>> DAVID NASSER: A lot of us grew up listening
to that thick Scottish accent on “Truth for Life” on the radio waves, right? My kids certainly grew up listening to it
on their way to school as mom would drop them off, and we've just been incredibly impacted
by the ministry of our guest. He's written seven books. He's the local pastor of Parkside Church in
Ohio. Honestly, just one of the great gifts to the
local church at this particular moment. A pastor who really loves the idea of training
up the next generation of pastors, and on a week-to-week basis just expositionally unpacks
God's word to almost 1700 different radio stations on the planet. We love him. This is not his first time to be on campus. It's such a privilege for us to get to sit
under his teaching. Can we welcome together Dr. Alistair Begg? >> ALISTAIR BEGG: If you have a Bible, and
you should, I invite you to turn to Jeremiah chapter nine where my text for this morning
is found. As you're turning there let me say thank you
for the privilege of being with you this morning. You can speak anywhere once, I think, but
to be invited back a second time you then have to decide did they invite me back just
because they felt sorry for me the first time? Or is it just because the last time I was
here the entire student body is no longer here, and so they don't know what they're
getting into. But I'm here this morning, and I've shared
in the worship – and lovely to be led as we've been – and as I was reflecting on
what David has said concerning Willie Bell, who was known by me because I was a football
fan in England, and he played for the team that I supported at that time in England. And standing up here I actually feel quite
old. I realized that I'm not ready to be hailed
as your grandfather, most of you, although I am a grandfather, but I'm prepared to be,
if you would like to adopt me, as a kind of kindly uncle. And I want to speak to you as a kindly uncle,
as a pastor, and as somebody who realized how quickly time goes by. You probably don't know this song; you shouldn't
know this song. It begins like this: "At the bar down in Dallas
an old man chimed in, and I thought he was out of his head, because, being a young guy,
I just laughed it off when I heard what the old man had said. He said never again will I turn young ladies'
heads or run and chase after the wind, because I'm three quarters done from the start to
the end, and I wish I was 18 again. I wish I was 18 again to go where I've never
been, because I'm three quarters done from the start to the end, and I wish I was 18
again." Now I suppose there's some sentimental schmaltz
in that, but I would love to come back around and play for the freshmen team at Liberty
coached by Willie Bell. That would've been fantastic. I don't even know if I would've got picked,
but here I am, and there's no possibility of that. And your future is all before you. And the Bible is an open book to you, and
this is what the prophet Jeremiah says. Speaking from the Lord, "Let not the wise
man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man
boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows
me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the
Lord." Tillich on one occasion writes, "Every day,
in a thousand ways, we're tempted to make ourselves the center of the universe." And if you will pardon me, this particular
generation has grown up being encouraged to regard themselves as the center of the universe. Many of you have regarded it as perfectly
normal and reasonable to have been driven to your school in a minivan bearing a bumper
sticker that proclaimed the genius of the inhabitants of the minivan: actually, yourselves. And in David Brook's book, The Road to Character,
he observes that while in an earlier era there was a stronger social sanction against blowing
your own trumpet, or getting above yourself, or being too big for your britches, we now
live in a culture of self-promotion that says recognize my accomplishments. I am pretty special. Now I know that the painters of old in the
renaissance did self-portraits, but that's not the same as selfies. That cannot be the same as walking around
with a sort of inverted umbrella taking pictures of yourselves all the time, and tweeting them
across the universe. Your own mother doesn't even care. Why are you sending it? Why are you sending it to me? Do you really think you are the center of
the universe? Wow, this is Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street
Journal: "For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young that they're perfect in every
way. It's yielding something new in history. An entire generation with no proper sense
of inadequacy." Well, you say, I don't think you are a kindly
uncle. I think you're a grumpy old uncle. You come in here and start off like this on
such a lovely morning. You say to me, are you seeking to suggest
that somehow or another your particular little sector of society has managed to avoid all
of this? Well no. I'm a baby boomer – whatever that really
means – and when the baby boomers, the oldest of us, turned 65 four years ago, Dan Barry,
writing the New York Times, said of my generation, quote: "They are living longer, working longer,
and nursing some disappointment at how their lives have turned out. The self-aware or self-absorbed feel far less
self-fulfilled, and thus are wracked with self-pity." It's a staggering statement. In 1965, when I was 13, Paul Simon was adept
at proclaiming all of this individualism. Some of you may actually listen to him – A
Winter's Tale, A Winter's Day. "In a deep and dark December, he says, and
I am alone. I build walls, don't talk of love. I have my books and my poetry to protect me. I'm shielded in my armor, hiding in my room,
safe within my womb. I touch no one and no on touches me. I am a rock; I am an island." And many have actually taken on that guise. Therapists report that the paradox, which
is the American paradox, that never in history have we had so much, and yet had so little. The therapists acknowledge the fact that those
young people from good homes, who graduate from a fine college, who are able to get work
find themselves baffled by the emptiness they feel. Their self-esteem is high, but their self
is empty. Writing of this David Wells says, "They grew
up being told that they could be anything they wanted to be, but they don't know what
they want to be. They are unhappy, but there seems to be no
real cause for their unhappiness. They are more connected to more people through
the internet, and yet they have never felt more lonely. They want to be accepted, and yet they often
feel alienated. Never have we had so much, and never have
we had so little." So our modern life is marked by feeling of
indecision and loneliness, and we live in a secular world where men and women are being
forced, somehow or another, to try and create their own significance and their own meaning. Well, you say this is a miserable and wretched
set of circumstances that you're reminding us of this morning. Well, let me say something that you will find
of interest, I'm sure. Namely, that human inventiveness and human
need has not changed very much in the last two and a half thousand years from the time
that Jeremiah was written, because Jeremiah now is writing to the people – people who
are trusting in everything and everyone other than that which God has made known of Himself. In other words, they have have invested themselves
in substitute God's – gods that inherently cannot satisfy. They've gone down the road to which CS Lewis
refers, where he says you know we are like people making little sand piles in the puddles
at the corner of our street not realizing that God's purpose for us is far greater than
that in all the beauty and wonder of His love. And the background to the verses I've read
– which I'm assigning to you as homework which you can do or not do – but the background
is that of death and disaster. The prophet says you should teach your daughters
how to sing a lament, because death has come up into our windows. In other words, a broken world, and the attempts
to fix it, were such that they were prepared to trust their own judgement. And their judgment was expressed, primarily,
in three ways. The prophet is sent by God to them in their
day to speak to them with sympathy for their suffering, and to speak to them also with
great clarity in providing this solution for their sins. What were the three areas where they found
confidence to be inadequate? Number one: wisdom, wisdom. "Let not the wise boast in their wisdom." You say, well you shouldn't be coming to a
fine intellectual institution like this and undermining wisdom. Well of course one would never do that, but
the pursuit of wisdom divorced from the fear of the Lord is a dead end street. That's why Einstein observed on one occasion,
"I've discovered," he said, "that the men who know the most are the most gloomy." See, I'm not clever enough to really get depressed. You have to be really clever to get really
depressed. I'm clever enough to get fed up. I'm clever enough to be disappointed, but
I'm not smart enough to have to go and just hide in a corner and suck my thumb. Now you may be in that category, and if you
are you know know that you can't think yourself out of it – you cannot. Cowper, one of the great theological hymn
writers of an earlier generation is the one who wrote out of his deep darkness and deep
sadness, realizing that the extent of his intellect held no answer for him. Ecclesiastes opens with that very issue, doesn't
it? Now that's why when you move around institutions
of education you're not necessarily finding people who are the most tranquil, who are
the most at ease. You are often moving in areas that are seabeds
of agitation, and of disappointment, and of confusion, and of unfulfilled longings, and
hopes, and dreams. Well if the answer was simply an education
then of course it would be the kind of place that people would want to go for vacation
– just to pull up a camper and just hang around, and to meet all these tranquil souls. No, don't boast in your wisdom he says, or
in your might, or in your strength. I think about how much time and energy is
spent in contemporary society trying to disprove the fact that we are all crumbling, fading,
and degenerating. And my wife told me, she said, you have a
furniture problem. I think it was when I was shaving recently. I said what do you mean? She said, your chest has dropped down into
your drawers. And I thanked her for that encouragement,
but as I began to ponder it I said, you know she does have a measure of truth. I used to be able like you, to go up and down
the aisles in CVS, or whatever pharmacy it is, and say what is this stuff for? I wonder what they use that for. Why would you have one of those? Now I'm looking for the jolly stuff! Now I'm the guy with the thing that's around
the arm. Now I'm the person! How did that happen? It was only yesterday I was 18, wasn't it? And suddenly one day you'll be old, and that's
why the Bible always says remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the time
of trouble comes, and before you begin to collapse. That is Ecclesiastes 12. Before you start to walk around like a grasshopper,
before you're like, what? Before the – no, we won't go into all the
details. This is a mixed group. But before everything begins to fall apart,
that's what he said, and the fact of the matter is that every breath we take, as we just sang,
is a gift from God, and all flesh is like grass, and the glory of man is like the flower
in the field. And the grass withers and the flower falls,
and, therefore, it is an ultimate futility to invest multi-billion dollars in the western
world to try and disprove what is a reality. Namely, that frail as summer's flower we flourish,
and blows the wind, and it is gone, but while mortals rise and perish God endures unchanging
on.” Don't go down that road he says. All right, wisdom, might, and riches, riches. There's two problems with money. Money may leave you while you live, and you
and I will leave our money when we die. Money may desert you while you're living,
and you will desert money when you leave. Money is regarded as the universal provider
of everything, but it doesn't provide happiness, and is the universal passport to everywhere,
but gives no access to heaven. In the 60s, a country singer, whose name I've
just forgotten, wrote a song that was banned on many of the airways here in the United
States. It's the same guy that wrote the song, "The
Streak" – which we don't want to quote here either this morning-, but nevertheless it
started like this: Itemize the things you covet
As you squander through your life. Bigger cars, better houses,
Term insurance on your wife. Tuesday evenings with your harlot,
And on Wednesdays is your charlatan. Your analyst is on the list. 86 proof anesthetic crutches
Prop you to top, Where the smiles are all synthetic
And the ulcers never stop. And when they take that final inventory
yours will be the same sad story everywhere. No one will really care, no one more lonely
than This rich important man. Spending counterfeit incentive,
Wasting precious time and health. Placing value on the worthless,
Disregarding priceless wealth, And you can wheel and deal the best of them. Steal it from the rest of them. You know the score; their ethics are a bore. You better take care of business, Mr. Businessman,
Before it's too late." We live in a nation that has shown the world
how to deal with these issues under God. As soon as we seek to move down these roads
absent God, then everything, of course, collapses. So he says I don't want you to this. I want you to avoid this, and he says and
I'll tell you why. Because the fact that you have an agile mind,
the fact that you have a healthy body, the fact that you have a fat portfolio will not
ultimately make sense of your life, and will not finally prepare you for death. So this what you need to do, he says. Make sure that the person who boasts boasts
in this: That he understands and knows me – who I am as the living God. In other words, what you and I cannot discover
by way of investigation, God has provided for us by way of revelation. The heavens and earth will pass away, but
God's word does not pass away. And these unfading glories, to which Jeremiah
points, are gifts to us before they're ever expectations from us. So, knowing this, that God is a god, number
one, of steadfast love. The covenant love of God – the love of God
that has taken an initiative of calling out to you in the darkness of your life, and raising
you up from the deadness of your rebellion and indifference towards Him – that covenant
love revealed in the Lord Jesus. "How deep the Father's love for us. How vast beyond all measure, that He would
give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure." That's what he's saying. Concentrate on this; think on this. You may feel friendless today, you may have
lost the love of your potential life or whatever it might be. Rest in the steadfast love of God – a God
who also executes justice. He rules in equity; he rules in truth. He's not arbitrary in His dealings. He is active in keeping with His character. And because He is just sin must be punished,
and because He is love He has provided a substitute to die in our place, thereby providing a righteousness
which we ourselves could never, and can never, produce. "The Lord is righteous in all His dealings." Psalm 145, from which we read the opening
verses. No, it is in knowing God, in knowing God,
not as a cosmic notion, not as somehow trapped within creation in the prevailing pantheism
of our day, but knowing and saying to ourselves on a morning like this, before there was time,
before there was anything there was God. He is the creator of the universe. He is the one who sustains everything. In Christ all things hold together. All of the universe, all of the stars and
planets are in his place according to His ordering. This morning the space station has been passing
over here. 17 times it will pass over here in the course
of a day, going at 17,000 miles an hour. One of the fellows up there just now is Colonel
Jeff Williams, a friend. And the other morning he sent me a photograph
from the space station in a text message to my phone. It was a picture of Cleveland, Ohio, and it
looked really, really good. In fact, I texted him back and I said even
Cleveland looks good from that distance. But I think he took it at 4:00 in the morning. But here's my point. The reason that that thing is up there and
stays up there is because we live in an ordered word. It is because the Creator has established
the boundaries of space. They're not just on any old orbit going at
17,000 miles an hour. They're not docking with other things at 17,000
miles an hour on the happenstance that perhaps in a created – in a universe that has just
emerged, the whole thing will finally happen. No, it is in the order of it all, and the
boundaries of God, both morally and physically, are established for that reason. Contemporary wisdom says there are no boundaries. It is obvious there are boundaries! Every cardiovascular surgeon knows there are
boundaries. It is obvious that there are moral boundaries,
and that's why within the framework of God's purposes He has established these boundaries
for us. So that for example, sex is safe and beautiful
within the framework of marriage, and it is dangerous and destructive when it is removed
from it. And contemporary wisdom challenges that. Says you know, you're just a bunch of people
with your little religious rules, and you're trying to force them on us. And our answer is, no we're not. We're not asking you to do anything. We're not trying to convince you of anything,
actually, but we want to say to you that we're not here just championing the rules of our
little religious club. We are here suggesting to you that our lives
are ordered by actually the shape of the world, because it is the Creator who has made them
and sustains us. It is only heavenly biblical wisdom that allows
us to get there. “This is eternal life", said Jesus, "that
they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Now let me draw this to a close by quoting
again from the Wall Street. This is an article – you can find it if
you Google, and it's quite old now. It's called the "Disquiet of Ziggy Zeitgeist." I won't read it all to you but the journalist,
the commentator, begins, "For the first time in my 72 years I have no idea what's going
on. For the first time," he says, "I've been able
to commentate out of the seven decades, or five at least, and I've had a fair grasp of
what's going on." He says, "But here we are. We have lost our sense of time. We have individualism, but we have no privacy. We are all outsiders with no insight to be
outside of. There's no arc; there's no thru-line; there's
no destiny. As the British soldiers sang in the trenches
of World War I to the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne': We're here, because we're here, because we're
here, because we're here. We're here …" How's that going, okay? In other words, the sense of futility, that
we don't even know what we're doing. We're just here, because we're here. I hope you don't feel like that this morning,
and if you do, then read your Bible. Look to Christ. You are purposefully here. You're not a random collection of molecules. You're not just held in suspension. You're not just a rag-bag leftover from some
evolutionary hypothesis. You were put together in your mother's womb. God has purposes for you. Your DNA is distinct from the person on your
right and on your left, but the fellow says I don't know. "Like most people I used to think the world
would go on the way it was going on with better medicine, the arrival of an occasional iPad,
or an earthquake, but that was when I knew what was going on. I worry that the reality itself is fading
like the Cheshire cat – leaving behind only a smile that grows ever more alarming. What a strange time it is to be alive in America. It can't stay this way, can it? Or can it?" Now what do we say to that? We say humbly, we do know what's going on. Why? Because we know God. How do we know God? On account of His grace. When Paul picks up Jeremiah 9, and he applies
it in 1 Corinthians at the end of chapter one. He actually quotes that. “Let not the – let the one who boasts
boast in the Lord.” And then he essentially goes on to say to
the Corinthians, you know, you're not really that fantastic a group. And he says, but don't feel bad, because I'm
not really that fantastic either. When I came to you I came, you know, tooting
my own horn, or trying to make you think I was really clever. He said I was a little diffident when I came,
and people would've confirmed that. In fact, people said, you know he doesn't
seem to be that much? I mean he writes really strong letters, but
when you see him up close he's not that great. And so says Paul, let's just agree on it this
morning. How about we agree on this, this morning,
right? That God has put His treasure in old clay
pots in old clay pots, so that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to us and not
to us. So what you're allowed to do as you go out
this morning, is to say to the person next to you, you know what? I am an old clay pot. I am an old clay pot. And if you happen to have a wife or a husband
they will be quick to confirm that for you. An honest friend will do the same, because
here's the deal. And let me quote from George Elliot in Middle
March as I bring this to a close. Elliot in Middle March has purple passage
in which she – because remember, George Elliot is a woman – she is celebrating those
who lead humble lives. And here's the quote, speaking of a lady:
"But the effect of her being, her existence, on those around her is incalculably diffusive. For the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts. And that things are not so ill with you as
they might have been, is half owing to the number who live, faithfully, a hidden life,
and rest in unvisited graves” – those who live, faithfully, a hidden life, and rest
in unvisited graves. Few of us, if any, will be even a footnote
in history. That is not an occasion for sadness or self-deprecation. It is simply an acknowledgement of the exhortation
of Jeremiah which rings out through the centuries and down into this great citadel of learning
with all the mass potential of all of your lives. Think of it; it is immense, and in order for
you to become what God wants you to be, you need to get by yourself as you're running,
as you're walking, in your bedroom, in your car, and tell God what you both know to be
true. That without Him there's not a breath that
I can breathe, there's not a song that I can sing, there's not a sermon I can preach, there's
not an injection that I can give, there's nothing, and then when we have done this,
then we will ask Him to raise us up. The flip side of it, I suppose, is the exhortation
elsewhere in Isaiah. "This is the one to whom I will look, says
the Lord. He or she who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my Word." What matters is not what I have to say about
myself, or what you have to say about yourself, or what even your best friend has to say about
you; what matters is what God has to say about you. Hence the warning; hence the encouragement,
and hence the vastness of the opportunity. On one occasion Dwight L. Moody was sitting
as a youngster up in a balcony up somewhere in the Midwest states, and he heard somebody
say, "The world has yet to see what God can do with a life wholly yielded to Him." And Moody unbeknown to anyone around him said,
"Well, I would like to have that kind of life God." And so you've got this little Moody, with
his little fat tummy, actually his big fat tummy, and I think he had more suits than
he had sermons. So just thank you for the encouragement that
there's one person still awake. And Moody Bible institute owns more real estate
in downtown Chicago than any other real estate holder. What a strange thing that God wanted to do
from such a funny little man. Okay, you funny little old clay pots, let's
pray. Father, thank You that you are the one that
looks to us as we turn to You in humility and in faith. Thank You that You use unlikely people in
unlikely ways to fulfill unlikely things. We offer our lives afresh to You today. We thank You for the privilege of being here. We pray that we might be a help and not a
hindrance to one another as we seek to know, and love, and follow Christ, in who's name
we pray, Amen. >> Announcer: Amen, Amen. Hey, can we thank Alistair one more time?
