If you've ever been caught in a riptide, you know how easy it is to be carried away by the tide and never realize it till you look back toward the shore. Today on Truth for Life, we'll see how easy it is to get swept up in the surrounding culture if we're not careful. Alistair Begg is teaching from 2 Corinthians chapter 2, beginning with verse 12. He's titled today's message, Inadequacy, The Surprising Secret to Being Useful to God. I want to approach the subject from four perspectives.
First of all, to consider the biblical framework that underpins the thesis in the title. Then to change gears from that and move to the cultural setting, which is ours in seeking to understand the Bible. then to change gears again and to ask a question concerning the contemporary church in relationship to the biblical framework and the cultural setting and then finally to look at the whole matter in relationship to ourselves as individuals where then does the contemporary church fall in relationship to these things would it be fair to say that the church is firmly grounded in its understanding of inadequacy as a foundation for usefulness? Or do you think that the church has capitulated to the spirit of the age and that the average seminarian is about to launch himself or herself on an unsuspecting church and let them all know how brilliant she is or how terrific he is and how they just can't wait to discover it. You will recall that when Nehemiah was assigned the task for the rebuilding of the walls and the rehanging of the gates in the broken down context of Jerusalem.
The first thing that he did was pray. Then he did a reconnaissance. And after his reconnaissance, under cover of night and with little fuss and bother, he didn't arrive in Jerusalem under a great banner saying, your greatest fears are over. I am here. Nehemiah has arrived.
No, he finally got the people together and he said to them, you see the trouble we're in? Or in the King James version, it puts it in the interrogative, do you see the trouble we are in?
Well, the fact of the matter was they saw it, but they didn't see it. they had grown accustomed to the trouble that they were in. They had begun to live with it. It was so familiar to them that it took somebody coming from the outside to let them see that the real predicament was not actually in the fact that the walls were broken down, but the broken down walls were a metaphor for the fact that the glory of God was being dragged in the dust of a Judean hillside. And so his prophetic role is to call the people in the midst of the situation, to stand back far enough from it for a moment, and to view it from the perspective of God, and then to determine what needs to be done from there.
and so it is that in every generation the role of the prophet is in part to say do you see this do you see the trouble we are in i wonder are we alert to the way in which our pulpits increasingly sound like popular therapy rather than unpopular theology Are we aware how little the call of the kingdom rings out? He who would be first should be last. He who would be master of all must be the servant of all. The radical claims of Jesus cutting across the preoccupations of our contemporary society, a narcissistic culture that is intensely interested in feeling good about itself, and the incumbent pressure that is on the pulpit to try and make sure that we do not lose the ears of those whose agenda is so different from Christ's. He is the one who calls for the renunciation of the self.
You want to save your life? Then lose it. if you lose your life for my sake and the gospel says jesus you will find it it is in loss that you find it in trying to hold on to it you lose it i wonder have we embraced such a notion of triumphalism that we are now embarrassed by any notion of inadequacy or insufficiency say, we must ask the question why it is that the least, the last, and the left out in our communities, the marginalized, are not coming in droves into the context of our churches. And it may be a simplistic response It certainly a generalization and I understand that But nevertheless part of the answer may lie in the fact that we portray ourselves as the company that has it all together, as the company that understands everything, that has got it all buttoned down. And so the person says, well, I don't go in there and tell people how I really am, because if they find out what I'm really like, none of them are like that at all.
Now, because you see, we're all shiny porcelain pitchers. Makes it hard for an old cracked pot to nestle in amongst all that shiny stuff. I'm just asking you to think, that's all. Smugness. Evangelical smugness.
such a smugness, such a pervasive smugness, that the smug don't know how smug they are. It will take unsmugness to expose it. Are we prepared to tolerate the thought, the observation again by David Wells, that, quotes, efforts to build character have been replaced by efforts to manage the impressions that we make on others? What if we are actually focused on the unashamed promotion of ourselves than on the unequivocal proclamation of the gospel? Paul says, if I want to glorify myself, I can run through my credentials any day you want.
I went to the right schools. I came from the right family background. I had everything by the tail. but I'm not here to do that. That's why I would all the more gladly glory in my infirmities and in my insufficiencies in order that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to God.
You can't have it both ways. You cannot from the pulpit, if I may just illustrate it for me for a moment, you cannot from the pulpit make people believe that you're fantastic and that Jesus is fantastic simultaneously.
Now, they may look at you and say, you mean a little pipsqueak like that was able to expound that passage? That's amazing. We must have a great God and a great Bible. Is it conceivable that we suffer from humility in the wrong place? We are producing a crop of preachers who are very sure about themselves and creatively vague about doctrinal orthodoxy.
So they're very, very sure about who they are. And they believe that it is the great apologetic to let the world know that they are equally unsure about just everything between the covers of their Bible. It's humility in the wrong place. I think on that occasion, Chesterton said, we are now breeding a group of individuals who are too humble to acknowledge the validity of the three times table. In a strange leap to Ronald Reagan, if you've ever gone to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley and put on the earphones and gone into the mock-up of the Oval Office, you will have heard President Reagan's voice in your ears.
And like me, you will have been intrigued by much that is said. And like me, you may have been arrested when he reaches the point and he says, I never regarded this as my own office. I regarded this as the office of the people. I served in this office. And then he says, I took it so seriously that I never removed my suit coat when I was working in the Oval Office.
And then there's a pause. And he says, you see, you can take the office seriously without taking yourself too seriously. me. Is it possible that contemporary evangelicalism is increasingly fertilized by those of us who take ourselves too seriously while not taking that to which we've been called seriously enough? That brings me then to my final point as the uncomfortable nature of the challenge turns its gaze on us as individuals.
If we consider it in terms of the biblical pattern, and then in terms of the cultural context, and then in terms of, if you like, the ecclesiastical framework, then now what about it personally? It's the challenge to ask ourselves whether we're prepared to face up to our extreme feebleness, to face up to our impotence, to face up to what Jonathan Edwards referred to as, quotes, the bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit in our hearts? Or are we going to kid ourselves? Are we going to start to believe our own press clippings? Are we going to start to be imbibing some of this elixir that makes it very difficult for your wife to sleep with you in the evening because she can't find a pillow big enough to accommodate your gargantuan cranium like a grapefruit on a toothpick.
Says C.S. Lewis, and the four loves those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty. we easily imagine conditions far higher than we have actually reached if we describe what we have imagined we may make others and make ourselves believe that we have really been there and so fool both them and ourselves. You see, here is one of the arenas in which we face the danger of allowing the world to squeeze us into its own mold. Many times when we expound Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2, it has more of a flavor to it of dealing with some of the bits and pieces and often in a teenager's life.
I remember I listened to so many sermons on that. It was all about a sort of second level of Christianity. And if you wanted to be a missionary, you had to be a Romans 12, 1 and 2 Christian. But if you just wanted to be a Christian, you didn't really have to worry about it very much. I hope we're all safe from that.
But what is striking to me is that after he says, this is your service of reasonable worship, what is the very first point of application? Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. He starts right there with humility. You offer your body as a living sacrifice to God, your mind, your influence, all that you have, all of your training, all of your studies, all of your everything, you offer it all up to God, which is your reasonable service of spiritual worship, then immediately says, now listen, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather with sober judgment. Let's think about pastor just for a moment.
Let's turn the gaze where it's most uncomfortable, the searchlight that shines right in my eyes that I cannot avoid. as pastors and church leaders, we have to ask ourselves whether we can honestly say with Paul, we do not preach ourselves. 2 Corinthians 4, 5. We do not preach ourselves. But Jesus Christ is Lord and ourselves as your servants for Christ's sake.
Can we really say we do not preach ourselves? Let me tell you, we preach ourselves when we seek to advance our reputation, our influence and our own well-being. We preach ourselves when our pulpits become the occasion of conjecture and personal opinion rather than the exposition of the text. We preach ourselves when we intrude continually with stories about ourselves or attempts to display our cleverness. the commentator Barnes puts it simply when he says we preach ourselves in one word when self is primary and the gospel is secondary when we prostitute the ministry to gain popularity to live a life of ease to be respected to gain influence to rule over people and to make the preaching of the gospel merely an occasion of advancing ourselves in the world.
So we need to pray, don't we? That God in his mercy will do whatever it takes in order to drive home to our hearts the reality of our insufficiency. Until we know, not just intellectually, but experientially, that Jesus meant what he said when he told his followers, apart from me, you can do nothing. We're in real difficulty. Sir Malcolm Sargent, on one occasion, he's listening to a very fine singer.
The girl is a soprano. She is singing an operatic piece. She is apparently flawless in her technique. the clarity of her tone is exceptional she finishes to great applause and the person who had taken Sir Malcolm Sargent to the occasion turned to him and said so what do you think? he said I think she will be brilliant when something happens to break her heart when something happens to break her heart.
You see, fellas, girls, what Paul is displaying here is a reliance on Christ alone for life and power. To rely on Christ for life and for power demands that I seek to rely upon myself, that I renounce my confidence in any of my own wisdom and my own willpower, and I turn entirely to Christ, asking him for the wisdom and power that is needed. You can do the research on your own now. We started in Corinthians with Paul. we might easily have gone to the psalmist.
Psalm 127. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stands guard in vain. In other words, we build and we watch in vain apart from the Lord.
Solomon. call out he says to his son call out for wisdom call out for these things in other words pray seek god ask him for this insight or what about the leadership of jehoshaphat when he assembles all the people together in the square and somebody comes and says there's a vast army coming against you it will annihilate us jehoshaphat said you don't know who you're dealing with i'm jehoshaphat I mean, did he? No. He called out to God. Oh God, he says, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you We have no power to face this vast army coming against us Do you find that in any leadership books lately Wall Street today has a number of principles of how you supposed to be a successful leader I guarantee you this isn one of them.
The one thing you don't do is stand up in front of the congregation and say, I don't know what to do. We're completely overwhelmed. That's Jehoshaphat. No surprise because God, Isaiah 40, gives strength to the weak. Full circle to Paul.
God chose the weak, he says, 1 Corinthians 1. 2 Corinthians 4, he put his treasure in old clay pots. In old clay pots. There you are. Trinity graduate.
Take that big diploma. Put it up on the wall. And have your wife or your mom or your girlfriend or somebody just draw a picture of an old flower pot that's kind of cracked and musty and put that up beside it just to remind yourself that that's what you are. Because even the Christians we admire most for their godliness and for their giftedness are just as much jars of clay as are we. The people that we admire the most are as much jars of clay as ourselves.
This is Stoddy just before he dies.
someone says to him, Stott, what about you? What are you? This is what he said. I am simply a beloved child of a heavenly father, an unworthy servant of my friend and master, Jesus Christ, a sinner saved by grace to the glory and praise of God. How do you explain Stott's usefulness?
because he got a double first from Oxford, because he's arguably the best sanctified scholarship brain in a pulpit in the 20th century? No, I don't think so. I think you'd have to explain him in terms of his willingness to accept that all that God had given him still brought him to the place where he realized, apart from you, Jesus, I can do nothing. And then we will finish with Augustine. Augustine says, when anyone knows that he is nothing in himself and has no help from himself, the weapons within him are broken and the war is ended.
When anyone knows he's nothing in himself and has no help from himself, the weapons are broken and the war has ended. But unfortunately, the war never ends, does it? I haven't found the war ends. That's why I like the Westminster Confession. It says the Christian is involved in a continual and irreconcilable war.
It never ends. And so it is to the gospel that we have to turn to remind ourselves that Christ bore the sins of our proud adequacy in himself. That he clothes us with the garments of his righteousness. And that it is this unmerited grace that stirs us and enables us to press on to the gates of heaven. But says Rutherford, you must remember, be humbled, walk softly, down with your top sail.
Stoop. Stoop. It is a low entry to go in at heaven's gate. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God. You're listening to Truth for Life.
That is Alistair Begg reminding us that we are the conduit for God's work, not the key. Alistair will be back in a moment to close today's program.
Now, as Alistair explained in today's message, prayer keeps us connected to God and helps us rely on Jesus for wisdom and power instead of relying on our own wisdom or strength.
So today on Truth for Life, we want to invite you to download for free the audiobook and digital study guide of Alistair's book Pray Big. In the book Pray Big, Alistair explores the prayers of the Apostle Paul for his friends in the church of Ephesus. He then helps us follow Paul's pattern of prayer so we can learn how to pray with confidence, boldness, and in accordance with God's will. If you've ever wondered what you're supposed to say when you pray, who to pray for, what to pray about. This is a book that answers those questions and a whole lot more.
Don't miss the opportunity to download the Pray Big audiobook and digital study guide for free. It's a special offer during the month of September. Visit truthforlife.org slash pray big.
Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. Father, we offer ourselves afresh to you. we pray that under the searching gaze of your word and in obedience to the direction of the Holy Spirit, you might be pleased to use the considerations of the last hour to help us live our lives to the praise of your glorious grace. And this we humbly pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
We're glad you joined us today. We live in a self-focused, success-driven culture, and the Bible offers radical teaching concerning where we should find true meaning and significance. We'll explore that subject tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
