Presenting Everyone Mature in Christ (Part 2 of 4)

Every pastor has so many issues competing for his should his primary assignment be.

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg continues a message he started Friday originally presented to an audience of church leaders. He's talking about the pastoral priority of presenting everyone mature in Christ. Alistair is teaching from Colossians 1. To proclaim Jesus, to back up into verse 25, is to make the Word of God fully known. It isn't possible for us to see the people of God becoming fully mature without us making the Word of God fully known.

And it's important for us to reinforce these things, especially in an opening session like this. That right teaching of the Bible always leads us to Jesus. And part of our skill in counseling with our friends and our loved ones is to be able to take them from where they are and show them, through the Scriptures, what it means to be in Christ, united to him, and how all the dimensions of their Christian pilgrimage are ultimately tied to his saving work. Our people will not know Christ better without knowing the Scriptures better. And it is for that reason that many of us have committed for a long time to make expository preaching of the Bible the staple diet of our congregation.

And we will do it, hopefully, with a humble heart. Now, just to stick with this phrase for a moment, him we proclaim—him we proclaim—when that is actually our focus, it will serve as a safeguard against at least a couple of things. One, it will serve as a safeguard against preaching ourselves. Preaching ourselves.

For many of us, there's far too much of the first person in our talks. I wondered, you have those old commentaries by Albert Barnes, where he has a purple passage—I won't read it all, it's too long—but he waxes eloquent on the whole idea of preaching ourselves. Ministers may be said to preach themselves in the following ways, when their preaching has a primary reference to the advancement of their own reputation. So when we preach, and the thought in our mind is, Do they like me? Or do they realize how erudite I am, or whatever it might be, when we aim at exalting any notion of our own authority or of our own influence? Or when we proclaim our own opinions rather than Christ? Or when we put ourselves forward and speak too much of ourselves? In one word, really, we preach ourselves when self is primary and the gospel is secondary. Now, to keep in mind that notion, I am here to proclaim you, Lord Jesus, as a safeguard against ourselves. It's also a safeguard against us getting involved in emphases that make us unhelpfully distinctive because it appears we have particular axes to grind. Ian Murray, wonderfully helpful when he writes, The preaching of Christ crucified to the unconverted requires the presentation of his person, the cost of his substitution for sinners, and the immensity of the divine love for sinners.

It does not require explanations on the extent of the atonement. On a lighter level—and I saw a large van here with Friendship Baptist Church. I thought, what a nice name for a Baptist church. Then I thought, that's almost an oxymoron in some places. And then I confessed that within the next ten yards. I did.

Yeah. Because, I mean, I jokingly say here that, you know, we've long given up that song, I'm so glad you're part of the family of God. We just sing now, I'm surprised that you're part of the family of God. But I was about to mention a Baptist thing, so that's what came to mind.

So, at a lighter level, you remember the story of G. Campbell Morgan from Westminster Chapel? He used to tell the story of a Baptist preacher who had a fixation with baptism, and he referred to it constantly. And so, one morning he announced his text, Genesis 3.9, Adam, where are you? And then he said, We shall follow three lines.

Number one, where Adam was. Number two, how he was to be saved from where he was. And thirdly and finally, a few words about baptism.

It's so commonplace, it's so straightforward, we might miss it. Him we proclaim. Let me suggest to us that the best reputation we can have is of faithfulness to Scripture rather than even to a doctrinal position. You remember Spurgeon's opening sermon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, when he had followed the immense ministry of Gill, who was known for his theological erudition. And as Spurgeon stood to address his congregation for the first time, remember, the essence of his quote was this.

If I am asked, What is my creed? I reply, It is Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ. Now, him we proclaim, and the proclaiming of Christ is accompanied or unfolds with both a negative and a positive dimension.

You see that. Him we proclaim, warning or admonishing everyone, and teaching everyone with all wisdom. Now, this is something that Paul references frequently in his letters—for example, classically in 1 Thessalonians.

He writes to the Thessalonians, remember, and he says to them, We ask you to respect those who labor among you, who are over you in the Lord, and who admonish you or who warn you. Paul didn't shrink as some of us are tempted to do from the uncongenial work of rebuking error and evil. Why is it that we're forced to try desperately to pick up so many of the pieces of scattered marriages and broken lives? Surely part of it—and I'm not suggesting this is the answer to it—but surely part of it has to do with how slow we are on the preventative end in our preaching to warn our people about these things, to point out the error of such activity, the evil of such activity. Instead of waiting till all the dozen eggs are smashed on the kitchen floor and then we're all running around trying to find a way to reconcile and put the pieces back together again, and somebody might come to us justifiably and say, Pastor, why did you never warn me?

Why did you never put up a big sign? Why was your preaching so absent, that admonishing element? Of course, some of us on the other side have become such experts at the warning and the admonishing that it would be a happy thing if we were to tone it down just a little bit. But the fact is, the pathway of discipleship, the track onto maturity, is strewn with dangers and with temptations. It's seldom a straight line, is it?

It's certainly not in my life. You're charting your course, you're going on all along, and all of a sudden you trip up, you fall over, you're in a hole, somebody has to pull you out, and so on. Peter is classic in that regard, isn't he? He doesn't even get out of the chapter in Matthew chapter 16.

He starts with an attaboy, and then it goes down from there. Who do you say? Who demands to say that? Who do you say I am? You're the Christ, the Son of the living God. Excellent work, Peter!

Go to the top of the class. Now, let me explain to you that I'm going up to suffer and to die. Far be it from you, Lord. Get behind me, Satan. You're a hindrance to me. How's your discipleship going, Peter? Fantastic!

Nine o'clock in the morning, full steam ahead, twenty past eleven, down in the dumps. Welcome to being a disciple of Jesus! Our people are living their lives there, and we are entrusted in part with the responsibility of helping them to run that race. Isn't it amazing now that we're gonna have cars that you don't have to drive? But the driver assist thing is supposed to keep you in the lane, right? And it's a jolly nuisance of a thing. If I boarded a car with it, it scared me half to death.

Every time I was just going a little off, and then it goes, and then it shoves you back over again. I'm like, What's that about? We're trying to keep you alive, Beck. That's what it's about. This is part of it, the ministry of the Word of God. What are you doing to me, Pastor, trying to keep you on the line, trying to keep you there? Just because you started from the right position doesn't mean that you're still on track. That's what they always say to us.

That's what we will say as well, isn't it? I never once imagined I would find myself in this position. How did I get here?

I never thought this would happen to me. You see, because the process, whereby we have the privilege of doing what we do, is the same process in part that God has entrusted so as to keep us on the track. We are actually in part responsible for ourselves. And we all need to be warned—I need to be warned—against manifold dangers, the peril of pride, of greed, of laziness. Now, part of our responsibility is to put up the big signs.

Why would we ever be concerned when a sign says, Danger? In April, just around Easter time, a young couple in England, both of them twenty-five and schoolteachers, were having a holiday on the island of Santorini in Greece. And they had only been there, I think, a day, and they took a buggy to go and explore. And the buggy fell two hundred feet into a ravine, and they were killed instantaneously, both of them. The report in The Times, amongst other things, pointed out, quote, With no fence or wall on the edge of the cliff to prevent them falling, the couple plunged to their deaths. The sidebar to it, interestingly, is that in The Times of London, the comments from siblings and parents were quite incredible, because they said to the journalist, The depth of our sadness is mitigated by the fact that on this Easter weekend we know that Jesus Christ is a resurrected Lord, and so did Millie and Toby.

Amazing. Pastor, why didn't you put up the fence? Think about our young people. Think about our teenagers. How we need fences for them.

Walls, hedges. Not hard-hearted admonishment. No, the kind of thing that is along the lines of Paul to the Ephesian elders, and he says to them, he says, You know, you'll remember that for three years I never stopped warning you, day and night. But there's not a period after night, because there's two more words. With tears.

With tears. You see, that is the nature of the admonishing. Not judgmentalism. Not a pulpit that is six feet above contradiction. But the awareness of the fact that we are in danger ourselves, and we're kept by God's grace. Now, the negative is set beside the positive. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone.

We don't need to say a great deal on this. It seems fairly straightforward, doesn't it? We're saying, This is not the way. There's danger here. We used to sing at Crusaders in Scotland, I met Jesus at the crossroads, where the two ways meet. And Satan too was standing there, and he said, Come this way. Lots and lots of pleasures I will give to you today. But I said, No, there's Jesus here.

Just see what he offers me. Down here, my sins forgiven. Up there, a home in heaven. No, this is the way for me. Now, that's what we want to be saying to our folks—pointing them in that direction, teaching them in that way. Now, one of the inevitable questions that comes to us—and let's just address it, since it almost inevitably does, and we don't always have a good answer up our sleeves—well, people say, Well, what about teaching and what about preaching? It's almost a chestnut, isn't it? You say, Well, the distinction is arbitrary.

No, it's not. When you read the Acts of the Apostles, you will discover that the distinction is made not all the time, but the distinction is made. So, for example, in Acts 5, the apostles did not cease teaching and proclaiming Jesus as the Christ. They were teaching and proclaiming Jesus as the Christ. In Acts chapter 15, they taught and preached the word of the Lord.

So what are we to do with this? Well, quite simply, in teaching, as we unfold the Scriptures, we're aiming to give people an understanding of God's truth—perhaps unfolding the first principle of some theological notion of justification or whatever it might be. That is, in our teaching. Then in preaching, we are making an appeal to their hearts, if you like, to their minds, to their wills, to respond to the Word of God that they have now understood as a result of our teaching.

And I think what people are often suggesting is that there is a form of preaching which is just exhorting, exhorting, exhorting, and there is apparently no foundation to it at all, because there's no didactic element to it, and so people are being asked to respond in a vacuum. Paul is saying here that if we're going to disciple our people, if we're going to see them go on to maturity, then it's going to involve both warning and teaching. And that is the warning and teaching of everyone, which calls for considerable wisdom, with all wisdom. Wisdom runs through this book. I think what Paul probably has simply in mind is that this wisdom is not as a result of training or on account of our expertise, but rather the wisdom that comes from the fear of the Lord—respect for the Word of the Lord, sensitivity to the Spirit of God—so that we might then realize that this is something that we're to do for everyone, teaching everyone. I thought about that in relationship to a quote that I have in my notes from Luther that I've used in one way, and now I want to use it in another way.

I've usually used it in a positive way, but now I thought today, no, I'm not so sure now. Do you remember this quote, where Luther tells his colleagues, he says, When I preach, I regard neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom I have above forty in my congregation. I have all my eyes on the servants and the children. And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.

Wow! How much godly wisdom is there in that, Martin Luther? It sounds very good, doesn't it? I don't care about the doctors and the magistrates. I only care about the servants and the children. Well, you can't get away with that, Luther. Because it says everyone.

That includes the doctors and the magistrates. And that's where the real skill in preaching comes in, isn't it? In viewing a congregation, as I view you now, and picking out those who are already on the third stages of anesthesia, and deciding whether you're gonna reach for them and bring them back or just allow them a pleasant afternoon. When you see the child that is winding the watch around his mother's wrist, are you gonna say something like, Can I remember when I was a nine-year-old boy, I used to sit out there, and all of a sudden the boy is with you?

What are you going to do? It's for everyone! For everyone! I like Archbishop Coggan, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, on his three Ps in the pew. He was a master of this kind of thing. He was a very kindly man.

And he used to say to us, This is what I like to think of. I like to think that I can, by my teaching of the Bible, give constant advice to the puzzled, warm encouragement to the promising, and express compassion to the perplexed. For God brings into our care men and women, young and old, and all of them at different stages of spiritual experience. Feeding them, proclaiming the whole counsel of God, are not ends in themselves.

They serve a greater end. In just a minute we're going to pause with Alistair Begg for a closing word of prayer, so please keep listening. This is Truth for Life, and today's message is titled Presenting Everyone Mature in Christ. Earlier we heard Alistair remind us that the wisdom of the Bible is for everyone. Hearing the clear and accurate teaching of God's Word should not be an exclusive right available only to those who are able to pay for it. At Truth for Life, we believe cost should never be a barrier to anyone who desires to learn more about Jesus and about the Bible. That's the reason why every single message you hear on Truth for Life can be freely downloaded from our website or accessed for free through our mobile app. In fact, right now, the complete collection of Alistair's sermons in the Pastor's Study series is available on a USB drive or on CDs if you'd prefer. Either way, you're invited to purchase all eight volumes in this series at our cost without any markup. Simply go to truthforlife.org and look for the Pastor's Study series. These free and affordable resources are made possible because of Truth Partners and listeners like you who give a one-time donation to Truth for Life.

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Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. And now, Alistair leads us in prayer. Just a moment of silence as we even think about that—that God, from all of eternity, would have called us into the ministry of his Word, so that we might at least aspire to being able to say, This is all my business, here below, to cry, Behold the Lamb! Forgive us, Lord, when we preach ourselves, or out of fear of people's faces, fail to warn them and place them in danger, or fail because we like some more than others or can't be bothered with another group. We try and sidestep the everyone that runs three times through these two verses. Bless us now as we go on through the afternoon. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Every pastor feels the significant weight that comes with the charge to rightly divide the Word of truth. On Tuesday we'll hear a message from Alistair Begg that reminds pastors and church attenders alike of the critical importance of proclaiming the truth without compromise. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.