He will destroy the glory of his forest and fruitful garden,
soul, and body as when a sick man wastes away,” etc. This is an amazing juxtaposing. God punishes a
nation for doing what God picked them up and made them do. There’s no explanation. There’s no way to harmonize
those things. Full responsibility for pride fell on the king of Assyria.
Full responsibility for evil intention and massacre fell on Assyria. Even
though they were acting by divine decree, they bore full responsibility for
what they did. This again
is an illustration of those parallel realities: human responsibility and divine
sovereignty. And they will always run parallel, and they will always
have to be understood that way. Sinners bear the full weight of responsibility
for their acts of defiance against God, even when God is using them to
accomplish His purposes. And
yet all things are decreed and determined by God as to their final end.”
As mentioned there are other examples that he
gives in this sermon, but we will not go into them at this point. When we get to John chapter six we will see
one of his other examples.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “The Brook Kidron” (2 Chronicles 29:16).
Today’s Bible question: “Whom did Eli accuse of being drunk?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/20/2016 10:25 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment