When you talk with someone about Jesus and the gospel, do you feel like you have to answer every single question they ask? Today on Truth for Life, Alister McGrath explains why that's not necessary and often not advisable. We're studying the closing verses in First Timothy chapter six. Paul. Makes it clear, John, the disciple of love, says into John, and in the tenth verse, and he was a loving guy.
He says, if anyone comes to you and doesn't bring the teaching, the orthodox teaching that is Trinitarian, do not take him into your house or welcome him, because anyone who welcomes him shares in his evil work.
Now, loved ones, you've got to learn in this day of dialogue to know when just to turn. When to know that this is going to lead to controversy, it's going to lead to confusion. It's going to be unhelpful because a feature of all cultish activity is that it has, alongside the Bible, as is true here, godless chatter and stuff that is falsely called knowledge.
So, for example, you go down the high street and you find this lovely shop with beautiful lighting, and there, right in the the plate glass window, is a copy of the Bible. My, my! You say to yourself, "You don't see that very much these days." Look at that on a lovely easel, the Bible. What nice people they must be in there, and how concerned they must be about the gospel to put the Bible up right in the window. There can't possibly be anything wrong with them, can there?
Yes. Because they have another book sitting right beside the Bible, and the book that's sitting beside the Bible is the key to understanding the Bible. It is full of falsely contrived knowledge, and they will tell you that you can make head nor tail of this book, the Bible, unless you get into this book written by Mary Baker Eddy. That's why when you travel in the Marriott Hotel, in the one drawer and then the other drawer, or sometimes in both drawers, you have the Book of Mormon and you have the King James Version Bible. Why?
Because all of this falsely called knowledge from the Book of Moroni is supposed to explain our Bibles.
Now, what do you want to do? Spend the rest of your time dialoguing that? Because when you've answered every sinner's question, they may not be one step closer to faith. Because only God grants faith, and He did not give us the gospel as an apologetic to argue people into the kingdom. The apologetic simply creates a crisis in the world view of those who are thinking about these matters.
But it is insufficient in itself. As if somehow or another we could dialogue people into the kingdom. And those of you who have, to quote Dag Lucas, a size twelve brain, have a peculiar proclivity for this kind of thing. Because you're the kind of individual that wants to turn up every stone and look underneath it. If you're a bit of a dimwit like me, you don't have to worry about that.
You're the kind of person that, when PBS does a thing on the person of Jesus Christ, you watch it for six hours, despite for the fact that it is six hours of total drivel. And it gets you all churned up and upset, and then you have to try and go and answer every question that has been raised by these babblers and these false teachers with all their so-called incontrovertible evidence. Why not be dumb like me? Just don't watch it. Do you really think you are going to find out something you need to know to listen to the ramblings of the pagans?
Who have already started from a presupposition that is totally anti-biblical, that is totally anti-God, that doesn't believe a single thing about Jesus Christ, and every hour spent doing that is one hour absent from McDonald's, when you can meet people who need the Lord and will be prepared to talk to you about all kinds of things. If you can look them in the eye, be kind and gentle in your approach.
So, for those of you who are knowledgeable chaps, I think you need to learn with me the great verse of the Old Testament, which I use every so often. I hope none of you have had a letter from me with this verse. I hope none of you have. I don't think any of you have, but I do use this. From time to time, it's a kind of my last resort verse.
Nehemiah chapter six and verse eight. It's a great verse. When they were accusing Nehemiah of all kinds of things, he sent them this reply: "Nothing like what you are saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head." It's a great verse. They say, "Well, we want to come in and see you and talk to you about the problem with the such and such and the so and so and the house and the thing and the whole hall and the mess hall." Say, "You know what?
Nothing like what you're saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head." Now, excuse me, I'm trying to build a wall here. Thank you. That's the emphasis here in First Timothy, Timothy. Timothy, guard this.
If you're going to guard it, you need to proclaim it. You need to know it. You need to be passionate about it. And you don't need to fall into the trap of thinking that all this inane babbling that is going on here in the background, while you are seeking to tell others the good news of Jesus Christ, is such that you should turn aside and try and fix it, and try and deal with it, and try and sort this and that out. You'll never do it.
I say, but you know that was Timothy. He was young. He had a problem with his stomach. He was he was diffident. He's not like me, you know.
Yeah. What about Saul of Tarsus? Paul comes into Corinth. He is an intellect by any standards. He said, "When I came to you, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." People wanted eloquent wisdom.
They wanted dialogue. They wanted all these things. I didn't give it to them. There was another group over here, and they wanted miraculous signs and they wanted drama, and I didn't give that to them. All I gave to them was the story of a Galilean carpenter and his atoning death upon the cross.
Can I tell you something? That is all we have to give to people. That's it. That's the whole deal, and that's why many of us are ashamed. That's why we never get there.
And if you don't get there, you don't get to the place where God keeps all of His appointments with men and women. See, God doesn't keep His appointments with men and women over here in their quest for fulfillment. He keeps all of his appointments with men and women at a cross. Timothy, guard this, shun this.
Now, just notice, consider this. Consider is my third verb, which I'm inserting. Wherefrom?
Well, look. He is describing this circumstance in verse twenty-one. He says, "There is this falsely called knowledge, which some have professed, and in so doing have wandered from the faith." Consider the fact that they began in a certain way, and they have wandered off track. They are professors who have missed the mark. They're the kind of individuals who were intensely interested.
They had to know everything. I've seen these people again and again. They are dear souls, but they will never take a simple explanation. If you give them a simple explanation, they think that you're trying to fog them off. You're not.
You're trying to help them. People get in themselves all turned up about all manner of things. They are zealous. They debate the details. They argue over the incidentals, and before long, they have lost sight of the fact that they were ever aiming for a target at all.
They failed to pursue godliness. They began to embrace stupid ideas. They filled their heads with knowledge. They were no longer involved in evangelism. And you say, "Well, of course, that would never happen here." Listen, it happens everywhere, everywhere.
Guys, just guard the clear gospel of Jesus Christ. Shun all the babblings and the inanities. Don't be unkind. I don't want to be unkind in saying this. I don't want to be dismissive, but I care passionately.
This, this is my concern. It's the same concern as Paul. It is: Will there be a generation come behind us that understand the gospel? Will there be a generation that grows up behind us that lives for Jesus Christ? Will there be young people that stand up and know the book and love the book and love Christ and are passionate?
And when they say, "Breathe on me, breath of God," they mean that, and that they will impact their generation for Christ. Will there? I tell you, it will not come from any other department than from the department of the tutelage of God's word, learning to know it and to guard it and to shun it and to observe it and to rest. It's my last word, rest. Because you take all of this and you say, "How in the world am I going to be able to do that?" I've got to guard this.
I've got to turn from that. I've got to consider what has happened to these dear souls. While he says, "I want you to rest on the grace that is within you." You see, do not be deceived. In the church in every generation, there will arise those wolves in sheep's clothing, seeking to drag away people after them. That's what the word was to Ephesus, wasn't it?
That's Acts chapter twenty. It's the very same church context. Paul says to the Ephesian elders on the beach, he says, "I want you to guard yourselves, and guard your lives, and guard your doctrine, and look after things here, because after I leave you, there will arise from within people who will seek to draw away folks after them." What will they do? They will take the Bible and they will say, "You know what? Nobody here can understand it.
You can only understand it if you listen to me. If you listen to me, I will tell you about the key to it. The key to it is a special knowledge. I have the special knowledge. If you would come to my house three times a month for the next six months, I think you could get the special knowledge as well.
Oh, I'd like that knowledge. Before you know where you are, you have a small cluster gathered around this esoteric interest, which is the key to this book. Paul says, 'Look out! It's going.'" To happen, I'm telling you, it does happen. I have watched it happen in the 15 years that I've been here, and it continues to happen, and it will happen again next week.
And anybody who is naive to that is not reading the Bible and paying attention. That's why pastors are shepherds. That's why sheep have to be rescued, but they also need a whack over their nose every so often. Why? Because they do dumb things, and they go dumb places, and they come out with dumb ideas.
You say, "Well, I'm glad it's you and not me." Sorry, it is you. If you take the history of the church, you will discover that God, in His amazing providence, has chosen continually. To use the most unlikely individuals, to take a stand in their day for the preservation of the gospel, recognizing that it is God's grace that has redeemed them, recognizing that it is God's grace that continues to keep them, that it is by His grace that they are enabled to live the life and to walk. As the hymn writer says, "O to grace, how great a debtor daily I am constrained to be!" Such individuals, in the words of verse twelve of Two Timothy one, are saying, "I know whom I have believed, and I and I'm convinced that He's able to keep what I've committed to Him against that day." And when I think about this great nation, and I think about Memorial Day, and I get ready to go to the little parade tomorrow morning that goes up to the cemetery and watch the guys doing the old and everything, and singing the national anthem, and rejoicing in all the privileges of the gospel in this place, I don't want to forget how we got it, and I don't want to forget some of the names of the people. Whom God used, and I want to tell you as I close of one man, whose name, not two percent of you have ever heard, and his name was John Brown, not the John Brown's body of familiar hymnody, but another John Brown, and he lived in the 17th century in Scotland.
And he was the owner of a little croft. He was a poor man. He never owned more than twenty sheep, it was said, or more than one cow at a time. And he loved Christ. And he and his wife had been married by one of the great covenanting figures, a man by the name of Alexander Peden.
On the day of his wedding, a pedan had pronounced what was essentially a word of prophecy over this couple, which is dramatic when you think about it for a number of reasons. But he told the bride Isabel that she should love this man John because she wouldn't have him for long. That she should keep his shroud close because she would need to use it. And when she used it, it would be a shroud that was stained in blood. I've been to a number of wedding receptions in the last years, and I never heard that as one of the toasts.
But apparently, that was the toast. This man was living in the time of the persecution of the Scottish Church, which Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, chronicled as being the most severe persecution in history, greater than that of the Roman emperors or of the popish inquisitors, and this man. Had a severe speech impediment, so he had twenty sheep, one cow, lived in a tiny little place in Herefordshire. For those of you who are golfers, he lived near Turnberry. He lived in the same area, out of which came a man by the name of Murdoch, who discovered coal gas.
Out of which came Macadam, who gave to us blacktop roads. Out of which came Baird, who gave to us the genius for the television tube. And out of which came Alexander Fleming, who gave to us penicillin. That's where this man lived, away in the middle of nowhere, and he had a speech impediment to boot. But despite the fact of his impediment, he had become a teacher to young people, and I quote.
An impediment in his speech had forced him to surrender his hope of entering the office of the ministry. But his reading and shrewdness and character fitted him to be the teacher of those near the little farm who desired instruction in the truth as it is in Jesus. And one evening in each week, he met with the young persons of the neighborhood and expounded to them the Bible and the confession of faith. In summer they gathered in a sheepfold out in the fields. In winter they formed a circle round the fire of peat, which blazed on the kitchen floor in his house.
The place was wild and solitary, and round it the heather and the moss stretched for miles. But it was a training school for theologians and heroes.
So you got the picture. Here is a poor man, twenty sheep, one cow, little croft, one wife, baby, speech impediment. He's got all these young people coming every week, and he's teaching them the Bible, and he's teaching them the foundations of the faith.
Well, it was on account of that that the authorities hated him, and Claverhouse came looking for him. Representing the establishment of the time, he came actually looking for Alexander Peden, who, because of his influence as a Covenanter, was a wanted man on the lists. Peden had already gone, but he came on Brown and another young man as they were digging peat out of a peat bog, and he came to him, and he gathered a group of soldiers around him. And he said to him, "Go to your prayers, for you shall die immediately." I don't have time to tell you at all, but it's a wonderful story of how he kneels down on the grass and he starts to do a very long prayer. John Brown was a bright guy.
If I'm about to die immediately after my prayer, I should probably pray for quite a long time.
So he began to pray for everything he could think of. He got the guy really ticked off. And the fellow turned and he said to his friends, "I thought you said that this guy couldn't preach because apparently he was praying without any stammer at all, without any impediment. He was just praying profusely and and amazingly for the downtrodden of Scotland. He was praying that God would preserve a remnant who would believe the gospel and would continue when he was gone." And so Claverhouse turns around and he says, "I thought you said he couldn't preach." And they said, "Well, he can't." And Claverhouse said, "Well, if he has never preached, he sure has muckle prayed." In other words, he prayed a tremendous deal.
And he exclaimed angrily to him, "You have begun to preach." And John Brown, looking up from his knees, said, "Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching nor of praying that calls this preaching." And the biographer says that John Brown ran to God with the alacrity of a boy bounding home from school. And when the prayer was done, Claverhouse spoke again. Take good night of your wife and children. And the woman he loved was standing near with a baby in her arms. And going to her, the martyr said, "Now, Isabel, the day has come that I told you would come when I spake first to you of marrying me." And she replied with a fortitude at which.
Probably she herself marvelled afterwards. Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you. That's all I desire. He answered, "I have no more to do but die." He kissed his wife and the bairns with whom he had both prayed and played, and begged God to multiply purchased and promised blessings upon them, and gave them his good bye. Then Claverhouse ordered six shold soldiers to shoot him.
And the soldiers looked down on the ground and refused to lift their guns. And Claverhouse unclipped his own belt and his own pistol, and he put it to the head of John Brown and he blew his brains out. And he turned to Isabel and he said, "What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?" And she said, "I never thought so much of him." Now listen, this is John Brown. Who, John Brown, was a guy with twenty sheep. Oh, that John Brown.
Oh, you mean John Brown, the guy with a Bible study for kids in his house? That John Brown. Oh, you mean John Brown from 1685? That John Brown, yeah, the John Brown that none of us has got a clue about. That's exactly right.
The John Brown that none of us ever knew, the way nobody knows us. It doesn't matter. What matters is this: that we guard the gospel, that we turn away from the foolish wranglings and jamborings and inanities. That we consider the dreadful tragedy of professors who have missed the mark, and we rest in the grace of God, saying, "I don't know how God's wondrous grace to me has been made known, but I know whom I have believed, and I am committed, and I know that He will keep what I have committed to Him against that day." You see, the history of the guarding of the gospel is not simply a history of those who, at the level of academics and theology, wrote down the creeds for which we are so thankful. But it is the history of unsung men and women who, in their day, were prepared to live and die for Jesus Christ.
You're listening to Truth for Life with Aleister Beg, and Aleister returns in just a minute. I want to encourage you to visit our website today. We are featuring a large selection of gospel-sharing holiday gift books. Each holiday season, we carefully select books that will make valued gifts, so you can share the gospel with friends and family. And when you visit truthforlife.org/gifts today, you'll find a large offering of high-quality books, all available to purchase at our deeply discounted prices.
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Now, here's Alister with a closing prayer. Father, I ask you to write these truths in our hearts—the things that are unhelpful to be forgotten. All that is of yourself, that it might be retained. Oh, how we want to make an impact in our day for Your glory. I don't know how it is that the Spirit moves, convicting men of sin.
I don't know when You'll come, whether we will be called to You or whether You will come for us. But we want to affirm the wonder. Of it all, that you will keep that which you've committed to us. We rejoice in this as we think of the days that lie ahead. As we pray in Christ's name, Amen.
Thanks for listening today. If we routinely read our Bibles and pray, does it matter if we join a church? Join us tomorrow to find out the answer. The Bible teaching of Aleister Beg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
