John MacArthur, Jr. (1939–2025)

First sentence: As I travel around, one of the questions I am asked most often is "How can a Christian know the will of God for his or her life?" Most of us acknowledge that God has a plan for the life of every believer, but often we have trouble in finding just which way this play goes at a particular juncture.

Found: God's Will may be a short book, but it's a relevant book with substance. The premise is a simple one,
"Let's begin with a simple assumption. Since God has a will for us, He must show more want us to know it. If so, then we could expect Him to communicate it to us in the most obvious way. And how would that be? Through the Bible, His revelation. Therefore, I believe that what anyone needs to know about the will of God is clearly revealed in the pages of His Word. God's will is, in fact, very explicit in Scripture."
The chapter titles: "Is God a Cosmic Killjoy?", "The Crucial First Step," "The Fizzies Principle," "The Priority of Purity," "Silencing the Critics," "Facing the Flak," and "You're It."

MacArthur argues that God's will is simple and easy to understand. There are five things that are God's will for every one. First, God wills everyone to be saved. If you are saved, if you are trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation, you are in God's will. Second, God wills everyone to be filled with the Spirit and to live in the Spirit. Third, God wills everyone to be sanctified. It isn't enough to profess your belief, one must live by it. Fourth, God wills everyone to be submissive. Every one has to submit to someone--authority is God-given authority unless submitting means violating God's direct commandments. Fifth, God wills everyone to suffer. To suffer?! Is suffering really God's will for believers?! Surely we're misreading this last one, right?! Nope. Read the Bible. It's there in black and white. (And perhaps red.) If you're saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, and suffering...then you are living in accordance with God's will and the rest is up to you.

Quotes:
The doctrine of salvation is unpopular because it includes the recognition of sin. Nobody likes to admit sin. And many people resist the idea that they need to be saved.
There is a world out there that needs Jesus Christ. God wants them to be saved, and you and I are the vehicles for the transportation of the gospel. That is God’s will.
When you were saved, the moment you received Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit came to live within you. There is no Christian who does not possess the Holy Spirit.
So many times we ask for what we already have! We pray for the Holy Spirit, and He is already here.
Let me share how I study the Bible and how the Bible has come alive to me. I began in 1 John. One day I sat down and read all five chapters straight through. It took me twenty minutes. Reading one book straight through was terrific. (The books of the Bible weren’t written as an assortment of good little individual verses. They were written with flow and context.) The next day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through again. The third day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through. The fourth day, straight through again. The fifth day, I sat down and read it again. I did this for thirty days. Do you know what happened at the end of the thirty days? I knew what was in 1 John. You might say, “My, are you smart!” No, I am not smart. I read it thirty times. Even I can get it then!
The more you study the Word of God, the more it saturates your mind and life. Someone is reported to have asked a concert violinist in New York’s Carnegie Hall how she became so skilled. She said that it was by “planned neglect.” She planned to neglect everything that was not related to her goal.
Some less important things in your life could stand some planned neglect so that you might give yourself to studying the Word of God.
The more you would study the Word of God, the more your mind would be saturated with it. It will be no problem then for you to think of Christ. You won’t be able to stop thinking of Him.
The only way you can be saturated with the thoughts of Christ is to saturate yourself with the Book that is all about Him.
Evangelism involves living a godly life in the face of an ungodly world.
And that will bring persecution, because the world does not like Jesus.
The Bible never sees a Christian at any time who doesn’t suffer—because anybody who lives a godly life in the world will get the flak that the world throws back.
One of the problems of evangelism today is that Christians are not willing to stand nose to nose with the world and tell it like it is concerning Jesus Christ. show less

John MacArthur's Can God Bless America? is a short book you can breeze through in about an hour, but it asks an incredibly important question: is God able to bless America — and should He? In a time when the phrase "God bless America" has become a clichéd slogan, lip-service to a generic and rather selfish patriotism, we need to use this phrase advisedly (if at all). MacArthur takes a look at the underlying assumptions we have about this phrase and — more importantly — what the Bible show more has to say about national blessing and the conditions attached to it.

Basically, we want God's blessing without God in the bargain. God, give us safety and wealth and good feelings about ourselves as Americans, please. But don't demand anything of us. Obedience and then blessing — are You kidding? MacArthur writes, "While people reject the God of Scripture as their sovereign, they still claim Him as their servant" (vi).

I appreciated MacArthur's discussion of the dangers of moralism and how attempts to use politics as the church's main strategy for influencing our nation are doomed to failure. Jesus didn't try to overthrow or control government. We don't need more laws to make us moral; we need regeneration. MacArthur lists sixteen reasons that moralism doesn't work, and his arguments are compelling (to list just a few, 1.) it isn't our commission, 2.) it wastes immense amounts of precious resources, 4.) moralism misconstrues the nature of God's kingdom, 6.) moralism is a religion devoid of theology, 8.) moralism has no New Testament model except the Pharisees, 13.) the politics of moralism makes those we are supposed to reach with the gospel into enemies, etc.).

America is not God's chosen nation, entitled to special privileges and first in line by right for when He hands out blessings. That would be Israel, and even their national blessings are and have always been dependent upon their obedience. The fact is, we're fast becoming a post-Christian nation and we have no right to expect special treatment from God simply because we are Americans. Our sense of entitlement must be so disgusting to Him.

Unpatriotic? Maybe. But my citizenship is in Heaven, and God forbid even a good thing like honest earthly patriotism to become more important to me than my real country. show less

I was skeptical that there could be much new material for such a well known, perhaps one of the best known passages of scripture. I was wrong. This book is both insightful and interesting. MacArthur shows his heart as a preacher in telling the story of a man, his two sons, and the events that transpire as they live out this parable. MacArthur also uses his skill in language and culture to help the reader grasp some of the details of this story that he might otherwise miss. This is a great show more reminder that we are powerfully loved by God and greatly responsible for how we respond to His love. This is one of those books that I just did not want to end. show less

Decidedly mixed bag. Many great principles and helpful lessons, many dispensational sillinesses and unhelpful instructions like "don't be pedantic". No one tries to preach poorly; when giving such instructions, examples are critical. (Cf. Carson's Exegetical Fallacies) The tone of many chapters comes across as desperate, as if preaching is failing all over the world, and this book represents the final bulwark against bad preaching. Also, the citations are less than professional - one author show more quoted Luther at the Diet of Worms, and footnoted RC Sproul's Holiness of God. Great book, but hardly an authoritative source on what Luther said. Secondary sources abound, to the detriment of the book's overall ethos.
REP is probably best used as a diagnostic for individual elements - if your intros are lame, check out the appropriate chapter. But if you are just starting out, and weak in every area, the tone of these articles will leave you with the impression that with only 80 hours of sermon prep per week, you too could preach like John MacArthur. show less