Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we begin a series titled Lessons for Life. These are messages Alistair Begg originally taught to college students. but I think you'll see that the teaching applies to all of us at any age. We begin by learning why it's imperative for Christians to be confident in the truth. and power and relevance of the gospel.
At a bar. down in Dallas. An old man chimed in. And I thought he was out of his head. Because being a young man, I just laughed it off.
when I heard what the old man had said. He said. I wish I was eighteen again. To go where I've never been. I'm three quarters home.
From the start To the end, And I wish I was eighteen. Again. I don't know why I woke up with that old song by Sonny Throckmorton on my mind this morning, but I did. I think it's because in a very similar and yet different way. When I come, as I come this morning, to an opportunity like this.
I feel very much like that. It is that when I look out on you this morning. I have, I think, a rightful sense of jealousy. Jealous. of the opportunity that now falls to you.
to seize the moment to bring the gospel to this next Generation. And if you want to be fit for that task, if you're serious about taking up. the challenge. It is imperative That you, like Timothy, as Paul addresses him here in 2 Timothy 3:14. That you are both convinced and continuing.
It is imperative that you're convinced because even a casual reading of church history reveals the fact that when Christians, when the church loses confidence in the truth. Power and relevance of the gospel. Along with that, it loses any compelling sense. Yeah. William Booth, who had founded the Salvation Army.
was asked What he thought were going to be the challenges of the church in the next generation, in the next century. In Booth's day, of course, that was the challenge of the twentieth century. And this is Booth's reply. In answering your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers Which confront the coming century will be Religion without the Holy Spirit. Christianity without Christ.
forgiveness without repentance. Salvation without regeneration. Politics without God and heaven without hell. His words, of course, were prophetic. As both the twentieth and the twentieth-first century have now revealed.
Are you convinced about the gospel? Are you absolutely sure that the gospel centers On what God has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. in order to save us from sin and from the devil and from death. Are you convinced? That this message of the cross, which is foolishness to men and women, which is an affront to their pride.
Is absolutely central to all that we say and do. For no presentation of the gospel is a gospel presentation. without the cross being both proclaimed and explained. If we do not pay careful attention to this, then we may fall foul of all kinds of agendas. Bow.
Underneath the lordship of Jesus. For under his lordship we are not free to believe whatever we like. If we close our Bibles, then the remembered Christ becomes an imagined Christ. And Augustine in his day said: if you believe what you like in the gospel, And you reject what you don't like. It is not the gospel you believe.
But yourself. Smeaton. in his book on the atonement. Rights A sentence or two that is quite chilling in the contemporary context. Listen to what he wrote.
to convert one sinner. from the error of his ways. is an event of greater significance. than the liberation of an entire kingdom from temporal evil. to convert one sinner.
Who converts sinners? Who softens hard hearts? Who opens blind eyes? Only grower. And how has he chosen to do this?
through the gospel of his son.
So here I am to say to you this morning: this is no time for watery substitutes, this is no time for weak-kneed Christians, this is the moment. And it is a time for us not to be caught on our back foot, But to be able to say quite clearly, Underneath the authority of the Bible, and in a way that is imaginative and creative and engaging to our friends, a number of things. First of all, That this story is historical. That the message of the Bible is historical, these things actually happened. You say, well, you've come all this way here to tell us something we know.
That's exactly right. I discovered a long time ago that my job in life was not to introduce new ideas, but to make sure that people didn't forget the old ideas. These things actually happened. Paul in 1 Corinthians says, I deliver to you as of first importance. that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
He was buried, he was raised in accordance with the scriptures. In other words, what Paul is saying is the Old Testament scriptures, as I've read them, now so clearly to me, he says, point forward to all of the reality that there is in Jesus. Peter says the same thing. We did not follow cleverly devised myths. When we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus.
Because we were eyewitnesses Of His Majesty.
Sometimes we're a little too close to this. to stand back from it enough to really allow it to grasp us. Peterer Who wrote those words, we didn't follow myths. Was along with his colleagues. completely demoralized on Good Friday.
They were thoroughly bewildered on Easter Sunday. And yet, within a matter of weeks, they're on the streets of Jerusalem declaring, God has raised this Jesus to life. And we are witnesses of the Fact. Not the idea. The concept, the construct, the notion, the fact.
We're here to tell you that this actually happened. And Peter and the others. were clearly convinced That Jesus was alive. F.F. Bruce says: if Jesus had not risen from the dead, we should probably never have heard of him.
Now this is something of great importance, and I emphasize it for you and encourage you to go to your Bible and think it out. This is why, for example, Luke begins his gospel in such a historical manner. Classically, at the beginning of chapter 3, it begins, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip Tetrarch of the region of Itoria and Trachonitis, and Lysanius the Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came to John.
Now, some of you are thinking that's great. I'm going to use that in one of my papers for my theology class. I mean, that's a bunch of filler at the start, isn't it? What's all that in there for? That's just because he's got to have 2,000 words and he knows he's only got about 1,650 on his birthday.
So he fills it all up. In the year of Tiberius, Reconitis, Hittiputus, Incatatentus of the No, no. The word of the Lord came to John not in a vacuum. But in a place in a time, in a moment, at a fixed point in history. when God chose to make it so.
Young people, you need to lay hold of this. You need to ground yourself in this. Peter is not weaving together a flowery tale. He's not offering some story of an impersonal God with whom you can engage. He is recording what actually happened.
And of course, Peter and Paul do the same thing. John does the same. James 2. Paul says in his great classic chapter, from which I've quoted already in 15 of Corinthians, that this Jesus appeared to 500 people at one and the same time. And he adds, most of whom are still living.
That's important. You might be able to swing it by if they're all already dead, but if they're actually there, they can put out their hand and go, No, I'm one of the 500, and that's not true. Like, if I came here and I told you that I was personally acquainted with every member of the Beatles. And I knew all of them. Bill, Reginald, Tom, and Harry.
All four of them. I've known them a long time. And now, even though you're 100 years behind me, you know enough of history to stand up and say, No, you don't know the Beatles at all. We know who they were. Two of them are still alive, although two of them are dead, and that's not their names.
That's the point, he's saying. Jesus Christ appeared. And we don't need to go to our Bibles, we can go to secular Roman and Jewish historians. referring to the fact that the followers of Jesus worshiped him as God. called him Messiah.
That he was executed in Judea when Pontius Pilate was the governor. And when you give this consideration, and with this, you want to be talking to your friends. We are left with no middle ground. Either in Jesus God entered into time. Lived a perfect life.
And died the death That we as sinners deserve. and rose again from the dead on the third day. Either that is true. Or the New Testament. Is the record of a lie.
It is an elaborate hoax. Unlike other religions, for example Buddhism, which can get along fine without Buddha, Christianity does not exist for a moment. or in any respect Apart. from the historicity. of a risen Christ.
Are you convinced? It's historical these things actually happened. Secondly, it's rational. It actually makes sense. Our friends may reject it, but not on account of its irrationality.
Everybody starts from presuppositions, we all do. Everyone comes to the Bible with presuppositions.
So it's poor form on the part of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion to pass over the question of the resurrection of Jesus without giving any consideration to the evidence for it. This is what he says. Jesus probably existed. But the idea that he came back to life After being dead, is absurd. You know, if you say things like that with that Cambridge accent, it carries a tremendous amount of weight.
A G Jesus Christ probably existed. But the idea that he came back to life from the dead, quite frankly, is absurd.
Well, thank you very much for your analysis. That was very good.
Now we can say this New Testament story of Jesus and the resurrection makes sense of the big picture of life, it answers the big questions. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? The panoramic story of the Bible is the good, the bad, the new, the perfect.
But God In the perfection of his wisdom, he has created a world, set his creatures in that world, they have rebelled against him. The world becomes broken into that brokenness, into that badness. comes Christ The time is fulfilled, he says. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.
The king has come, he walks on water. He raises the dead. He transforms the demonic He sits with the woman at the well. He deals with a little cheat up the tree. And when we are brought into a living personal relationship with Jesus, sin no longer reigns, but it remains.
We wrestle on the three fronts against the world and the flesh and the devil. The good we want to do, we don't do. The bad we don't want to do, we end up doing. Romans 7 is a reality. Romans 8 is an encouragement.
Romans 7 is the north side of the house where it's kind of chilly. Romans 8 is the south side of the house where it's a little warmer. And you live in both of those parts. of the building and you look forward to the day. when it will be absolutely Perfect.
That's what we're able to say to men and women. When they asked us this morning about all those migrants, What is wrong with the world? Where people find U-Haul vans parked with dead and Decaying bodies inside them, of pe as people run in search of freedom, as they run in search of hope, as they run in search of security. Do we really have An economic, structural Political answer to this, and if we do. Don't you think that by this time in the development of the world these things would have taken such hold That it would be Just terrific.
William Booth. was as committed to the care of the human body. to the engagement with the miseries of human life. As anyone in his day and age, he left his Methodist background to establish the Salvation Army in order that he might be amongst the women on the street, that he might engage with those who were lying on the steps of the closed churches. But he's the one who said to get a person soundly saved It is not enough to put on him a new pair of trousers.
to give him regular work or even to give him a university education. These things are all outside a man. And if the inside remains unchanged, You have wasted your labors. If the inside remains unchanged, who can change the heart? Like Jesus.
Who can deal with the illness of our world? Who can deal with the brokenness that exists? This story is Historical. These things actually happened. It's rational.
It really makes sense. And finally, It is empirical. In the sense that men and women can put it to the test. It's not true because it works. It works.
Because it's true. And the story of the gospel really answers the cries of the human heart. You see, the question of identity. is addressed in Jesus. Because in Jesus you don't have to create your identity.
It's not a created identity. It's a received identity. If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. And so it actually is an opportunity for us to say: when the cry of the human heart is for meaning. When in the drama group here they finally uh strut the stage and somebody uh trots out Shakespeare, all the world's a stage and all the men and women are merely players, they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.
Or, you know, we could go on from there. What we want. When these issues are addressed, then Christianity has an answer. It says we were created purposefully for a relationship with God. That Sartre, no wonder he was a gloomy old soul.
when he got up in the morning and writes a a sentence or two like this, Here we are, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence, and there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.
Well, what does Christianity say? Jesus says, I have come that you might have life. And that you might have it in all of his fullness. The cry for freedom. Freedom from self-pity, freedom from jealousy, freedom from resentment.
If the sun makes you free, you'll really be free. The cry for forgiveness. For love. Yeah. For God.
To be set free from the suffocating distress which a man or a woman feels in being separated from God. Are you convinced about this stuff? Oh, I know you signed up. You know, I know you have to fill in the form. And so you should.
And I know you made testimony of your profession of faith. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking at your core. The things you would live for and die for, are you convinced of this? Are you convinced that these things actually happen, that this is historical, that these things really are rational, that you can speak to them with great confidence in our fragmented society, and that you can say to people, listen, put it to the test, taste and see that the Lord is.
Is good. Because not one line of the New Testament was written. Apart from the conviction. that Jesus had defeated death. and was alive forever.
The symbol of Christianity. It's not the dead. figure of a crucifix. But it is the triumphant Christ with a cross broken beneath his feet. And it is that which compels To give up their small dreams.
and to take this to the ends of the earth. Don't misunderstand me here. I'm not suggesting that if you really get a hold of this and believe this, then you'll end up as crazy as I am, or you'll end up, you know, with your collar turned all around wrong, or you have to go into some quasi-world. Who knows where God wants you to go? You just need to settle this issue.
He convinced? You continuing? He prepares. To allow this to frame your life? to form your convictions.
to fashion your plans. At a school in Ohio, An old man, Chess Scotsman, chimed in. And I thought he was Out of his head. Because being a youngster I Didn't pay heed. Especially when I learned what he said.
He said I wish I was 18 again. To go where I've never been. to tell all the people. All these lonely people. That this story is the story.
Historical. Rational. empirical.
Well, may God help us. Let us pray. Father, how we thank you that we don't have to invent some. Strange philosophical construct in order to have something Meaningful to say. But we thank you that God You were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself, not counting.
their sins against them because you were counting them against your son. Thank you that we find in the Bible the story of the appeasement of the wrath of God. By the love of God. Secured in a gift of God. Even the Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray for ourselves this morning, Lord. whether our lives are short or long. That we might give ourselves in whatever area and arena of life you said us to. to be those who remain convinced of what we have learned, knowing those from whom we have learned it, as we thank you for the impact of loved ones and parents and friends and teachers, even the teachers that are around us here in this institution in this day. May the fact that they have enabled us to be convinced result in our continuing.
and thank you for the promise of your word. That being confident of this. That he who has begun a good work in you. will bring it to completion. at the day of Jesus Christ.
So we give ourselves afresh to you. And we commend ourselves into your loving care. In Christ's name. Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life.
That is Alastair Begg pointing out that Christianity is historical, rational. and empirical. Are you convinced? If you have lingering questions about the Bible or about Jesus or the gospel, let me encourage you to visit the Learn More page. at truthforlife.
org slash learn more. You'll find several short series and a couple of videos that address the most frequently asked questions. In one brief video Alistair explains the gospel message clearly and and concisely. Again, the link is truthforlife.org slash learn more.
Now, at Truth for Life, we know that the world's priorities are often very different from what the Bible teaches, and that can be confusing or overwhelming. Our prayer is that the Bible-centered teaching you hear on this daily program offers you an encouraging change of focus as you reflect on God's Word. And it reminds you that God is unchanging, He's sovereign, His Word is tried and true. I hope you'll find this current series Lessons for Life to be helpful in this way.
Well, we're glad you joined us today. Tomorrow we'll see how while many people approached Jesus with their own expectations, He ultimately meets our greatest need. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
