People often think freedom means the absence of restriction. The liberty to think and speak and act without restraint. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains why Christian freedom is expressed in joyful obedience to the commands of Christ. Like a hardworking farmer, true freedom is defined in persistent diligence. Paul writes, share in suffering is a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.
An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I am saying, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Father, do help us just in these brief moments. Grant to us clarity and faith, we pray. In Christ's name.
Amen. Well, we said that the exhortations or these designations on the part of Paul need to be understood in light of what he has reminded Timothy of in the opening verse—namely, that his strength comes from the grace that is in Christ Jesus. So it is on the basis of his life in Christ and the grace of Christ and the strength that comes from Christ that these pictures are then to be responded to and taken to heart and applied. And first we noted the devotion of the soldier who is in submission to his commanding officer.
And then we went on to consider the way in which the athlete paid attention to the rules. And we were very clear about the fact—at least we tried to be very clear about the fact—that the Christian is not under the law as a way of salvation but as a guide to conduct in life. And I think it would be worth reiterating what I did in only one of the services, because there is in the minds of people confusion regarding the place of the law in the life of the Christian, and it is a matter of debate, even in evangelical circles. My position is pretty clear and has been throughout—namely, that the law of God sends us to Christ in order that we might be saved, and that Christ returns us to the law to frame our way of life so that we are not then simply living out our existence on the basis of conjecture or on the strength of love or whatever else it might be. In case folks stumble over that, the notion that glad obedience to the moral law of God is simply our logical act of worship, let's just be clear about this.
What are we able to say with confidence from the Scriptures? Number one, that Christ has fulfilled the law of God for us. We are lawbreakers. He is the law-fulfiller. By his active obedience, by his passive obedience, he has kept the law of God in its entirety, for he is a perfect man. And when we look away to Christ, we look away to him as the one who has satisfied the demands of the law by obeying it in its entirety and who has absorbed the curse of the law, which falls upon lawbreakers, namely ourselves. So our confidence is always in Christ, the one who has fulfilled God's law for us. Secondly, that in Christ we are given a new ability to obey God's law. The law only condemns us before we find in Jesus the law fulfilled. When we are redeemed, when we are made new, then we discover that the Holy Spirit works in us—and we saw this when we studied in Romans chapter 8—in such a way as to give us the ability to obey the law of God from our hearts in a way that is not irksome, nor in a way that suggests by so doing we are putting ourselves in a stronger standing with God than we were if we had not been so good. We realize that we could never make ourselves more acceptable to God than we are in Christ. Thirdly, that we need to recognize that our new freedom in Christ, our freedom in Christ, is expressed in glad obedience to the commands of Christ. Our freedom is expressed in obedience.
It's kind of paradoxical, isn't it? But that's exactly what Jesus said. If a man or a woman loves me, they will keep my commandments.
And it wasn't really hard to understand that, and it shouldn't be for us tonight. Fourthly, we need to make absolutely clear that when we're thinking about our sanctification—that is, the work of the Spirit of God within our lives to conform as ever and ever and more and more to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ—that that process of sanctification comes from our communion with Christ. From our communion with Christ. So don't misunderstand, don't hear me saying that our sanctification is achieved by our obedience to the law of God. Our sanctification is achieved as a result of our communion with Christ, and our communion with Christ is a love affair which issues, again, in obedience.
And fifthly, it is important also to recognize that when we break God's law, and we do break God's law, we do not lose our relationship with the Father, but we spoil our relationship with the Father. In simple terms, when my father told me, Be home at eleven o'clock and make sure the car is in the garage. And I came home a quarter past midnight. I was hoping desperately that he was in bed and that he would leave early for work the following morning, because I was not looking forward to breakfast time.
Why? Because he would be disbanding me as his son? That I would no longer be able to call him father?
No. But because I had broken his rules, I had cast a shadow over the enjoyment of my relationship with him. And I hope that makes perfect sense, and we come back to it another time. And then the third and final picture that we were going to consider is in verse 6, not the picture of a soldier or an athlete, but the picture of a hard-working farmer. So if we want to think in terms of the devotion of the soldier and the discipline of the athlete, we can think in terms of the diligence of the farmer.
There are no overnight results in farming, as far as I can tell—apart, I suppose, from dairy farming, you would say, that there are some overnight results there. But this picture is, on the one hand, a daunting picture, and it's, on the one hand, an encouraging picture. It's quite a challenge, isn't it, the picture of a hard-working farmer? Because there's none of the drama in this metaphor that is associated either with the concept of being a soldier in an army or being an athlete in a race.
There's drama in that, you know? There's warfare, and there's strenuous activity, and there's competition, and so on. But there's nothing of that in the work of a farmer. The daily routine of a farmer is, by and large, just plain, old-fashioned work. I mean, you have to do the same things again and again. You have to do it whether you feel like it or whether you don't feel like it if you want to have any kind of crawl.
If you ought to sit around and wait for the temperature to be perfect or for the wind to be perfect, you will never plant anything, and if you never plant anything, then you will never reap anything. Well, what's the point? Well, the point is twofold, I think. One, when we think about the daunting nature of this, it is to recognize the fact that while a lot of Christian discipleship may have excitement in it, actually most of Christian discipleship is a bit of a slog. It's a bit of a slog. It's a bit like the other routines of our lives.
You know, you have to get up, you have to brush your teeth, you have to do these things, and you go on again. And the Christian life is a lot like that. And it's a lot like the challenge of being a farmer, week after week, sowing, watering, planting—doing sowing conditions that are often less than ideal, hindered by stony soil, hindered by weeds which spring up easily, hindered in such a way that when we take the metaphor and apply it, the servant of God may be tempted to say, you know, this is so jolly difficult, I don't want to do this anymore. And especially if they begin to look around and see that someone else's farm seems to be going gloriously well, and they've been doing the same things and trying their best, and yet they don't seem to have the same success. And the temptation will be for them to say, well, I need to go and find out how I can be far more successful or find another methodology or do whatever else it is.
It can be very daunting, can't it? But the flip side of it is that it's actually a very encouraging metaphor. Because what it's saying is this, that as a servant of God, I may not enjoy the gifts that somebody else does. I may not be gifted in the way that another servant of God is. But as long as I have health and strength and as long as I have breath, I can work hard.
I can work hard. And the promise is that it is the hardworking farmer who should have the first share of the crops. That the benefits that accrue are benefits that are enjoyed by the farmer who is diligent. Giftedness plus laziness is a dangerous combination. And many a man has been exceptionally gifted and proved absolutely useless, because he's not diligent. Squandered his gifts. On the other side, someone who has simple gifts, exercised with humble diligence, will produce far more than he might expect, will produce a harvest if he doesn't quit.
So you have the rigor that is attached to being a soldier, you have the rules that are identified as part and parcel of the athletic program, and you have the rewards that come to the farmer. Paul was able to speak of this because he had worked very hard, and he had enjoyed a harvest of souls. And indeed, Timothy was part of that harvest. And the fruit that Paul knew was the work of God, but it was not the work of God apart from the hard work of Paul.
Right? The fruit that he knew was the work of God, but the work of God that produced the fruit did not produce the fruit apart from the hard work of Paul. God did not do it in a vacuum.
He may from time to time do it in a vacuum, but that hasn't been his pattern. There are toils, there are tears, and there are also great joys in being present to witness the early signs of life. When those little shoots appear in the ground, when you show them to your children and your grandchildren, look, it's going to be springtime. There are the evidences of a harvest yet to come. And so it is that the servant of God should be living with his eye on the harvest.
That's why Jesus said, Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers into his harvest, so that we might share in these privileges. George Whitefield, probably the greatest evangelist in America, at least in the eighteenth century, writes in his diaries in North Carolina, on Christmas Day, 1739. And his entry in his diary is as follows, Oh, how it will rejoice me to hear that some soul this day was born again, Then it would be Christmas Day indeed. Oh, if I could only know that somebody was born again. Rutherford was the same.
Rutherford labored in Anway, on the Solway Firth, the border between Scotland and England, and never with great obvious success, no fantastic crowds, no amazing indications of things. He was a faithful soldier. He was a hard-working farmer.
He was a row-keeping athlete. And when Margaret Cousins, the wife of a Presbyterian minister who was a friend of Rutherford's, wrote a thirty-three stanza poem on the life of Rutherford that she had taken out of his letters and his memoirs—the poem begins, The sands of time are sinking, The dawn of heaven breaks, And the summer morn I've longed for, And so on. It's very poetic. It became a hymn of that ilk. But there's a stanza in there that I love that she took again from his journal, and it reads as follows, O Anwith, that's the place, O Anwith, on the Solway, To me thou still art dear, Even from the edge of heaven I shed for thee a tear, And if one soul from Anwith Meets me at God's right hand, My heaven will be two heavens In Emmanuel's land. O Cleveland, on Lake Erie, To me you are still dear, One day from the edge of heaven I shed for you a tear, And if one soul from Cleveland Meets me, meets you, At God's right hand, And your heaven may be two heavens In Emmanuel's land. O Cleveland, a good soldier, A strenuous athlete, A diligent farmer, And all energized, As verse 1 makes clear, By the grace that is ours In the Lord Jesus Christ, The indicative Always precedes the imperative. Father, thank you for the way that Paul was able to write so clearly and so helpfully, so that those of us who are becoming jaded or indifferent or lethargic or casual or careless or lazy could be jolted out of such a dangerous posture. Thank you for the grace that is ours as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grant that that grace may issue, then, in a life that is marked by these characteristics, so that we might in due course reap a harvest if we don't faint. Thank you that all of our acceptance with you is in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that we are covered over with a robe of righteousness that is his perfect and finished work. Thank you that when you look on eyes you see us in the sun.
What a marvel. We praise you in Christ's name. Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg reminding us that God produces the harvest as we do the hard work he's called us to do. Well, just a few days from now, on February 27th, we'll be marking the 30th anniversary of the very first daily broadcast for Truth for Life. That's three decades of God's grace enabling us to do what he's called us to do. And today, Alistair wanted to share some thoughts about all that God has done through Truth for Life since our daily program was first broadcast back in 1995. Well, thank you, Bob.
It is quite a thought, isn't it? And if I am just totally honest, as I must be, I think I've always made it known that I never ever had a thought to be involved in a radio program at all. That it wasn't a hope, it certainly wasn't a dream, and it really was something that I was coaxed into.
I mean, since entering the doorway, I've been totally committed to the venture. But in those early days, were it not for the people around me here, most of them were younger than me and living in a world that I was really unfamiliar with. If it weren't for them, then probably the program would never have started in the first place. And even when it did begin, it was a small venture and there was no real obvious indication that it was meaningful to more than just a handful of people. By the time we began in the February of 1995 and broadcasting on 31 stations, that was a huge adventure. And once again, none of us had any way of knowing whether this would hold any traction at all, whether we would begin to achieve some of the things that we said were fundamental to us, hoping that people when they hear the Bible, when they meet with Jesus, will come to trust in him, that through the radio program we might be able to encourage them to deepen in their walk, and certainly that we would be simply supplemental to the ongoing work of local pastors throughout the country. And once we were off and running, it began to be apparent that to some degree at least that was actually happening.
From this vantage point now, we find ourselves on the receiving end of hundreds of communications from people, not just on a variety of radio stations around the country, but actually by means of social media and so on all around the world. And that in itself is both an immense privilege and a peculiar challenge, because the temptation that comes with a measure of usefulness is that we become self-reliant, or that we begin to think we know what we're doing. When in actual fact we know that on our best day we're unprofitable servants, that we can plant, we can water, but it's only God who makes things grow. I think the thing that I find most reassuring is that when I am amongst my colleagues here at Truth for Life, it is very clear to me that our shared convictions have, by God's grace, not wavered through the time. That the notion from the very beginning of seeking to teach the Bible with clarity and with relevance, which of course is vitally important, the reason for that is not so that people would say, oh how clear and relevant this is, but in order that they might have an encounter with the living God. And by God's grace we've been able to do that. Also from the beginning we were committed to making sure that we were a help and never a hindrance to people in following Jesus, and certainly in relationship to local churches.
I mean my role, my role in life, my calling in life is to be, and has been, to pastor a local congregation, and all the joys and challenges and privileges of that are apparent. And so I'm keenly aware of what that means in the lives of my colleagues, and to that end we have tried always to make sure that we've made it perfectly clear that we're in partnership and we're glad to be a help to them in any way we can. And so we find ourselves 30 years on, still serving and still knowing your support and your encouragement, and we give our thanks to God. We hope we can continue to do what we're doing over the next 30 years if God spares us. We certainly look over our shoulder with thankfulness and we look ahead of us with great anticipation, and I'm sure I'll have occasion to say this to you in a number of ways, but just in case I don't, thank you for joining us, for supporting, for praying as we continue on this quite extraordinary adventure. Yeah it is quite an adventure, and Alistair, you and I had the opportunity to sit down recently to reflect on the past 30 years. We talked about a number of things, including your vision for the future, and I want to invite our listeners to listen to our conversation.
I think they'll enjoy hearing all of what you have to say. You can find the interview with Alistair online at truthforlife.org slash 30 years. And as Alistair mentioned, our mission has not wavered over the last three decades.
We are planting, we're watering, and we are thanking God for the ways he has made things grow. And for those of you who are regular listeners to Truth for Life, you can come alongside this mission, join the vital team of Truth Partners, listeners just like you who pray for this ministry, who give a set amount each month. It is Truth Partner support that makes all of this possible. Alistair's daily teaching, the purchase of books and study guides online at cost, Truth Partner giving makes all of our online teaching and daily devotionals available for free. So if you've benefited from this listener-funded ministry and have yet to become a part of the team that supports it, would you join with us in looking forward to the next 30 years by becoming a monthly Truth Partner today? Visit truthforlife.org slash Truth Partner or call us at 888-588-7884. And those Truth Partners who give $20 a month or more are invited to receive the monthly book offers we make at no additional cost. It's one of the ways we say thank you for your partnership and today we're recommending a book called Honor Loving Your Church by Building One Another Up. Ask for your copy of the book when you become a monthly Truth Partner or when you give a one-time 30-year anniversary donation to support the ongoing ministry of Truth for Life. Visit our website at truthforlife.org slash 30 years. Thanks for listening today. Tomorrow we'll learn why Christians are expected to think, focus, and learn. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
