‘The Christian Manifesto’ Interview

Welcome to a special edition of Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

I'm Bob Lapine. If you listen every Sunday, don't worry. You can still hear the regularly scheduled program from our study in Lessons For Life. Wherever you listen, just look for the program that was posted on Saturday, September 16th. It's titled Approved by God. Maybe you've already seen it or heard about it, but Alistair just released a new book titled The Christian Manifesto, Jesus' Life-Changing Words from the Sermon on the Plane. I had the opportunity recently to sit down with Alistair and talk about this well-known passage from Luke chapter 6 and the book that it inspired. Here's our conversation. I want to start by asking you about the title of the book because I don't think of you as a provocateur and yet here we are in the middle of conversations about things like Christian nationalism and Alistair Begg writes a book called The Christian Manifesto.

You want to explain yourself here? Yeah, I think that the title we thought about for those very reasons and decided that the risk was worth the potential benefit, just in the sense that people are used to setting out their declarations, their statements regarding their company policy or their school agenda or whatever it might be. What we're really saying in this is that if you listen to the king talk about his kingdom, what are the principles and values that are there? In a couple of places we might say the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain actually sets out these principles, so that's what it's about. I think the provocative aspect of it is hopefully we'll make people say well wait a minute what do you mean a manifesto and then they'll read it rather than oh dear I don't want to hear a manifesto and then they'll neglect it.

Time will tell. You mentioned both the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. There's overlap between what we see in Matthew's Gospel and what's in Luke's Gospel. This is really the heart of what Jesus is telling his disciples that life is supposed to be all about, right? Yes, I think it's pretty clear that there are two separate occasions for sure but that the overlap between the material is exactly what we would expect when two of Jesus' followers were giving to their readers in their Gospel the sort of highlights of the overarching teaching of the King and a bit like in newspaper articles somebody highlights one piece but when you read both of them you realize that they are fitting in with one another. Yeah and as we think about this I'm thinking back to the first sermon I ever preached when I was in my 20s which was on the Beatitudes and I have to tell you I'm embarrassed to go back and listen to it because I was reading commentaries that were telling me that this was about the future about the Millennial Kingdom that these principles would be lived in the future and maybe it wasn't for today.

I don't think that's the case. I think we're supposed to read the Sermon on the Plain and apply it in our day don't you think? Oh I think for sure we can all be grateful for the fact that Martin Lloyd-Jones eventually gave to us the Beatitudes and helped us navigate our way through that. He did that a long time ago and of course the work that John Stott did in the counter-cultural essence of Christian living I found very helpful as a young man and yeah no I think it's vitally important. I think the other side of course is that the real danger in it is that we see this as just a sort of form of moralism.

Pull up your socks and try and be a decent person. If you'll do this then maybe Jesus will let you into his kingdom as opposed to what is actually being conveyed by Jesus. Here are the evidences, here are the marks of kingdom living, here is the impact that comes when an individual or a community bow their knee to me and trust entirely in who I am and what I've done that the outflow is from there.

So that's working from in to out. And I think it's easy for any of us to to read Luke chapter 6 and go wait a second I can't do this. I mean love my enemies and think differently. This is unnatural and it feels impossible and I think that's part of the point isn't it that Jesus is trying to say you can't do this. Well yes I think well I think you know it's interesting that you phrase it in that way because part of the problem is that the sort of moral framework of Christianity with a big C is such that people do read this and say oh yes I definitely can do this and they might not make a very good job of it but they're trying their best to be these people. And I think that when we read this the material carefully you realize exactly what you're saying that Jesus is pointing out to us that this is an impossibility apart from the the work of grace within our lives. And we also need to keep in mind and you point this out beautifully in the book that this is not what we do to enter into the kingdom this is what we do because we are citizens of the kingdom. Yes and and so to read it I must be honest Bob I you know I scan read this book in preparation for this conversation and I've I was immediately thinking of the passage where Paul says I do not I don't know I don't box in the air you know I don't I don't shadow box but I I beat my body I beat my body and to read this book is to give yourself a pretty good punch on the nose because it immediately we want to jump to the conclusion that oh yes it's very clear that these are the evidences of of real Kingdom living and yet we're confronted by the fight that you know if we look on the last week we haven't just been exemplary people in relationship to these things and so the wonderful thing about it is that it casts us back again and again on the Lord but not to use that as an excuse for the potential disobedience of our own hearts. I find great comfort that Paul said there are things I hate I end up doing and and there are ways I fall short and so as I read the sermon on the plane as I read your book I think well it does pull me up short over and over again but that's where I come back and re-believe the gospel and and find my hope there. Absolutely. I think the thing that underpins this and it's it's a short book I think with a big punch more of a punch than I actually realized and if at this point in in history if this point in our history in America with an increasingly divided country on all kinds of fronts if the people of God if we the people of God are prepared to actually take these things seriously and endeavor at great cost to ourselves and perhaps to our reputation and perhaps our own agendas and strategies and everything else be prepared to let the world in to see the embryonic nature of this kingdom that in the part of the problem is that and I say this in the book I say you know this idea of of a forgiving spirit or loving your enemy or whatever it might be does the average person in our community say well if I want to know about that I should go to such and such a church or do university or college students say oh yeah those are the people those are the kingdom people those are the Jesus people that they understand that and to our shame I don't think that would necessarily be the immediate response and so the opportunity that is before us now is for a phenomenal adventure to actually take this material I mean I just imagined to myself reading this out loud in in our congregation I mean I preached it many many years ago but I think it's even more daunting than than it was back in the in the early in the late 90s I think about principles in the Sermon on the Plain like the teaching of Jesus that we are to love our enemy and I think of today modern social media I wonder how many Christians are taking a command to love your enemy and as they ride out their their latest tweet or post their latest post on Facebook are thinking well I need to be loving my enemy it seems we've lost sight of some of these commands of Jesus yeah and they're so fundamental that's the striking thing I mean this is not like a postgraduate course this is the this is Christianity 101 I mean this is this is foundational the nature of forgiveness the amazing reality of mercy and you know the trouble is that we read these parables I read these parables and you know I want to be the younger brother that comes back you know on my knees and I look at and I said I horribly think I might be the elder brother here I want to be the guy who beat his breast and said Lord be merciful to me a sinner but I see myself more forcibly in these guys who said well I don't do this and I don't do that and I do this and I do that and therefore I've been able to scale myself that's the challenge of it that's the challenge that Jesus was laying down of course forgiveness is one of the key themes in the Sermon on the Plain and you and I both as we talk to people in pastoral ministry find a lot of people struggling with this issue of forgiveness in part I think because they don't rightly understand what it means to forgive someone forgiveness though is is a command it's not an option for a Christian is it right the the the way in which it is framed of course is that our our merciful response to people reaction to people is on account of the the groundswell reality of realizing how merciful God has been to us and you know when we say the Lord's Prayer you know forgive forgiving our debtors as as forgive us our sins forgive us our debts as as we forgive our debtors so hard to say that because you've got the trespasses or debtors or whatever anyway forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and you know it's only as I realize the immensity of God's forgiveness towards me that I realize that that I don't really have an option here in terms of forgiveness it doesn't mean that to forgive a person doesn't mean that we condone what they've done or that we are just simply saying it doesn't matter no we don't condone it and it does matter if it didn't matter there's no if it wasn't wrong there would be no need for forgiveness but to forgive in that way is a supernatural thing in the same way that at the other end of the the other side of the coin to love in the way that Jesus calls us to love is also a super fight supernatural reality as you're sitting with someone who is struggling with forgiveness they've been profoundly hurt or scarred by someone and they say I just can't forgive this person what's your pastoral counsel to them in that moment well funnily enough I was with somebody just last week they came through our building they were traveling and in casual conversation we were just bantering things around and then eventually the gentleman said to me would it be okay if you and I just talked for a moment and as we talked he told me that he was he's been harboring all of his life a sense of anger towards one of his parents he had reached the point he said where he has now been able to look on that parent with a sense of compassion but he said and then he burst into tears as a man his sixties he said but I just can't say I forgive you can you help me to do that and so I said well I'll try but that is the reality of it and and it's not immediately helpful I think to say to somebody well I I'm not sure can't is right I think perhaps won't is right because it is by an act of the will as sometimes our hearts need to catch up with our heads need to catch up with our words and so I encouraged him and we prayed together and he said this has been a burden shared and a burden halved let me ask you about Jesus teaching about money and possessions which is a part of what's in the sermon on the plane which again seems counter-cultural to the consumerism and the materialism that is so prevalent in our own culture yeah it is such a challenge I mean that's that's what I say when I read through this again you know I don't I don't know about you Bob but I don't really listen to my own sermons means Spurgeon said keep your old sermons to weep over and I can understand that but as I as I read this material again I was struck by by the immensity of the challenge that the things that we lay store by are not the things that Jesus lays store by and we have if you like been tempted at least in Western civilization to baptize into Orthodoxy a sense of well-being a sense of position and and a sense of being relatively settled but as I say in the book you know in terms of being rich you know most of us would fit in the scheme of the entire world in the 1% of those in the entire world therefore it's not as if the I can sidestep it and say well I know a few people who are rich they need to hear this no I I need to hear this as well because the the temptation is to find our security in something other than God himself and Jesus is saying there's no lasting joy that is found in that and of course we know that but then it's so easy to slip back into that and to be confronted by the challenge of the manifesto of the king he says no you've got it upside down if you go there my world turns it upside down and that's the challenge is there anything that helps you rethink your relationship with money and possessions as you read the words of Jesus how do you get free from the bondage that can come from materialism well I think first of all just being alerted to it is one thing and not trying to sidestep the warning bell saying yeah well that's very good for someone but it doesn't matter me first first of all being prepared to allow the thing to scan our own hearts and then I think generosity with what we have is a tremendous help to recognizing that what we have was entrusted to us on loan and it's not ours to keep in any case and you know I say that as a Scot you know we're knowing along with the Dutch and a few others for a sense of frugality and for you know holding everything to ourselves it's a real journey for me to discover that generosity with a provision that God has made is a is a wonderfully satisfying reality and also it it when you do that when you when you disburse what you have then you have less left and therefore you are left to trust God I suppose more because you're saying I don't need this for my security I need you as my security Luke chapter 6 and the Sermon on the Plain does not feel to me like a passage you go to for comfort it feels like a passage you go to for to be challenged in your faith and I think a lot of us open our Bibles looking for comfort rather than than exhortation or challenge is there comfort do you think found in reading through the Sermon on the Plain? Well I I think you're right Bob I mean I think the initial impact of it is either to skip over it quickly or to run and hide or to say this must have meant something very significant in Jesus Day but of course you know we're postmodern people and we view things differently and which of course is then just to be those who read the Word but don't pay any attention to it at all this the joy that is found in it is the joy of bowing down to the King is acknowledging that his way is actually perfect that his plans are are the perfect plans and although they turn our lives upside down so that the idea of it's not it's not that we go out to say I've got to find as many people as possible that can hate me because then this would then I would really be getting to grips with this so that we some because some of us can make people dislike us you know with just the blink of an eye so it's important that that that we set the the impact of individual statements that are often unearthed from the sermon within the context of the totality of what Jesus is saying that that this is not everything about the Christian life this is not everything about what it means to bow beneath the king and so we need to make sure that in taking this particular address we set it within the wider framework of the entirety of Christ the entirety of Christ's ministry well I'm thinking again about the title the Christian Manifesto I'm thinking if if somehow our world was shaped by this teaching what a what a glorious reality that would be if we lived this way if we all lived this way that's what God intends for us yeah exactly I mean you and I both are children of the 60s one way or another and you know the you know Woodstock whatever it was and with all of its excesses and crazinesses aside it was a genuine cry by that generation to discover what it meant to truly love it was as one journalist described it the search for the nation's soul and you know it came up short the challenge of dealing with wars amongst the nations has been addressed by establishing the night the United Nations but anybody with half a brain realizes that whatever is going on there in Brussels or whatever it might be it can't settle the the deep-seated animosities of people and the cries of the human heart and so that is why the idea of you know one day this thing will be there in glorious Technicolor that's the picture in Revelation that there will be this gathering of the people but in the meantime somehow or another local churches have got to figure out a way to open up their hearts and open up their doors to let people come in and understand that in our vulnerabilities and in our brokenness we are subjects of a king he is a merciful King he tells the truth he doesn't dodge the issues and he died in order that we might learn to die to ourselves as well and it is in dying to ourselves and instead of instead of making apologies for things that happened 250 years ago or 500 years ago which is you know which is fairly it's kind of like very trendy you know that I could apologize for things I never did to people that I never met forget that for the moment how about we just apologize for the things or ask for forgiveness for the things that we have done to the people that we have met and and then and then perhaps people will say well wait a minute I think we ought to give this a look it's not about this it's not about that it's about Jesus is about he's a king apparently he has decided that his followers will live in a certain way by the enabling of the Spirit these people over there are apparently trying it why don't we go check it out you have in recent months been taking the Parkside congregation through Romans chapter 1 and Psalm 139 and Jude which which all point to how out of sync our culture is with God's God's Word God's expectations it feels like the sermon on the plane and Luke chapter 6 is pointing us back inward and saying it's not just culture that is out of sync with God's demands but our own lives are out of sync and that's again why we need the gospel for forgiveness and for transformation yeah that that's good pop I wish I thought of that I you know yeah I I think what are the salvation's for me in in trying to tackle Jude and being tackled by Jude is the fact that he doesn't name anybody he doesn't call anybody out I mean he gives us an identical picture of the characteristics of people that will that will cause trouble and and chaos if they're allowed to embed themselves so there is there is despite his very forceful approach it's if you like a an iron fist in a kid glove and there is something in that I think that we need to be prepared to identify what he's calling us to see while at the same time recognizing that every finger that points out has a number that point back towards us and the sermon on the plane you know you know we all know we all know the thing about the the plank and the twig you know but but we're horrible at finding twigs in people's eyes and you know I think there's a sort of humorous treatment of that in the book where you know we have this idea that we have a huge beam that is projecting from our foreheads and we're trying to talk to somebody about something that they have in their eye and they say you know could you back up a little bit please and I say well why do I need to back up so we got a huge thing sticking out your head oh no I don't no I don't they say yeah you do and and yet we're masters at that and churches are horrible for that yeah you know self-righteousness self-pity self self and that's why we need to bow down before the king that's why he gives us the sermon and I think it's not unimportant for us to be looking and saying this is what is wrong in our world and this is how the gospel would fix that but if we neglect this is what is wrong in my own heart and this is what needs to be addressed there then we we drift into the self-righteousness that you're talking about I want to ask you about the last chapter in the book because after all of the challenging teaching of the sermon on the plane you conclude the book by talking about the heart of the king why is that so important as we work our way through this material well just in the same way that when we listen to somebody giving a talk there is a person there there is there is a life there there's a that we hear these words and we we respond to them not simply because we can understand the syntax but because we sense something of the person at least at the at best and so when we read the words of Jesus we need to realize that it is these are Jesus words he is the the Christ who has spoken clearly he is the the Christ who has compassion on people he's the Christ who gives up himself in order that others might find in him the the longings of their hearts and that's why we finish in the way that we do so that we don't get the Creed as it were distanced from the compassionate heart of Christ himself I think every pastor who preaches every author who writes a book like this it comes away thinking I hope my readers or my listeners will think differently as a result of their interaction with this will will feel differently and will act differently as you think about this book and your prayer for this book what do you hope will be different how do you hope people will be different after they have read this book and they've meditated on this sermon well first of all I you know I hope that I will be different the old song that we never sing you know it's not my brother not my sister but it's me Oh Lord standing in the need of prayer I mean that that is that is foundationally the case and and so I hope that that would be multiplied I hope that that our church family those who choose to read this book that we that it might have an impact among us because learning to say I'm sorry learning to say please forgive me learning to say you know I'm not at my best at the moment can you come alongside me learning to say yes I know that these people believe a very different agenda that their lifestyle is orientated in another direction and learning to say but I have no basis upon which I could argue that I would myself would not be where they are were it not for the amazing grace of God were it not for his compassion towards me and in very specific areas this comes across I mean you and I know that we field questions all the time that go along the lines of my grandson is about to be married to a transgender person and I don't know what to do about this and I'm calling to ask you to tell me what to do which is a huge responsibility and in a conversation like that just a few days ago and people may not like this answer but I asked the I asked the grandmother does your grandson understand your belief in Jesus yes does your grandson understand that your belief in Jesus makes it such that you can't countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life yes I said well then okay as long as he knows that then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony and I suggest that you buy them a gift oh she said what she was caught off guard I said well here's the thing there you're not going to your your love for them may catch them off guard but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said these people are what I always thought judgmental critical unprepared to countenance anything and it is a fancy it is a fine line isn't it it really is and people need to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling but I think we're going to take that risk we're gonna have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges into the hearts and lives of those who don't understand Jesus and and don't understand that he is a king John tells us he was full of grace and truth and we have to figure out how we can be full of grace and truth at the same time don't we yeah yeah full of our word should be full of grace and seasoned with salt yes so easy to get that upside down and when a pastor does then that that will take on an a role in a congregation as well and flavor it and so you know let not many of you become teachers well it's been a treat for us to hear Alistair Begg talk about his new book the Christian manifesto I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did and I hope it challenged you to take up Jesus called to live a radical countercultural life for his glory if you'd like to find out more about the book the Christian manifesto visit Truth for Life org slash store there you're able to preview the book and to get your copy our team at Truth for Life has also produced a companion study guide that's great for both individual readers and small groups it's only three dollars with free shipping or you can download it as a free PDF it's a great pairing with the book so you can take notes chapter by chapter apply what you've learned and then discuss it with others once again find the study guide as well as the book at Truth for Life org slash store I'm Bob Lapine thanks again for joining us for this special interview the Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living you