A Good Servant of Christ Jesus (Banner of Truth) (Part 2 of 2)

Pick almost any topic and it seems like everybody has an opinion. People are quick to share what's on their minds.

Their voices are often loud and clear. But how can we listen to what God has to say? Well, today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg challenges pastors to diligently preach the Word of God. We're in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 12. What I've discovered is that in this realm of love and faith and purity, the evil one's approaches do not respect geography, they don't respect intellect, they don't respect style, they come from everywhere and all over the place. And being alert to that and being reminded of it is, of course, wonderfully helpful.

Rutherford deals with this frequently in his writings. At one point, remember, he says, Down with the top sail. Down with the top sail. Stoop! Stoop! It is a low entry to go in at heaven's gate. And as T. S. Mooney says, We all need a wife for no other reason than, of course, to keep us humble.

And when we lose that, we've lost something greatly. I don't know if you read the works of Robert Harris, if you've read the trilogy on ancient Rome. It's essentially on Cicero, and I made a note of just one piece as I was thinking of this. The voice of the books is Tiro, who's the slave of Cicero, and he has served Cicero all of his days. On one occasion, as Cicero's stature has risen, he is on the receiving end of a dreadful verbose string of flattery from Crassus. And Crassus comes and blows smoke at Cicero, and the slave observes. There was a time when Cicero would have spotted such an obvious trap a mile off. But I fear there is in all men who achieve their life's ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction. Instead of staying in his seat and modestly disavowing such praise, Cicero rose up and made a long speech agreeing with Crassus's every word. Think Uzziah, who the chronicler tells us was gloriously helped until he became strong.

But when he became strong, he grew proud to his own destruction. So the character is dealt with there, and then Paul goes on to deal with the work itself. I want you to devote yourself, he says, to the public reading of Scripture. And, of course, this is at the very heart of things. We affirm this, we believe this, we teach it, and we try and model it. It's the pattern all the way through the Old Testament, and it is the pattern that is then exemplified in the ministry of Jesus, and then by way of apostolic precept, and then by their practice, and so on.

And in the second century, Justin Martyr, in his first apology, acknowledges this when he writes, On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. Then, when the reader is finished, the president speaks, instructing and exhorting the people. I've enjoyed the brief time that I've been here for more reasons than I can recount, but I enjoy the fact that nobody claps for anything. Yeah, nobody claps, and also there's a pulpit. And there's an expectation that the reason it's here is because you put a Bible on it. As I travel the country, I'm amazed at how little reading of the Bible there is, how little public reading of Scripture. Now, this group, you live in a ratified world.

You get this. But if you get out and go to some of the other places, you'll realize what a blessing and benefit it is simply to do as you've committed to do. And so that the reading of Scripture is an absolute essential, and the Scripture being read in such a way that the individual has actually prepared to read it and understands it and doesn't stumble over all the words and doesn't change the tense when he's reading it and doesn't treat the gender as if it is just a passing fancy. The very way in which a man stands to read the Scriptures publicly will tell you a tremendous amount about his understanding of the central place of Scripture in the entirety of the liturgical dimensions, whatever they may be, in and amongst the people of God. It is to be read, and it is to be the basis of exhortation. It is to be taught, and it is to be preached. Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching. The late Mark Ashton, who was at the Round Church in Cambridge in a wonderfully helpful little book, reminds us all when he says, in preaching, the primary aim is not to achieve increased biblical understanding, along with a few practical ideas for applying it. Rather, the primary aim is that after the text is proclaimed, we will encounter God himself in a life-changing way. The Word will make a difference.

The Word will produce change. And those who have been most useful in the preaching and teaching of the Bible have been those who are entirely convinced of the power and the authority of the Scriptures. It's surely the lasting benefit of Lloyd-Jones' ministry. I mean, the stuff that is on the internet of Lloyd-Jones goes back a long, long, long time.

Why would people still listen to this? Because he's absolutely convinced of the power and the authority of the Scriptures, never deviating from course. Timothy, do you realize how important it is for us now to make sure that this batten of faith, of both personal character and public conviction about these things, is being passed safely into the hands of the generations that come behind us? The colossal loss of confidence in the Scriptures. How many people are prepared to play fast and loose with the first eleven chapters of Genesis?

How many are equivocating over the issues of gender and of sexuality and reversing out of an understanding of the Bible that it is the very Word of God, that it is powerful in itself, that it is to be lifted up and to be proclaimed, because it introduces us to Christ as the living Word? Luther, tremendously helpful on this, quoted now in Horatio Bonner's little book The Way of Peace. And Luther was so wonderfully clear, wasn't he? And when he announced the fact that he was committed to the preaching of the Word, he said that he didn't really focus on the doctors and the lawyers that were in attendance. He says, but instead, I focus on the servant-maids, and I focus on the children.

And he says, Well, then, if the doctors and the lawyers don't like it that way, then they know where the door is, and they can leave. Another kind word from your pastor! See, that's the Lutheran element, you see?

This is him in Bonner. That was another quote altogether. We must make a great difference between God's Word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound which flyeth into the air and soon vanishes. But the word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, it is greater than death and hell. For it is the power of God, and remaineth everlastingly. Therefore we ought diligently to teach God's Word, and we must know certainly and believe that God himself speaks with us.

This is our only hope. The people hear our voice, but do they hear the voice of Christ? Christ is our worship leader. Christ is the preacher.

Devote yourself to its reading, to exhortation, and to teaching. That distinction, of course, you read in the Acts, don't you, that Paul and Barnabas—he refers to them as—Luke tells us that they were teaching and preaching the Word of God. And that's one of the chestnuts that we're always asked in question-and-answer times.

What does that really mean? Well, it underlines the twofold approach, doesn't it? In teaching, we're aiming to give people an understanding of God's truth. We're aiming to make sure that they are getting the first principles of Christian doctrine. In preaching, we're making an appeal to people's wills and to their emotions, to respond, then, to what they have heard as we have sought to provide a basis for understanding in teaching. So preaching is not less than teaching. Preaching is teaching plus application, plus the call for response. It is, as the late John Murray recorded it in a conversation reported with William McKenzie of Christian Focus—and the two of them are driving in the Highlands in Scotland, and Professor Murray says to William, What's the difference between a lecture and preaching? And William tries his best to answer, can come up with a decent answer.

Eventually he says, I give up. John Murray says, I'll tell you what it is. Preaching is a personal, passionate plea.

McKenzie says, In what sense? Murray says, In this sense, we beseech you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. Let us beware of thinking that we have fulfilled our calling by simply providing a running commentary through a series of verses whereby people's understanding of the text has increased, and we've given them three pointers to take home and discuss over lunch. But the real question is, Where, then, is this communion with God?

Where is this connection that takes us all up and beyond and out of ourselves, that cannot be explained in terms of a lecture, that cannot be explained simply in terms of human language and so on? Then it is God, you see. And that's why the primary task of gathering together in the congregation of God's people, the defining mark of the gathering of God's people, is listening to God's Word. That's Deuteronomy. It was our reading this morning, if you're doing Mary McShane.

One of the chapters, Deuteronomy 4. Assemble the people before me to hear my words. That's why we've come, you ask the average member of the congregation. And why is it that you come, you know, to church? You don't really even want to get half of the answers, but unless they're instructed in this. Can I just give you a quote? I'm conscious of the time.

I'll stop in a moment. But Christopher Ash, picking up on this, very helpfully writes, The reason we gather in church is first that we may hear and submit to the voice of God in his Word. He assembles us by his command, and we assemble to listen to his Word. The Word of God is the driving force that shapes authentic church life. This is why the primacy of preaching and Bible teaching is not just one tradition amongst other equally valid Christian traditions. It is the defining mark of the assembly of the people of God. Unless our first desire when we gather is to hear and heed the voice of God in his Word, we have missed the foundation point of the church." And so Paul reminds Timothy of the fact that he says, This is what you have been called to.

Don't neglect this gift it was given you. You were called, you were equipped, you were set apart, the council of elders, and some form of ordination, I think, we could see there. And the listeners, of course—remember, it's a public letter, the listeners, it's a public reading—are being made aware of the fact that Timothy wasn't a volunteer.

He was a conscript. He wasn't operating on the basis of natural talent. He was God's man in God's place, enabled by God's power to open up the Word for God's people. And the sovereignty of God's purposes and God's provision brought with it the responsibility to make sure that he was cultivating, that he was developing, that he was making progress in the gifts that he's been given. It's a very sad thing when people who have clearly been uniquely gifted drift off into the misty flats, either on account of flagrant disobedience or because they have just actually lost out along the way. Timothy didn't simply drift with the tide, go with the flow. He has to set his sails, and rather than neglect his gift, he is to kindle it, as Paul writes in his second letter, into a flame.

Well, what should we do? He says, What you need to do is practice, put into practice. But practice as well. Practice these things.

Make sure that it becomes second nature to you. I liked what Al said yesterday. I find it very hard to say no to an invitation to preach. Why? Because God made him a preacher, for goodness sake.

Well, that was no surprise. Preachers preach. Farmers farm. Sailors sail.

Fishers fetch. Woe is me if I don't preach this. So we put it into practice. We might not be very good.

We have some real clunkers along the way. Every so often on a Sunday, we find that God has decided to give us a wee bit of an encouragement, but for most of it, he wants to just keep us where we need to be. Immerse yourself! Immerse yourself.

There's a wonderful verb, isn't it? Immerse yourself in them. Immerse your mind in the truth of God, in the same way that the body is immersed in the air that it breathes. And as you do so, the Hinnok clause is so that all may see your progress. Remember, he says that people are watching you, Timothy.

Don't let them despise you because you're young. Stick with the program as I've outlined it. If you will actually follow this plan, if you will go through this training process, enabled by the grace of God, then you will discover that people will actually see that you're making progress.

Remember Paul, when he writes, and he goes into one of his great purple passages, and then he backs off a little bit and he says, Not that I have already obtained all this, or am already perfect, but I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. That's exactly what he's urging his young lieutenant to do here. He doesn't want him to be parading any apparent successes that he's had.

He doesn't want him to be trying to curry favor with people by telling them what a hopeless and miserable creature he is, like Uriah Heap in David Copperfield. No, the congregation know. They know. They understand that any progress in the pastor, they will ascribe to God's grace. They will know that their journey is difficult. They'll be far more alert to that than many of us are prepared to include them in our struggles and in our challenges so that they might see our progress and, along with us, magnify the grace of God, who has chosen to put his treasure in an old clay pot so that the triumph might be seen to belong to God and not to us. Persist in this.

Persist in this. For by so doing, you will save yourself. It says in the Bible, you can save yourself. Go back and tell your people, I've been saving myself. They'll say, No, pastor, you told us only God can save. No, no, it's in the Bible.

And I can save you too. Oh, the pastor's gone to a conference and lost his mind. Now, that's why we interpret Scripture with Scripture, isn't it? We know exactly what he's saying here.

The amazing grace of God. People say to me, say, Who do you listen to? I say, Me.

Do you know how bad that is? I mean, you only have to listen to it twice. But I preach four times every Sunday, listening to me. And I know me. I know who I am. I know what I'm like. I am my congregation. So are you. Sure, I listen to lots of other people. All your folks, I listen to them too.

I love them all. But the fact of the matter is, we're saving ourselves. Every so often, I think about the fact that God may only have put me in pastoral ministry for me to make sure I go to church. Do you ever think about that?

Have you ever been on vacation in Florida riding a bicycle at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning? And you're riding along the road and you go, I don't need to go. And then your next thought is, but I should go. And then your next thought is, do I want to go?

And then your next thought is, maybe the only reason you ever go is because you're the pastor. Persist in this. It's a long obedience in the same direction. You know how it goes. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Sunday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Sunday. And it never quits.

Never quits. No greater calling, no greater joy, no greater privilege. We're all better together than any one of us is on our own. So we say to each other, let us heed the Bible.

Let us seek to help one another. Let's ensure that we run all the way through the tape. Remember Simeon?

They said to him, Simeon, you're an old man now. You don't need to keep on like this. And he said, well, shall I not run with all my might now that I see the finishing tape in view? So let's encourage each other in that way. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg and words of encouragement for those who are in ministry. Alistair will close our program with prayer today, so please keep listening. If you are a pastor or a youth leader or a Bible study teacher, or maybe you're just looking to dive deeper into your own study of God's Word, you can read transcripts of hundreds of sermons preached by Alistair. Simply visit truthforlife.org and click on the sermons option in the top menu bar. There you're able to select sermons by topic, by scripture, or by series. If the sermon has a transcript, you'll see it right below the player when you choose a message.

Or you can select the has transcript filter to browse all of the sermons by Alistair that have a transcript. Well, as we've been learning to be good servants of Christ Jesus, we need to be students of God's Word. It's important for us to not only study the Bible for ourselves, but to teach it to our children or to others. The book we've been featuring this month, God's Bible Timeline, the big book of biblical history, is a helpful resource for teaching the Bible.

It's great for explaining the Bible to young children or teenagers or even to adults by learning from hundreds of colorful pictures and illustrations. This book is organized into 18 different timelines, each of them presenting a unique era in biblical history. For example, there's the period between creation and the flood. There's the time of Samuel and Saul.

There's the era of the exile. These timelines begin in Genesis and track all the way through the formation of the early church. And all of the timelines make it easy for us to understand how one era flows into the next. There's even a timeline for the period between the Old Testament and New Testament where God was seemingly silent. And as a bonus, the book includes a pullout poster that shows a quick overview of the storyline of the entire Bible. The book God's Bible Timeline is a wonderful reference tool for anyone studying or teaching the Bible, but it's only available for a few more days. So be sure to request your copy when you give to support the teaching you hear on this program.

Visit truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father, thank you for just the clarity of the Bible. Forgive us for lack of clarity.

That's our part. But thank you that just a small boy could understand this. And so we pray that in understanding we may then come to increasingly depend upon the power and enabling of the Holy Spirit to conform us to the image of Christ. Help us, Lord, close the gap in our lives between what we say and what we are. Help us to watch our lives and our doctrine to do so closely. Thank you for one another for the encouragement of this hour. We commend ourselves to you afresh, seeking the forgiveness of all our sins. In Jesus' name, Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. What happens when God's people forget about God? We'll find out tomorrow as Alistair begins a series called More Jars of Clay. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.