Dr. MacArthur looked to the truth of scripture to assess who is to blame for the riots.
The points below are only highlights, but readers should be able to ascertain whether they want to hear the video based on them, I suppose.
If you are Christian and are concerned with having a godly walk with Christ, then I certainly recommend listening to the video. This video was recorded before the one on how Christians should respond to the riots, and goes into greater depth on the restraints God has placed in mankind and society.
- Society drowning in a sea of lies: politicians, health officials, university professors, media, social activists, religious leaders…have been lying to us
- God and His word are truth; the Son of God is the Way, the truth and the life; we must look there for truth
- In Isaiah ch.1 God confronts His people Israel for their rebelliousness and sin; they had abandoned the Lord, holding Him in low esteem and were unresponsive to His chastening…: they experienced the desolation of a people who turn against God [I think Dr. J.M. is implying that we are experiencing the same]
- Isaiah 5: woe to those who call evil, good; and good evil…turning truth, righteousness and virtue upside down
- Isaiah 28: …they found refuge in lies; Isaiah 59: they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity
- The above is the natural bent of humanity; these things can be seen in the current culture in the USA: honest working people are on lockdown; the strong and violent are running wild: you can’t work in a store but you can loot it; demand justice for one man’s life and applaud lawless mobs attacking the police and killing innocent people
- Charges are brought against police and lawless rioters go free
- Leaders exert control over law abiding citizens on lockdown, but are afraid to confront rioters…
- The solution, they say, is to abolish the police
- What is wrong? Isaiah 5:20: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…
- What is wrong? Something environmental, educational…? How did we get here?
- Criminals become heroes and heroes are viewed as lawbreakers
- Who is to blame?
- Romans 3:10 – 18: (God has not changed his moral standards or His definition of humanity: humanity is now as they were in the Old Testament) None righteous, none understands, none seeks God; all are useless, none good, not one…
- Three aspects examined from above text, that God is confronting: Character; conversation; conduct
- Character: on a relative, humanistic scale, some are better than others, but NONE is righteous or holy; they are spiritually dead, blind; no one seeks God: per the Bible, man’s character is ignorant regarding God and righteousness; rebellious, useless, deviant, bad
- Conversation: throat is like an open grave; tongue, venomous
- Conduct: feet swift to do wrong, murder: in WWII, 85 million died; 55 million were civilians
- That is, make it legal for people to kill and they will [60 million abortions, e.g. since 1973]
- The force behind this unredeemed fleshly response is the absence of any fear of God
- God gave man the capacity of reason which ascertains cause and effect relationships in the creation around him; rebels reject God, deny apparent cause and effect relationships around themselves; that leads to a debased mind, as in Romans 1: thereafter, make gods of humans, animals..; they think they are wise and can found new thought, new governments…
- God gives such rebels over to their own depraved desires: sexual revolution; homosexual revolution; killing infants in the womb; destruction of the family (via the aforementioned)
- Mankind’s natural sinfulness; in addition to the judgment of God, giving them over to the full expression of their innate depravity as their minds became more debased…
- The above related to the recent riots and the conduct of rioters and leaders…
- When God is rejected and rebelled against, the law of God in the consciences of those rebels is oppressed, and consciences become hardened; furthermore, they become informed with other values – God gave the conscience as a restraint against wickedness when it is informed by His word; consciences informed with worldly values, honor different kinds of boundaries.
- Hence, evil is called good; and good, evil. Remember, God is the One whose criteria determine reality. He has set down a standard of good and evil in the Bible.
- The destruction of the family via the sexual revolutions, has eroded another God-given restraint against wickedness
- Ungodly, debased people establish ungodly forms of government; hence, government does not uphold the law established by God; biblical justice is perverted as we currently see
- Ungodly, debased people pervert God’s church via false doctrines and teachers
- Ungodly rebels are currently hacking away at the last social restraint against wickedness, the police. In Romans 13, God gave the sword to governing agencies; all power comes from God. These are his sword in the earth. When these are ungodly, injustice prevails and the most wicked are exalted
- Hence, we have a political party that builds its platform on the killing of infants in the womb; destroying the family; elevating homosexuality, transgender perversion…and they’re proud of it.
Dr. MacArthur has many sermons on YouTube; his website is gty.org.
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