No Place for Truth ― Alistair Begg

I invite you to turn with me to the Acts of the Apostles and to chapter 17 and as you turn there thank you for very gracious and undeserved welcome it's a privilege to be here again and to be in the company of all who have spoken and who are about to speak and to have the privilege of moving among this vast crowd and meeting folks that I've never met but that I find we have ties with one another that are deeper than I could ever have been possible were it not for God's grace and goodness to us I I just said the sinker just now after the singing of those two opening hymns and I've had a wonderful evening and I'd be very glad to go home now and and and he said not not so fast boy so so let's let's read familiar words from Acts chapter 17 and beginning at verse 16 now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in a marketplace every day with those who happen to be there some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him and some said what is this babbler wish to say others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection and they took him and brought him to the Areopagus thing may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting for you bring some strange things to our ears we wish to know therefore what these things mean now all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new so Paul standing in the midst of the areopagus dead men of Athens I perceive that in every way you are very religious for as I passed along and observe the objects of your worship I found also an altar with this description to the unknown God were there for you worship is unknown this I proclaim to you the God who made the world and everything in it being lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him it is actually not far from each one of us but in him we live and move and have our being as even some of your own poets have said for we are indeed his offspring being then God's offspring we are not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone an image formed by the art and imagination of man the times of ignorance God overlooked but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he's fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man who he has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead now when they heard of the resurrection of the Dead some mocked but others said we will hear you again about this so Paul went out from their midst but some men joined him and believed among whom also were dionysius the areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them amen a brief prayer I want to use a prayer of Augustan as we turn to the scriptures together but my microphone is down here then maybe that's why it sounds so bad okay did you did you hear some of what I just read from the Bible it's quite embarrassing really about with me we have our custom to lead us although who are the light of the minds that Noli the life of the souls that love thee and the strength of the Wills that serve thee help us to know thee that we may truly love thee so to love thee that we may serve thee whom to serve His perfect freedom for we pray in Christ's name Amen well the brief that has been given me is straightforward you read it in the book it's somewhat daunting I'm to give a lecture it's supposed to last about 50 minutes I'm not sure that I've ever really given a lecture but tonight is good a night as any to make a stab at it I suppose the way in which we're going to handle this is to address the question simply what is this cultural context in which we find ourselves living and then secondly how are we going to respond to it in the forward to a book entitled light of the world written by Joseph Ratzinger the former Pope Benedict George wiegel suggests that we are living in quotes a world that has lost its story a world in which the progress promised by the humanities of the past three centuries is now gravely threatened by understandings of the human person that reduce our humanity to a conjurer ease of cosmic chemical accidents a humanity with no intentional origin no noble destiny and thus no path to take through history in a similar but in a lighter vein Henry Allen who is a journalist columnist a critic writing in The Wall Street Journal exclaimed for the first time in my 72 years I have no idea what's going on the most important thing in our culture isn't change but the fact that reality itself is dwindling fading like sunstruck wallpaper Facebook enshrines banality we have individualism but we have no privacy we are all Outsiders with no inside to be outside on there is no Ark no through-line no destiny as the British Tommy sang in the trenches of World War one to the tune of auld lang syne we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here we'll organized religion die I got talking to a girl from an Episcopal youth group in Missouri he writes if this Capelli anism is great she said you don't have to believe anything like most people I used to think the world would go on in the way it was going on with better medicine and the arrival and an occasional iPad or an earthquake that was when I knew what was going on I worried that reality itself is fading like the Cheshire Cat leaving behind only a smile that grows ever more alarming now I haven't ferreted around for these things these are just materials that I've picked up through my reading and have them in my files and I was intrigued as I think about it now and many of you have been to see that one of Gauguin's paintings the post-impressionist painter sold for some 300 million I think was on the 9th of this month and Gauguin was celebrated for all kinds of reasons but he himself was a disaster on his most famous painting he wrote three questions up in the left hand corner do then on new kasam knew who are long knew where did it come from what am i where am I going and at a very foundational level of our Western society these questions ring in the lyrics of contemporary songs in the literature of our day and certainly in the movies that will be featured in the Oscars on Sunday evening what we can say that we actually do know what is going on and that's because the Bible tells us we could say with the prophet Isaiah truth has stumbled in the public square or in the authorized version has fallen in the street with Jeremiah falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land and so the prevailing and the oppressive assumption of today is that there is actually no such thing as truth or any real sense of right and wrong at least in the sense that we can attest to it all of the time everywhere and for everyone ie as an absolute and all of us have grown up with people telling us that the only absolute is that there are no absolutes and this relativism should be understood biblically is not something that has just come out of nowhere and behind the relativism and all that is represented in it is for Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians chapter 10 where he writes for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and the relativism and post-modernism that is represented in the philosophies and experiences of our day should be understood in that way this is an argument this is a lofty opinion and this is raised against the knowledge of God it is if you like a cosmic issue we're dealing with a present darkness with the spiritual forces of evil which exists in the heavenly places and behind these spiritual forces the devil of whom Jesus said he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him he has been a murderer he says from the beginning and a liar and he is the father of all who profound lies now when you think about that we can think about in a number of ways it would be tedious to do too many but let's just think in terms first of all about the question of reality reality the fact that we would even have to discuss reality as if there were no reality is an indication of the confusion that is present under the postmodern son rights our friend David Wells everyone has a right to their own version of reality and so as a result of that perspective I have my reality and you have your reality my pjs are touching your pjs says one boy to his brother my reality it might be impinging upon your reality and yours upon mine and your reality may actually be real in the subjective sense that it's real for you but of course my reality which is real for me may contradict your reality this is really real for me isn't this all beginning to make perfect sense for us don't we find ourselves saying now that is a wonderful notion now it makes for a completely unsettling and confusing existence and once again one does not have to go looking around for these things if you take what is currently a huge multi-billion dollar industry in the realm of virtual reality avatars invented coinage and a whole notion of quasi reality in the press in the last two weeks here there have been articles concerning how many people have embraced an avatar an invention of themselves through whom they communicate in this quasi real world and when they invent themselves the article pointed out if they're a little person like me then their avatar is a big tall person if you're a funny-looking little character than you're a magnificent looking character and these people are living in this strange world and we're going to go and speak to them about reality they'll know there's no there's no reality talk to my avatar now again this doesn't spring from anywhere I'm and I'm happy that young man was 16 I used to be 16 golly what a long time ago it was 1968 but right around that time and fight when I was 14 Paul Simon and celebrated writer of lyrics in the contemporary world was pondering reality himself remember through the corridors of sleep past the shadows dark and deep my mind dances and leaps and confusion I don't know what is real I can't touch what I feel and I hide behind the shield of my illusion so I'll just continue to pretend that my life will never end and the flowers never Bend with the rain fall is not just as simple as we are often led to believe as we sit down in Starbucks with people who live in this unreal real world Christian Science is an unreal world as well as it occurs to me the idea that pain is an illusion do you believe that you know the doggerel there once was a Christian Scientist from deal who said that pain isn't real but if you sit on a pin and the point enters in you'll dislike what you fancy you feel it expresses itself in the realm of morality once again from this perspective ethics becomes simply a matter of personal taste each person able to chart their own course a bit like ordering a pizza with a variety of potential options and toppings things that you can leave aside if you don't want to have them so I'll manufacture my own little moral world of my own little in oral world nobody will be there to tell me anything is wrong or right the only thing that mustn't happen is I mustn't ever be hurting anybody at least not from my reality at least and the same is true in terms of history in terms of history some of your students of history it must be quite a hard thing to be a student of history at this point in in secular universities just yesterday in the arts review in The Wall Street there was an article entitled whose history is it anyway and it was addressing the fact that in terms of many of the historical movies that are now before us there's a tremendous amount of tampering going on with the actual history but say the people who know about these things we are trying to hold movies to a truth interesting word to a truth we can't hold history to because history is always just someone's opinion the director of Selma dismissing concerns about accuracy in that particular movie says everyone sees history through their own lens and that should be valid so in postmodern style history accuracy is replaced by advocacy it is what I want it to be now this is probably a good time for me just to pause and give you a little historical anecdote just to I can see you're a little crestfallen but this world in which we're living I can I can sense it coming back to me even at the height of six feet above contradiction here just now I was going to tie this to somebody but I thought I better not I don't want to make friends enemies amongst my colleagues so I'll just make it generic Lee but it's American tourists visiting runnymede down the Thames and they are being instructed in all of the details of the signing of the Magna Carta and a very pocket Englishman is going through his paces and describing what a significant document this has been and has led to the writings of men great parts of the Constitution of the United States and so on and it ended a moment of great declaration he says and so ladies in general you see 1215 the signing took place and a man turned to his wife and he said you know honey we just missed that about 15 minutes it's unnecessary for me to continue in this vein the question is how are we to respond to the challenge how are we to do that how are we if you like to live Christianly in a post-christian culture how are we to speak about heal is the way and the truth and the life in a culture that says but truth cannot be defined in these objective and substantial terms let me suggest to you that we could take one of three possible approaches in fact - I do not advocate I think this should be avoided and one I think we should adopt the first one that is possible we might refer to as admonition admonition this is a kind of approach it's not unusual you see it throughout history it's alive and well in contemporary America and that is just a curse the darkness I'm using the word admonition in terms of rebuke or of reproach or of reprimand in other words to respond to the cultural milieu in which we find ourselves living in a spirit of condemnation I encounter this when I came to America for the first time in 1972 I won't tell you where the church was but I went to a church my hair was rather long and it didn't it didn't fit the framework didn't send my mother's framework either but that's another question altogether and after I'd addressed the church the man said there you go folks look at that even someone who looks like that can be a Christian and I felt immediately drawn to that man he endeared himself to me out I felt that deep seeded Koinonia that comes on me only on moments like that but it was the same man who introduced me to a phrase that I'd never heard and that was he said that apparently America was going to hell in a handbasket actually said is going to hell in a handbasket and what was most troubling though was that he actually seemed pretty pleased about it I don't mean that facetiously you see when Paul addresses Titus in an environment that is amazingly challenging in Crete he takes time to make sure that Titus understands that those who are going to be living for Jesus in that kind of environment need to make sure they don't fall foul of an approach such as this and so he says to Titus remind them that your folks to be submissive to rulers and authorities to be obedient to be ready for every good work to speak evil of no one to avoid quarreling to be gentle and to show perfect courtesy toward all people I don't know about you but that lands with quite an impact in my heart and mind as I seem to navigate the waters both as an individual member of society and also as someone who along with my colleagues is responsible for the souls and well being of those under my care do you realize how quickly your church my church can become just an angry place where instead of a spirit of mission there is just a prevailing sense of admonition there's a reason you see there's a credibility gap between many of our congregations and our contemporary young people because although they may be all of these things in relationship to a quasi reality and an immorality and so on the one thing they don't like to be is mean and to the extent that they think that these Christian people are just mean then it works against us some of you have aspirations I think to replace Statler and Waldorf you remember those old boys from the muffets Vulcan ears they were never down in the action they just sat up there the whole time humping and pumping and moaning and complaining oh it's a dreadful thing when you have a step we'll run a Waldorf in your congregation male or female this biblical precedent for this kind of approach the sons of thunder were right along those lines weren't they coming back from the evangelistic vacancy in Samaria where the response has not been exactly what you would call fantastic they said to Jesus Lord do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them the kind of reverse altar call approach and Jesus said now that that would be a no the second poor alternative is accommodation in 1952 James s steward had the opportunity to deliver lectures at Yale Divinity School and on that occasion he warmed the worn the students of what he referred to as the coming over the horizon of a theologically vague and harmlessly accommodating gospel which he said is no gospel at all and historically liberal Protestantism has taken this approach making its appeal to those who are elite in the culture at least intellectually not wishing to be regarded as ignorant and unlearned men they gave up large swathe of theological orthodoxy in order to accommodate themselves to the culture so if there are difficult parts we'll just get rid of them the 20th century which began really with the Scopes Monkey Trial we got a problem with creation we'll get rid of creation now you simply want Jesus as an example but you don't like this notion of substitutionary atonement we can get rid of that as well and I know that you would like to think of the resurrection not as a physical reality that impinges upon everything but just as some kind of spiritual notion and we are here to tell you today they would say that that's just exactly how we are to view it and that approach continues in certain quarters and and tragically not just now in the quarters of that which we would regard as liberalism but actually in quarters that would now be within the broader framework of evangelicalism so if our audience is offended by our theology then we can just switch to psychology if they don't like the notion that they are guilty lost sinful responsible and accountable to God and we can change that a little after all we do need a crowd if propositional truth claims are unwelcome then we'll just tell stories if the Bible's clarity on the nature of marriage and human sexuality is too clear then we can just soften the blow we can blur the lines we didn't do that I know that we're very grateful for all the Americans that come to Europe especially to Scotland and spend money it means a great deal to us I speak on behalf of the nation and you always come back saying what happened to all those churches over there a lot of them empty or whatever and I always say the same thing hang on you're about to find out I might not be very nice but I think it's fairly accurate did you see the piece on the 3rd of January Europe's empty churches go on sale did you read some of this is it is I don't know whether to laugh or burst into tears in Bristol England the farmers in Falls Church has become the circle media circus training school operators say the high ceilings are perfect for aerial equipment like trapeze well Providence in Edinburgh Scotland a Lutheran Church has become a Frankenstein themed bar featuring bubbling test-tubes lasers and a life-size Frankenstein's monster descending from the ceiling at midnight Jason McDonald the supervisor of the pub says he hadn't heard any complaints about this he says for one simple reason there are hundreds and hundreds of old churches and no one goes to them well you've been listening earlier about Ephesus and then go to Wales in fact we can go throughout Western Europe now this issue of truth and reality and history is absolutely crucial and that's why when we address it in this way we do so purposefully GD unone a historian who has studied extensively in human culture studied 86 different societies spanning 5,000 years and he found an unexpected and direct correlation between sexual continents and the ability of a society to grow and remain healthy in human records he said there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and post-nuptial continents Toynbee said of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history 19 of them collapse when they reach the moral state that the United States is in tonight so what are we to do we say no to admonition we say no to accommodation and we say yes to proclamation to Proclamation the weapons of our warfare are strong for tailing tearing down strongholds and those notions that set themselves against the knowledge of God God has entrusted to us not only the armor that protects us as we go into battle but he has also provided us with the weapon of our warfare and you would not be here tonight I imagine well enough for the fight that you believe that - now I chose to read from acts chapter 17 and I'm not planning now at this late stage in the evening to begin an exposition of it but I want to say sufficient about it in order to I hope we've whet your appetite and send you back to do your homework again Paul is there as we're told waiting in Athens Luke tells us what he saw he tells us what he felt and then he tells us what he did or what he said in a sophisticated environment in a magnificent place he was aware of the fact that it was just completely full of idols now think about it for saul of tarsus growing up in the framework of judaism awaking to a new day and going to bed at night with the Shema in his ears he had always rayul the Lord your God the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and these things are to be upon your hearts and you shall teach them to your children when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up and in this amazing and dramatic encounter with God incarnate in Jesus that turns his life upside down and inside out he now is filled with a nature a notion of what it means that this God is one that there is only this one God and he then when he writes to the Corinthians makes that perfectly clear he says we know that an idol is nothing at all in all the world and there is no god but one so for him stand and look at all of that moved him when the language is is that of a movement that would be in the very core of his being and what stirred him more than anything else was what Carson refers to as the D guarding of God that God was being robbed of his glory that in the folly and in the confusion that was represented as it related to the reality of man and the moral interactions of men and women and a whole unfolding of the drama of history he stands there and he looks at it but the thing that moves the most is a concern for the glory of God can I just see tangentially that it will not do for us to be concerned about these issues in our culture for a lesser motive than the glory of God and the praising of his name it is insufficient to say I am concerned about this because of what it will mean for my grandchildren I am concerned about this because of what it means for our nation being destabilized and politically compromised and internationally abused you can be concerned about that until you die but that's not the motivation for the proclamation of the good news of the gospel not to fix our nation's God has promised his son the nation's as his inheritance he is putting together a company that no one can number from every tribe and nation and language and people under the Sun and he will accomplish what he is set out to do he is ordained men and women to salvation and he has ordained the means whereby they will come to salvation through the proclaiming of the word of truth even in an environment that says we think you're wrong and we think you're crazy Petey Forsythe in an earlier day says the mainspring of mission is not pity but see not so much pity for perishing sinners as faith and zeal for the church rights of Christ so in being invited to address address the thinkers he goes that it very interesting he doesn't he I had a privilege in the last twelve months of being with someone I never met before a professor from Dallas at a Derald a block I'm sure many of you will know him neither personally or by his writings but he gave an address on that particular day that I found very very challenging and very helpful and he and he pointed out that Paul in addressing the Christian constituency in Rome he made absolutely clear the universal fallenness of man and the implications of this that you have turned your backs on God you've exchanged the glory of God and there are ramifications from that and he does that very very clearly and absolutely unequivocally and now he stands stands as it were confronting that very culture that kind of culture and without compromising the truth in any way at all he identifies with him he builds bridges to them he engages them he doesn't seize the opportunity in the Areopagus by beginning the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against clowns like you people who sit around here just talking nonsense morning noon and night full your heads are full of wooden and-and-and-and-and and the stuffing of a teddy bear something like that something suddenly very endearing and engaging you know no he doesn't do that at all as we did he goes soft actually liberal scholarship I actually tries to claim that Paul never actually said the speech in the Areopagus oh that was invented later on it had to be invented because he said Paul would never have done that no that's just their reality oh he says I want to I'm glad of this opportunity says and I invite you to think and then he simply goes down the line with them he says you need to know that God is the creator and the sustainer of everyone and everything suggesting wick where do you where do you start in talking their culture there's a very little idea of Christianity at all that is interested in all kinds of notions and and concepts religiously and philosophically he says let's start at the very beginning is a very good place to start God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything you need to know he says that he's in charge of history and he's in charge of geography he is transcendent he doesn't live in a temple you can't enshrine him in that way and you shouldn't ever think of him as a figment of your imagination as a cosmic principle as your own creation you should not think of him in terms of objects that are made by of gold and silver you should also know he says that he seeks a relationship with his creatures that he is not only transcendent but he's imminent he's not far he's not far from every one of us he's merciful he's righteous he commands repentance he will judge the world and he's given proof of this by raising Jesus from the dead now without using that simply as a template that we trod out I think it is one of the most helpful places that we find in acts for us to use as a kind of foundational framework helping us to engage the world in which we live in today the idea of a final judgment is unpalatable to modern man he simply rejects it he's not part of his reality Paul recognizes that what he's up against but he makes it very very clear that they were created by God that they are accountable to God and that they're going to face God you see if we're going to take on the challenge of the day we need to take on the challenge of the day and we need to be prepared to say what the Bible says it doesn't mean that we're rude we're bombastic we're unkind we make enemies over time we're still able to love and to connect with a society that lives in rebellion because we to ourselves lived in rebellion that's Paul's point again in encouraging Titus in Titus 3 after all these days remember remind them that they too were a complete mess but it not for the grace of God so we need to be clear that although truth has stumbled in the public square and the substitute gods that are offered in our day are worthless in engaging with our culture it's not difficult for us to get agreement on one thing our world is broken it's broken take the world section of the New York Times today and just go through the regions of the world the attempt of man to bring reconciliation confronted at every turn with a virtual impossibility of it all husbands and wife's parents and children why is this well the answer is because we're alienated from the God who made us and that that alienation lies at the root of all of these circumstances so we can get agreement on his brokenness and we have an opportunity to say do you know that in the story of the Bible it is this amazing story of how God is remaking his broken world and do you know that God has done this and God has said that and so on and many of our friends have never been engaged by that kind of thing they've determined that if there is a way to remake the world it will probably have something to do with them and particularly if they come from an intelligent context if they come from an environment in which they are influential in the world for example in 1946 the president of Dartmouth John Sloan Dickey said to the graduating class there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix in 2010 President Kim Yong Kim Jong Kim said to the graduating class of Dartmouth rehearsing the statement from 1946 you are the better human beings that we've all been waiting for really have you seen some of these people do you realize they extend to which the philosophies and religious frameworks of whether it's Kabbalah and the mixture of Judaism and so on or New Age theories that the Oprah fiying of an entire generation owes itself to so much that comes from the east I was recently in India and I was scribbling and making notes as I went around I was in a Hindu temple and I wrote down one of us one of the inscriptions on the wall this is what it said the self is the friend of the self and the self is also the enemy of the self none but the self can save the self have a good day what what what what do people believe if they believe anything they believe that if there is a God and if he's good then he will reward nice people if they just try their best they also tend to believe that if they are prepared to admit to a problem the problem is outside of them and they'll get the answer by looking inside of them so that all of the spiritualities as well says that are from below all enshrined divinity within the framework of the natural order and so if you want to find God you look inside yourself if you want to find an answer you look inside yourself the gospel says now they actual reversal either the problem is inside and the answer is outside the answer is actually outside a city wall where the dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all I was written by an Irish lady for boys and girls that they might get some understanding of the wonder of God's dealings in the cross let me finish this with two apparently unrelated observations one in relationship to tone and our approach to those who clearly are opposed to what we believe and say nobody nobody was a more articulate proponent of New Atheism than Christopher Hitchens not talking Christopher and he said really hard things but if you listen to them there was something about this man that cried out in the night for example in his book on mortality he says everybody told me that I would confront my mortality on the day my father died he said funnily enough that didn't happen I found that I was confronted by that on the day my son was born and then he quotes I Rossini I think it is I just have to check resetti I should have said listen then you get a sensitivity of this guy here's the quote from the poem what man has bent or his son sleep to brood how that face shall watch his when cold it lies or thought as his own mother kissed his eyes of what her kiss was when his father would he said that in the dying embers of his life the biggest thing for him the thing that mattered most to him was to remember friendship quote again for me to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off the ones that made the sacrifice of a following day a trivial one that was the way that Kali matches chose to remember his beloved Heraclitus has adapted into English by William Corrie and then again he quotes the poets they told me Heraclitus they told me you were dead they brought me better news to hear and better tears to shed I wept when I remembered how often you and I had tired the Sun with talking and sent him down in the sky I wanted to say the head since I want to say do you know that Jesus is a friend like no other friend in the world that he is a friend who loves you who dies for you who calls out to you who embraces you who explains you who saves you no tone and the last thought bravery this is no time for wimpy Christians there's no time for moaning groaning Christians either this is time for the man who emerges in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress out of the verse we began with from Jeremiah chapter 9 where Jeremiah says that there is no volume truth no place for volume truth and you remember when you read the words progress who do we meet who this great heart meet he meets mr. valiant for truth what a nice fellow I am once he says whose name is volume for truth I am a pilgrim and going to the celestial City he given a royal battle with three characters interestingly called wild head inconsiderate and pragmatic and he gives them a good doing great heart system that's quite a sword you have there it's a right Jerusalem blade it is so said valiant let a man have one of these blades with a hand to wield it and skill to use it it's ages its edges will never blunt it will cut flesh and bones and soul and spirit and all it's time for soldiers of Christ to arrive at the end of the 19th century into the 20th they asked William the Salvation Army admittedly not a solid member of the reformed community but I believe in Christian they said to him booth what do you think of the chief dangers confronting the church going into the 20th century and here's his answer in answering your inquiry I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost Christianity without Christ forgiveness without repentance salvation without regeneration politics without God and heaven without it he'll well be praised together Lord look upon us in your mercy we pray granted words of our mouths our lips the meditation of our hearts may be acceptable in your sight may be filled with grace filled with Jesus help us Lord in the battle of our day to somehow or another get this right so that we might live in such a way that people would have occasion to say tell me about the reason for the hope you have and then grant that we may have a courage to say what the word says so that we might see many turning in repentance and in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray amen

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 24,950

Rating: 4.8216562 out of 5

Keywords: alistair begg, truth, ligonier

Id: xv2eA1JVY04

Length: 53min 11sec (3191 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017