I Want to Know Christ

the following message by Aleister Begg is made available by Truth For Life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org can I invite you to take your Bible and to turn with me to Philippians and to chapter 3 if you would care to use one of the Bibles that you'll find in the pews then this reading is on page 832. good job and let me read from the first verse finally my brothers rejoice in the Lord it is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again and it is a safeguard for you watch out for those dogs those men who do evil those mutilators of the flesh for it is we who are the circumcision we who worship by the spirit of God who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh though I myself have reasons for such confidence if anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of The Tribe of Benjamin a Hebrew of Hebrews in regard to the law a Pharisee as for Zeal persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness faultless but whatever was to my Prophet I now consider loss for the sake of Christ what is more I consider everything I lost compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whose sake I have lost all things I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings becoming like him in his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead amen father we pray now that you will come by the Holy Spirit and teach us from the Bible that you will make the book live to us O Lord that you will show us yourself within your word that you will show as ourselves and show us our savior and make the book live to us for Jesus sake we ask it amen well this morning we're picking up where we left off last time we had begun last time by noticing that Paul had introduced this third chapter of Philippians with a striking exhortation in verse 2 watch out for those dogs not exactly a political correct statement we noted but a very very important one and he had followed his exhortation with a word of explanation in the third verse he described the identity and the activity of those who were the true circumcision and his description there of men and women as being part of the true circumcision might be equally read those who are the True Believers or those who are the true Christians so many times in the Old Testament men were tempted to think that as a result of some external feature they would be identified as the True Believer when a point of fact God through the prophets was concerned always to make clear that the genuine circumcision was that circumcision of heart and these individuals he explained in verse 3 the true circumcision were identified by the fact that they worshiped by the spirit of God the glory in Christ Jesus and they put no confidence in the flesh in other words for them worship is something that emerges from within them God has redeemed them and transformed them and placed his Spirit to live within them and so they find themselves worshiping God in the spirit it is spiritual activity dead man can't sing and as a result of God's spirit within them they worship also they glory in Christ Jesus as their savior they are identified with Jesus and they are believing in Christ and they put absolutely no confidence in the flesh if you ask them are you going to heaven and they replied in the affirmative and you said upon what do you base your Assurance they would point to nothing in themselves they would Point only to who Christ is and what Christ has done now in Verses 4 to 6 Paul then provides his readers with a personal illustration of this truth you will notice that he changes from the uh plural in verse 3 for it is we who are the circumcision to the singular in verse 4 though I myself have reason for confidence and he goes on to say if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence I have more so while he is describing something which was true of this group who are now in Christ he says let me just give to you a personal illustration of what I'm on about now it is important that we realize that these judaizers for that's who they were individuals who were saying it was Christ plus these various things these judaizers were making their appeal to people not on the basis of some lesser commitment but in actual fact on the basis of a stronger commitment these were zealous individuals and they would come around the fringes of faith and they would appeal often to the young Christian to really live for God and they would say if you want to really live for God then there are certain things that you need to do there are laws that you need to be there are standards up to which you need to come because the converts to Christianity were zealous they wanted to know Christ they wanted to follow Christ that's a feature of somebody's Newfound faith and so they were not a susceptible to someone coming along diluting the demands of Christ as it were the real tests lay for them in the individuals who would come around and say now I know that you want to be serious about these things let me tell you what's involved in being a true Christian if you are really a proper Christian if you are a real believer then you will want to make sure that you are doing all of this it wasn't that they were susceptible to a substandard Christianity they were susceptible to the notion of a super standard and that incidentally is why the Cults always fish on the fringes of faith always trying to find those who are either disillusioned with what they have experienced in formalized religion or who are concerned to be very zealous and they come along and the appeal to the notion of a super standard so that they might be that beyond the average individual it is all too easy says singer Ferguson for young or poorly instructed Christians to be deceived by an impression of superior spirituality and so Paul says I understand this kind of thing I know these misguided and harmful ideas because in my life prior to coming to Christ I was familiar with it all and he wants it to be clear that his opposition to the judaizers isn't based on jealousy it's not as if these people are coming around and talking about things that are alien to Paul no he says if you want to talk about judaizers I can out Judy eyes any one of them if you want to talk about reasons for finding confidence in yourself I've got more than most people if you want to boast about your achievements then hey let me be the first to stand up and boast and he is being somewhat sarcastic in his approach now what he does then is he provides these seven identifiable marks of things that previously provided him with reasons for believing that God would accept him and I want to remove just very quickly through each of them you will find them right in front of you as you allow your eye to scan the text if anyone he says in the second half of verse 4 thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh or in who he is or what he's done or what his background is I've got more let me tell you he says first of all I was circumcised on the eighth day now the ishmaelites were circumcised at the age of 13. proselytes to Judaism were only circumcised when they were in their adult life having converted to Judaism but Paul was an eight dare there was no better position in which to be than to have been grounded in a context where your parents dealt with the demands of Judaism with studied exactness and he was a product of that the purity of his Jewish pedigree was never in question from the very day of his birth that's what he's saying secondly I'm of the people of Israel he says all the Privileges of the people of Israel are his by Birthright he wasn't the child of proselyte parents he was as they say in Ireland The Real McCoy I meet people who come up to me and they say you know I'm from Scotland as well I say oh where were you born and they say Connecticut and I say oh but I thought you said you were from Scotland oh they say well you know my my family is from Scotland I said oh your mother was born in Scotland no no my mother was not well what about your dad no actually my dad wasn't born and I said well wow it's about 400 years they say you know I think you have to go back but I'm but I'm Scottish you know well I admire your Zeal but you don't really qualify I'm sorry you couldn't play for Scotland in the World Cup any more than I can pray play for America in the World Cup the fact of your Affinity with it doesn't make you it but Paul was of the people of Israel he was of The Tribe of Benjamin in other words if you think of it in Scottish terms he wasn't only Scottish but he came from a really good clan so his name was like McDonald wasn't a lousy name like beg his name like McDonald or Cameron or Angus or Fraser and when you heard it you said there you go that's exactly what this did of The Tribe of Benjamin remember Benjamin was a significant son the child of Jacob and Rachel do you remember this from our studies in Joseph there were two children the children of Jacob and Rachel one was Joseph himself and the other was born at the at the expense of the life of Rachel remember she died in giving birth to Benjamin and she wanted Benjamin to be called Ben or knee son of my sorrow and Jacob over rules it and says no he will be called son of my right hand and Benjamin is a significant figure in the patriarchal literature and indeed when the first king of Israel was crowned none other than Saul himself he came from The Tribe of Benjamin and you can just imagine that the parents of Paul sitting down with a gift of this little boy not only planned to deal with the early days of his life in commitment to judaistic Ritual but they also said why don't we call him the name of the first king of Israel there couldn't be a better name for a Jewish boy than that let's call him Saul after all our background is from the line of Benjamin in other words his pedigree was excellent if he'd been a dog he would have had KCC after his name Kings Kennel Club fourthly he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews now you can see he's just packing these things together he was a full-blooded Jew he spoke Hebrew although they lived in Tarsus which was Greek he studied Hebrew and he did so under Gamaliel in Jerusalem who was one of the key teachers he had if you like a private school education now what he's doing is he's building his case if these factors were the key to acceptance with God he says you can see that I had them now the first four on the list are his by inheritance he had no control over these things he benefited as a result of his pedigree the next three he identifies are those which give indication of his own personal commitment and effort look at what he says I was a Pharisee in relationship to the law in regard to the law I was a Pharisee it was obviously vital that the Jews kept the law and the Pharisees were a sect that emerged in the second century before Jesus Christ they were committed not only to keeping the Old Testament law but they had also added a whole host of their own laws to it so that they could be seen to be doubly meticulous and it was incumbent upon all who joined the Pharisees to be committed to doing what Pharisees did they were On All or Nothing group they were perfect for Saul who was On All or Nothing kind of guy after all there was nothing about Saul of Tarsus which was mealy mouth there was nothing about him which trod up the middle line he was either in or he was out he was either with you or he was against you you would never have asked Saul a question and found him doing a kind of dialectic well I think on the one hand and on the other hand and possibly here and possibly there no I would have said here let me tell you straight it was perfect for him as a Pharisee in relationship to Zeal he was a persecutor of the church he says if you doubt my Zeal in relationship to Judaism you can judge my enthusiasm for the Jewish faith by looking at my record and you will see that I was active in persecuting the church he hated Christians he hated the notion of Christ he hated any who were involved in this crummy little group as he saw them and he admitted his expressed devoted purpose in life to stamp it out once and for all and he was doing so because he believed as a monotheist that that is exactly what God wanted and that by doing so he would be putting himself in the best of positions with God and seventhly he says as far as legalistic righteousness is concerned you'll find that I was faultless in other words if people looked at his life and said does he obey the Sabbath absolutely he doesn't miss does he do the external Washings before he eats yes does he observe the high holy days without question is he concern to be ceremonial clean absolutely if you're in his home or you're with him anywhere at all you will see in other words as the people looked at his life and they said does he keep all the things does he dot all the eyes and cross all the t's the answer is absolutely so in that respect he's a lot like the young man who came to Jesus and was concerned to find out what you have to do to inherit eternal life you see that's the question that many of you are asking this morning what do I have to do to inherit eternal life you ask that of all kinds of things what other qualifications necessary to get into the school or what do I have to do to get in there or what do I have to do to join this this racket club what what is it in me that I can produce that will accrue to my account so that I may gain acceptance that's the question of the young man he says to Jesus what do I have to do to inherit eternal life and Jesus says you know the Commandments do not murder do not commit adultery do not steal do not give false testimony do not defraud honor your father and mother and the man replies all these I have kept since I was a boy now was Jesus to say oh well then I guess you have eternal life thanks for sharing that with me no it says that Jesus looked on the young man and he loved him and he said to him let me just ask you to do one thing since you're already got off to a great start take everything that you own and sell it and give it to the poor and then come and follow me and it says and that the man's face fell and he went away sad because he had great possessions now what was the issue the issue was this that all of his ability to keep the externals of the law did not put him in a right place with God and if there was one thing in his life which pointed to the fact that he had set up a throne in his own life and he was sitting on it it was his money now Jesus could equally have pointed to another area he could have said well I want you to leave behind this or I want you to turn away from that the point is not so much the money although Jesus makes the point that it is very hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven because the Temptation is for someone who has amassed money to say I did this I achieved this this is all mine and therefore I gain access on the basis of this Jesus says give away all the basis of your access and then come and follow me and he went away sad regularly on the Lord's Day some of you go away sad because you see you're a religious activities your attendance at church your prayers and your Bible reading and all the things that you've decided are on the list you see these as a means of confidence before God so when you do them you feel confident and when you don't do them you feel no confidence you're relying on them you see the law of God or obedience to God as a ladder of which we claim to acceptance with God rather than discovering that the law of God is to be written into our very hearts and so although I may not be guilty of theft insofar as I have a huge ton of money stuffed under my bed that I sold stole from the bank in Chagrin Falls the fact is that I have stolen another's reputation with a slanderous word that I have stolen time from my employer that I have stolen the good name of others that I am not right before this law when it penetrates the core of my being I realize that far from it being a ladder to acceptance it is a mirror that shows me that I'm in the wrong and I can put myself in the right well says Paul that was it if you want to think in terms of reasons for confidence in terms of background and who your father is and what you've been doing and where you were studying and how you've been doing religiously then he says that was all there he says well let me tell you where I am today verse 7. whatever was to my prophet these things that I regarded is very profitable he says I now consider them as loss and the reason I do is for the sake of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ every advantage that he had previously considered again he now sees to be a loss now in a moment I'm going to show you just how that came about but for now notice that the radical change in Paul is seen in the way he calculates things this is a little section here for those of you who work for Arthur Anderson or Ernst young or whatever else it is this is a there's a little accountants theology for a moment or two and if you have a talk to give to some of your colleagues you might want to look here it would fit your background he regarded credits as debits he thought that he was a spiritual millionaire but he came to realize that he was spiritually bankrupt he sat down and he did a spiritual audit and he reached the conclusion that what he had been entering in his Ledger in the prophet account should actually have been entered in the loss account for example he thought in terms of his acceptance with God on the basis of all the things that he has outlined these things were actually grounds for rejection he thought that he was advancing in Holiness he wasn't even on the path of holiness the things that he was counting on as using as arguments in his defense were actually being picked up and used by the witnesses for the prosecution against him in other words when he prepared his brief as it were before the bar of judgment and he decided now I need to go and plead my case before God he put together his Ledger of activities and in them he wrote them all down he says I'm an eight dare as far as circumcision is concerned I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews I have the right background I went to the right schools I was involved in the right activities I wasn't just a law keeper I was a Pharisee and I have it all here and I want to offer it to you excuse me says the council for the prosecution could I just borrow that for a moment and so he takes the very stuff that he's going to use in his defense and the council for the prosecution comes over and he says I'd like to present my case against Saul of Tarsus and the Very things that he has written down as a means of acceptance with God the council for the prosecution picks up and says no this is the basis of my prosecution you see how radical this is it's not striking to me that people think they're just slide into Christianity you know they're just slide in and be a believer slide in and be a Christian after all I mean there can't really be that much of a difference surely I'm a fairly devout person it's Father's day and I've tried to be a good dad and I paid my taxes I did my quarterly returns I'm on track in relationship to that goodness gracious it's a nice morning I'm in church aren't I I could be playing golf surely there's points for that and so on and we put together all the things in our Ledger for the defense and the Lord says give me that over here and I'm going to take that and use it as the prosecution against you what religious stuff now that's exactly where he was all he counted on as being accomplishments what actually failures now look at how he expresses it in verse 8 he says it in three different ways he says what is more I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord he says if you want to know how I view these things now while I'm not dismissive of my family background while I am grateful for the Heritage that is mine in Judaism he mentions that in Romans chapter 9 and verse 4 and following he is not just dismissive of these things but in terms of what it means to be accepted before God he says all of that stuff I consider a loss in fact he says I have lost all things now if you think about that it's true here's a fellow who in contemporary terms had a wonderful home a terrific background a formalized education that was desirable by all when he joined a religious party he was able to attach himself to the All or Nothing group who were the most zealous when it came to disdaining anything that was in opposition to the true blue Judaism there was nobody that was further at the front of the pack than he was and all of these things he had viewed as significance and all of those things had given him significance what gives you significance if you think about dying tonight and standing before God what do you plan on pleading as your case before the bar of God's judgment what will you say to him oh well my uncle was a deacon in the Second Baptist Church of Toledo you know my grandmother was a Godly woman I remember and all of those things none of which are inconsequential but the grace of God does not transfer through human genes now he says look at where I am I'm in the jail look he says let me just take my jacket off for you and show you my back look at this mess he would have said have you ever seen a bag like that he said do you know how I got that why I got that I got that because I walked out in obedience to Jesus Christ if anybody doubts that there has been a radical change in my life he says you don't need to look to the numbers of people that listen to me preach I'm not here to claim he says that there are dramatic things that have happened as a result of who I am after all woe is me if I preach not the gospel I'm just a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ but I have actually lost everything I used to be able to go into a city and people said hey it's Saul of Tarsus welcome there were people in contemporary terms who kept me my own table in restaurants that's the way I used to be able to move around and now the people say Saul of Tarsus who is he scumbag prisoner terrorists I've lost everything he says if this is the credit I don't have any credit left all I have got left is loss now I considered it as loss for the sake of Christ I've actually lost it and then he says in fact I'll go to fathers to say that I count the whole shooting match rubbish that I may be gaining Christ and be found in him that I may gain Christ and be found in him how well look at how he explains it not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law look at that what is my acceptance with Christ what is my knowledge of Christ as my savior how do I know that Christ accepts me not because I come to him with a righteousness of my own and I say Lord Jesus I'm sure you would like to have me as a member of your group because after all look at how well I've done that was the Pharisees all the time that's why they couldn't stand it when he spent time with with uh Zacchaeus why would he go into zacchaeus's house when there's all of us nice guys here when we've got all our righteousness and all our robes and all our prayers goodness Zacchaeus maybe won't even wash the dishes in the right way before the eats he's a sinner Paul says I don't come and gain Christ presenting a righteousness of my own saying do you know who my father was do you know how I was brought up do you know that I've really been quite a zealous person for you oh God he says no that's not it I don't present a righteousness of my own but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith you see God's declaration what we have here is the doctrine of justification God's declaration about the sinner on the basis of the sacrifice of his son by Nature I am condemned by Nature I sin I sin because I'm a sinner I'm a transgressor I park on the double yellow lines I am an iniquitur because inside of me my mechanism is is spinning all wrong and if I am somehow another to go before God and plead my case I have nothing I can plead here's my life here's my sin you cannot view my life apart from the fact that I am a sinner now I'm going to try and go to God like this what can I bring even my good deeds are tainted even my best designs often are marred by their motivation well then if I can't go in with this where do I put this well says somebody that's easy what you try and do is Whittle away at all this sin try and reduce this as much as you can and try and replace it with something else with righteousness try and get the righteousness column up and the sin call them down have you tried that that'll break your heart there is no hope there see the message of the Gospel is not try a little harder and see if you can't counterbalance the problem the messages of the Gospel is here is the Lord Jesus here is my life and my sin my sin is transferred to the account of Christ he who was perfect and knew no sin became sin for us so that we might know the righteousness of God in him so that I may then stand before Christ clothed in the righteousness which comes about as a result of my union with the Lord Jesus Christ and that is why it is so important that I know myself to be United with Christ that I have come to realize that here is the barrier here is the provision and I recognize the Wonder of it all down in the in the Southeast Indies they take the phrase the word justification and they paraphrase it in a form of pidgin English God he say I'm all right God he say I'm all right they look at their lives and they look at the Bible and they realize that the bad news is God he say I'm all wrong God he say I can fix it God he say here's my son I trust in Christ God he say I'm all right how all right totally all right fully finally and invincibly all right on the basis of What Not on the basis of a righteousness of my own that comes by way of the law but in the races of a righteousness that comes from God and that it is mined by faith the Declaration is full and final you cannot add to being justified with God you cannot subtract from being justified with God justification is full because God gives to us Christ's righteousness justification is final because it doesn't depend on my keeping of the law but on God's Gift of his son justification cannot be reversed and can never be destroyed and it is Invincible because it is the Judgment of the last day brought into present day experience so that I need not fear the power of God's judgment because God has judged my sins in Christ as I have come to him not with the righteousness of my own but in an awareness of my great need of him have you ever done that you see the the three tenses of of Christian Living are right here not only does he mention the fact of our justification which is a which is a crisis it's not a process it's not something that you do over a period of time you will go to certain churches and they will tell you that well you can do your best I listen to a television program for as long as I could stand it the other evening as somebody explained how you could get your friends through purgatory and your family and how important it was to continually see the mass you can't simply say because Uncle George has gone now for 15 years said the priest that somehow or another you can leave off on that oh no he said you cannot leave off on that would you like he said to get to heaven and to turn around and look at your Uncle George and your Uncle George said to you why did you leave me there for all that time why didn't you keep saying the mass for me Now you listen carefully to me you don't have to be a genius to understand that that idea and this truth cannot with any sense of logic at all live in the same house you cannot have a justification which is full final irreversible and Invincible that declares a man or a woman righteous in God's sight and means for them they will be absent from the body and present with the Lord on the day they die and the notion that I have just described to you from the television they are two totally different gospels and if you want to know what Paul thinks about the latter read Galatians chapter 1. now this justification leads which is a crisis leads to a process which is sanctification and it's there in verse 10 and I don't have time to work through it you'll be pleased to know but he says I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings you see people would be saying what happened to Saul of Tarsus what's all this Jesus stuff that started with Saul of Tarsus you see becoming a Christian is a bit like a is like a a house or a shop changing owners let's say for example that there is a derelict Cottage at the end of your street it's been that way for a long time and it's all overgrown and the walls are broken down and the door is hanging off his hinges and then as you take your normal walk as you walk your dog you go down and you're about to walk past it in the way that you always do and you do a double take and you look back and you say there's something different here and you pause to your companion and you say is there something different about this and you look at it and you say yeah it looks to me that somebody has started to renovate that oh well I wonder how that could have happened and as you go back the next day there is a further work of renovation until Suddenly It's Beginning to be transformed before your gaze well you see somewhere in a lawyer's office a transaction took place a title deed was signed ownership was changed and the new owner began to renovate the house as a result of his new ownership that's what happens when you are Justified you are declared righteous in God's sight if you like the house of your life is already in its transparent Beauty but the process that accompanies it through your journey is that Christ then begins to work at you and to change your life to change your affections to change your desires all I once held dear and built my life upon these things are no longer the same significance to me why not because of the title did it has been completely changed but it is not simply a declaration in a room somewhere it is a transformation in a life somewhere don't come to me and tell me about the title deed that you hold in your Bible in the fly leaf of your Bible somewhere if there's no transformation in your life because when he comes to take ownership he comes to change it all so we are Justified declared righteous not on the basis of anything we are done we are Sanctified and he uses suffering as one of the means to conform us to the image of his son and he says and we're looking forward to the day when we're glorified he says verse 11 and so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the Dead Paul wants to know this Christ progressively and passionately and he says and somehow there's going to be a day when I attend to the resurrection of the Dead is he doubting it no I think he's just being humble I think he's simply saying this is it really the case he says with baited breath can it really be so will it be so for a sinner like me who even now isn't perfect verse 12. so painfully aware of my past all of the Dreadful things that I did so horribly aware of my present imperfections my weakness and my stumblings and yet he says somehow I'm going to attend to the resurrection of the Dead now let me conclude with this thought if we had spoken to Saul of Tarsus in the early days and said to him Saul of Tarsus do you think you'll go to heaven he would have said without question I'm going to heaven and then we would have said to him so why do you think you're going to go to heaven and he would have said well because I was circumcised on the eighth day I'm of the people of Israel The Tribe of Benjamin a Hebrew of the Hebrews a Pharisee in the laws deal persecuting the church legalistic righteousness faultless now he says I'm not going to heaven on the basis of that at all in fight he says if you try and rely on that to get to heaven you'll never get to heaven what brought about the change I think there's two things well there's a host of things there's two things I want to mention in conclusion the day recorded for is in Acts chapter 7. when Stephen had made his great speech wonderful sermon the people who looked at Stephen saw that his face was shining like an angel he made this speech concerning the history of the people of God and The Wonder of the glory of Jesus he told the people that he could see Heaven open and the son of man namely Jesus standing at the right hand of God that's how he finished his sermon he says and I can actually see Heaven open and I can see Jesus and at that point they began to run and yell and shout and say let's deal with him and they picked up stones and they began to hurl them at him and as he knelt on the ground they just crushed his head with stones and beat his body and the gentleman stood off to the side very appropriately distancing himself from the sorry scene and he said to the group you can leave your coats here leave your coats here why don't you put your jacket down here it'll give you more pivot when you throw your stones now on that day when he went home to his bed and he put his head on the pillow he had a number of scenes that would have co-mingled in his mind one the horrible scene of the life being literally beaten out of this young man Stephen and then he would hear his own voice saying and you can leave your quotes here you can leave your quotes here you can leave your coats here and it wasn't much time after that when is he goes on one of his other Pursuits and as he goes down the Damascus Road he is struck by a bright shining light from heaven and he hears a voice from the heavens saying Saul Saul why do you persecute me isn't it hard for you to keep kicking Against The Gods don't you find that your legs are bloodied as you continue to resist me as you continue to hold out against me in the way that some of you continue to do Sunday by Sunday by Sunday you kick against the idea of submission you kick against the idea of acknowledging your need of Christ and the backs of your legs are bloodied and blue metaphorically and the word comes to you again and says oh isn't it hard for you to keep kicking against this and he says who are you Lord and suddenly in an encounter with Christ it's all made new if I were to ask a succession of people to come up here and tell me how it was they came to Christ I'd hear the story over and over again the same as Saul of tars as well I met a young man or I met a young woman and I couldn't explain how they lived their life or what they did there was something about their countenance there was something about their lives I was speaking with somebody just the other day involved in a business transaction the man with whom he was dealing was concerned deal with all of the details but he turned to this individual a Christian and a friend of mine and he said to him you know irrespective what of whatever happens with this business deal he said I would like to spend a weekend with you because I recognize that you have something that I do not have and I want to know what it is that was the encounter with Stephen then the encounter with Christ the painful discovery that he was utterly Unworthy of God that he was utterly unfit for heaven that he was utterly bereft of salvation and the joyful discovery that in that unworthy unfit useless predicament Christ had sought him Christ had humbled him and Christ had saved him what of you this morning how will it be apparent in the life of an individual who has been transformed in the same way well we will find ourselves saying often with fits and with starts and with fumblings and failures but we will find ourselves saying at the core of my being I want to know Christ I want to know him progressively and passionately and I am amazed that I Oh So Unworthy still I'm a child of his care for his word teaches me that his love reaches me everywhere oh you say well I came for Father's Day I didn't expect this I thought we'd have seven principles on how to be a good dad listen I thought about that I'm working on those principles too Father's Day has only been in existence officially since 1972. thought up by a lady 62 years earlier and it's a good thing and I hope you have a wonderful day but I thought of all the fathers who would come and I said what is the best gift that I could ever give a father on Father's Day I decided it must be this to tell you that the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ Our Lord and the best Father's day you will ever know is the Father's Day when you bow as a dad and simply say Lord Jesus Christ I admit that I am on the wrong side of this equation I believe that you died to declare me right before God I've considered the implications of what this will mean and I don't want this service to end but that from my heart You Hear My Cry Lord I believe help all of my unbelief and the papers will be signed and the renovation process will begin and I can guarantee you what a wonderful change will be brought about father look upon us in your mercy we pray that in an abundance of words we don't miss the point give us ears to hear and eyes to see granda's repentance and faith and the grace necessary to lay hold upon your great and precious promises save us from our pride and from thinking that we can come before you on the strength of all of our endeavors help us to do the calculations turn us the right way up let us take a spiritual audit how Dreadful to think you have thousands in your bank account and write checks on the strength of that only to discover that it's all been a debit and how horrible for that to be the case in spiritual terms turn our lives than the right way up we pray for Jesus sake amen this message was brought to you from Truth For Life where the learning Is For Living to learn more about Truth For Life with Aleister Begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 25,649

Keywords: justification, biblicalfigures, christianthinking, falseteachers, gospel, unionwithchrist

Id: JcqH3_VFzWU

Length: 47min 46sec (2866 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023