Coming to trust Jesus for our eternal salvation is something that happens in a defining moment. But living out your life as a Christian is a lifelong daily commitment to obedience. And today UnTruth for Life. Alastair Begg shares some scripture-based convictions that frame his life and ministry. Two Timothy chapter three.
But mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. boastful, proud. Abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful. unholy Without love, unforgiving, slanderous.
without self-control. Brutal. not lovers of the good. treacherous, rash, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. having a form of godliness, but denying its power.
have nothing to do with them. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women. Who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires. always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Janus and Jambras opposed Moses, so also these men opposed the truth.
men of depraved minds. who as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch. Iconium and Lystra.
the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. While evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.
because you know those from whom you learned it. And how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation. through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is God-breathed. and is useful for teaching, rebuking.
correcting and training in righteousness.
so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped. for every good work. Amen. Just a brief prayer together. Father, what we know not, Teach us.
What we Have not. Give us what we are not Make us. For your son's sake, we pray. Amen. Well, as I say, it is a privilege to be here, to be back here at Masters.
According to my own records, the first occasion of a visit here to the college for me was on uh the 30th of November 1987. And my most memorable visit For me, was on the 30th of November 1990. Actually, the 26th of November 1990. The the 26th of November was a Monday. That means that the 25th was a Sunday.
I'm pretty smart that way, just to let you know. I figured that out, but I remember it vividly because I had been at Grace Church in the evening. I was driving out here to Santa Clarida with Dr. MacArthur to go and stay in his home. And as we got closer to his home, he said to me, I just turned and said in passing, and you'll be okay tomorrow morning for speaking at chapel, won't you?
I said, no, I wasn't planning on doing that at all. He said, Well, I think it would be a good idea if you did. As you know, he doesn't have many ideas. They're usually a little more straightforward than that. And I said to him, but I don't have anything prepared.
And what am I going to do? I'm just going to go to my bed and get up, and it will be the morning, and then it will be time. And he said, yes, he said, it's not a problem. He says, why don't you go to your bed and just say to yourself, if there were five things. that I would want to say to a group of young college students.
And then just tell them what the five things are.
So I said, fine.
So I went to my bed and I had a little notepad, which I usually have with me. And I wrote on the top of the pad, these are the sheets from 1990. Um I wrote on the talk Master's College, November 26, 1990. And then I said What I just told you. And then I wrote down So Um I'm going to share with you some of the principles.
encapsulated in a phrase or two which largely frame my life and ministry. And that was, I think, a super idea on John's part. Uh then And I thought it might not be a bad idea for now. Because after all, you weren't here, right? I mean.
There's some of you it some of you actually were here. Because uh the students then uh are now older than I was when I gave that talk then. Which is a sobering kind of thought.
So What I want to do is largely do that because I want you to know. I mean, if if I were in your position, I say, well, this is they they brought this old guy in and apparently he gave a talk twenty-four years ago and it was it was quite good, but it couldn't have been that good because he hasn't been here for 15 years.
So Um They They delayed a 15-year delay in the hope that I could get another talk, and then I come back and give the same talk that I gave 24 years ago. Probably this next time I'll be back, I'll be about 77 if we work on the same principle. Uh but you see I'm now addressing you. By and large, you all have the greater part of your life. before you.
For myself, Unless I live to be a hundred and twenty-five, I have the greater part of my life. behind me. And I have less in front of me.
So, if I was a young person, I want to know not only. Hey, how was it 24 years ago when you were 40 38? But are you jaded? Have the principles changed? Do you still believe?
Are these really the things you would still want to say? And I think there's a test in that because if they were valid then, then they should be valid now. And so I had ten on that occasion. I'm going to do a favor to you this morning. And make it 20.
No, and reduce it to five and reduce it to five. I want to, if I may, just give you five. I'm not doing it expositionally. I'm doing it topically. I hope you will see that each thing that I say to you is firmly grounded in the Scriptures.
If it isn't, then you shouldn't pay much attention to it. But I've read from 2 Timothy purposefully because not of the opening section of it, but because of the you, however, or the but you. He is addressing Timothy, as you know, in the prospect of his departure, his demise, his death, that is, Paul the Apostle. They're going to move from the apostolic to the post-apostolic church. The question is, how is it going to go?
It's therefore imperative that Timothy, as a young man, is able to stand in the stead of the apostle, is able to proclaim the apostles' words, and to do so in a context where there is all of the external persecution, where there is the infiltration of false teachers, where there is the willingness on the part of some to be always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. And it is in that context that Paul is able to say to Timothy, you know two things. You know who your teachers were. You know your teachers. And you know the scriptures.
And I want you, he says, to continue in the things you have learned. and have become convinced of.
So he issues this call to continuance. in the things that are his basic convictions. And in I think in every life. The journey of Christian pilgrimage is essentially that journey. It is, in the title of a book from a long way in the past, it is a long obedience in the one direction.
It is the ability to sustain life by the enabling grace of God. It's not a few hundred-yard sprints that last for a moment and then you can lie down on the grass, but it is a cross-country run that lasts for the rest of your life. And the convictions to which you come at this point in your lives will largely frame the rest of your lives. And so Here are my five. Number one.
There is no ideal place. to serve God. except the place he set you down. There is no ideal place to serve God except the place He sets you down. Abraham I want you to go to a place.
What place? Don't you worry about the place. I know where I want you to go, I'd like you to go. Jonah. I would like you to go to Nineveh.
I was thinking more about Tarshish. No, I would like you to go to Nineveh. Beg I would like you to go. to Cleveland.
Well, how unfair is that? I mean, I'm not a world traveler, but I've been coast to coast in America. And if you had to choose a spot, you know. You know, even in the top. Twenty And I say that with the greatest respect for all of you who come from Cleveland, but it's not exactly the rolling hills of Scotland.
Um In fact, I believe some people very unkindly refer to it as the mistake. On the lake. Who wants to live in a city that has a tower that is terminal and a lake that is eerie? That's what I'm with. It's apparently the buckle.
on the rust belt of America. It is the very heart of it all. How in the world do you ever end up where you end up? Only by the providential overruling hand of God. And this is a very simple point, but I want to make it for you because I receive resumes from young people like you all the time.
And a lot of them justifiably, deservedly, go in the round file. Because you have never understood this point. Because you've never understood that the song we've just been singing. actually has an impact on all of life. including geography.
including location. including place of service. And it will be a tremendously liberating thing for you if you can fasten onto this and grab a hold of it so that you won't write letters saying, I believe that I should be serving in a multi-generational church, I should be on a pastoral team of at least a dozen, I'm most skillful in Area Y and Area Z, and I'm very competent in everything else, the usual boring, horrible resume stuff. And frankly, it just sounds like you're blowing your own horn. I might give you a job.
Maybe in The nursery. Or car parking to begin with, since you're so good. And since you're so clear about where you need to be. But of course, you would never have written to me, would you? Not unless you'd been rejected in the first 25 places to which you'd applied, and now you find yourself in Cleveland, Ohio.
No, no, it's not that. Think for a moment about John the Baptist. John the Baptist, where did John the Baptist operate? You remember he had that amazing city center church in Jerusalem? It was it was perfect.
He was doing he was doing urban ministry. No, he wasn't. No, he was out in the suburbs of Jerusalem. He had a beautiful, beautiful, spreading campus with freeway access. I mean, no traffic lights in between himself and the campus.
No, it was just perfect. No, no, no, no. He was actually operating, Luke tells us, in the Judean wilderness. What is referred to by one commentator as a hot, uninhabitable depression. Situated between 600 and 1300 feet below sea level.
Not what you would call an ideal place for ministry. And yet, what do we believe? What do we learn? Quote the whole Judean countryside And all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Why?
Because He was the ideal man. in the ideal place. No. because he was God's man in God's place. Just the way that Esther was God's woman.
in God's place. Just the way that Naomi Despite her triple bereavement, Was God's woman in God's place. You wouldn't have called it an ideal place. You don't need to look for an ideal place. Because there is no ideal place to serve God.
Except the place he said you down. Secondly, And there is, in my mind, at least some kind of progression of thought in this, because part of the explanation for the effectiveness of the ministry of John the Baptist, if it is not to be found in the congenial nature of his circumstances, is to be found in the second point. Not entirely, but certainly. And here's the second point. This is a quote from Isaiah 66.
This is the one. To whom I will look, says the Lord. He who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. This is the one to whom I will look. Who is the one to whom God looks?
This is the description of it absolutely clearly. What a challenge that is in our day, isn't it? Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, as she does on Saturdays, in 2009. She made this comment. For thirty years, the self-esteem movement.
Told The young people. that they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history. An entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy. An entire generation with no Proper sense of inadequacy.
We're not talking here about a false humility or some kind of obsequiousness. No, she says there's just no proper sense of inadequacy, no genuine, heartfelt awareness of the fact that I am by nature an inadequate person, that I am on my best day an unprofitable servant, that I am a broken and a fractured vessel into which God pours the immensity of His grace. No proper sense of that. In The American Paradox, a book by David Myers. where he says the American paradox is that Never in the history of America have people had so much and yet never had so little.
And then he goes on to identify the fact that this sense of angst has permeated the millennials, young people in your kind of generation, and slightly ahead of you. And he says it's striking that it is not in the lives of individuals who grew up, as it were, on the wrong side of the tracks, but rather in the lives of individuals who had a lovely home and a nice mom and dad and made it through school and got into college and university and graduated and found a job for themselves. And yet he says the amazing thing is that they testify to the fact that they're empty. They're baffled by their emptiness. Because their self-esteem is high.
But their self is empty. And if you read that book, you will find that he makes the point that I'm trying to make to you: that these individuals grew up being told they could be anything they wanted to be, but they don't know what they want to be. They've never been more connected to people in their entire lives by means of social media. And yet they testify to a sense of alienation that they can't explain. They have really everything that they had hoped to get at the end of their dream, and yet they got there and they find that there's nothing actually there for them.
Now, the Christian world, the Christian testimony, the Christian youngster growing up, coming out of college and education in that environment, has something to say. What do we have to say? We have to say that united to Christ, our adequacy is ultimately found in Him. After all, If Peggy Noonan was worried about this in 2009, Goodness gracious, she couldn't be prepared for the last five years. You are the young people that have introduced us to the selfie.
The selfie, of all names in the world, the selfie, what a horrible name. He said, well it's not bizarre, it's just because you're an old guy, you don't realize this is it. No, I do realize this is it. Or you say, Well, Rembrandt, he did self-portraits. Yeah, well I knew Rembrandt and you ain't no Rembrandt.
Alright. All right. 2 Timothy 3 Heading the list. Men will be what? Feel out us.
Lovers of themselves rather than lovers of God. You see how countercultural the message of the Bible, the gospel is, that needs to seep into the heart of our lives so that as we seek to make sense of the environment in which we live, we've got to be in it. We don't have to be of it in every case. we have an opportunity to make a difference. Arrogance And selfiness Abounds.
The reason that you're even surprised that I would point it out is because it is so endemic. But you don't even, many of you notice it. For me, it's an observation from the outside. For you, you've grown up with it. You largely created it.
So it takes somebody from the outside to say, do you really think this is a good idea? Do you really think that everybody in the world wants to hear about what you're doing every fifteen seconds? I got news for you. They don't.
Now, if you get a child that's grown up like that, I don't care what college they go to. By the time they come out to serve on your pastoral team, unless something has happened to hammer them and to break them, then you don't want to deal with them. Trust me. Because The one to whom God looks Is the one who is humble. Contrite?
And Trembles are the word. Go back to John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the people come to say. You've been really preaching up a storm, John, and we're going to include you in our magazine. We wanted to put a few things in about you.
Uh who are you? It says I'm not. They said, now let's ask the question again. Who are you? It says, I am not.
They said, Well, are you? He said, No. They said, this is not going well. We're trying to put something in the magazine. What shall we put in?
He said, well, you could say that I'm a voice. Crying. You could say that I'm a finger. Pointing. You can see that I'm a small light shining.
But I'm the best man, I'm not the groom. Trace pastoral collapse in America in the last 15 years since I've been gone. and trace it to one root in every single instance. whether the guy has gone down socially, morally, politically Economically, whatever way he's gone, it's gone as a result of one thing because he never paid attention to Isaiah 66:2. And pride will kill you.
Now humility is not Uriah heep. Remember from Master Copperfield? Remember? Um David Copperfield and Uriah Heap, who he was always telling David Copperfield how humble he was. Remember, he dropped his H's.
You do.
Some of you have read proper books, have you? For goodness sake, yeah.
So, um,.
So he said, I'm an I'm an I'm a I'm an ever so humble man. Master Copperfield, I am an humble man. And he explained how humble he was by dropping his H's. If he had been a proud man, he would have said, I am a humble man. But he said, I'm an humble man.
He wasn't a humble man, he was a creep. That's not what we're talking about when we talk humility. This is what humility is. Be yourself and forget yourself. Just be yourself and forget yourself.
You don't have to be the other guy in the group. You don't have to be the other girl on the team. You have been made purposefully by God. He put you together exactly the way He wants you. You come in this morning, you don't feel that good or that strong, or whatever it may be.
It doesn't matter. God has put you together exactly as He wants you. And the one to whom He looks is the one. Who isn't necessarily championing every cause or is the leader in every part? but rather is a swan.
You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life, and we'll hear more of his. Life-defining biblical convictions tomorrow. We are finding out as we listen to Alister how important it is to stay connected to God and to understand His Word, so that our lives reflect His truth. At Truth for Life teaching the Bible is our passion. We pray always that God will work through Alister's daily teaching to bring unbelievers to saving faith in Christ and to fortify believers as they strive to stay faithful in an increasingly challenging world.
And to help you to that end, we are excited to offer a free audiobook and digital study guide. The book is Alistair's book, Pray Big: Learn to Pray Like an Apostle. If you haven't read the book, you'll want to take advantage of this opportunity to learn from Alastair as he explores the Apostle Paul's prayers for the church in Ephesus. Could it be your prayers are too small? Are they limited to personal or immediate concerns?
Learn how you can pray for much bigger things that have eternal significance, just as Paul did. He prayed for the Lord to move in broad, sweeping ways that would build God's kingdom. and have an everlasting impact. This is a book that will help you to pray with confidence and boldness, and to pray in line with God's will and purposes. Download the Pray Big audiobook and study guide.
They're available for free today at truthforlife.org/slash Pray Big. I'm Bablapine. We are glad you've joined us today. Tomorrow we'll find out why spiritual growth is often greater through tears and disappointment. than during times of laughter and success.
The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
