The following "Question" was asked by an attendee at the 2005 Shepherds' Conference (a ministry of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California), and was "Answered" by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from "General Session #4 John MacArthur - Q&A."  A copy of the CD, cassette tape, or MP3 can be obtained by going to:  www.shepherdsconference.org  ©2005. All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church.

Questioner

The Doctrines of Grace…   I think, probably like yourself and the vast majority of my brethren here, I pursue a ministry of expository preaching, verse by verse, through the Scripture.  When, how, how not to systematically preach through the doctrines of grace—I’m wondering what your progression of thought has become on that and what you might prescribe to the rest of us.

John MacArthur's Answer

Well, I know what you mean by “the doctrines of grace.”  Of course, I basically am an expositional preacher.  I am not a systematic theologian.  I preach the text.  But, I am amazed how those same doctrines just keep coming out of the text, place after place.  The analogy of Scripture (analogi scriptura)—the Scripture is analogous to itself because it has a single author.  Listen, if anything has been proven to me, that has.  I have spent now 36 years expositional time in the New Testament, and a lot of it in the Old Testament, that’s not taped and some that is, and I will just tell you: the Scripture is perfectly consistent and clear on all these doctrines.  I feel that’s the best way to teach truth, is out of the text, and then compare the text with the text.  But, periodically, I will stop in that flow of exposition and I will do doctrinal series. 

I’ve done it all through the years.  In fact, I just completed maybe nine messages—I don’t remember—eight or nine or ten messages on doctrine.  And I did it backwards.  I started with the perseverance of the saints—because that’s a question a lot of people have (is my salvation permanent?).  And I ended up that message by saying it’s permanent, because it was predetermined before the foundation of the world.  God predetermined to conform you to the image of His Son; and whomever the Father chooses, He gives to the Son; and whomever the Son receives, He keeps; and whomever He keeps, He raises at the last day; and no one is lost.  So, the perseverance is guaranteed by the doctrine of sovereign election.  So we backed into sovereign election.  Then, from there, we backed into issues of grace and how it has to be irresistible, it has to be grace from above—from  on high, to change our hearts because we are depraved.  I don’t call it “the doctrine of total depravity”; I call it “the doctrine of utter or total inability.”  Then, we backed into the issue of the atonement and we talked about “limited atonement” (is the term we like to use).  It’s probably not the right term because we all know the atonement is limited.  It’s limited to people who believe—we all know that.  The question is who limited it?  Does man limit it or does God limit it?  Is it a potential atonement for the whole, wide world or an actual atonement for certain people?  So, we backed into that and we talked about the atonement.  Then, we talked about what was the reason for the atonement, on behalf of those who would believe, and we went back to the love of God.  So, we did a whole thing on the sovereign, eternal love of God, in which He loves his own in a way different than He loves the world.  And then, we back from there into the doctrine of redemption.  Then we backed into the doctrine of assurance, and we were sort of right back where we started.

So, that’s been over the last couple of months or so.  So, periodically, I will do that because when you do teach the text—and this is the thing—look, nobody has been here (well, few have been here) all these years.  People tend to come and go.  So, you are always are dealing with people who can’t quite put it all together.  It’s really helpful, periodically, to get above the text.  You know, most of us live our lives in the worm’s-eye view; we’re looking at it from ground level.  It really helps sometimes to get above it.  But, even when you do that, and you do it on a topical level, the power of it comes because you link together passages which you carefully exposit.  So, it’s expositional theology—expositional, thematic preaching—where you really let the text make the point. 

One of the things that happens—and I’ve already been asked to speak at a conference next year, and they said, “We want you to tell us what 35 years of Bible exposition has taught you.”  The first thing that came to my mind was that if you teach the Bible, year after year after year after year, you better never say anything you can’t defend from the text, or they’re going to question it.  They learn to expect that.  That’s a great expectation. 

So, I think you have every reason to do that, I think it’s great to do that; in fact, it’s pretty common for me, in a sermon, to find a doctrinal point in a text and do an excursus on that doctrinal point, in which I draw other texts together to make that point.  I believe in Bible exposition—listen—that is theological before it is practical.  I’m not just wandering through the text, trying to make cute ideas flow out of an outline and tell you how to apply this; I’m much more concerned to show you principles of doctrine that weave the fabric of your life together.  So, expositional preaching, for me, is doctrinal.  The difference is, I take one text and I might do a little excursus on several doctrines there, but I can turn the table sometimes and take many texts and cover one doctrine.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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