Alistair Begg - "A Strange Place for a Strange Man"

well let me invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Luke and to chapter three and I'm going to read these opening verses of Luke chapter three and in my address if my remarks do not immediately emerge from Luke chapter three then you can be fairly confident that you will be able later on to find them either in Matthews record Mark's record or John's record if however having gone there you still cannot find my remarks then you should assume that I just made them up I'm very very grateful for this privilege of last evening and then again this morning your president's words are entirely undeserved and gratefully received I rejoice in my fellowship and the gospel with him and with your faculty and with the entire ethos of this institution and in these days of sometimes alarming discord and confusion it's very very important for us to know who our friends are and to be able to advance together people make a lot of superficial things I've noticed they make deductions on the basis of certain things and I want to immediately disavow something this morning the absence of my tie it does make a statement however it doesn't make this statement they use some of you wish it was making out others of you are concerned that it was making the statement that it makes is that I should never have traveled without my wife because about 15 minutes of guys I tried to put on my tie the top button of my shirt popped off and landed on the floor of my room and I just stared at it like a small boy wondering what do you do in a circumstance like this so it is not my testimony to the fact that this is Halloween or anything like that at all and in fact this is about the closest I could get to a costume Luke chapter three verse one in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip Tetrarch of the region of it areia and Trek and itis and the scene is the tetrarch of abilene during the high priest of Anna's and Caiaphas the Word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness and he went into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make his paths straight every Valley shall be filled and every mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight and the rough places shall become level waves and all flesh shall see the salvation of God Amen father with our Bibles open before us we humbly pray that the Spirit of God will be the one who illumines the page introduces us to the truth of your word and to the wonders of your dearly beloved son in whose name we pray amen how are we to account for the impact of the preaching ministry of John the Baptist after all the gospel records are very very clear there was a mass movement of people to hear John the Baptist preached at the beginning of mark mark records all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and even allowing for hyperbole in that statement it is clear that he was remarkable remarkable in many different ways in fact I think it would be fair to say of him that when we read of him in the gospel records we read of a strange man in a strange place and the strangeness of his life is there even before he's born at the very infancy of his conception the work of God is revealed first of all to his mother and then in turn of course to Zachariah he had elderly parents they were beyond the time of normal expectation of the delivery of a son and it was to them as elderly parents that the angel came and made this dramatic announcement actually announcing to Zachariah the name of the son that he's going to have letting Zachariah know that his influence will be great that he is filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb and that he is going to turn many to the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah now that in itself is quite remarkable in fact it is as remarkable as the record of any birth other than the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ himself that's point one the details of his birth strange and also in relationship to the location in which he ends up ministering the fact that it is mentioned in the gospel records is not simply filler in the way some of you students are tempted to put in little geographical details because your word count is what law no we're actually and incidentally historical details in the same way but that's another day and another subject but the fact is that he was in the wilderness he was in the wilderness one of the commentators describes the exact location in which he found himself some hundreds of feet below sea level as being a hot uninhabitable depression in the heart of the wilderness not exactly what you would call the ideal spot for the development of a remarkable preaching ministry after all if there are still people called Church growth experts I don't know if there are they would be really perturbed by this because after all he doesn't have a Center City location nor does he have a prime suburban setting with easy access from the freight freeway and wonderful visibility for all the passing people no interesting birth interesting location and what about his lifestyle what a strange lifestyle we're told that he was in the wilderness to the day of his public appearance so the the people who on the occasion of his birth stored up all the things that were said about them in his in their hearts and said what is this child going to be would have had occasion to ask off his parents and so how is John doing these days and the answer would have been were not too sure he's he actually he's got some fascination with the wilderness and he's been down there again he goes on these camping trips again and again but if you ever see him you'll recognize him because he wears this hairy jacket all the time and this is not Brooks Brothers you see this camel this camel covering is worthy of common and there's not a lot of comment about what people wear in the New Testament is there you don't hear much about it anymore such-and-such or he had a tire the and fell off his shirt nobody's concerned about any of these things that's our foolish preoccupations so when his mentions its sub significance and he wore a leather belt he was bohemian if you like he was a sort of Haight Ashbury fellow from the 60s and his diet he was into health food before there was even Halford locusts and wild honey the the vegans today would have claimed him as one of their own and indeed when you put the entire package together you can ever imagine him being welcomed to speak at the expositors conference at the Southern Baptist Seminary at least not in that outfit for sure remarkable and what about his preaching surely that is the most remarkable part of all all of these people saying to one another have you gone to hear John the Baptist preached no where does he do that well it's a little bit of a trek but it's where it's worth the visit that we're going out and we're taking many with us well is what does he say does he does he say things like every day is Friday it's does he say you can be all that you want to be if you just want to be and really really really want to be does he say things like that oh no no he's actually quite straightforward you're gonna have to come and hear him now we could go on with that but we want these things are relatively strange they're strange in his day and they're strange in contemporary terms but somebody immediately says well of course that kind of thing was possible then it was understandable then the times then if you like were conducive to that kind of approach well that's only because you're not considering the context and the context can be summarized essentially in two words first of all in terms of darkness the opening of the third chapter of Luke gives to us in a summary form the kind of social and political climate into which john the baptist was coming to preach and it is dark we didn't delay on it but we may simply say that just with the introduction of the name Tiberius Caesar those who were students of the time and those who read of it now will understand the darkness of the context into which John was going to come marked by confusion and marked by chaos and marked essentially by brutality and by corruption it was dark and also it was silent silent in the sense that here we were coming out of the intertestamental period four hundred years or so have it have elapsed by now generations of common generations have gone saying where is he who will come where is the Promised One where is the word of the prophets what the prophets ever speak again is there a word from God how are we to know what are we to do and in the mornings of the day the Jewish families would raise their children and say here are Israel the Lord your God the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and soul and strength and these things are to be upon your hearts and you teach them to your children when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up because God will fulfill his promises and all this silence and all this darkness and then his arrival now it is that context I suggest to you which makes all the more remarkable the impact of his preaching and causes us I hope in some measure to say what might we learn from it and in what ways we pattern ourselves after it I haven't thought this through entirely but I think these four aspects and I will be brief on each these four aspects are worthy of our consideration first of all we can understand it only in terms of divine authority divine authority as we have noted the beginnings of his life the calling of God upon him and the designation concerning him there was a man sent from God whose name was John he was absolutely clear about his calling that his ministry was to make ready for the Lord a people prepared he was clear when questioned that a man can only receive that which has given him from heaven in other words he was in absolutely no doubt at all that his responsibility and his privilege was an account of a divine mandate he was not on a fool's errand he had not invented himself he was not creating a brand he was not developing a philosophy he was a man under divine authority and in that respect at least we ought to understand that the callings of God never leave a man or a woman where they find him and so it was that we consider the impact in terms of divine authority but secondly also in terms of his personal integrity his personal integrity there is with John no building of the lily there is no flannel with John there you never get the sense in the brief encounters that we have within that he was trying his best to curry favor with anyone at all in fact especially not with the religious fellows of the time can you imagine them being invited to one of his addresses down in this hot uninhabitable depression trekking away down there at the invitation of somebody and when they're all seated and ready for him to begin his opening line is you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath you know and they're looking at one another and say we came all the way out here to listen to this but of course what he was doing was not setting himself forward it wasn't that John the Baptist was an argumentative type it wasn't that he liked to fight and wasn't that he was looking for trouble no he was under divine authority and the words of his mouth were testimony not to the personality of John but to the authority of God who else would say such things except someone in this case his integrity is revealed in being prepared at the very expense of his life to take on the political establishment of the day and Herod the Great no matter how great he is is on the receiving end of the authoritative honest and plain speaking of John the Baptist it is not right for you Herod to have her she is not your wife she is your brother's wife you know you could lose your head for that John I recognize that it still isn't right personal integrity you see just as a sidebar for a moment what a man is on his knees before God that is what he is and nothing else and eventually hypocrisy and the thin murky layers of self aggrandizement we'll eventually be vaporized eventually on that day and perhaps even before that day in the now when in the tragedy of it all the people look on and say but I thought he was but I considered him eyes but I John the Baptist he scratched this fellow he scratched into the core of him and you scratch into integrity what about the integrity of someone who is so clear in his presentation finds himself in jail sends two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him are you the one who is to come or should we look for somebody else now I'm gladly saying that him and I second him I've never sung it before but there was a lot in there about something about other there were tempest and there were storms and they were overwhelming doubts in there somewhere and I thought well I'm glad they put that in there because I want to suggest to you that John the Baptist simply integrity extended to the realm of his own personal doubting why because remember his message Jesus is coming and the fire is already burning and that and the axe is already at the fruit at the foot of the tree and the whole things about the collapse he's in jail and they come and report to him the things that Jesus is saying and guess what he can't smell any fire burning and he hasn't heard about any trees getting choked down and so he says well goodness gracious we better just check and make sure are you gonna be a pastor then don't don't pretend you're something you're not in your preaching I mean don't do the kind of naked preaching that I'm a miserable wretch and I'm a horrible person and they know that already you don't have to go through that but you know it it is it is it is fair enough to let people know that sometimes I really wrestle with this the challenge of unanswered prayer at least unanswered in my timeframe those kinds of things integrity is not just the integrity which is prepared to say you brood of vipers or you can have her but it's the integrity that says you know I wonder thirdly genuine humility divine authority personal integrity genuine humility you need to go to the beginning of John for theirs don't you when they come to him and he and they ask him twice who are you who are you and he says well I am NOT this and they come at him again and they say well who are you are you Elijah and they says no I am NOT Elijah and then there's a sense of a frustration that is apparently building with the with the search committee as it were as they're looking for the latest prophet and and and they said well what do you have to say about yourself and John says well why don't you go to my website it's all there no I say there there there's a real question for most of us is what do you have to say about yourself oh why don't you that's there's a couch or something pull up I'll pull up a nice chair we're going to be here for some time because I want to talk about myself what does John say he says well listen here's the deal you know when you have a bridegroom the bridegroom's job is to prepare the way and get out of the way I am the bridegroom or let me put it another way the one to whom I am pointing is the one whose sandals I am not worthy of actually strapping on for him or cleaning for him at the end of the day he is the one who must increase I am the one who must decrease if if you want something for the brochure that you're putting together so to speak why don't you say John the Baptist will be preaching he wants you to know that he is a finger pointing and that he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness I never liked that when people say your president didn't say this is not a just so you know and I'm never happy when I hear people saying and he and Alistair beg is the voice of something John the Baptist does not say I am the voice he says I am the voice of one crying in a wilderness you see he was you know if he'd been around to read Paul's letter to the Corinthians where Paul says you know we do not preach ourselves John the Baptist would have just been Amen in all the way through that address you said that's exactly right I don't want to delay on this but I do want to just pick on something I found in an old commentary by Albert Barnes I won't read it all but I said to myself what does it mean to preach yourself cuz I don't want to preach myself well let's say I do but then when I know I do then I'm not supposed to want to you understand Barnes says man may be said to preach themselves in the following ways one when their preaching is a primary reference to their own in its interest when they engage in it to advance their reputation when they proclaim their own opinions another gospel of Christ when they put themselves forward speech marks of themselves refer often to themselves are vain of their powers of reason of their eloquence of their learning and seek to make these known rather than simple truths of the gospel in one word when self is primary and the gospel is secondary when they prostitute the ministry to gain popularity to live a life of ease to be respected and so on the remarkable preaching of John knows nothing of this that I think is one of the reasons it's so remarkable CS Lewis in the fourloves gives a wonderful word of warning when he says those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to adjust penalty we easily imagine conditions far higher than we've actually reached and if we describe what we have imagined we may make others and make ourselves believe that we've really been there and so fool both them ourselves and fool both them and ourselves and the two things tied together don't they the matter of integrity and humility and then finally I suggest to you that part of the reason for his effectiveness was due to what we might refer to as a helpful simplicity a helpful simplicity many of you have no idea who Johnny Carson was his final program was on my 40th birthday which is now 27 years ago and I sat there for the last time and watched and listened as the curtain on the show was pulled back by someone and the fellow who was his sidekick a man by the name of Ed McMahon for the last time gave the introduction to Carson and he cried out as he did memorably night after night after night here's Johnny that cued the music and in Kim Carson and he was gone I used to look at Carson marvel at various things that his timing and everything else but then I would think about Mike man no there is a job I said to myself what a job is this you get paid millions of dollars to sit there and when you're called upon you just say the same thing every night here's Johnny that's a job and it's not a hard job if you can handle it what is the simplicity of John the Baptist preaching here's Jesus here's Jesus that's what he's saying he's he's really only got two strings to his bow get baptized and here's Jesus this is a baptism for repentance of the forgiveness of sins the one who is coming after me the ones who am I'm pointing the one on the other side of the river that my friends are concerned about because so many people are going to him he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin other world the whole reason for my existence is to say here's Jesus now that's what the hymn writers have helped us with hasn't it tis all my business here below to stay behold the lamb we're not here to impress people where our philosophy we're not here to expound passages of Scripture and show them this means that and that verb was there and that adjective is actually qualified and this and that the next thing and people are bamboozled by at all they don't really know what we're on about and eventually we say now let me give you three practical pointers to talk about over lunch nothing really has happened nothing has happened that is not our objective our objective is to stand underneath the authority of the word of God and say this is the Word of God this is the story of salvation this is the Lord Jesus Christ look to Jesus Christ look to Jesus Christ and live as the unknown preacher said when Spurgeon was converted you see what we're aiming for under God is not of people get information with a few practical pointers but that they have a divine encounter with the Living God through the Word of God by the power of the Spirit of God that is what we long for where is the stillness at the end of our preaching where is the moment where even for a nanosecond somebody says this is surely the Word of God I must ponder here for a moment goodness gracious you can't you get you know run over in the crust as you hear the immediate response to the Bible are you going for lunch did you get coffee have you seen what happened last night and the preacher crawls down below and goes out on his way and back to his room or maybe that's just how I feel well here we are 31st of October 2019 what do you think what do you think about our context dark silent silent pulpits that are big silenced by fear poopers that have been silenced by a loss of confidence in the scripture people poopers that have been silenced by the impact of a prevailing culture that says we have no place or time for this and the darkness of a world that is upside down where people's lives are broken Spurgeon in many ways I think fell and line with the Baptist he was never marketable character wasn't he when you go to his grave and in Upper Norwood there in suburban London it's no surprise what he has on his stone is it his wife has a verse over him he has a verse over him what is his they are sins by faith I saw the stream thy flowing wooden supply redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die clarity authority integrity humility simplicity let me encourage those of you who are young and about the business to take seriously these things and not least of all this matter of simplicity in your preaching Spurgeon did not pull punches and I'm going to finish in this in this humorous vein because after all I'll said that I'm a fairly joyful soul and much of this has been somewhat challenging ever finishing a joyful vein with this word are from Spurgeon to the preachers of his day and this comes under this final point of simplicity whatever you may know says Spurgeon you can't be truly efficient ministers if you're not apt to teach you know ministers who have mistaken their calling and evidently have no gifts for it make sure that none think the same of you there are brethren in the ministry whose speech is intolerable either they rouse you to wrath or else they send you to sleep no anesthetic can ever equal some discourses in sleep giving properties no human being unless gifted with infinite patience could long endure to listen to them and nature does well to give the victim deliverance through sleep I heard one say the other day that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster and in my own judgment that was a slender on the oyster for that worthy bivalve shows great discretion in his openings and knows when to close if some men were sentenced to hear their own sermons it would be a righteous judgment upon and they would soon cry out with cain my punishment is greater than I can bear let us then not fall under the same condemnation divine authority personal integrity genuine humility helpful simplicity Father God what a marvel it is that you have chosen throughout all of the ages to put your treasure in old clay parts so that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to God and not to us thank you for this day and for this place for the commitment that underpins it to Christ to the gospel to the Scriptures to the world strengthen the hands of all involved fulfill your purposes Lord for your glory in our day enable us to speak into an increasingly silenced and silenced world and to bring the light of the gospel into the darkness and the confusion and the chaos of an environment such as our own for we humbly pray in Christ's name you

Channel: Southern Seminary

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Keywords: SBTS, Chapel, Southern Seminary, Alistair Begg, Luke 3

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Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019