We are grateful to have celebrated the life and ministry of our founder, longtime president, and chancellor, Dr. John MacArthur, on August 23, 2025. Below is an adapted transcript of  Dr. Sinclair Ferguson's message from the memorial service.

 

I think I should have known that a service that began with the playing of the Scottish bagpipes would probably last about the length of an old 17th-century Scottish service.

Before we turn to God's Word for a few minutes, I'd like to, if I may, be the mouthpiece of all of us and many throughout the world to say to you, Mrs. MacArthur, that we have always loved you because of your husband. But there is probably no day when you have been loved more by us for your own sake and for what you have given to all of us. To all of you in the MacArthur family, we want to thank you for allowing us the privilege of sharing in what is a celebration of God's grace and the opportunity for all of us who, in one way or another, were drawn into the friendship of John MacArthur. Whether we ever met him or not, we really do give thanks to God for the privilege of joining you today as a family.

I suppose, like many ministers, when I've heard that someone I've loved and someone who loved the Lord has gone to glory, it's always been my practice to ask, "What passage of Scripture, what characteristic of the Lord Jesus Christ has my loved one reminded me of?" Not only so that we can speak of them and see the reflected glory of the Lord Jesus in them, but because it often helps those who are not yet Christians to understand why they have admired and esteemed someone so much without realizing what it was that characterized their lives. They have seen something of the shadow of Jesus Christ in their lives. But now is an opportunity for them to see Jesus Christ Himself and to come and to trust in Him.

The passage that's very much been on my mind in these last few weeks is from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. —2 Corinthians 4:1–18
 
I don't think I've ever been asked to preach in the United States before without being asked for a title. And the title for this brief message that I wasn't asked for is “Why Are So Many of Us Today So Grateful for the Gift that God Gave Us in Dr. John MacArthur?” And the answer, of course, lies in part because of what he was to us, but chiefly because of what the Lord Jesus was to him, and therefore correspondingly to us.

I want to think with you briefly about three answers to this question. The first is because we saw in him a reflection of apostolic ministry. The second is because we experienced in his preaching the truths that transformed our destiny. And the third, very simply, is because we want to thank God for what he was to each of us individually and personally.

We saw in him, first of all, a reflection of apostolic ministry.

I think on this occasion, he would forgive me, and I'm sure you will forgive me, for not going line by line, word by word through 2 Corinthians 4. But I want you to notice with me five characteristics of apostolic ministry that were very evident in the ministry that has now come to a completion from this pulpit.

Twice in these verses, the apostle Paul says that he does not lose heart, and the repetition suggests that there were many circumstances in which he might have lost heart. Indeed, the language he uses was used outside of the New Testament of the struggles that a woman in labor pains might experience, but she was determined to see them through in order that a child would be born. And Paul uses this picture as a description of the Christian ministry, the ministry of the gospel—to be in labor pains until Christ is fully formed in us.

And for these past 56 years, Dr. MacArthur was in labor pains in the Word of God, in the presence of God, in order that Christ might be fully formed, especially in this congregation. He scattered the seed of the Word of God from this small space on earth that the Word of God might bring each of us to something of the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says that he did this by the open statement of the truth. He tells us that there is preaching that is impressive but also profoundly deceptive. But his preaching was the open manifestation of the truth. Not just in talking about the words of the Word of God, but in proclaiming God in Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, there was to men and women's souls an actual manifestation of the Lord Jesus. There was a sense that He was the preacher and that He was fulfilling the promise that He had given to the apostles in His farewell discourse in the upper room: “I will come to you and I will manifest myself to you.”

And this is always the great characteristic of the unfolding of the Word of God that brings illumination, because it brings us into the conscious awareness that it is Jesus Christ Himself who is preaching to us through His Word and drawing us to Himself, convicting us of our sin, and bringing us to faith.

Amazingly, I think a little like Paul, perhaps, at the little lectern in Ephesus where he hired the lecture hall of the philosopher Tyrannus, and all Asia heard the Word of God. So here we give thanks that the patient unfolding of the truth of the gospel has reached to the ends of the earth and without exception, by God's grace, into every single one of our hearts.

But that can never happen, Paul indicates here, without a second characteristic. And that is the visible consistency of a life lived before God.

And he underlines this, doesn't he? That in a Christ manifesting ministry, the one who preaches must be manifested to those to whom he preaches in the integrity of his own life.

“What I am is plain to God,” he says. Manifested to God, and, using the same language, it is manifest also in your conscience. That only takes place when the preacher has made some great renunciations—when he is able to renounce self for the sake of Jesus Christ and live for Him, and when he is able to renounce all his own ambitions for the single ambition of making Christ known to the nations.

And Paul speaks about that integrity in his own life, that even in the midst of conflict and affliction, because he believed, like the psalmist, under stress, because he believed through the same Holy Spirit, he therefore spoke.

And so there was the open manifestation of the truth and the visible consistency of the life, and all in service of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. “We do not preach ourselves,” he says, “but Jesus Christ as Lord.” When I reread these verses in the light of this service, it was as though that phrase in particular stood out as so obvious. “We preach Jesus Christ as Lord.” Not only as Savior, but we preach Jesus Christ as Lord.

And then you'll notice that Paul adds something that seems to be almost in tension with that statement. I think if we had been writing that statement, we would have put the full stop at the end of this. “We do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord.” But you notice how Paul continues, "And ourselves, your bond servants for Jesus' sake."

And this is what brings the Word of God from the servant of God to the hearts of the people of God. That though he stands behind the sacred desk, he stands kneeling. And as Paul says to the Thessalonians, he not only gives the Word of God, but he gives himself in the Word of God. And though he has done the work, he realizes that in his hands, through his mouth, what is happening is that the people of God receive the Word not as the word of men, but as it really is—the Word of God which itself is at work in you believers.

And this is what Martin Lloyd Jones called the mystery and romance of preaching, isn't it? That seed is scattered and the Spirit takes that seed, moves among the congregation, and comes to each of us and says, "And this is for you."

And what pleases the Holy Spirit to do that is that the one who preaches the gospel is the servant of Jesus Christ whose lordship he preaches, and also comes to those to whom he preaches and says, “I am also your servant for Jesus’ sake.” It is in this way that Jesus is exalted among us. And since February 9, 1969, that has been consistently true here.

But with this also goes another characteristic Paul mentions here, and that is the willingness to suffer for the gospel.

There is a cost in being so fragile. It is not accidental, says Paul, that God has put the power and glory of the gospel in clay pots in order that when those clay pots are broken, as in the days of Gideon, the power, the glory, and the transformation will seem to have come not from the man but from the Savior he preaches. And so he says, "We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” And that calls the preacher to be willing to suffer and to be broken for the gospel.

I couldn't help thinking about the words of Amy Carmichael in her poem:

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die, and rent
by ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?

No wound, no scar?
Yet as the Master shall the servant be,
And, pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?

That the day dawns when all wounds are healed and any scars that remain, glorified like Christ's scars, remain as signs of faithfulness, and all of this—the open statement of the truth, the visible consistency of the life, the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, the willingness to suffer for the gospel—is tied up with a single eye for the glory of God. The preacher does not serve himself. He does not glorify himself. “It is all for your sake,” says the apostle. And because it's for your sake, it is through you to others for their sake.

But ultimately, it is for His sake that we do all things. We live to please Him, to glorify Him, and ultimately, we will indeed enjoy Him forever perfectly. And so we do not lose heart because the things that are seen are temporary. The things that are unseen are eternal.

You know, as I've been reflecting in these past few weeks, I’ve really become convinced that Dr. MacArthur's ministry was a ministry for the ages. It was the simplicity of it. It was that it was not dominated by world events, but dominated by the truth of the gospel that will last forever.

And it caused me to think that he not only obviously belonged to an honored Scottish clan, the son of Arthur—that is, for anyone who is in any doubt, the great King Arthur of the Knights of the Round Table. But he belonged to an even older clan. Not the clan of the MacArthurs, but the clan of those whose Christian name was John. He belonged to the clan of John the Baptist. Although I have to say he always seemed better dressed to me than John the Baptist was. Except in that photograph in Ian Murray's lovely biography, where he is coming out of the Pacific Ocean as though he were a monster from the undersea. But John the Baptist's message was “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” “He must increase and I must decrease.”

And like John the beloved apostle, whose name he shared so beautifully, who saw the glory of the Lord Jesus and specially experienced it to describe himself as the disciple Jesus loved because Jesus washed his feet as a sign that He would wash his sins away. “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God.”

He was, from time to time, in public ministry like the golden-tongued preacher of the early church, John Chrysostom, who was willing to withstand an emperor for the sake of the gospel. And he was like John Knox, who, as he was buried, was described as a man who feared the face of no man because he had learned to fear the face of God.

He was like John Calvin, too—page by page, line by line, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, expounding the Word of God until, in his case, the city of Geneva was transformed and he had no more breath in him, and in our case, until our lives were transformed and there was no more breath in our John.

And he was also like another Scot of lesser fame, John Livingston, through whose sermon in 1630 at the Kirk of Shotts 500 people were converted and who later wrote this about preaching—words I know John MacArthur at some time must have read: “There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to matter or expression, and cannot be described what it is, or from whence it cometh, but with a sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections and comes immediately from the Word; but if there be any way to obtain such a thing, it is by the heavenly disposition of the speaker.”

Because the fruit of true gospel ministry does not ultimately lie in the exegetical skills of the preacher or his pleasing personality or his courage, but ultimately in this unction of the Holy Spirit, that he is able to say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel.

I think perhaps Dr. MacArthur might be embarrassed that today he is twice compared to John Owen. But when I heard of his passing into glory, I immediately thought of what was said about John Owen, the great 17th-century divine, by his young colleague David Clarkson, following Owen's death in 1683, almost exactly on this day of the year. And here is what Clarkson said to his congregation:

“A great light is fallen; one of eminency for holiness, learning, parts, and abilities; a pastor, a scholar, a divine of the first magnitude; holiness gave a divine lustre to his other accomplishments, it shined in his whole course, and was diffused through his whole conversation. I need not tell you of this that knew him, and observed that it was his great design to promote holiness in the power, life, and exercise of it among you. It was his great complaint that the power of it declined among professors. It was his care and endeavour to prevent or cure spiritual decays in his own flock. He was a burning and a shining light, and you for a while rejoiced in his light.”

But in many ways, it is John Bunyan again who gives us the clue to why we are so grateful for our John. You remember when Interpreter takes the pilgrim into a special room. He shows him a picture. “The man in the picture had his eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written upon his lips, and the world behind his back. He stood as if he pleaded with men, and a crown of gold hung over his head. Then Christian said, ‘What does this picture mean?’ And Interpreter responds, ‘The man depicted in this picture is one of a thousand; he can beget children and nurse them himself when they are born. And as you see him with his eyes lifted up to heaven with the best of books in his hand and the law of truth written on his lips, this is to show you that his work is to understand and unfold difficult things…Therefore, pay attention to what I have shown you, lest in your journey you meet with some who pretend to lead you along the right path, while in reality their way leads to death.”

So we thank God that we have heard echoes of apostolic ministry. We thank God for the wonderful way in which this ministry, we trust, belongs to the rest of history. But also, for all of us, because of what he meant to us personally.

And if, for a moment, I may give personal testimony, many years ago now, when I was in my 30s, Dr. MacArthur reached out to me and drew me into his friendship without any apparent reason in me.

This room and this planet are filled with multitudes of us who can give the same testimony. And many of us can even give that testimony although we never had the privilege of actually meeting him. But in this ministry, we were drawn into his friendship, and he was our friend forever.

He manifested a quality that, at least in my own observation, is present in every true minister of the gospel, that central fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5, the fruit of kindness. Again and again, in words that people have spoken to me, those words have been added. Words that the great Augustine said about Ambrose, who became a kind of instrument to bring him to faith: “It wasn't just his great preaching. But that he was kind to me because he was a follower of the lion of the tribe of Judah, who was also the lamb slain because of his kindness, his love for sinners.”

To those of us who were friends, companions, and colleagues in the ministry, let us take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul.

All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work. I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction. —2 Timothy 3:16–4:2

And to those of us who are members of the church family here at Grace Church, I want to encourage you to remember Paul's words to what may have been his favorite congregation, if apostles were allowed favorite congregations.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. —Philippians 2:12–16

And finally, to Mrs. MacArthur and the whole MacArthur family, all of us in this room and multitudes to the ends of the earth want to thank you for so willingly sharing with us the one who loved you most of all and who was most of all loved by you, and who was able to say with Paul, "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6–8).

You loved him best and longest and were loved by him best and longest, and you will miss him most. But now you have more treasure in heaven than ever before. You look forward to sharing that beautiful vision of seeing Christ face to face. And his Savior and ours will surely guide you there. You do not grudge him what he now experiences. But the fact that he is now treasure in heaven for you bids you to be faithful also to the end. And that day will come when all shadows will flee away and we will see him face to face and enjoy the glorious eternal reunion. And until that day comes, may the grace of the Lord Jesus—And I think you all know that the name John actually means God is gracious—The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with us all. Let's pray.

Lord our Father, we thank You for all that we have heard and seen this day, all that has been sung to Your praise. We ask that You would mark in our memories and in the histories of our lives all that You have given to us in Your servant John MacArthur. We pray that, like him, we may follow the Lord Jesus Christ to the very end and then to the beginning of our eternal consciousness that He has held us fast and we will be with Him forever. And this we pray together in our Savior's name. Amen.