 What if you were given the opportunity to share the gospel with one of the world's most famous political commentators in front of an audience of millions of people? How would you respond? What would you even say? Would you crumble under the pressure? A few years ago, well-known pastor John MacArthur was invited on Ben Shapiro's show to discuss MacArthur keeping his church open during the worldwide event that we shall not speak of. Okay, I can't wink. But in the midst of the conversation, Shapiro asked MacArthur's perspective on the differences between Christianity and Judaism. In this video, we're going to take a look at what John MacArthur did in this conversation and what made his gospel presentation so relevant not just to the Jewish audience, but to the general audience. If you've ever wanted to share the gospel with your Jewish friends or family, keep watching. Let's dive in. When it comes to the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, as a Jew, whenever I hear pastors speak about Christianity, very often I think to myself, right, all that stuff's in the Old Testament. So when they say things like, you know, sin has to be cleansed by God, right? We have an entire day, Yom Kippur, that is for that. I say three times a day a paragraph about doing repentance before God, plus an additional section for repentance in the morning prayers. The idea of repenting and confessing your sins before God is something that is endemic to Judaism and has been for thousands of years. Ben points out something important here. Yeah, repentance isn't new. Yeah, it's highlighted in the Old Testament as well. He's trying to make an appeal that Christianity and Judaism are maybe more similar than people think, which is, you know, true in some ways, but not true in others. I'm interested to see how MacArthur responds and tries to bring out some of the differences, the important differences between Judaism and Christianity. The same God who wrote the Old Testament, wrote the New Testament. And I need to say this, I am a Christian because of the Old Testament. Without the Old Testament, I don't know whether I could believe the New Testament. And that may sound strange to you, but how do I know that Jesus is the Messiah if I don't have all the predictions of the Old Testament defining him when he shows up? And you read Isaiah 53, and it's the biography of the Messiah, the servant of the Lord, and it lays out his arrival and his rejection and his death and his resurrection and his ascension and his accordination. He does something so important here. He starts with the Old Testament and he connects it with the New Testament through the prophecies foretelling Jesus. If you simply begin with the New Testament talking about Jesus, you lose the credibility that comes with the Old Testament, especially to a Jewish audience. The emphasis ought to be, this is not a new religion. Look in your books, it testifies about Jesus. He makes reference to Isaiah 53, one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture that testifies about Jesus. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all talking about Jesus. A lot of the areas where Christian scholars think that Christianity has departed dramatically from Judaism, I think are not really dramatic departures. They seem to be reflections of Judaism from a slightly different angle. Even so far as a lot of the stuff in the Sermon on the Mount about when it says that you're supposed to love thy brother as thyself and you're supposed to treat your brother as you would wish to be treated. That's present in the Old Testament too. No, I think what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount was elevate the teaching of the rabbis. Elevate it. He went above them. He said, well, you've been told you shouldn't commit adultery. I'm telling you, if you look at a woman a lust after her, you've committed adultery in your heart. He got to the heart of the law. They were content with the practical application of the law. He was not content with that. It's interesting to me that Benjamin Shapiro is the one who brings up the Sermon on the Mount because from John MacArthur's perspective, this is a great place to go in talking about Jesus, talking about his connection to the Old Testament and the law. Jesus said that I had not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. John, to talk about the fact that, yeah, if you've heard it said of old, you shall not commit adultery, as John MacArthur said, but he elevates it to the area of lust and then also hatred being like connecting that with murder too and so looking at the heart orientation. This is really interesting because Dennis Prager, a Jewish political commentator, had verbalized a while back that in his belief, Judaism was just very moralistic, behavioristic religion. A lot of people see it that way too, but even when you look at the Old Testament and you see David's writings, it's, search me, oh God, and know my heart. The motives and the heart was always a connecting point in terms of how God saw us and in terms of our standing before him. It was never just about the behavior, it was never just about what we do, but it was also, okay, where is our heart and our motivation in the midst of it as well and highlighting that you can rebel against God not just through deeds, but in terms of heart motivations and heart desires. That is a really convicting thing. And you could say, well, Jesus is a good teacher, but good teachers don't claim to be God. They don't say I and God are one. They don't say I created the universe. That's not a good teacher. That's somebody who's crazy as a lunatic or somebody who's trying to pull off a huge deception. So you cannot come to Jesus and just patronize him as a noble, good Jewish teacher because he crossed a line, he crossed a severe line and the Jews saw that either he's the Messiah or he is a blasphemer and he needs to be put to death. And those are really the choices you have. After laying out the connection between the Old and New Testament through the prophecies about Jesus and then seeing how Jesus elevated the law that he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law and he elevated it to the heart level, then we see MacArthur drawing a clear line in the sand, saying that, hey, you know, Jesus wasn't just some nice guy or some cool teacher and especially as a Jewish person, you can't just treat him that way because he made claims. He drew lines in the sand when he said, before Abraham was, I am claiming his equality with God. When he said, I'm the way, the truth and the life, no one can come to the Father except through me. You have to do something with those claims. I want to say this to you personally. You are a testimony to the glory of God in man. I see the beauty of God's creation in you. I see the use of reason and compassion and care. I see so many things in you. So I'm not denying that reflection of God in you, but I'm saying you either believe Jesus is the Savior or you don't. That's the distinction. Oh man. I don't know about you guys, but that was a powerful moment. I love to see just kind of the verbalization and recognition of the image of God in somebody, right? Like that you disagree with that doesn't maybe believe all the things that you wish they believed, but ultimately you're saying, hey, like you're created in the image of God and I know we might not be on the same page in this, but I love you and I care for you. And that's honestly why I'm sharing this with you. But you notice even in the midst of that love and that compassion, he doesn't compromise the truth. You think about it. John McArthur could have entered this conversation thinking, oh, well, I know Ben Shapiro is Jewish and so he's not really going to be interested in Jesus and I'm sure he's had people talk to him about Christianity before. So I might as well just like leave that in my back pocket, talk about cultural issues that we both agree on and it'll be a great wonderful conversation. But no, he was like, hey, I want to make sure that he understands the clear gospel that he understands that this is not a new religion, but rather is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, something that he does believe. But that flies in the face of the idea that we only have two options. We can either approach somebody with love and compassion, avoiding any kind of confrontation or conflict or disagreement because we want to just be perceived as really nice and agreeable and that's just wonderful. Alternatively, we can be really judgmental and critical and aggressive and hostile and then say what we want to say, even if it hurts their feelings or even if it offends them because we're just kind of rambunctious bull in a China shop type deal. Like those are only two options, but we can see here a clear example of somebody that approaches with love with compassion and yet speaks the truth boldly and doesn't compromise. This is a really good example for all of us. Now, for us, we might not have this kind of wild opportunity to share the gospel in that kind of context, but at the same time, we all do have our different contexts and opportunities where we can share with people in our own life and I don't know about you, but I'm not on MacArthur's level. I don't have, you know, his kind of Bible knowledge and just, oh man, so much wisdom, but at the same time, we can recognize that God wants to use us even in the midst of our inadequacies and our weaknesses. Reminds me of one of my favorite verses, Second Corinthians 12, 9, where it says, But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest on me. Yes, you might not know exactly what to say and you might say the wrong thing, but God calls us to faithfulness and he promises us that in the midst of that, he will meet us and he will strengthen us. He will use those scattered seeds to bring about increase. I pray this video encourages you to be bold to speak up in the lives of those around you with truth and love. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos like this all the time. If you want to support my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily, hit the link in my description. Join Patreon today. You can get access to our Discord server. You can get access to exclusive videos and also into our bi-weekly video calls that we do and everyone goes around and we chat and we hang out. It's a lot of fun. 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