LARSON: Well, I'm thankful to be joined by Dr. John MacArthur now, as in God's providence,
it seems that we are one of the first conferences to have been canceled in the Christian community.
And Dr. MacArthur, you were scheduled to be with us.
And so thankful that from Los Angeles you're joining us to really talk through the current
situation and to bring some context to what Christians are facing in this day.
And so maybe just starting from a big picture perspective, what should the church right
now be thinking about this global health crisis?
MACARTHUR: Well, I think we should be the most balanced, the most stable, the most sane,
the most reasonable and rational.
And even beyond that, of course, we have a living hope.
We know where we're headed.
Eternity is settled for us far better to depart and be with Christ so that the worst that
could ever happen to us would be the best it could ever happen.
And I think this is a time for us to make manifest our faith.
And yesterday was Sunday for us and we weren't allowed to have anybody here, but I preached
anyway on Matthew 6 where Jesus three times said, "Stop worrying.
Why are you worrying about your life, your food, your drink, your clothing?
Your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things."
And the Psalms are just full of divine promises that God is our refuge and our strength.
And so this is an opportunity for Christian people who say they trust in the Lord and
they put their faith in Jesus Christ to demonstrate that by being stable and even hopeful and
even joyful.
The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Spirit and this is a great time for that.
This isn't like the Black Death.
I told our people, 75 million people died in the Black Death and one writer said that
the bodies were stacked like lasagna.
Some Italian writer said that, it was a horrific time.
And of course, every year 60 million people die around the world.
Death is not new to us.
So we should be the people who have no fear.
We should be without fear because our trust is in the Lord and this is an opportunity
for us to declare that if you have no hope and if you have fear and all people do when
it comes to controlling their life and particularly their death, this is a great time for us to
be a living testimony of what true faith in the Lord looks like.
LARSON: Many within the church are wondering, is this an opportunity to bring the gospel
of Jesus Christ to the world?
Do you think that there is a window of opportunity here to proclaim the gospel in a way that
perhaps we wouldn't have had an opportunity to do even just a few weeks ago?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, there's absolutely no question about that.
I was thinking back of the times when I've had to deal with some kind of a global or
national problem, going back to a massive earthquake that we had here called the Northridge
earthquake.
People came into our church panicked because this was really a severe earthquake and we
were able to address that.
There was what were called the Watts riots.
You may remember those that happened here in LA, and we addressed the evil of mankind
and went to the gospel.
When the Gulf War broke out, I did a series on what the Bible says about war and how fragile
life is.
And then maybe the big one was 9/11 and I ended up not only preaching a message on that,
but before I knew it, I was on the Larry King Show and the question asked, what is the lesson
of all of this?
And I said, "The lesson is, you're not in control of your death.
It could happen any time and you need to be ready."
And we were able to give the gospel on CNN and it kept going and going.
So absolutely, I think the fear of death is real and it's legitimate if you have no hope.
If you're just wishing for the best after you die and you're not in control of your
death, that's a terrifying reality.
So this is a time for us to speak of the gospel and the security we have in Christ and the
eternal life that He promises those who put their trust in Him.
This is a great gospel opportunity.
And even though it's not the kind of plague where, you know, millions and millions of
people are going to die, it still brings up the issue of the fact that you're not in control
of your life and you could be one who dies in this situation and that specter hangs over
people's head.
This is a perfect opportunity for us to declare the gospel.
LARSON: In your recent message that you gave at the Shepherd's Conference from Philippians,
you talked about unity in the church and the need for the church to be really seen as a
place of joy.
And certainly, joy now in the midst of suffering and this trial that is upon us, how should
the church come together to be able to meet the needs of our neighbors?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, this is a great follow-up question to what I was just saying.
This is when we need to show the joy in the Holy Spirit that Paul talks about in Romans
14.
This is when we need to show the peace that passes all understanding in our hearts because
we know we're locked into an eternal redemption and we have an eternal inheritance laid up
for us in heaven.
And this is the time for Christians to have joy, to demonstrate peace, to declare their
faith.
And also, and I've been thinking a lot about this, in fact, this was the message I would
have given at the conference, that we need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I think for many people, they think of their responsibility to witness, to give the gospel
as kind of a confrontation and it can be a little bit, I don't know, off-putting that
you're going to confront somebody.
And you see examples of evangelism where you go to somebody and you nail them to the law
and you start an argument and a debate.
But when you go to the Scripture, it's very different.
We're not called by the Great Commission to have some kind of an argument or even some
kind of evidentiary presentation with the gospel.
We're called to proclaim the gospel.
This goes back even to the Old Testament.
"Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all people."
I think this is the time for us not to decide whether we can win the argument with a nonbeliever,
but to take the opportunity to declare the gospel.
You know, there's a verb in the New Testament that's used many, many times, kērussō.
It's translated a number of different ways, but it basically means "to herald."
Without newspapers, authorities would send a herald into town and he would declare a
message from the authorities to the people.
That's how we need to present the gospel.
It isn't that we're looking for some kind of argument or debate.
You just herald the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And in Acts 13, I think it's so interesting.
That's what they did.
They declared the gospel and it says in the next verse, "And as many as were appointed
unto eternal life believed."
LARSON: So it sounds like you're saying just as preachers walk into the pulpit, depending
if they're able to gather by livestream or just in smaller communities to just keep on
keeping on?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, and declare the gospel.
Just declare that God is God and men are sinners and Christ has provided the sacrifice to allow
God to be just and the justifier of sinners and just give the gospel, declare it.
It doesn't have to be an argument or a debate.
And I think, again, the declaration of the gospel is what we do.
We declare the gospel, we proclaim the gospel and let the Holy Spirit take that and do what
He will as He has ordained.
LARSON: The theme of our conference was, "Made in the Image of God," and as it relates even
to this current situation, what do we need to be communicating about the dignity of who
humanity is in light of being made in the image of God?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, obviously that is completely lost on our culture.
A culture that murders babies wouldn't have any adequate or accurate assessment of the
value of human life.
It's an oddity, isn't it, Chris, that they're advocating abortion at almost ramped up prior
to this coming election.
At the same time, they're trying to save old people from the flu.
There's such a confused understanding of human dignity and the image of God.
Again, this is the opportunity for believers to declare the truth.
And I would play off of that and say, look, everybody is in a panic that all people might
die, but don't seem to be disturbed to slaughter babies in the womb.
What is this?
If human life has any value at all, you would think they would grant more value to that
beginning life than that at the very end of life, but this is the confusion of a godless
culture.
So I think we would start by reiterating the dignity of life and remind people that there's
something innate in us that understands that.
And that's why we see something like this virus, even though it's not lethal at a high
percentage.
The thought that people might die disturbs us.
Why doesn't it disturb us that they're being slaughtered in the womb?
I think this is an opportunity for us to make the connection.
LARSON: And so as God's people who are being remade in the image of Christ, how should
this idea of being made in God's image and this renewal that comes by the working of
the gospel and the Spirit's application of that in our life?
How should that motivate us to live a holy life?
MACARTHUR: Well, look, that is the motivation.
The motivation for us to live a holy life is that Christ is in us and we are in Christ.
There's no higher motivation than that.
If we're motivated by anything other than the honor of Christ and the glory of God,
that's a secondary or tertiary motivation.
Everything should be for the love of the Lord.
Everything should be for the honor of the Lord.
Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory
of God.
All things are by Him, all things are for Him.
The end of all things, even evangelism, it says in John and Romans, is for the sake of
the name, for the glory of the name of the Lord.
So I think we have to understand that God is having justified us and transformed us
and begun the process of sanctification, God is conforming us to the image of His Son by
the Holy Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:18.
Everything that comes our way, by the way, even this kind of thing as James would say,
"Count it all joy when you fall into various trials because they have a perfecting work."
This is all part for the believer of the conditions in life that maybe we wouldn't choose, but
that God uses as part of our perfection, part of our move toward Christlikeness.
So I think we embrace these things.
I can go back in my pastoral ministry, and I've said this to our people many times, that
most difficult personal times in my life, whether it was an illness, or whether it was
a disaster or whatever it was, the most difficult times in my life personally have been the
times when there is the most evident expression of the power and the presence of the Lord.
So, these are the best of times.
I even tell pastors, embrace trouble, embrace tribulation because this is God doing best
work in your heart and drawing you near to him.
And I think believers in this hour need to look at this as God perfecting them.
God may be trimming off some unnecessary things, maybe lessening their preoccupation with what
is temporal because it is so fragile and so temporary.
So the Lord is perfecting you, if you're His child.
Embrace the trouble and find in that trouble the hand of the Lord moving you more toward
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And again, one of the things that is going to become very fresh to us is the idea that
we're not in control of all the elements of our lives and we can hold a lot of things
much more lightly than we do.
We hold sometimes a death grip on temporal things.
This is a good time to reassess that.
LARSON: As you know, your good friend, Dr. Sproul was known for saying that there's no
maverick molecule.
And considering the doctrine of providence, we can certainly modify that to say that there's
no maverick virus.
What is the doctrine of providence and how can that be a comfort to Christians in this
time?
MACARTHUR: I like to compare the doctrine of providence to miracles.
A miracle is when God suspends natural law to do something outside of natural law and
without natural law and against the grain of natural law.
That's a miracle.
Walking on water, whatever it is, raising dead people, whatever our Lord did.
That suspends natural law and supernaturally invades time and space and acts in a divine
way that has no human explanation.
Providence in my mind, is a greater miracle than a miracle because it is God accomplishing
His own ends and His own purposes not by suspending natural law, but by taking all the elements
of natural law and blending them together in a masterful way that He achieves His purpose
but never interrupts what is the natural and normal course of things.
This is providence.
It is God not suspending circumstances and acting.
It is God taking all the contingencies, all the actors, and all their activities, and
all their thoughts and words, and somehow out of all of that, pulling it together to
create exactly what He wills to do.
That is a far more massive miracle than just suspending natural law and acting.
And I look at my life and I know you do, Chris, as well and I know R.C. did.
Every day, I see that.
Every day of my life is a day full of providence and it's a different providence every day.
It's something, "Wow, how did that happen?
Whatever made those circumstances come together to bring it to this point?"
So we live in...I think the most thrilling thing about the Christian life is providence.
Just seeing it unfold day in and day out and if you're in tune with the Lord and in tune
with His Word, you're really seeing it unfold and you see God at work in ways that have
no human explanation.
LARSON: Do you have some sense that maybe now is one of the most exciting times to be
alive as a Christian?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, I think for a number of reasons, because particularly in this flu issue, it's
just a reminder to people that they're not in control.
They are not in control of their life and they are not in control of their death.
There are forces and powers outside of them and actually inside of them that have powers
that they can't touch and they can't interrupt.
This is a perfect opportunity to speak to them about eternity, about eternal life, about
the forgiveness of sin, about heaven and about hell and about eternal punishment.
Anytime the culture's fear level is elevated, this is when Christians want to stand up and
as I said earlier, be joyful, full of peace, full of faith, happy, thankful, grateful,
anticipating that it would be far better to depart and be with Christ, but He wants us
to stay so we can declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all people.
So yeah, I think this is the elevated time for Christians to show their trust in the
Lord and to take advantage of the opportunity to declare the gospel of salvation.
LARSON: We sure our thankful for you and for the ministry God has entrusted to you.
And may the Lord continue to protect you and bless the gospel as it goes forth from Grace
Community Church and through your various affiliated ministries.
And you've been such a friend to us at Ligonier over the years and we look forward to, Lord
willing, seeing you maybe next year at our national conference.
MACARTHUR: Well, I love all of you guys and ladies and say hi to Vesta for me as well
in a special way.
But we love you very much at Ligonier and we feel our hearts are knit together in the
gospel cause.
Thanks for being a faithful partner to us.
LARSON: Thank you so much.