I stayed home from church on Sunday and decided to watch sermons (and birds, through the window) while doing weights and then cardio on my recumbent bike. I wanted to hear a good sermon on the Beatitudes, so I started with John MacArthur and moved on to Sinclair Ferguson. I thought it might be worth making a post about it, because it’s an important point.
So, to start with, I will say that I don’t have an ordinary living room like most hoomans, with, like, “furniture”. I have a chin-up / dip station, a flat/incline/decline bench, two adjustable dumbbells, a folding floor mat, a recumbent bike, and a TV hooked up to a laptop for streaming. My living room is just for working out, and watching streaming videos. Usually, it’s about men’s issues like Chisha Zed and Emily King, wargame gameplay like Example of Play and Taff in Exile, or sermons.
So, I started out with coffee and a fiber smoothie (e-mail me for recipe), and then this sermon from John MacArthur:
MacArthur says:
The third reason we ought to study the Sermon on the Mount is that it’s the only path to true happiness for Christians. If you want to be truly happy and filled with the Spirit, you don’t chase mystical experiences, pursue elusive dreams, or hop from meeting to meeting trying to catch something in the air. Instead, to know happiness, blessedness, bliss, joy, and gladness, you simply study the Sermon on the Mount and put it into practice. Additionally, I believe we should study it because it’s the most powerful tool for evangelism. Living out the Sermon on the Mount will astonish the world—it’s the greatest evangelistic tool there is, as this kind of life transforms and draws others to Christ.
I disagree with John MacArthur here. Christians should use the method of evangelism that Jesus used, which is to present evidence to non-believers.
Here is a great article by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason, and he looks through the Bible to see how people in the Bible evangelize.
Koukl starts with the actions of Moses in the Exodus:
Note the pattern: a powerful evidence (miracles, in this case), giving the people knowledge of God, in Whom they then placed their faith. Knowledge—some level of certainty—went before belief in each of these cases.
Then Koukl goes on to the New Testament:
Jesus gives us the same lesson we find in Exodus. He proves something that can’t be seen—the forgiveness of sins—with evidence that can be seen—a dramatic healing. Jesus heals “in order that you may know.” Once again, the concrete evidence allows the doubters to know the truth so they can then trust in the forgiveness Christ could give.
It’s easier for a pastor to say to people in the pews that they don’t have to study any evidence to evangelize. Then there’s no work for them to do, and people like to hear that message. People love testimonies and changed lives, because it’s easy.
One problem with this approach is that people in all different religions have testimonies and changed lives. Mormons have that. Even atheists can tell you that atheism improved their happiness. So that’s not going to work. But the bigger problem is what Greg said: the testimony / changed life approach is not Biblical. The use of evidence is Biblical. And we have loads of evidence available.
Here is a list of evidences that a mature Christian should be able to say SOMETHING about:
- origin of the universe
- fine-tuning of the initial conditions for permitting life
- origin of life (building blocks AND information)
- molecular machines
- sudden infusions of information in the fossil record
- habitability
- scientific evidence that the mind is not the brain
- the moral argument
- a good argument from prophecy, like Psalm 22
- a case for the reliability of the gospels
- a case for the resurrection based on evidence accepted by a wide range of Christian and non-Christian scholars
- a case for the archaeological accuracy of the Bible
And so on! There’s more, but I want to get to Scottish pastor Sinclair Ferguson.
I feel I should say that my dear departed best friend and wise advisor Murdina would love that I am listening to her beloved Scottish pastors. I even know how to translate Scottish rubbish to real English. “Warrum” means “warm”. “Girrul” means “girl”. “Worruld” means “world”. “Churruch” is “church”. Etc. Etc.
Anyway, here’s Sinclair Ferguson’s sermon:
At 8:28, Sinclair Ferguson says:
The Beatitudes describe a countercultural transformation that reflects the beauty of Jesus in our lives, but this transformation often leads to conflict and persecution in a world that opposes such values. Jesus emphasizes this in a postscript to the Beatitudes, warning that this new way of life will bring believers into opposition with the world, resulting in suffering.
This reality deeply impacted the Apostle Peter, who initially struggled with the idea of a Christian life marked by persecution, longing for a Christ without a cross. Yet, by the end of his life, in his first letter, Peter encourages Christians facing trials, saying, “Do not be surprised by the fiery trial that is coming upon you, as though something strange were happening to you.” He came to understand that belonging to Jesus Christ and His kingdom naturally invites the same opposition Jesus faced, marking a defining characteristic of the citizens of God’s kingdom.
This is a much more accurate and realistic statement of what will happen to you if you start taking discipleship to the Lord Jesus seriously.
An authentic Christian life is not going to be marked by “happiness” as the world understands it. On the contrary, Christians are not only vulnerable to ordinary suffering, but they also will face social disapproval and even persecution for following Jesus. That’s the normal Christian life. This should NOT be surprising for followers of Jesus. We should expect to experience the same loss and persecution that Jesus experienced.
In fact, staying faithful through suffering or privation is more likely to impress non-Christians.
The only way that the normal Christian life is ever going to make you happy is if you rejoice at experiencing the same sort of sadness that your Boss did. Like if your reputation at work suffers because you disagree with same-sex marriage. The only happy thing about it is that you can look back on your loss with Boss, and give him a fist-bump. You were faithful, and it cost you something to do it.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I agree with your general thesis regarding the cost of discipleship, but I think you’re cherry-picking MacArthur here. He wrote an entire book, “The Gospel According to Jesus,” that destroys the watered down antinomianism present in modern day “churches.” He very effectively deals with the cost of discipleship, more or less implying that if there is no cost of discipleship in a Christian’s life, especially in this day and age, then we should question the disciple. He didn’t go quite that far, but I do.
In fact, the book was so compelling that many highly respected seminarian professors accused MacArthur of trying to establish “Lordship salvation.” These were the type of academics who maintained, with vigor, that a person could be regenerated by Christ yet show not one fruit of regeneration, even continue to live completely carnal lives. This false belief has seeped into the evan-jellyfish “churches” so much in the past 60 years that they have become a joke unto themselves.
The reason that the overwhelming majority of “pastors” today won’t preach on child sacrifice in the womb, radical homo-fascism, and trans-mutilating children is because they don’t want to incur a cost of discipleship. They love their collection plates more than they love Jesus and His precious little ones. They know that if they preached on these topics, they would find out just how incredibly small their “churches” really are. Of course, the people who remained in their churches (if they preached soundly) would bear the actual fruits of regeneration instead of country club churchianity.
Anyway, MacArthur has an entire body of work addressing the Beautitudes and the cost of discipleship. And he has been more than clear in his rejection of the modern day “Savior without a Lord” thinking, as well as the false “gospel” of catholicism. He certainly accumulated his share of enemies.
I do highly recommend “The Gospel According to Jesus.” When I was struggling to understand why there were so few Christians at the child sacrifice centers, that book really explained to me the false beliefs that had crept into Western churchianity in the past half century or so. I’ve now come to believe that the so-called “churches” of the West might very well be the biggest mission field there is today.
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I read that exact book! It is in the “What I Am Reading” section of the blog. All I can do is respond to what he said in the sermon.
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Yeah, not all of his sermons are great.
But, I think that we should consider his entire body of work. For instance, in that book, MacArthur emphasizes that the Sermon on the Mount IS Gospel, as well as Law, and is relevant to today, not just an impossible theoretical standard to view from afar, like many more modern day theologians believe.
Anyway, I definitely agree with your overall thesis that Jesus used evidence, including miracles, and Law in both revealing Himself and in presenting His Gospel. And the Ferguson quote is spot on too. I need to read more of him – thanks!
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This does not need to be an either/or. You are right in knowing and arguing the evidence. But so is MacArthur in the living out the Beautitudes to the world.
Jesus often used miracles to draw people and then presented the evidence that worked well in his time among the Jewish people. There must be some degree of drawing to someone with the evidential knowledge before that evidence can be presented.
Working in the spiritually dry and hostile desert of newsroom for two decades, I found that my oddball way of living (to them) create both curiosity and more. I had endless conversations with nonbelievers on Scripture and evidence for God. This was in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. They saw me variously as a prude, as very religious and other things, but it was basically my attempt to living according to Gospel, most difficultly laid out in the Beatitudes.
We knew less then about the fine-tuning, pre-Cambrian explosion and so on. So when challenged on how I could believe in God, I simply started with asking them if they could explain how something came from nothing in their materialistic view. Of course they could not, so I explained I could via something that always has been. And you know where it goes from there.
But most of them started with the questions because they saw my life with a bunch of children, no drinking, no vulgar language, and much more that appeared counter-culture, and asked why.
So I think you may dismiss McArther too quickly. I’d suggest it is both.
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MacArthur was wrong about a lot of things, but he was a strong and faithful man, and should be honored. WK is correct about the Beatitudes here. I just wish he didn’t undercut happiness. The Christian life should produce happiness, despite whatever suffering or persecution comes.
If you have proper gratitude to God, you can’t be anything but happy, no matter your circumstance.
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