If you're in the practice of making New Year's resolutions, you probably focus on self-improvement goals—losing weight, exercising more, getting more organized, or learning a new skill. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg rounds out the year by drawing our focus away from ourselves and pointing us instead to God's glory. It's within the framework of Scripture, but I want us to recognize together that we set out on this journey, on those of us who were present on the first Sunday of the year, thinking about how important it is to think Christianly. And we said that to think Christianly is not simply to think about Christian things, but it is to allow the Bible to be what the Bible is—a lamp to our feet and a light to our path—and so for the Scriptures to be the framework in which we consider absolutely everything—the considerations of life and marriage and rest and relaxation and science and art and whatever it might be.
Because it is in the Bible that we discover not only who God is, but also who we are and why it is that we need a Savior. Now, as I say, I want to reflect on this a little bit and to remind you—I hope that this only triggers in your mind happy remembrances—but we began on the back of that statement on that first Sunday by reading together and considering the hundred-and-thirty-ninth psalm. And in the reading of the hundred-and-thirty-ninth psalm, we saw that that psalm challenges a kind of view of the world which is part and parcel of everyday life, as we simply move amongst our friends and our colleagues, and as we're also tempted ourselves to view the world as if we were the center of the universe, to think that somehow or another it all begins with me, that my orientation is first of all around myself. And the psalmist disavowed us of that very quickly. We saw that God knows all about me, that God is with me, that God has made me, and that God judges righteously. Now, the reason that we study the Bible in that way is so that we might go out and interact with the world in which we live. None of us lives in a box. None of us is isolated from the everyday events of life. I recognize that the world in which we studied the hundred-and-thirty-ninth psalm is a world which largely believes, I am what I choose to be. I am what I choose to be. The psalmist says, God made you, God is with you, God surrounds you, and God judges justly. The world in which we live suggests that words mean what we decide the word should mean. The hundred-and-thirty-ninth psalm says, No, life is derived from God, it is sustained by God, and it is given meaning by God.
When Paul writes to the Colossians, he writes very similarly. For by him, he writes, All things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities… Now, think about that when you're just tuning into whatever your favorite news broadcast is, and when you're tempted to nudge the person next to you and say, Can you believe this? I mean, what in the world is going on here?
How are we dealing with this? Now, this is where you need your Bible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. The great vacuum that is at the center of twenty-first-century life is a vacuum that is only ultimately addressed by God himself. We don't want to overstate the circumstances in which we live, but we don't want to be naïve to them either. We live now at a time in our culture where institutions are pretty well passé—whether it's the police, the school, the government, or the church.
The idea that there are norms which are absolutely binding and absolutely timeless, that idea is regarded as implausible, if not absolutely irrelevant. And men and women waiting for the great ball to drop in New York City tonight are living in an environment the fabric of our twenty-first-century Western culture is unraveling before our eyes. Where is the unchangeable in the midst of a changing world? O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise. I'm fourteen years old, and I'm in my bedroom, and I am surrounded by all of these cries and longings, O LORD.
Where could I go from your presence? You see? That's why we studied Psalm 139, so that we might discover what it means when a man or a woman is in Christ, when they become a new creation, when the old things are gone, when they are ushered into this amazing process, this journey of sanctification, whereby God, having taken hold of us, is in the business of conforming us to the image of his Son, making us just like Jesus. And we have to recognize that we're, many of us, not very much like Jesus. The church, in many ways, is a hospital.
The church is, okay, maybe a gym, but it's like a convalescent ward, because we're living our lives in a kind of fragile convalescence. We know that in Christ we are filled with all his fullness. We imagine ourselves to be strong and healthy and holy. But in actual fact, we're weak, and we're sinful, and we're sick. And under God's care, we're getting better.
But we're not yet well. That's why we studied Psalm 139. From there, we went to the book of Jude.
Remember Jude? Now, there was a progression of thought, at least in my mind, in our studies throughout the year. We want to think Christianly. Okay, let's think about our world as God has made us, and then let's think about the church. And that's why we studied Jude together, because Jude issues in his day this call to the people of God to contend for the faith—not to become contentious in their approach, but to be very, very clear about what the story of the Bible is, about who God is, how he has made himself known in Jesus, what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and what that rules out as, well, that's what it rules in. And we paid careful attention to that, because we said, instead of regarding the great dilemma that we face as being all these bogeymen out there, in fact, the history of the church shows that the church collapses better from within as a result of default than it collapses as a result of any oppression from the outside. In fact, church history bears testimony to the fact that the blood of the martyrs has proved almost inevitably to be the seed of the church. And so we studied Jude, and we recognized the creeping influence of a godless way of thinking. Now, what he's addressing there is not a first-century phenomenon, but an every-century phenomenon, where people will seek to take the grace of God and so teach it as to turn it into a license for immorality. And that's why we studied all the way through Jude.
I can't remember how many studies there were—perhaps a dozen—because we realized that in every generation it is imperative that the church in that generation pays attention to what it means to be in Christ and for Christ, and how easy it is for a church family to accommodate itself to the thought forms of a culture—and to accommodate itself to the thought forms of a culture within the framework of Christendom that is itself losing the plot, that is now questioning things which are verities, that is now prepared to take on board dialogue concerning matters about which there is no need for dialogue—ideas, practices that suggest that the way to reach a generation is with a kind of trimmed-down Christianity, one that is far easier to accommodate than that which speaks so clearly from the Bible, and so on. This is not like any other gathering. This is not a meeting of people post-high school who got together because it was the last week of the year. This is the assembly of the righteous in the presence of the risen Christ, who stands amongst his people to lead us in our praise. When we miss that, we miss everything.
How does it happen? The grace of God. Trivialized. Worship loses its all. The truth of Scripture loses its ability to compel. People say, Well, maybe he has some ideas.
We'll consider the ideas. No, the compulsion is not from the lips of the preacher. The compulsion is from the lips of God. It is the Scripture that compels. When this happens, obedience loses its virtue.
We begin to toy with the idea. Somehow or another, I'm not sure I have to be as obedient as all that. Did Jesus really mean it when he said, If a person loves me, he will keep my commandments?
No. And inevitably, the church loses its moral authority. In the wider constituency of Western thought, the church has by and large lost its moral authority.
Why? Because of immorality within the church. How in the world do we speak to a generation about the authority of God, the love of God, the compelling influence of God, when we ourselves have not paid scant attention to it at all?
That was the second series. Then we went from Jude to John. Now, we went to John's Gospel in order that we might fill our minds with the words and the works of Jesus. We're looking at the statements that Jesus made prefaced by the two words, verily, verily, or truly, truly. And as we read each of these passages, we discovered very clearly that there's a certain group of people that are intrigued by Jesus. Jesus, because of what he did and because of what he said, had begun to gather a large crowd around him.
And in the gathering of that crowd, he spoke very clearly. And as we saw in John chapter 6, a number of the people that had been part of the concentric circle had decided that they were no longer going to be following him. They'd no longer follow him, because they began to say to one another, you know, we don't like these hard sayings that he's making. We would like it if it was a lot easier than this, if it was a lot more accessible and so on.
Well, again, that's not a new phenomenon, is it? We recognize that people turn away from the consideration of Jesus, and many of them have done so because their only interest in Jesus was an interest in self-fulfillment. Church had become for them a kind of variegation of the idea of, you can have your needs met, you can answer your questions, you can have everything put together for you. So it became a sort of deified self-help mechanism. And so as soon as we had secured sufficient help, then we could just drift away.
Or, worse still, if we discover that that help came at cost. Since our interest was in self-expression and we discovered that it came in the realm of self-surrender, they said, No, we don't do self-surrender. We're looking for self-expression. And just as in Jesus' day, many of them wandered away.
So I'm gonna put it this way. The gospel of today frequently is unthinking and superficial. Thinking Christianly. Frequently, the gospel of today is unthinking and superficial.
Frequently is believed and preached without urgency. And the reason is that it has yet to dawn upon many in the church that God in his holiness is deeply and irrevocably set in opposition to the world, because of its sin. That the real issue of man is the fact of our alienation from God. That we are distanced from God on two fronts—on our side, on account of our sin, and on God's side, on account of his wrath. Well, is that really the story of the Bible? That we have offended against God, that God must punish sin? Or is it simply that Christianity is whatever you want it to be?
That you come, you see if it's nice for your children, if you fulfill yourself, and so on? If you can be doing that, but that's not the gospel. Am I preaching in vain?
No. The reality is that we need someone to reconcile us. And the story of the gospel is, despite our rebellion and despite the reality on account of God's wrath, God has come to seek us out. Hence Christmas, hence the atonement, hence the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth in which dwells righteousness. All that the Father gives me will come to me.
And whoever comes to me, I will never turn away. The gospel. It's a mystery, isn't it? It's actually the mystery that many of you were considering as you, in Bible studies, worked your way through Romans chapter 9, 10, and 11. And along with those who were teaching and all who were listening, you found that you were greatly encouraged by the way in which Paul finally throws up his hands, as it were, at the end of the wonders that he has been proclaiming. And the wonders that he's been proclaiming take his breath away.
You will notice, if you turn to it, that there are two exclamation marks—both of them—halfway through 33 and at the end of 33. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
Paul has written this amazing letter, and whether this reference is simply to what he has been immediately identifying in chapters 9, 10, and 11, or whether he's referring to the entirety of it, both fit. And the fact of the matter is, he is saying that God's counsel is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. It's not just that the things that he has chosen not to make known are incomprehensible. In actual fact, the things that he has chosen not to make known are inapprehendable. We cannot apprehend what he has not made known. It is what he has made known that is incomprehensible. His riches, his wisdom, his knowledge, his kindness—it is this which is incomprehensible. It is unsearchable.
It is a very antithesis of trivial and accessible. Now, you see, here's the thing. God's incomprehensibility beyond the limits of what he has revealed is without question.
It's without question. For some of us, you see, the gospel we proclaim is boring. The approach that we take is banal—and partly because it hasn't really registered with us. I mean, have you ever knelt on your knees and said, O God, how incomprehensible are you? And how wonderful that you searched me, and you know me, and you made me, and there's nowhere that I can go out of your presence?
Have you? Do you know God? What do you mean when you say God?
Do you believe God? When we studied on the first of the year, we had a, quote, concern in the doctrine of providence, which fits in this place as well. David Cahoon says that this great and vast mystery does not answer all our questions, but it enables us to live without answers until the time comes when we will live without questions. The problem for some of us is we're living without questions.
We should be living with questions. And so, Paul says, I'll give you two questions—one in 34 and one in 35. Question 1. Who has known the mind of the Lord or has been his counselor? Nobody.
Question 2. Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? Nobody. The Westminster Confession is so straightforward and clear. There is only one living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, unchangeable, boundless, and incomprehensible. So we cannot know him unless he comes down to us and speaks to us.
The writer to the Hebrews begins in that way. In many and various ways of old, God has spoken to us by the prophets, but now in these last days, he has spoken to us in his Son. You see, we do not come to biblical conviction. We do not come to the reality of this by speculation, nor by way of imagination.
Every time you find yourself saying, I like to think of God as, be careful, because you're planning on diminishing the reality of who God is. We come by way of revelation. And he gives it to us in the thirty-sixth verse, in a nutshell. For from him, and through him, and to him, everything. Why are all these things brought into being, including you? In order that you might live your life to him.
And that's why he ends. So all the glory, all the glory, belongs to you. Amen. Are you in awe of God?
You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. The more we study the Bible and learn about God, the more aware we become of our own hopeless condition outside of Christ. And it's only then that we're truly awed by God, that we can turn to him in faith. That's why we're passionate about teaching the Bible every day here at Truth for Life. And here on the last day of the year, your giving is important. It's what makes this daily program and our online teaching possible. A year-end donation of any amount, $20, $30, even $50.
When everyone contributes, it adds up and enables the ministry to close the year with the resources needed to be in a solid position. Make your donation securely online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Be sure to go online before midnight tonight so your donation is tax deductible for 2024. Again, the link is truthforlife.org slash donate. Or you can call us today before five o'clock Eastern time at 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening and for praying for us in 2024. Tomorrow we kick off the new year by considering the ripple effects of sin. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
