Alistair Begg: "Inadequacy: The Surprising Secret to Being Useful to God" (Lecture)

well good afternoon and welcome to this installment of our scripture and ministry lecture series sponsored by the Karla h-henry Center for theological understanding here at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School very pleased that you are all with us we're especially pleased that reverend alistair bag is with us today and we are looking forward to hearing him he's been in pastoral ministry since 1975 following graduation from the london school of theology he served eight years in Scotland at both Charlotte Chaplin Edinburgh and Hamilton Baptist Church in 1983 became the senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland Ohio he's written several books and he has heard daily and weekly on the radio program truth for life the teaching on truth for life stems from the week-by-week Bible teaching at Parkside Church and he and his wife Susan were married in 1975 and have three grown children we're pleased that he's with us today we're honored that you are all with us today and we are of course honored to be the presence of the Holy Spirit today let's pray for the Lord's blessing on this time together or do we give you thanks for this day and your Mercy's new each day we give you thanks for this time together for the truth that you give us in your word for your grace which surrounds and sustains us and for this opportunity to learn of you and your way in your works in our world we ask for your blessing on River and bag and upon each of us as we hear and receive these things we pray in Jesus name Amen well thank you very much it is a privilege to be invited to deliver this lecture and the scripture and ministry series a lecture that I have entitled inadequacy the surprising secret to being useful to God and I think you would understand if I said that I feel myself entirely inadequate to give a lecture on the subject but I want to begin by setting a context in the Bible and if you are able to follow along I'm going to read from 2nd Corinthians and chapter 2 and beginning to read at the twelfth verse I'm going to read through to the end of verse 6 in chapter 3 and Paul is describing the circumstances now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me I still had no peace of mind because I did not find my brother Titus there so I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia but thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him for we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing to the one we are the smell of death to the other the fragrance of life and who is equal to such a task unlike so many we do not peddle the Word of God for profit on the contrary in Christ we speak before God with sincerity like man sent from God are we beginning to commend ourselves again or do we need like some people letters of recommendation to you or from you you yourselves are our letter written on our hearts known and read by everybody you show that you are a letter from Christ the result of our ministry written not with ink but with the spirit of the Living God not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts such confidence as this is ours through oh Christ before God not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves but our competence comes from God he has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant not of the letter but of the spirit for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life amen I want to approach the subject from our four perspectives first of all to consider here in 2nd Corinthians and largely in the section that begins in chapter 10 the biblical framework that underpins the thesis in the title then to change gears from that and move to the cultural setting which is ours in seeking to understand the Bible then to change gears again and to ask a question concerning the contemporary church in relationship to the biblical framework and the cultural setting and then finally to look at the whole matter in relationship to ourselves as individuals so I'll try and make my points clear as I go along looking first of all at it if you like biblically the Oxford English Dictionary which is the only dictionary that anyone should really pay attention to defines inadequacy as quotes the condition or quality of being inadequate if you think about that you look up a dictionary for help and that's as good as it can do perhaps I misspoke in commanding the dictionary at all but rather what it is pointing out is that inadequacy is an indication of being unequal to what a task requires being unequal to what a task requires and it is that very issue that in the NIV from which I was reading Paul addresses at the very end of their sixteen and in a simple sentence when he asks the question who is equal to such a task or in the ESV who is for these things what Paul is doing there is he's addressing the issue of adequacy and his expressions of confidence particularly in this second letter are not displays of self assumption he freely admits as you would have noticed towards the end of our reading that he is unequal to the task in himself and he makes it perfectly clear that the secret to his usefulness in ministry cannot be traced to any natural competence so in verse 5 again not that we are competent or sufficient or adequate in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves but our competence comes from God now this is not an aberration on the part of Paul this is true to his self designation throughout all of his letters classically in 1st Corinthians 15 he says on that occasion I am the least of the Apostles unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God but by the grace of God I am what I am and His grace towards me was not in vain and it is this perspective which underpins Paul's entire understanding not only of himself but also of the ministry to which God has called him and in addressing the Corinthians in his second letter part of the challenge that he faces is found in responding to those who have opposed him and who accused him of being cowardly and of being unworldly of being worldly I should say and of being something of a second-class citizen when it comes to the things of Christ you must take my word for that and then read chapter 10 and see if what I'm telling you is true and if you have an NIV and you're open there chapter 10 has the heading Paul's defense of his ministry and his defense of his ministry is a reluctant defense because he recognizes at the very end of chapter 10 that it's not the one who commends himself who is approved but the one whom the Lord commends so he says it's really not something that I want to do to get into a classification of ministry my ministry against the ministry of others he actually says that directly in verse 12 somewhat ironically we do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves when they measure themselves by themselves and comparing right in their own Seavey's letter conducting their own interviews they have decided who they are and how wonderful they are and so Paul says really we need to understand that it's not what you say about yourself that matters what you say about yourself means nothing in God's work what you say about yourself means nothing in God's work it's what God says about you that matters that's how he finishes chapter 10 and so he says if there's any boasting to be done it mustn't be about personal achievements but rather it must be about the Lord and it is the Lord who has been underpinning all that Paul has done all the way through so that when for example in his first letter he writes concerning success and encouragement in evangelism in the sowing of the seeds of the gospel he puts it succinctly and with great humility I planted Apollo's watered but God gave the growth I did the job of planting he said and others did their part now when we reached chapter 11 we discover that his detractors have been boasting among other things about their Jewishness and about their servanthood and that is why he says in verse 22 are they Hebrews so am I are the Israelites so am i are they Abraham's so am I are they the servants of Christ and that he says I am out of my mind to talk like this I am more now when he then goes to the more what he goes on to describe is his experience of suffering for Christ he does not list his credentials in terms of the numbers that had emerged to hear him preach he does not go back through his training with Gamaliel he does not give a long list of his credentials but rather he says and I'm out of my mind to say this if you want to consider my life and my ministry then consider it distinctly in terms of inadequacy and then he goes through his list being in prison more frequently flogged more severely been exposed to death again and again and all the way through it's not dissimilar to what he does what he ends his letter in Galatians he says I don't want to have any I don't want to really to have any trouble from any of you that I've written to and he doesn't then say because you all know how prestigious I am because you all know that I am the great mighty Apostle Paul no if you recall what he says is I don't really want to have any trouble from you because I bear in my body the marks of Christ in other words his credential is a credential of weakness his appeal is the appeal of a back that has been broken open in the service of Jesus Christ if there is to be any boasting he says let it then be boasting in the Lord and perhaps to illustrate the very point at the end of chapter 11 he says if I'm going to boast our boast of the things that show my weakness the God and father of the Lord Jesus too is to be praised forever knows that I'm not telling lies and then he says in Damascus the governor under King ER reaches had the city of the Damned Essenes guarded in order to arrest me but I was taken a in a large limousine but some of my supporters came for me and removed me by helicopter no but I was lured in a basket from a window in the wall and I slipped through his hands not exactly an auspicious departure from Damascus could he ever have forgotten the great contrast between the way in which he had preceded to Damascus in all of the pride of his heart breathing out threatenings and slaughter against those who named the name of Jesus Christ and now he leaves squeezed into a basket and pushed out through the wall and scarpering away to safety says wait it was there that the persecutor became the persecuted and in that new experience now of persecution in all of the weakness that unfolds Paul declares the credentials of his ministry and so in Chapter 12 which of course you are greatly familiar with he is aware of the fact that the opportunity for boasting concerning the peculiar experience of being caught up into the third heaven is a wonderful one if ever you had an opportunity to brag to go on the equivalent of Christian TV and let everybody know what had happened to you in those strange moments it is there for you to do but he says I'm not going to do that I'm not going to use that as a basis for self-promotion I'm not going to use that as a platform to set myself forward and make these people know who are my detractors just how significant I am and just what I have experienced of God and all the things that are peculiar to me says I'm not going to do that I could do that but I choose not to do that it's along the lines of his arrival in Corinth isn't it first Corinthians 2 when I came to your loved ones I didn't come to you with this or with that not because he was incompetent in the term of his intellectual faculty but because he recognized the incongruity in the proclamation of a message that was so foolish there is a lesson in this in passing my boss in Edinburgh all those years ago makes a wonderful comment on this he says of all the context in which boasting is inappropriate this surely heads the list any genuine experience of God is a gift of his love and provides no basis for us to elevate ourselves so he says I'm not going to use this as a basis of elevation and then he explains his thorn in the flesh in terms of God's purposeful intervention in his life there was given me verse 7 a thorn in my flesh this is his theologizing of his experience it's not our jurisdiction here to go into this just now but the way in which he expresses this this striking Petersons paraphrase isn't helpfully because of the extravagance of these revelations and to keep me from getting a big head I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in touch with my limitations I find that very helpful because of the extravagance of the revelations and to keep me from becoming a Fathead I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in touch with my limitations says Bengal how dangerous must self-exaltation be when the Apostle required so much restraint how dreadful must self-exaltation be if the apostle required such restraint that God intervened in his life at the deepest level of his physicality in order to ensure that he would understand that actually it was in the experience of weakness and inadequacy that his greatest usefulness was to be found now let's finish this first point with just a couple of comments it is in the confrontation with inadequacy that he discovers that God's grace is sufficient you will notice that his weakness is not removed he asked for this thorn in the flesh to be removed that is not removed but the weakness becomes the conduit of God's power and I think verse 10 gives it to us perfectly in that sentence doesn't it the paradox of grace when I am weak then I am strong when I am weak then I am strong here I suggest to you is the principle of all effective service and if I may jump outside of my first point for a moment and this is why some of us will never amount to anything for God because we revolt against this principle and I'm going to show you in a moment just why we are prone to do so the glory does not lie in our inadequacy this is not a plea for going around like your riah heap trying to tell everybody I'm a very humble man mr. copperfield I am your humble servant master copperfield if you know David Copperfield the glory does not lie in our inadequacy but lies in the adequacy of Christ which is discovered in our weakness and in our insufficiency so again Peterson's paraphrase at the end he says now I take limitations in my stride and with good cheer these limitations that cut me down sighs and so the weaker I get the stronger I become well there we have it that's enough on the first point I think instead of my insufficiency proving to be a barrier to usefulness the reverse is the case since dependence is the objective weakness is the advantage secondly let's look at it in terms of the cultural setting in which we read our Bibles and in which we respond to these truths a culture that to borrow a phrase from David Wells has quotes a bloated sense of human capacity a bloated sense of human capacity in keeping with that assessment and writing in The Wall Street Journal in July 2009 Peggy Noonan observed in one of her columns quotes for 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way it's yielding something new in history an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy those of you who are sociologists will be familiar with a book therapy culture written by a professor from Kent University in the South of England frank fury or purity and in that book he records at the beginning he has some very helpful graphs and in one of them he records a search of 300 United Kingdom newspapers in 1980 he searched 300 years papers looking for a reference to self-esteem in 1980 they couldn't find a single one in 1986 they found three citations by 1990 there were a hundred and three a decade later in 2000 there were a staggering three thousand three hundred and twenty-eight references who knows how many there are today 11 years on but what we do know today is that living for oneself and feeling good about oneself is increasingly the central and controlling feature of human existence and such an orientation has no place for thoughts of inadequacy because to tolerate such notions works against the absolute essential 'ti of maintaining a favorable opinion of oneself whatever else happens we must never ever lose that it is the key to everything our world tells us says fury and his book low self-esteem is one of the most overused diagnoses for the problem of the human condition and if you care to read the book he works it out very helpfully earlier this year around the time of college and university graduation David Brooks wrote an editorial in the New York Times entitled it's not about you he described the Graduate setting off into the world with what he refers to as the baby boomer theology so often iterated in commencement addresses ringing in their ears and then he articulates that theology follow your passion chart your own course follow your dreams find your self this says Brooks is the litany of expressive individualism which is still the dominant theme in American culture again quote in him today's graduates enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of life but says Brooks in his concluding sentence the purpose in life is not to find yourself it is to lose yourself are we going to have to turn to the editorial pages of the New York Times in order to correct the warp theology of contemporary evangelicalism and we shouldn't assume that this kind of pushback to any realistic proper sense of inadequacy is a 21st century phenomenon because it isn't in 1946 John Sloan who was then president of Dartmouth College told the graduating class quotes there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix in 2010 last year the current president of Dartmouth Jim Krong Yong Kim referenced the statement from 1946 and then told the graduating class quotes you are the better human beings we've all been waiting for now if you found a statement in 46 staggering what do you make of such a statement in 2010 the starting point for this mentality actually is not high school graduation its beginning a lot earlier than that as those of you who are doing child psychology know the time when children could relax and be children and fall off their bikes and fail has faded into the dim and distant past achievement is aspired to from the moment of birth if not before William Cohen in the New York Times says nowadays parents hire tutors to correct the pitching motions of Little Leaguers because of one thing we couldn't possibly tolerate is for little Freddie to be a failure or to find out that he has an inadequate little left arm and he's just going to have to live with it for the rest of his life now your sensible people you read the papers you you review culture every so often a discordant note sounds someone introduces the idea of inadequacy or failure as important to usefulness someone is significant in ste as Steve Jobs in his now legendary graduation speech at Stanford University in 2005 Steve Jobs at least moved in the direction of Paul's perspective when he tied his being fired from Apple at the age of 32 significant progress in his later life this is what he said it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again less sure about everything hmm but actually that perspective is still more than a Sabbath day's journey away from the biblical framework let me give it to you the most trivial level that I have that I have noticed it this goes back to when I was still a teenager too bushy and hartfordshire the first time that I ever saw an American football game the the army the United States Army were hosting a team I hadn't a clue really what was going on but I stayed there because I liked the girl who'd taken me still do she's my wife I believe she still likes me as well I trust so but I was I was struck by the the uniqueness of the game and the and these cheerleaders as a teenager you would expect me to be struck by the teenagers but it wasn't how they looked it was what they said and they must have said more than this but they definitely had this as their central cheer and it went like this you can do it you can do it you can you can you can do it you can do it you can you can the fundamental problem was they couldn't because they were annihilated by the army the army thrashed them and I remember the score becoming so unbelievable I'm used to two football played with your feet and the score is relatively minor but there are like a 37 3 as the Sun began to wane in the sky but still they were there you can do it you can do it and somebody should have had the courage to say stop that well that's enough on the culture let's change gears once again and ask the question where then does the contemporary church fall in relationship to these things if there is any sense of accuracy and what we are suggesting from the biblical model here as it relates to Paul and if once generalizations from the culture hold any water then would it be fair to say that the church is firmly grounded in its understanding of inadequacy as a foundation for usefulness or do you think that their church has capitulated to the spirit of the age and that the average seminarian is about to launch himself or herself on an unsuspecting church and let them all know how brilliant she is or how terrific he is and how they just can't wait to discover it now I'm going to spend less time on this purposefully I'm also going to put my sentences in the interrogative rather than in the declarative I am also not going to give specific examples with people's names and therefore I run the risk of falling down in a morass of generalizations having said all of that by way of disclaimer let me play my hand you will recall that when nehemiah was assigned the task for the rebuilding of the walls and the rehanging of the gates in the broken-down context of Jerusalem the first thing that he did was pray any did a reconnaissance and after his reconnaissance under cover of night and with little fuss and bother he didn't arrive in Jerusalem under a great banner saying your greatest fears are over I am here now Maya has arrived now he finally got the people together and he said to them you see the trouble we're in or in the King James Version it puts it in the interrogative do you see the trouble we are in well the fact of the matter was they saw it but they didn't see it they had grown accustomed to the trouble that they were in they had begun to live with it there was it was so familiar to them that it took somebody coming from the outside to let them see that the real predicament was not actually in the fact that the walls were broken down but the broken down walls were a metaphor for the fact that the glory of God was being dragged in the dust of a Judean hillside and so his prophetic role is to call the people in the midst of the situation to stand back far enough from it for a moment and to view it from the perspective of God and then to determine what needs to be done from there and so it is that in every generation the role of the Prophet is in part to say do you see this do you see the trouble we are in I wonder are we alert to the way in which our pulpits increasingly sound like popular therapy rather than unpopular theology are we aware how little the call of the kingdom rings out he who would be first should be last he who would be master of all must be the servant of all the radical claims of Jesus across the preoccupations of our contemporary society a narcissistic culture that is intensely interested in feeling good about itself and the incumbent pressure that is on the pulpit to try and make sure that we do not lose the ears of those whose agenda is so different from Christ's he is the one who calls for the renunciation of the self you want to save your life then lose it if you lose your life for my sake and the gospel says Jesus you will find it it is in loss that you find it in trying to hold on to it you lose it I wonder have we embraced such a notion of triumphalism that we are now embarrassed by any notion of inadequacy or insufficiency we must ask the question why it is that the least the last and the left out in our communities the marginalized are not coming in droves into the context of our churches and it may be a simplistic response it's certainly a generalization and I understand that but nevertheless part of the answer may lie in the fact that we portray ourselves as the company that has it all together as the company that understands everything that is got it all buttoned down and so the person says well I didn't go in there and tell people how I really am because if they find out what I'm really like none of them are like that at all now because you see we're all shiny porcelain pictures makes it hard for an old crackpot to nestle in amongst all that shiny stuff is it possible that our churches are more akin to Lake Wobegon the little time that time for God and the decades cannot improve where all the women are strong all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average I'm just asking you to think that's all smugness evangelical smugness such as smugness such a pervasive smugness that the smug don't know how smug they are it will take unsmoked Ness to expose it are we prepared to tolerate the thought the observation again by David Wells that quotes efforts to build character have been replaced by efforts to manage the impressions that we make on others efforts to build character are sidelined in a preoccupation with personality what what if we are actually focused on the unashamed promotion of ourselves than on the unequivocal proclamation of the gospel what if we have answered the first question in the shorter Scottish Catechism so many times that we don't realize where we are what is the chief end of man the chief end of man is to glorify God to glorify God not to glorify myself to glorify God Paul says if I want to glorify myself I can run through my credentials any day you want I went to the right schools I came from the right family background I had everything by the tail but I'm not here to do that that's why I would all the world gladly glory in my infirmities and in my insufficiencies in order that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to God can have it both ways you cannot from the pulpit if I may just illustrate it from you from you cannot from the pulpit make people believe that you're fantastic and that Jesus is fantastic simultaneously now they may look at you and say you mean a little pipsqueak like that was able to expand that passage that's amazing we must have a great God and a great Bible is it conceivable that we suffer from humility in the wrong place humility in the wrong place - remember how Chesterton on one occasion observed that a man was meant to be doubtful of himself but undoubting about the truth doubtful of himself undoubting about the truth this has now been exactly reversed we are producing a crop of preachers who are very sure about themselves and creatively vague about doctrinal orthodoxy so they're very very sure about who they are and they believe that it is the great apologetic to lie the world know that they are equally unsure about just everything between the covers of their Bible its humility in the wrong place I think on that occasion Chesterton said we are now breeding a group of individuals who are too humble to acknowledge the validity of the three times table in a strange leap to Ronald Reagan if you've ever gone to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley and put on the earphones and gone into the mock-up of the Oval Office you will have heard President Reagan's voice in your ears and like me you will have been intrigued by much that is said and like me you may have been arrested when he reaches the point and he says I never regarded this as my own office I regarded this as the office of the people I served in this office and then he says I took it so seriously that I never removed my suit code when I was working in the Oval Office and then there's a pause and he says you see you can take the office seriously without taking yourself too seriously is it possible that contemporary evangelicalism is increasingly fertilized by those of us who take ourselves too seriously while not taking that to which we've been called seriously enough that brings me then to my final point as the the uncomfortable nature of the challenge turns its turns its gaze on us as individuals if we consider in terms of the biblical pattern and then in terms of the cultural context and then in terms of if you like the queasy as tickle framework then now what about it personally it's the challenge to ask ourselves whether we're prepared to face up to our extreme feebleness to face up to our impotence to face up to what Jonathan Edwards referred to as quotes the bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit in our hearts or are we going to kid ourselves are we going to start to believe our own prescribing some of this elixir that makes it very difficult for your wife to sleep with you in the evening because she can't find a pillow big enough to accommodate your gargantuan cranium like a grapefruit on a toothpick says CS Lewis and the four loves those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to adjust penalty we easily imagine conditions far higher than we have actually reached if we describe what we have imagined we may make others and make ourselves believe that we have really been there and so fool both them and ourselves you see here is one of the arenas in which we face the danger of allowing the world the world to squeezes into his own mold many times when we expound Romans chapter 12:1 and 2 it has more of a of a flavor to it of dealing with some of the bits and pieces and often in in in a teenager's life I remember I listened to so many sermons on that that was all it was all about a sort of second level of Christianity and if you wanted to be a missionary you had to be a Romans 12:1 and 2 Christian but if you just wanted to be a Christian you didn't really have to worry about it very much I hope we're all safe from that but what is striking to me is that after he says this is your service of reasonable worship what is the very first point of application do not think of yourself more highly than you ought he starts right there with humility you offer your body as a living sacrifice to God your mind your influence all that you have all of your training all of your studies all of your everything you offer it all up to God which is your reasonable service of spiritual worship that immediately says now listen don't think of yourself more highly than you are but rather with sober judgment let's think about pastor just for a moment let's turn the gaze where it's most uncomfortable the search light that shines right in my eyes that I cannot have I avoid as pastors and church leaders we have to ask ourselves whether we can honestly say with Paul we do not preach ourselves 2 Corinthians 4 or 5 we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Christ's sake can we really say we do not preach ourselves let me tell you we preach ourselves when we seek to advance our reputation our influence and our own well-being we preach ourselves when our pulpits become the occasion of conjecture and personal opinion rather than the exposition of the text we preach ourselves when we intrude continually with stories about ourselves or attempts to display our cleverness the commentator Barnes puts it simply when he says we preach ourselves in one word when self is primary and the gospel is secondary when we prostitute the ministry to gain popularity to live a life of these to be respected to gain influence to rule over people and to make the preaching of the gospel merely an occasion of advancing ourselves in the world so we need to pray don't we that God in His mercy will do whatever it takes in order to drive home to our hearts the reality of our insufficiency until we know not just intellectually but experientially that Jesus meant what he said when he told his followers apart from me you can do nothing we're in real difficulty Sir Malcolm sergeant the fellow who is responsible for creating the tedium that high school graduations when a half-baked orchestra plays ad nauseam dum dum dum dum dum that sergeant we have him to thank for that on one occasion he's listening to a very fine singer the girl is a soprano she is singing an operatic piece she is apparently flawless in her technique the clarity of her tone is exceptional she finishes - great applause and the person who had taken Sir Malcolm Sargent to the occasion turned to him and said so what do you think he said I think she will be brilliant when something happens to break her heart when something happens to break her heart you see fellows girls what Paul is displaying here is a reliance on Christ alone for life and power to rely on Christ for life and for power demands that I seek to rely upon myself that I renounce my confidence in any of my own wisdom and my own willpower and I turned entirely to Christ asking him for the wisdom and power that is needed you can do the research on your own now we started in Corinthians with Paul we might easily have gone to the psalmist Psalm 127 unless the Lord builds the house the builders labor in vain unless the Lord watches over the city the watchman stands guard in vain in other words we build and we watch in vain apart from the Lord Solomon call out he says to his son call out for wisdom call out for these things in other words pray seek God ask him for this insight Joseph I hear says Pharaoh that you are an interpreter of dreams I had a particularly bad night last night can you help me what does he say you've come to the right man boy if there was ever anybody then you about dreams it's me I've done a couple of books on dreams and I have a CD series as well I I've got to run off at the moment I'm doing an interview but I could leave you a CD Indian blur now what does he say I cannot but God can I cannot but God can what was Joseph saying there was he saying he was irrelevant no he was a conduit he wasn't the key this is not some call to passivity this is not some old-fashioned you know early 20th century let go and let God notion that no I'm not even approaching that the thousand miles away from that I cannot but God can or what about the leadership of Jehoshaphat when he assembles all the people together in the square and somebody comes and says there's a vast army coming against you it will annihilate us Josh if I said you don't know who you're dealing with I'm Jo horrified I mean did he you know he called out to God Oh God he says we do not know what to do but our eyes are upon you we have no power to face this vast army coming against us do you find that in any leadership books lately Wall Street today has a number of principles or how you're supposed to be a successful leader I guarantee you this isn't one of them the one thing you don't do is stand up in front the congregation say I don't know what to do we're completely overwhelmed that's Jehoshaphat no surprise because God Isaiah 40 gives strength to the weak full-circle to Paul God chose the weak he says 1st Corinthians 1 2 Corinthians 4 he put his treasure in old clay pots in old clay pots there you are Trinity graduate take that big diploma put it up on the wall and have your wife or your mom or your girlfriend or somebody just draw a picture of an old flower pot that's kind of cracked and musty and put that up beside it just to remind yourself that that's what you are because even the Christians we admire most for their godliness and for their giftedness are just as much jars of clay as are we brother will you give me that little book that's there sir yep just throw that to me thank you the people that we admire the most or as much jars of clay as ourselves this is this is story just before he dies someone system's thought what about you what are you this is what he said I am simply a beloved child of a heavenly father an unworthy servant of my friend and master Jesus Christ a sinner saved by grace to the glory and praise of God how do you explain starts usefulness because he got a double first from Oxford because he's arguably the best sanctified scholarship brain in a pulpit in the 20th century no I don't think so I think you'd have to explain him in terms of his willingness to accept that all that God had given him still brought him to the place where he realized apart from you Jesus I can do nothing and then we will finish with a Gustin Agustin says when anyone knows that he is nothing in himself and has no help from himself the weapons within him are broken and the war is ended when anyone knows he's nothing in himself and has no help from himself the weapons are broken and the war has ended but unfortunately the war never ends does it I haven't found the war ends that's why I like the Westminster Confession it says the Christian is involved in a continual and irreconcilable war it never ends and so it is to the gospel that we have to turn to remind ourselves that Christ bore the sins of our proud adequacy in himself that he clothes us with the garments of his righteousness and that it is this unmerited grace that stirs us and enables us to press on to the gates of heaven what says rather for it you must remember be humbled walk softly down with your Topsail stoop stoop it is a low entry to go in at Heaven's Gate now that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us but our sufficiency is from God father we offer ourselves afresh to you we pray that under the searching gaze of your word and in obedience to the direction of the holy spirit you might be pleased to you use the considerations of the last hour to help us live our lives to the praise of your glorious grace and this we humbly pray in Jesus name Amen amen okay thank you about 30 minutes for questions and Alistair bag would be glad to respond to them you can make your way up to one of the two mics on either side and you do that let me maybe begin an application and it's coming from two ends one the younger person who probably here anyway wouldn't disagree with anything you've said about the humility and the importance of that but what counsel would you give him or her who knows this mostly doctrinally or abstractly on the other side those that have been in ministry for a number of years and they have the experience and they've been there done that figured it out you can engage in ministry and you hardly even have to pray about it anymore what counsel would you give to that person well to the to the second person I'd say look out because we're now at our most dangerous when we when we find ourselves in that predicament you know one of the verses that scares me most is that you know the final phrase where Paul says the day will bring it to light the idea of ministry that is represented either by gold and silver and precious stones or wood hay and stubble and the paralyzing thought that we may be engaged from our perspective in a very sort of spectacular ministry but in actual fact it isn't in both cases we need we need examples don't wait and we need good friends often you know an elderly Irish guy once said to me that you know our Minister needs a wife if for no other reason than just to keep them humble but those who live with us no ascend they will be quick to detect those things and it's it's very important that they're that they're willing to speak into our lives in terms of the young person I I think I would say hang on you know you're you know that something will catch you along the way here I just believe it for that that fly the instruments for the moment believe it when they tell you in flight school that it can get phenomenally turbulent you know because one day it will and when it does it will be good that you have already got to this point in your thinking and I think also reading to the young person saying you know reading reading good Christian biographies a big help as well you realize you know you take a guy like a William Carey you know who is a who's a shoemaker you know says it goes to the goes to those fellows and says that he wants to evangelize India and they told them you can evangelize India you're a shoemaker you're completely inadequate the Gladys Aylward same thing I want to go to China they told me you can't go to China you're too small you're too dumb and you're too frail history reveals then in her smallness and in her frailty and with that little person that God had made her with that very long black hair which she often thought was a point of inadequacy because he'd like to have been taller and blonder when she finally reached China she realized oh god you do know what you're doing you made me tiny with very black hair so that I might become the little woman who was used in the lives of countless children it was what she regarded as her inadequacy which was really the foundation of her usefulness the clay pot yep here please what would you is a son what would you say to a lay person who hasn't handed it through the logical training officially or something like that that has desire to serve the Lord but feels they don't have the training or the skills or gifts in order to do so I'd say a couple of things I'd say first of all I'm glad that you have the desire you know the Bible says that he that desires the the task of an overseer or or of an elder desires desires a noble thing and so that there's the sense of aspiration on the one hand and fearfulness on the other is a happy tension in which I think that that that sense of of engagement comes um you know I I hope nobody takes from what I'm saying that this is some kind of diatribe against you know being as trained as well-trained as we possibly can be because it would be an idiot to come to you know place an institution like this and and and and try and suggest that so I would actually say that something yourself well if you do feel yourself inadequate let's say you're going to be a small group leader there are ways in which you can develop those things and there are you know for example in an institution like this there are night classes and you find someone who's doing a survey of of Scripture and there's a class for eight weeks or ten weeks I would say go to that get that but at the same time I would say remember that you you know it's not it you could you can do all of that and and and still not be peculiarly useful to God you know it is it isn't it it is in a very heart of things so we what we're really looking for is sanctified scholarship I mean we're looking for people who are giving themselves and doing the best that you can do in thinking everything out and as a layman it's not the same as as others who have those privileges but some of the most influential people in my own life being Christian laymen who are then especially for youngsters models of somebody who actually has a proper job but loves Christ you know who is an engineer but also is committed to the scriptures who serves you know in a biochemical lab and yet he's so clearly teaching the Bible so what I want to do is encourage an individual like that to read read as extensively as they can to seek out opportunities that are available to them so as to be thoroughly equipped you know thoroughly equipped be as equipped as you can be when we graduate and we're looking for positions maybe a pastoral ministry position a lot of times where we're asked to promote ourselves in a sense so it feels like it's send in your your best sermon send in your your resume how do we go about that pursuit while guiding guarding ourselves I guess from from starting to feel or adequate than we are so yeah it's a good question I just stopped myself from saying you know I'm growing weary getting those kind of letters and you know whether whether you get a letter from the person says I'm X years old I have done this and I've done that I believe I need to be in a multiple staff Church in a context such as ABC you know they're very very clear about who they are what they are and what they need to be doing because somebody's told them that's really what you need to do I I mean I there's a there's a process that there has to be I understand that and maybe some people really like that kind of thing I I don't know how to make it all happen but I think that the value of you know getting in getting in some getting in somewhere to begin and to work some of those things out in the process whether it's in an internship or whatever it might be is is probably really really helpful it when I put when I played football for my school I was good but I wasn't really good and so what happened was every Friday you had to go to the science lab and you sat in a science lab surrounded by all those egg smells and that and and the coach came in and through the through the jerseys out at the people that were picked to play that Saturday and you didn't know until he started through on the Jersey whether you were getting a jersey and what number was on your Jersey some people were you know sort of obvious picks I wasn't I just sat there going give me a jersey I'll play anywhere you want me to play I'm so desperately keen to play I'll do anything you want me to do just give me a Jersey and that's what I'm looking for and young guys just give me a Jersey you know I'm I I'm not a specialist I'm I you know I I have an interest in a skinny Jersey so some writes me a note says hey I my name is Joe give me a Jersey then I'll know they heard this talk and then I then I have to talk to me is that a decent I don't know that's a good or a bad answer anyway that's the answer I wouldn't listen to those people that tell you to blow your horn though I don't do I wouldn't do that I'd undersell myself I I wouldn't I wouldn't do that if I could follow up as you're yet please you've you've started an initiative with interns I talk about that a little bit is that is that part of what you're yeah it is in part it is in part yeah you know one of your graduates a couple of your graduates are with us Scott Kennedy and and Josh Griswold and actually Bing name was was with us before he reached you so he's kind of a reverse play but I really can't take much credit for it except one thing to see it happen the fellas that are making it happen know what they're doing I don't really know in fact the three newest interns this summer I had no part in their in their invitation and that was a real stretch for me being a control freak but it was an important thing for me to to do and there are three really fine fellows one from Sweden one from Taylor and one from Malone College nearby and that our plan is is to keep these fellows they don't know what we're doing is we're trying to help them determine whether whether pastoral ministry has a place in their future so we're doing the kind of kind of gap year in between undergraduate and postgraduate and and it's we're in the infancy of it we're really walking in the dark with our hands out in front of us but it's proving very beneficial I think to us as a church and I think from the report of the three guys that left in the summer it was a worthwhile exercise and it allows it allows the person to get a feel for things without being being high bun by over here please hi my name's Michael and I'm in my last year at Trinity and I know one thing that me and several brothers just have been kind of wrestling through is the question of how do you on one hand hold this idea of an accurate inadequacy and recognizing that and yet on the other hand I think there can be a danger we felt of like we so want to avoid pride or pride ourselves for that they can almost be a Zippity and how do you think through about say if you're going to do a trip I like how do you say hey you know we're all inadequate but this guy seems a little more gifted to lead let's let's kind of run with that like how do you balance kind of those those things without falling either ditch do you have some thoughts on that yeah and it's it is it really is the question isn't it I mean I yeah because even the whole sort of inadequate thing that's why I mentioned Uriah Heep I think the much response from that I guess you haven't been reading Charles Dickens lately but it's just a sort of Glee stare by people going who's just uh but um the benefit of a Scottish education and but yeah because we can get ourselves into the position where you know we're phenomenally proud about how inadequate we are you know I'm more inadequate than you and so it becomes a ridiculous thing no I mean it what Paul is saying is I'm not sufficient for this but I am God's man and therefore because I am God's man and because he's chosen to use weaknesses a conduit for strength I'm going to give myself to this you know wholeheartedly and you know if if you think about Paul's ministry he was accused of all kinds of things and you know at one point he says I don't care if I'm judged by you or by any human court in other words he's getting a lot of detractors says that I don't I don't care if I'm Jeb that sounds really kind of bolshie doesn't it I mean that sounds a little AD himself I'm don't care if I'm judged by you or by any human court he says I do not even judge myself my conscience is clear and then he says but that doesn't make me innocent in other words he knows that he knows his own heart and so it is that tension and we live in that tension the tension of as I said to the other fellow as aspiring to something that is clearly beyond us and yet at the same time recognizing that that God throughout history has chosen to use those who understood themselves to be insufficient for the vastness of the task I mean I mean hey how are you doing Gideon oh not bad for a little guy well who are you getting well I come from a little group I've got a family and I'm the least I'm the least in my family just the man I'm looking for we got a honking big army up here that's going to destroy you guys and you're my man what Jeremiah interested doing a little prophesy no I'm a child I can hardly put sentences together Jeremiah you're my man do you have anybody that I could anoint this king here no no no no no no no no anyone else well we got one other one but he's never around he's out running around in the field rolling around playing the sheep and everything well bring him in here my man the armies are arraigned against Goliath proud in their sufficiency until the cheese boy comes the pizza boy Domino's here he comes and the Dominos boys I could kill that sucker and his brother says you you're so proud you came down here just to watch the battle yeah III want to rewrite the Bible where David goes what battle you know it doesn't say that in there but that's what he ought to say what do you mean I came to watch the battle there's no battle because none a year pretty none of you what was the problem what was the problem what was it that made it possible for David David says you defy the armies of the Living God it was about the glory of God he saw what they didn't see they just saw a big giant and none of them was brave enough to take him on he saw that the glory of God was being besmirched by this ugly big character and because his zeal was for the glory of God he despised all the accoutrements of Saul's armor which must have been an amazing picture in the family room with him going around with that stuff on and he went out there confident in the God who had done for him what he couldn't do for himself when he met the bear and when he met the lion he didn't say of course I'm the right man you should see some of that some of the trophies I have on my wall I've killed things with my bare hands that's not what he said he says the God who delivered me from the bear and the lion the God who did for me what I couldn't do left to myself he will deliver this ugly Philistine into my hands and I will cut off his head and then the armies of Israel and the armies of the Philistines will know that there is a God in heaven not that they will know how fantastic is this little shepherd pizza delivery boy that's the tension loved ones that's what I'm talking about and that's what it is that's why McShane says what a man is on his knees before God that is what he is and nothing else I don't know what you think of me I can't worry about what you think of me big fat smoke tall Daft stupid whatever it is I can't worry about it I worry about the fact of the motives of my heart for that I will be judged not whether it was a good talk or a bad dog but why I even agreed to give the talk in the first place and why I preached four times a Sunday that's the tension that's the things anymore yes obviously one characteristic of thriving churches would be humble leadership have you ever have you noticed any other commonalities of thriving churches oh commonalities are thriving to thrive in churches it well yeah really a united leadership under under the I real understanding that Christ is the chief shepherd yes I mean that they're a united leadership but also United in a sense of genuine dependence upon God they the idea that as you as you have an axe you know what it says again and again that the word that the word of the Lord was spreading and and a sense of unity at the level also of of purpose you know in in acts you have all those summary statements as you know and one of my favorites is the 31st verse of Acts 9 where it says then the church throughout Judea Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace it was this is after the conversion of Saul it was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers living in the fear of the Lord it it's it's actually I think the word there is oikonomia it was it was built up it was edified and in turn it was multiplied so that this this pattern of edification and multiplication I think is a is a is one of the hallmarks that I've noticed of churches in all different kinds of contexts where although their context may be different that they are seeking to do just that to recognize that under the Holy Spirit that it that the people of God under our care are to be built up in their faith and that there is almost and there's an overspill factor that's related to that that they were encouraged and they grew in numbers as they as they lived in the fear of the Lord unity of purpose and and and also the the the there with the awareness if you like of the priesthood of all believers you know the gift that God has poured out his gifts upon his people so that that there is the encouragement there in these churches for people to discover you know who and what they are within the within the family of God and then for leadership to enable those people to become catalysts for engagement and involvement and then I'll see one last thing a commitment to both good news and two good deeds you know that the tightest passages all the three chapters of Titus where Paul is saying the Titus you know it's very important that your people are eager to do good that they're eager to do good teach them to do good and so this combination of of good news by way of proclamation and good deeds by way of you know engagement whatever right here please yet I was wondering if you have any thoughts about how we can learn to live love this sense of inadequacies but in a way that will also help us to develop zeal for doing God's work and develop our the gift that we have mm-hmm these are good questions and I and I'm just standing here thinking about them I don't have I I hope that very inadequacy of my answers helps to speak to the issue for us you know the danger in it the danger in an address like this is that it can appear to be so dreadfully lopsided I mean that is part of the value of it in in one sense that that you put it out there because you recognize that you know the counterbalance needs to be there if I understood your career your question correctly was along the lines of okay if I prepared to acknowledge inadequacy how do i balance that with a zeal for fulfilling my calling and doing what I believe God has enabled me to do I'd misunderstood the question he's coming back sorry I mean it was kind of the second half of the question but my concern is how do we develop this sense of inadequacies how do you develop a sense of inadequacy how do you develop it but at the same time how do you this love faithfulness and doing what you're called to you okay how do you develop a sense of how does it inadequacy develop and how does the faithfulness to the calling development probably simultaneously I mean for me the I mean how would you develop a sense of inadequacy with a golf club you know take a golf club and try and hit ten balls the same distance to the same target one after another say I'm inadequate for that okay well how about one target and one ball I mean for that as well I love golf I'm an inadequate golfer maybe I could do more be more faithful and then I would become more adequate yeah okay so now I can have four balls to the target but that's still six that I missed but it's better than I was so that our reach always exceeds our grasp for me if if the articulation of the good news of the the responsibility of teaching the gospel is my primary gifts and calling I am painfully aware of my own inadequacy I'm 59 years old when I started off as a 23 year old in Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh and I got my first responsibility to teach from the pulpit I was absolutely Terran eyes you know I was I about three minutes I couldn't get any saliva in my mouth I was it was like the worst experience I've ever had and the next time wasn't much better than that and and I was and I had a little brown box room that I hated for these sermons together in and and then I could say I didn't dinner many sermons and I thought well I could use Alan Redpath sermons who was an old guy that had a lot of alliterated outlines try to crack a couple of his you know and they were no good either they were good when he did them but no when I did them that made sense so I learned that lesson fast I we we learn by doing but the further we go you know I used to think by the time I got to 59 I'd be pretty well done with most of the bad stuff you know like a I sold who because they you know now I realized what McShane was saying that the seeds of every sin known to man are in my miserable heart and that although you know although we may be making progress I say to people all the time I don't know whether I'm making progress as a result of grace or as a result of just getting old you know is it a reason I don't react as fast it's not because I'm I'm more humble and gracious is this because I'm slowing down you know and so then I have to think about that while I'm driving in the car and then that makes me miserable as well but you know in it I I tell you it's you just have to it is in that tension it is in that tension when I am weak then I am strong that is the paradox of the day so if our quest is finally to become strong to be able to stand up in front of any group to be able to articulate anything to be able to do all those things and just just feel like hey wonderful then we can probably get there but at what expense because it is in that it is in the inadequate factor it is in the brokenness fighter that the real gain is made I start a horrible answer to your question brother I'm sorry but it what you're pointing out is the very tension and I think it is in that paradox and that in trying to get beyond the weakness part to the strong part we get we get beyond where we always need to be which is constantly to be to be to be there we've got one here and one here and then we're done and then we're done so then Steve if you would be kind of to close this after this final question over here thank you I have to be able to see you and to see everyone else someone told me that you were here today and I remembered your name and I remembered your accent which I like a lot so I came well I was sitting there I started to weep as you were describing what is happening in the church the leadership in the church and the cost to the church that has been my experience I have been in leadership in the church for thirty years and I have a passion that has not gone away because I have children I have grandchildren and my question is who's going to parent who's going to pastor who is going to be equipped to Pastor my children my grandchildren I also in 59 my childhood was awful and so there's a lot of recovery I've been doing about that for me there's not an issue at all about whether or not I have a problem with pride or arrogance that is that's just plain not an issue for me if anything my question is who is going to give me a jersey who is going to look at me and say yeah not only the pastoring that you've done has been so fruitful but the answers that God is bringing to you how God is healing you we we want you we want you to be there for our kids for the next generation so that's a question I'm asking do I have a place or not okay yeah I mean of course you did you know the old field Anglican thing I am only one but I am one I cannot do everything but I can do something what I can do I ought to do and what I ought to do with God's help I will do the sphere of our influence difference varies within the context of the church we need just to to find our niche I can't speak to that in relationship to you but I would say that in relationship to the children and to the grandchildren I am a grandfather of two little girls I'm thoroughly excited about what's happening at Parkside Church in relationship to that because of the selflessness of people like yourself and others who are taken very seriously what it means to to instill into the lives of these tiny ones both by song and by poem and by memorization in many ways in sort of classical ways that the truths of the gospel and the commitment to these young men that I was speaking about earlier these these young fellows that are just I spoke with on Sunday night our new interns they are the oldest of them is six years younger than my youngest child so I am intensely committed to working myself out of a job and to seeing the two Timothy to thing actually taking place and to the extent that churches are committed to that and to the extent that grandparents are committed to doing doing the job with her grandchildren and and and the the Shema of Deuteronomy 6 is in operation then then we need we needn't be unduly alarmed I need to remind ourselves every day when we wake up that the Lord God omnipotent reigns it doesn't always seem so but it is so and that nothing's our control and nothing's going to be our control given the tendency in America to have celebrities in ministry and books and speaking tours and internet sites they're engaging in all the self aggrandizing things that go on would you comment on how America compares with other countries and the Christian leadership and what's going to happen to us will I'm curious do you think America will repent before we go down well America does everything better than any other country that I've been in including getting things wrong so in hope you're going to get it wrong it will be better again and wrong with you in other words I mean this this the privileges of American life have made it possible for America to do things that no other nation in the world has been able to do and continues to do in terms of World Missions in terms of the establishing of the cause of the gospel and that continues to be the case I'm actually I am I think my last comment should be this comment I mean the one I just made and that is that I'm constantly glad to be alive at this moment in history I'm not remotely concerned about quotes America going down because I'm thoroughly convinced that I met that God has no favorites status for America therefore I can stop worrying about that in the same way that I can stop worrying about Great Britain and so what I get what I can focus on is the fact that God is working his purpose out as year succeeds the year that he is putting together a company that no one can number from every tribe nation people and language throughout the world that what is happening in his world is happening under his jurisdiction that he is the Ascended Christ at the moment in heaven he is overseeing the affairs of the nations and in the overseeing of the affairs of the nations including this nation he has never once made a mistake and he never will and therefore I can sleep at night confident that the God who reigns supreme in the heavens has got my concerns children's concerns grandchildren's concerns nations concerns under under his control as to the celebrity thing and yeah IIIi do believe that there is a huge there is a huge danger represented in that every I've been here now 28 years and every single pastoral collapse of significance that we have seen is traced to the exact same route and that is in one word right right whether it's the homosexuality of one or whether it's the whatever it is of it it's it's it's the title woods phenomena the rules no longer apply to me and we must we must root that out of our own sinful hearts pastor Beck thank you very much for I think a wonderfully helpful lecture this afternoon before I close us in prayer I call your attention to upcoming events sponsored by the Henry Center you can find those listed in these three pieces of literature on the back tables out there it also of course appears at our website which is WWE Cena or got just would call your attention to the debate tomorrow evening between dr. Mohler and dr. Wallace concerning social justice this card will tell you about the scripture seminar lectures that will be coming up in the spring and the blue one has information on the Jonathan Edwards Center sponsored by the Henry Center and its upcoming activities as well so god bless you thank you for coming allow me please two closest briefly in prayer our Heavenly Father this lecture this sermon by Pastor bag this afternoon has been a means of grace in our lives convicting grace other kinds of grace but God because it has come from you through him through your word we give you thanks for it and pray that you would cause it by the power of your Holy Spirit to work deeply in each of our hearts that which God you have sent it forth to do in each of our hearts we give you thanks Lord that your word is so clear in Isaiah 66 - that the one upon whom you look is the one who is humble and contrite and spirit the one who trembles at your word and some other we would pray as we close this afternoon that by your grace in the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord you would enable us to be the kind of people or humble and contrite and spirit and who Oh God tremble before your word in Jesus name we pray amen thank you

Channel: Henry Center

Views: 188,996

Rating: 4.7630663 out of 5

Keywords: Alistair Begg, Parkside Church, Henry Center, Humility, Inadequacy, Pastors, will, god, hctu, begg, scripture ministry, lecture

Id: a9wFLMl2-_I

Length: 93min 46sec (5626 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2011