21
" Theodore Roosevelt once said, “There has never yet been a man who led a life of ease, whose name is worth remembering. Certainly when the Lord calls us to be His disciples, He does not call us to a life of ease. A missionary whose story has influenced my life greatly is a man mentioned earlier named Henry Martyn. After a long and difficult life of Christian service in India, he announced he was going to go to Persia (modern Iran), because God had laid it upon his heart to translate the New Testament and the Psalms into the Persian language. By then he was an old man. People told him that if he stayed in India, he would die from the heat, and that Persia was hotter than India. But he went nonetheless. There he studied the Persian language and then translated the entire New Testament and Psalms in nine months. Then he learned that he couldn’t print or circulate them until he received the Shah’s permission. He traveled six hundred miles to Tehran; there he was denied permission to see the Shah. He turned around and made a four-hundred-mile trip to find the British ambassador, who gave him the proper letters of introduction and sent him the four hundred miles back to Tehran. This was in 1812, and Martyn made the whole trip on the back of a mule, traveling at night and resting by day, protected from the sweltering desert sun by nothing but a strip of canvas. He finally arrived back in Tehran, was received by the Shah, and secured permission for the Scriptures to be printed and circulated in Persia. Ten days later he died. But shortly before his death, he had written this statement in his diary: “I sat in the orchard, and thought, with sweet comfort and peace, of my God; in solitude my Company, my Friend, and Comforter.” He certainly did not live a life of ease, but it was a life worth remembering. And he’s one of many God used to turn redemptive history. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
23
" You’ve probably had a similar experience with someone you know. I’ve already recounted the stories of three of my closest friends—one in high school, one in college, and one in seminary—who seemed so dedicated to serving the Lord, and yet all of them eventually turned their backs on Him. One became a dope-smoking rock-concert promoter, and another became a Buddhist. These were not casual acquaintances, but friends at a very close level. I was sure they shared my passion for the true gospel as much as they shared my love for sports. These three young men proved to me that you can profess Christ and not know Him. You can think you’re a Christian and later see clearly that you’re not; you can certainly deceive other people. Seeing these seemingly intelligent, dedicated, strong Christians abandon their beliefs forced me to think about who is really a Christian and what being a Christian really means. Their actions portrayed them as fellow soldiers of Christ, but in the end their hearts exposed them as traitors. Spiritual defectors are an integral part of the story of Christianity, both past and present. They’re in your life and mine, just as they were in Jesus’ life. They shouldn’t surprise you, defeat you, disappoint you, or cause you to despair. Jesus’ insights on spiritual defectors in John 6, and the reaction to His teaching about the issue, give us one of the most compelling and enlightening stories of His ministry. It’s worth considering closely. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
24
" This is one of the most serious problems with seeker-sensitive churches. I was talking to a pastor at a seeker-friendly church not long ago about his idea that prospective Christians needed to “feel welcome” and “accepted” before anything else: no “threats,” no “judgmental baggage.” I asked, “If you had a person living in sin come to your church, would you confront him?” He furrowed his brow and shook his head disapprovingly. “Oh, no! We’d want him to feel loved and welcome.” My eyes widened. “How long would it be before you would actually say something about that?” “Maybe a year and a half, two years,” he said, smiling. “Because then he would really feel a part of things.” That was shocking to me. Is there some virtue in leaving a man in his sin for the sake of feeling accepted? “Well, that’s the difference between your church and our church,” I said finally. “Openly practicing sinners come to our church, and they either get saved or they don’t come back. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
25
" Almost no one tolerates the exclusivity and supremacy of Christ these days, even some who profess to be Christians. The message of the cross is not politically correct—it’s the singularity of the gospel, on top of everything else, that bothers people. Can you imagine for a moment what might happen if a celebrity or political leader just said, “I’m a Christian and if you’re not, you’re going to hell”? Yikes! And then imagine if he said, “All the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the people who believe they can earn salvation, whether liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics, and all the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses—you’re all going to eternal hell. But I care about you so much, I want to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is far more important than wars in the Middle East, terrorism, or any domestic policy.” You can’t be faithful and popular, so take your pick. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
27
" Jesus was trying to get the Pharisees to come off of their proud, high tower and see the spiritual bankruptcy in their own lives. The Pharisees had no regard for spirituality of soul, purity of heart, integrity of behavior, or obedience to God, and they were building their big spiritual structure on sand. Sure, they prayed and fasted and gave alms, but they did so only to impress God, to parade their supposed spirituality, and to enhance their reputations. They had a religion of externals; that is a religion of sand. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
30
" It’s pretty overwhelming to grasp that God has used a frail, human, clay pot as His means of saving others. But the reward goes even beyond that. Look at Matthew 10:41: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” That’s a tremendous divine principle. By the way, a prophet is what he says, and a righteous man is what he is, so the two really speak of the same individual. A true disciple lives what he says. He speaks the gospel truth, and he lives righteously. When you go out representing God by your life and your lips, by your speaking and your living, those who receive you will receive the reward that you receive. This could be true of a pastor, a teacher, a missionary, an evangelist, or anyone who represents Christ; the one who receives that one will share that one’s reward. If the Lord gives me a reward for proclaiming to you, He’ll give you the same reward for receiving what I proclaim. We all share. You want to be a blessing in the world? Then confess Christ before men! Stand up boldly, and don’t mitigate your testimony; don’t be ashamed of Christ. Don’t water down the truth. And let your life become the source of their reward. Then a disciple is a person who determines destiny. Even the least of us shares with the greatest of us in what God does in blessing us. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
31
" Apart from hypocrites, there are two categories of the deceived in the church: the superficial and the involved. The superficial are the ones who call themselves Christians because, when they were little, they went to church or Sunday school, they got confirmed, or they “made a decision” for Christ. You may have heard someone, when he is getting baptized, say, “I received Christ when I was twelve, but my life was a mess after that, and now I want to get back to the faith.” The truth probably is that he never received Christ at all when he was twelve. He went through some superficial religious activity and was deceived into thinking he was saved as a result. The involved who are deceived are a much more subtle and serious group. They’re immersed in the activities of the church, up to their necks. They know the gospel and biblical theology, but they don’t obey the Word of God. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
34
" It’s not at all surprising that Luke 4:28 says the people in the synagogue, “when they heard these things, were filled with wrath.” Nothing is worse than spiritual pride, because it is a barrier people selfishly put up that separates them from their own salvation. The Lord had said, “You know I come to save, and this is it. But I can save only the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. It doesn’t matter whether one is a Gentile woman or a Syrian leper. It just matters that he sees his bankruptcy and destitution, and he comes to Me like the hated tax collector who pounded his guilt-ridden chest and cried: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13), or the man who said, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24). He may not know everything there is to know, and his faith may not be full, but if he will just come in his desperation and say, ‘I don’t have a choice. I see what I am, and I see what You can do for me,’ then he will know I am the Messiah. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
35
" It always comes to this, though not so violently. There’s only one reason why people who know the truth of the gospel are not willing to repent and believe. It is because they will not see themselves as the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. It has nothing to do with the style of music your church offers, the drama and skits you stage, or the quality of your laser light show. It has everything to do with the spiritual deadness and blindness of pride. God offers nothing to people who are content with their own condition, except judgment. If you don’t think you are headed for hell, don’t think you need forgiveness, you put no value on the gospel of grace. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
36
" The true, exclusive, narrow gospel is hard enough to believe as it is. But to make things worse, from the start those promoting it were rejected people who had no standing or respect in society, like Paul, who preached this foolish message faithfully. The people proclaiming the most important and hard-to-believe truth are generally the ones the world despises, belittles, and ignores. In A.D. 178, Celsus wrote that Christians were the most vulgar and uneducated people around. No wonder. In 1 Corinthians 1:26—29, Paul told us that was by divine design. God has purposely chosen the foolish, the nonintellectuals to shame the wise: For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
37
" I read a story years ago that claimed to be about the most insignificant person ever born. His mother wrote his name on the birth certificate as Nosmo King. Somebody asked the mother where she got a name like that. It turned out the mother was illiterate, so she just copied down the No Smoking sign in the room and wrote it “Nosmo King.” There is the ultimate nothing person, named after a No Smoking sign. If you speak the hard gospel of Jesus Christ, you may be pegged as one of the Nosmo Kings of the world: a loser, a nobody. Verse 28 of 1 Corinthians 1 says God has chosen things that are “despised,” exoutheneo, considered nothing. Christians are about as low as you can go. We are “the things which are not,” literally “the nonexistent ones.” It’s human nature to want to be somebody. So the Lord decided to do it a different way, choosing as His messengers the impotent, nonintellectual nobodies whom the world considers nothing by its standards. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
39
" Paul suffered and struggled mightily in the service of his faith. Perhaps you could argue that he simply wasn’t the best example after which to model our own behavior. What if we look at the ultimate example of a Christian teacher and expositor, Christ Himself? Surely then we’ll see how to handle this unappealing message of a crucified Savior whom only the dregs of society preached. Surely at last we’ll see a glimmer of success. But by worldly standards, when Jesus began preaching His own gospel in His own hometown, He was an even more spectacular failure than Paul! This episode in Jesus’ life is one of the most gripping and powerful portions of the Bible. His words in Scripture capture the shock and emotion of the moment, and they still stun us with their power and their force. The riveting drama begins in Luke 4, verses 16 through 21: So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Imagine going to church next Sunday, expecting to hear your pastor preaching, and having the Lord Jesus Christ appear in person to tell you that He had come to fulfill all the prophecies of His second coming—all the prophecies of the glory of His kingdom of salvation on earth! Imagine that you had gone that morning, and Jesus was standing in the pulpit to tell you that the time was now for the fulfillment of all divine promises connected to His return. Well, that’s something like what the Jews in the Nazareth synagogue experienced that day. They had attended that synagogue all their lives, and they had heard reading after reading of the Torah, the Law, and the Haftarah, the prophets, and sermon after sermon on Sabbath after Sabbath throughout their lifetimes. They had heard much teaching about the Messiah, and they had been reading many Scriptures about His coming and kingdom. But all of a sudden, on this Sabbath in the year A.D. 28, in an obscure synagogue in a nothing blue-collar town called Nazareth, He was there! "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
40
" Human nature really hasn’t changed much throughout history; shame and honor were as big a deal in the ancient world as they are today. Back in the ninth century B.C., the epic poet Homer wrote, “The chief good was to be well spoken of, the chief evil, to be badly spoken of by one’s society.” In the first century A.D., the apostle Paul ministered in a shame-sensitive, honor-seeking culture, shamelessly preaching a shameful message about a publicly shamed person. And so the message was offensive. It was scandalous. It was stupid. It was foolish. It was moronic. Yet, as 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” It was this scandalous, offensive, foolish, ridiculous, bizarre, absurd message of the cross that God used to save those who believe. Roman authorities executed His Son, the Lord of the world, by a method they reserved only for the dregs of society; His followers had to be faithful enough to risk meeting the same shameful end. "
― John F. MacArthur Jr. , Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
