Alistair Begg - "Set the Believers an Example in Purity" | Expositors Summit 2019

turn with me if you would to first Thessalonians and to Chapter four and as you're turning there let me say that it is a privilege to be here once again it's always nice to be in the company of fellow foot soldiers those who are involved in pastoral ministry and sometimes on an evening like this with those who are so vital to as in ministry our wives and upon whom we depend for so much we're going to read from 1st Thessalonians 4 and I ask you to follow along as I do finally then brothers or brothers and sisters we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God just as you're doing that you do so more and more for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus for this is the will of God your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the Lord is an Avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you for God has not called us for impurity but in holiness therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you amen just a brief prayer father what we know not teach us what we have not give us what we are not make us for your son's sake amen well I want to tell you how I've arrived at this particular text for this evening I'm not sure that anyone would have known this apart from the people who organized this but they write to you sometime in advance and they ask for your passage and they ask for your title and it's very very hard for me to do because I don't know what I'm doing on Sunday yet in terms of a title I know what my passage is but I don't know what I'm doing and so someone reluctantly in order to try and be a good citizen I sent them my passage which was the final section of first Timothy and chapter six verses 11 to 16 now that may actually have appeared in your notes and you can tell now that I have immediately determined I'm going to deviate from it and that is exactly the case because as I went to it I said to myself why did I ever decide that I was going to speak on this because I I don't I'm not really I'm not really enjoying this at all and so I I went back into chapter 4 and I thought I would I would go there you know it was like daddy bears chair and then mommy bears chair and that wasn't comfortable either and in chapter 4 in verse 12 where we're encouraged to encourage others to make sure that in the realm of speech and in conduct and in love and in faith and in purity we will make progress and so I said well that would be better at least I have five points in relationship to that and then I said yeah but I don't like those five points either and I decided well I'll find out this thing is something to do with purity so why don't I find out how many people have actually addressed purity or are planning to address purity and I of course I haven't been here and I may have this completely wrong unless everybody's done the same as me and that is given a title and then preached on something else but according to what I received as of lunchtime today nobody had really touched the matter of purity very much at all and so I thought well maybe that is actually guidance maybe I'm actually moving away from this in order that I might address it straightforwardly and at the same time I was nudging myself forward into Hebrews 13 which I managed to stay safely away from in large measure but this is what is what I determined eventually and those of you who preach know that it is often a circuitous route to where we're going if it is not for you then I wish I were you but this is the story of my life and so where Paul says to Timothy said the believers an example in and then he says all these things I said know what we're going to do is simply set the believers an example in purity and then in addressing the matter of purity we will do so by looking together at first Thessalonians and in chapter 4 and so that's what we're going to do and I hope as the time unfolds and as we draw it to a close we will each of us in some measure have a sense that God has ordered our steps and ordered our thinking it is very very clear from the Bible anywhere we go in the Bible it's clear that the role of the Shepherd the role of the pastor or the teacher whatever else it is is to provide an example for those of God's people who are under his care he is to give those who are alongside him in the work of the gospel an example to follow and so much so that the New Testament places actually as much stress if not more stress upon the pastor's character in terms of a qualification for spiritual leadership then it places upon the issue of gifting and if most of us were to think this out we would realize that a lot of our preoccupations almost inevitably have to do with what gift do I have do I have it in sufficient measure and I exercising it correctly and so on all of which is entirely valid but when we read the Bible and when we consider the Apostolic example and apostolic precept then we realize why it is that Marie McShane said what he said quotes my peoples greatest need is my personal holiness my people's greatest need is my personal holiness and what makes it so staggering and so daunting and what presses us back upon the enablement of God's Spirit in the exercise of this is the fact that the example that we are to provide for our people is not to be intermittent it's not to be start and stop it's not to be bursts of enthusiasm followed by periods of of inertia but the example is to be maintained all of our lives all of our lives that's the significance surely of Paul when at the end of 1st Corinthians 9 he urges his readers he says now I want you to run in such a way that you will get the prize this is the role of the coats and the encouraged or if you like in pastoral ministry come on now don't let's run aimlessly let's keep going and then quite remarkably what does he say he doesn't say because you know I'm a terrific runner that I am a I'm wonderful at this no he says I do not run endlessly I don't just beat the air I beat my body into submission lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified now that you see is not some kind of arm's length rhetoric on the part of the Apostle nor is it something that any of us who have lived any length of time here in the United States would be tempted to suggest is sort of bizarre thought because any length of time in these fair shores on these fair shores has revealed to us that there surely is nothing worse than witnessing the collapse of a life and of a ministry that has taken a lifetime to build the kind of collapse that you find in the Old Testament with Uzziah who was gloriously helped until he became strong and when he became strong he grew proud to his own destruction and underlying every pastoral collapse about which I know anything on an intimate level is the ugliness of pride somehow or another this does not apply to me somehow or another this would be a good book for him this is something that somebody else needs to know I have the matter of purity under control when an actual fact God searches and knows our hearts and it would be a very strange congregation here filled with pastors and seminary students for whom this did not ring with a peculiar sense of clarity now with all of that said let's just walk through the passage the parts that I don't understand I'll just skip all right and you think I'm kidding all right all right verse two for you know what instruction we gave you through the Lord Jesus for this is the will of God your sanctification there's the first point it's very straightforward isn't it God's plan says Paul is to make you holy God's plan is to make you holy remember in enrollments when he writes and he says predestined you've been predestined to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus from all of eternity that is his plan to make you like Jesus into the Corinthians he says and we are being transformed into his likeness and John says and when we see him we will be like him that's the whole story of the Christian pilgrimage that those whom God justifies he sanctifies and the plan and purpose of God in this way is wonderfully worked out as he separates us from what we are by nature and sin and transforms us in such a way so as to reveal the fact that our lives in increasing measure reflect his own being and his own character anything about how diverse we are in personality how varied we are in gifting and so on and yet when it comes to the matter of the fruit of the Spirit being formed in us and fashion dinners that permeates all of our personalities all of the levels of our gifting because God is purposing to do that probably JC Ron's book holiness has held pride of place for all of time since it was penned I want to suggest to you a book that if you have not read it may in the course of time have proved itself to have displaced that book or at least come alongside it and that is a book by Cinco Ferguson which is entitled devoted to go and it is for as fine a treatment of the doctrine of sanctification as I have come across in the longest while so much so that we're dealing with it with our elders and reading it as our book and in the process of that sinker says the work of God in making us holy and transforming us in this way is such he says quotes that he puts back into our lives the attractiveness of personal character for which humans were originally created but which has been so badly Myer now that is a wonderful quote we want to expound the quote but I'm just giving it to you that might ease you into the purchase of the book I don't get any credit for selling the book you should know but nevertheless it's such a good book I want everybody to read it and what it does at least is this is it removes the notion of sanctification from something that is brittle something that is called something that is negative something that is mechanical and it says no that's not like that at all the purpose of God from all of eternity is to fashion us in such a way and when Murray McShane who died at 29 put pen to paper to write a hymn you remember his words chosen not for good in me wakened up from wrath to flee hidden in the saviors side by the spirit sanctified teach me Lord on earth to show by my love how much I oh there is something dreadfully wrong when the doctrine of election leads to moral carelessness I am now 67 years old so that's 10 years older than I was when I was 57 I'm very good at math in that way and I'm a lot older than I was when I came here at age of 31 and things that I couldn't say at 31 or shouldn't have said at 31 but probably still did I now at least by dint of longevity aver on the right to say certain things and I wanted to make this observation in passing that I noticed a disturbing trend among a younger generation of men who have tripped over and discovered reformed theology and instead of that apparently fashioning in them a peculiar interest in holiness it at least gives an early indication of more than an incipient antinomianism which in turn pervades congregations and which over time will leave a dreadful dreadful legacy this is God's will for you your sanctification that's point one point number two is that this then involves a clean cut with sexual immorality this involves a clean cut with sexual immorality Paul is writing to Thessalonica from Corinth Corinth was a hotbed of immoral excess the temple of aphrodite dominated the skyline in Corinth and the servants of Aphrodite plied their trade on the streets of Corinth under cover of darkness in a similar fashion to what is happening in Cleveland and Louisville and New York City and Seattle and Portland and Glasgow and London right now in Thessalonica the worship of the deities similarly involve rights of gross immorality and in the immoral climate in which Paul was writing the Assumption in such communities both Roman and Greek was simply this that men could not or would not limit themselves to their wives as their only sexual partner that was par for the course that was the framework in which the church was set that was one of the distinguishing features of the radical transformation that was brought about by the gospel in the lifes of those who had once been marked by that kind of lifestyle and what is striking about this is surely the fact that when Paul addresses it he doesn't wobble there's no embarrassment in what he said the way in which he tackles it both here and elsewhere in his letters is plain honest practical authoritative and uninhibited no I confess I don't really want to address these kind of matters but I didn't choose the topic for the thing I could have left it alone and forced Timothy but here I am it's not an easy matter to address this because we recognize that the challenge comes to each of our hearts Marshall the new testament commentator says where things are evil the Christian attitude is necessarily one of abstention and not one of moderation ass abstention and that's the word that is used here in our English text isn't it for this is the will of God your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality so God's will is that we would be holy this involves a clean break with sexual immorality thirdly says Paul that in turn means knowing how to control your own body verse 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body now those of you who perhaps have an old Erez V with you or who are aware of the textual variants here we'll understand that this is actually probably the most difficult little piece in terms of textual criticism in first Thessalonians and I'm not going to try and delve into that we have all the people here to help us that with that we read the books and and try our best but the the Revised Standard Version reads and so in light of this each one of you should know how to take a wife for himself all right now interestingly the ESV when it followed the RSV which it largely did did not follow it at this point but you will notice that it doesn't do what they are what they are as we did but rather it says that you should know then each one should know how to control his own body now I said that I won't get tied up and I'm not going to get tied up in it but the whole the whole thing has to do with the whole question of of the the word in Greek skew us or vessel and the King James Version has it in that way in dealing with one's own vessel and so then the whole discussion goes into what what is the vessel is it this in the body is it the wife to think of the wife is simply a vessel as a container as a retailer with something else in it it doesn't sound so good that's where start goes that's where many people go you can go wherever you like it's not my problem what is clear what is clear and maybe your problem but it's not my problem what what what is being made perfectly clear is this that heterosexual monogamous marriage is the sole context in which God intends sexual intercourse to be experienced and enjoy it let me just say that again whether you have look after your wife or whether look after your body the point of Paul is making is that in God's purpose for sanctification there is no way that we will make progress in this of holiness as long as we fiddle around with sexual immorality and if we're going to take seriously the issue of the encroachment of all kinds of invidious temptations that come our way then we are going to have to make sure that we're not in any doubt about this at all now to declare incidentally that anything outside of that framework is forbidden forbidden in any other context other than heterosexual monogamous marriage is not only to face the wrath of our culture but is to face an increasing pushback from a compromised Church I'm not going to tell you where I was but I speaking at a Christian college I was doing Ephesians chapter 5 I explained what Paul was saying there concerning immorality and as I made clear what I've just made clear to us now a whole group of people stood up right in the middle of my talk and walked out and created manifold chaos for the next 10 days on the college campus claiming that bag had come and he was mean that he was unkind that he was this and he was that now I am all of those things you can share with my wife but that was not the issue on that occasion all I said was what I believe the Bible makes perfectly clear well I know that not everyone will be married and some will be single and what are we to do with our singleness in terms of the moral question well I think if you are single and you want someone to look to you can do no better than go to John Stark who managed this throughout his entire life and just one brief quote from him he says concerning Christian singleness alongside a natural loneliness accompanied sometimes by acute pain we as singles can find joyful self-fulfillment in the self giving service of God and his people so as it was then and as it is now one of the distinguishing features of genuine Christian faith was to be seen then in this matter of a radical perspective on the privileges that God has given us in this physical realm and that's why I had in mind as I said Hebrews 13 and particularly just that straightforward statement in verse 4 let marriage be held in honor among all and led the marriage bed be undefiled for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulteress now in all of the discussions at the moment about the sufficiency of the Bible and the inerrancy of the Bible and all of these very very important discussions in my experience the knife-edge of that issue falls in the realm of human sexuality it is in this realm that people say no I am NOT that no I am NOT one of them no this does not apply here now I have a different perspective on that so that the clear and obvious instruction of Scripture is set aside some people actually claiming to maintain their own convictions about the absolute authority and sufficiency of the Bible oh it was an Agustin who says you know if when you come to the Bible you only believe the parts that you want to believe and leave the rest aside then said Agustin it's not the Bible you believe it's yourself and that's exactly where we are and the culture in which we live I just came back from the UK and and there the BBC has put together a film a seven part series I think it is to show two children two pupils between the ages of 9 to 12 in the public school system claiming that there are more than 100 gender identities this is produced to be shown throughout the school system and Christian have their children in that environment and the children are on the receiving end of all of that kind of manipulative stuff and if the pastor is messing around in his own mind with sexual immorality then the sound of the trumpet will be faint because you don't want to preach about this if you yourself are a walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction says the Jewish commentator Melanie Phillips of that situation how did we get to such a stage where such absurd nonsense is promulgated by our cultural avatars that's a secular response that's not a Christian response God's purpose is for our holiness it involves a clean break with sexual immorality that then will involve us in making sure that we control our own body and in that way living in holiness in honor we will distinguish ourselves from those who do not know God you see that there in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God why would we be surprised why are we surprised that the millennial generation having a clue what they're doing and where they're going everything has been deconstructed for them history language origins destiny relationships the past the present the future oh you say I think we can just leave it to everybody on their own no you can't because that's the fourth point you will notice Paul says this is not just a private matter this is not just a private matter because anyone who transgresses and wrongs his brother in this matter needs to realize that the Lord is an Avenger in all these things he says I've told you that before and I warned you before in other words he's saying that to cross this boundary is not something that we can just say well it's just about me in the privacy of my own life no this boundary cannot be crossed without in some way cheating or harming your brother and your sister it's not possible to do this what do you think you're doing who are you living with well her name is eggs we married to her No are you planning getting married to her now I see so you're just living with somebody else's future wife and you're actually telling me that you are a believing person have you read 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 but it speaks you see not only to the matter that lives outside the realm of marriage but if you think about it in holiness and honor parenthetically not like the passionate lust of the gentiles who don't know God so that Norman will transgress and wronged his brother in this matter in this matter of what holiness and honor in other words marriage itself Christian marriage is to be held in honor marriage is not a form of legalized lust the Lord Himself sees even the intimacies of my bedroom and yours too and he is the Avenger of those who transgress the clarity of his instruction and the boundaries that he has said remember not mechanically not negatively but in order that those whom he has made for himself might discover and live in the enjoyment of the attractiveness which becomes part and parcel of the work of God within the child of God who is being made to look like the son of God that's what is quite alarming isn't it God will punish all who offend in this matter he will punish all who offend in this matter JB Phillips I love his paraphrase and in Ephesians 5 where he's paraphrasing part of the fifth chapter of Ephesians he says on this point don't let anyone fool you about this however plausible their argument steer clear of the activities of darkness let your lives show by contrast how dreary and futile these things are right so that a contrast is not a contrast of us taking a high pulpit somewhere and exercise in a Ministry of admonition and and judgment and condemnation on a culture because we would be just like that whether or not for the redeeming grace of God so what is it supposed to happen well there's supposed to be that young man and young women living single life's pre marriage are able to display a character and a solidarity about these things that although their friends may regard them as crazy deep down their friends know that is a beautiful thing I wish I was that I wish I were still there I wish I had that night over again I wish I could start time all again the attractiveness and beauty of it all don't let anybody fool you hair paul says no matter what their arguments are and remember what we're doing here we're talking about the fact that the pastoral role the exemplary role of the pastor and teacher is to be at the forefront of this kind of thing I noticed what he goes on to say not only does God avenge these things but whoever disregards this disregards not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you so if this purity is required of God's people then in leadership we're gonna have to be honest with ourselves in these matters well you say I'm in an accountability group while that might be good but I'll tell you this if you'll tell lies to God about yourself in your bedroom there's not an accountability group on the face of the earth that will do anything for you at all because if you'll tell lies to yourself and your life to God you'll tell barefaced lies on a Tuesday morning when you meet with your little accountability group and that's not an argument against the countability groups it's an argument for total honesty in the secret recesses of my own soul you see Paul says the highest of standards doesn't he the highest of standards by his example and by his instruction and yet and this is so fantastic and yet he who says these standards so high is the one who acknowledges himself to be what the worst of sinners the worst of sinners George Whitfield 1738 he's in Gibraltar he writes in his diary conversed with the devout soldiers who was under strong spiritual trials and God was pleased to give him comfort Whitfield I find it necessary more and more everyday that ministers should be tempted in all things that they may be able to experimentally succor those that are tempted see I think it's justifiable when some of our congregation want to know if we actually live in the real world where they live so you remember little Howard Hendricks from Dallas Theological Seminary it was a striking little man I remember him saying to me because he was I think the chaplain to the Dallas Cowboys or something like that and I said well what's it like to do that he says well I just have to be around some dams and hell's routinely to keep me in the real world whoa I can't believe Hendrix ever even said the words let alone know it's straightforward isn't it people will find us far more approachable and helpful if we are prepared to honestly acknowledge that we walk with a limp as they do do you think do my congregation think that I don't see magazines in the airport do they think that I am immune from that that I got some kind of pass by being the pastor no they need to know I was with one of my dear friends in ministry he's an Englishman I can't quote him because this is dangerous stuff but we were in Australia together and we were in a department store I was looking for a pair of Tom's as it turns out never found them but we were we were going up an escalator and as we went up we were coming up like this and and they had female models all wearing underwear all the way up the escalator so I'm going up with him and he's like you know he's like up here when it comes to chu ality and I'm here son cannot go and I want what he's making of this and he turns to me he says huh it's quite hard isn't it I said well I know I say the ad is he says you know I I'm usually pretty good for about a week or seven or eight days but once I got away from my life for too long even even stuff like this can start me off oh it made me feel good I want to kiss him because I thought I you know I thought I'm I bet he's not thinking this now you see the greatest peril that we face as pastors is actually in relation to the fight that while we have potential for terrific good we also have horrible potential for dreadful harm if we fail to fulfill our ministry Richard Baxter was peculiar individual by any standards and who can believe how much he managed to write as well as caring for that congregation and Kidderminster in the in the heart of England and Baxter was very very clear about the spiritual care of the soul as you know and at one point he wrote down a number of reasons as to why the pastor needs to take care to be involved in self-examination and I'll just tell you what they are he says you need to be careful in examining yourself number one because you have heaven - win or lose yourselves remember in first Timothy three says and so you will save yourself and your healers and then he says quite tellingly a holy calling will not save an unholy man now you've even I mean call to a holy calling that doesn't answer the question as to whether we are increasing the holy number - he says because you have sinful inclinations just the same as anyone else number three pastors have greater temptations than most men number four the tempter will make his first and sharpest onset upon you number five because many eyes are upon you and therefore there will be many to observe your false six your sins are more aggravated than those of other men they have more of hypocrisy in and are more detrimental to the cause of the gospel 7 the honor of your Lord and Master and of his holy truth both lie more on you than lie on other men and eight the souls of your hearers and the success of your Labour's do very much depend upon your self examination so we really end where we began our congregations greatest need is not our giftedness but our godliness what does it mean to be godly what itwhat is godly how would we godliness seems to me to be about doing what pleases God without any I to the approval of others we get to godliness when we are prepared to acknowledge that my secret life is the key to any public usefulness my secret life that's why the Bible are Jews as always to guard your heart because it is the wellspring of life well you say to yourself well I feel out of depth in ministry good so do I so do I I thought after all this time I would have a lot of this stuff buttoned down after all I'm running out of time here I got far less in front of me than I have behind me but I don't the same challenges the same temptations the same issues the same champion at your heels the same desire for the approbation of man rather than the well done good and faithful servant I want to give you just one final quote from Charles bridges and I can't wait to meet Charles to ask him about this quote what he really meant by it because I don't want to read something into it from the 21st century that he never intended but writing to the ministers in his day writing to the ministers in his day he said to them tender well regulated domestic affection is the best defense against the vagrant desires of unlawful passion and I want to say to him what did you have in mind with that well-regulated domestic affection and he'll tell me and I'll go that's what I thought you meant that is really good I really like that that's why rather than be gone in Australia for 14 days I would rather just be in Louisville for one night so that I can go home for some tender well regulated domestic affection no no wonder Paul relativity they said you then my son be strong in the strength that is in Christ Jesus just a brief prayer God our Father with you our hearts are open books there are no secrets from you and when we are searched by the searching gaze of your word we know that what it not for the fact that Jesus Christ is all of our righteousness and all of our holiness and all of our sanctification and all of our Redemption then we would of course be of all men most miserable and we thank you that you have entrusted us with a peculiar privilege of in some measure seeking to be an example and we thank you tonight for those who are our brothers and sisters in the cause of the gospel who by their prayers and their fellowship and their encouragement and their example have enabled us to run the race that has set out before us I pray for any tonight Lord who are within earshot of my words that the only sense of being uncovered by the truth of your word will serve not simply to bring repentance but to a renewed conviction about living in and through and from the gospel so that on the day that we stand before you we might do so unashamed so hear our prayers and that our cries come to you for Jesus sake you

Channel: Southern Seminary

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Keywords: Expositors Summit, Southern Seminary, SBTS, SBTS Conferences, Alistair Begg, Preaching, Pastor, Shepherding, 1 Thessalonians, Purity, Pastoral Leadership

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Length: 45min 2sec (2702 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019