What Is Your Legacy?

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org 2 timothy chapter 4 page 8 4 3 verse 1 in the presence of god and of christ jesus and in view who will judge the living and the dead and in view of his appearing and his kingdom i give you this charge preach the word be prepared in season and out of season correct rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction for the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine instead to suit their own desires they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths but you keep your head in all situations endure hardship do the work of an evangelist discharge all the duties of your ministry for i'm already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure i have fought the good fight i have finished the race i have kept the faith now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing amen now just a brief prayer together god our father with our bibles open before us we pray that you will be our teacher such a futile prospect to spend all this time simply listening to a relatively knowledgeable fellow speaking with emphasis we don't want that we don't have time for that we do believe that when your word is truly preached that your voice is really heard that's the voice we're listening for so speak then in certain cases as if there was no one else in the room but ourselves speak to our waiting hearts for jesus sake amen a week passed on friday evening i spent part of the evening as the shadows began to fall it was still daylight but the sun was down in the sky and i went to a seat that i that has become one of my seats now when i think of places that i like to go and sit this is one of them it's in the graveyard of saint peter's anglican church in adding him yorkshire it's a wooden bench that was left as a memorial to somebody and it's down at the end of a long pathway that is essentially a corridor in between some ancient tombstones and i sat there last friday evening purposefully listening to the choir trying to get itself organized for sunday and also waiting for the bell to toll in the clock tower above me and seizing the opportunity to move amongst the tombstones in the graveyard and be caused to reflect upon the very transience of life and its frailty not out of a desire to be morbid not out of any feelings of melancholy at all simply as an opportunity to recalibrate things i like to listen to the bell ring i wish we had a bell tower here i like it when it rings just one stroke on the quarter of an hour a little more on the half hour and then dings out the hours peeling out over the thoroughfares of life and over the occasions of men and women's scurryings here and there and marking the fact that our times are going by reminding us that our lives are like a morning mist that as i arrived this morning in the earlier hours was over the golf course here as we came down pettibone road but i can guarantee has long since passed that says james is what our lives are like and while we know that the future comes in at the rate of 60 seconds a minute the fact is that the older we get the faster time seems to go by i don't fully understand that i've been thinking about it this week i don't know whether there's anything in the notion that when you're five years old and you have another birthday and you turn six a fifth of your life has just gone by twenty percent of everything you've known so far but when you're 50 years old and a year goes by only two percent of all that you've known has hastened past and there is something about the reality of death and its prospect which brings clarity to the living of life strangely enough that is one of the reasons that we want to steal ourselves against the prospect of death because most of us do not want to think seriously about the issues of life we want to live as if there was no yesterday and no tomorrow coming and we can live simply in the moment for the now and squeeze all the juice out of it that we can and then we'll deal with tomorrow should it ever come when we think for a moment or two we realize that that is unrealistic because very soon the camping trip of life is going to be over the tent is going to be folded up that's our bodies and packed away and we will head for an eternal dwelling which the bible says will either be in the presence of christ which is heaven or absent the presence of christ which is hell and in the meantime as we walk this earthly sought each one of us is leaving a legacy leaving a legacy and i want to talk to you this morning about the legacy that you and i are leaving the bible is replete with information regarding this not in this striking way that it is put down but nevertheless you turn for example to the life of jacob in genesis and he says to those around him i'm about to be gathered to my people therefore come here i want to bestow my blessing on you and i want to give you my instructions joseph pulls his feet up on the bed and he says i am about to die therefore listen very carefully to what it is i have to say peter writing his second letter says the time has come when i will fold up this tent of my life and that's why while i lived i wanted to refresh your memory so that when i am now gone you will be able to bring to mind all the things that i have told you in other words that is in other words that his legacy will live on in the lives of those who come after him and the exact same thing for paul here in the 6th verse of 2 timothy 4. i am he says in the present tense already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure the word there is analysis it is the word that is used for unyoking oxen at the end of a hard day's work in the fields it is the word used for striking camp and going home to a permanent dwelling it is the word used for weighing anchor and heading now finally to our destination that says paul is what is about to be my experience and in light of that he is concerned that timothy will understand his legacy now i'm using the phrase legacy or the word legacy in its figurative sense not in its literal legal sense which of course is the bequeathing of money or property via a will or a last will and testament but rather in a more figurative fashion simply using it to designate something that is handed down to those who follow now have i arrived at this because you say well i thought we were in a series in philippians presumably you didn't just do your preparation well that's true i didn't do my preparation but the reason i didn't do that preparation was because in the events of the last nine days i determined that it would never be useful for me to do that in relationship to this sunday morning because so many things have come across my path in these last nine days to arrest me in this issue of a legacy that it is incumbent upon me to convey it to you little things simple things the kind of things that have happened to you this last week nothing that is unique to me as if somehow or another i would teach from my own experience not for a moment things like this invited for lunch on wednesday uh to the glass house uh near the home of uh william wordsworth of old they are with good friends from the past who tell me that their son will be joining us and so he does and ronnie arrives in the company of his wife elsworth and in the company of a little bundle this size eight and a half months old called fiona beautiful blue eyes big cheeks and her hair scented with johnson and johnson baby shampoo you know that distinctive baby smell and so i took this little bundle in my arms and i held her up close to me i looked at her fingers i sniffed her hair and and in doing so i looked across her tiny frame into the eyes of her father thinking her father ronnie's a father ronnie was this high when sue and i went to hamilton he used to come by after school in his shorts with a school cap on looking for a biscuit or looking for a drink of orange juice and now he's a father and he has fiona and he's supposed to look after his wife am i really getting that old is the time going through my fingers this fast so by the appearance of some and by the departure of others this has struck me when i speak at kessick and it's the fourth time i've had the privilege of doing so now i take my j.b phillips new testaments i have two of them and i have people sign in them my colleagues in ministry my mentors in ministry perhaps would be better to say and i and i have there for example keswick98 and then they all signed their names on friday morning and as i went around the circle and in some cases at the breakfast table and said would you please sign this for me my eyes looked not only at their signature but my eyes looked across at the last keswick i attended which was 93 and there are the names of people who are no longer present last time i was there they signed this time they're gone what have they left a legacy names that are irrelevant to you even if i mentioned them it wouldn't mean anything i just spent a long time impressing them about impressing the people on you but it really wouldn't matter that much but the fragrancy of their legacy stirs my heart you see our lives this morning loved ones are like an artist's canvas on which we are painting every day that we live sometimes dark strokes sometimes bold sometimes thin lines but all of our lives as they unfold are increasingly becoming the canvas of who we are and what we are and we will eventually create a picture which we will walk away and leave behind and people will look as it were at that and that will be the legacy that we have left to them and the striking thing is this that none of us know when we have put the last brushstroke on the canvas none of us know when we have made that most familiar journey for the last time none of us know if there will be opportunity for another hello or for another hug goodbye or for another telephone call therefore the issue of a legacy is not something for people with gray hair and you've been around for a hundred years teenagers in our church have left their legacy to us children have left a legacy to us now we could go to any part of the bible and illustrate this but i want to illustrate it from ii timothy the reason being that i had to teach ii timothy all the way through the last five days in england and therefore it is most upon my heart is most familiar to me and i want therefore to use uh the verses there as a means of guiding our thought in coming to this let me say that relationships are seldom neutral there are those in whose company we are strengthened and encouraged and there are others who are frankly a drain on our resources and they tempt us to falter and to quit and when we look at old photograph albums and we see certain people's faces very often we will immediately have a thought that comes to mind there will in some cases be a phrase that is directly related to that face you can't see that face but you say that you can't see that face but you relate it to this because just to look at that is to bring back a whole kaleidoscope of memories which are directly related to the individual who is there now while there are no pictures in the bible in terms of photographs the bible is full of pictures that are here in literary form and as we leaf through these pictures as it were we see the legacy that these individuals have left some harmful and some helpful so we're going to look at harmful then we'll look at him helpful and then we'll draw it to a close by saying so what is ours going to be incidentally another thing that triggered me in this direction was a gentleman who came up to me and said he had something for me and he had a large frame that was wrapped in more of that bubble stuff than was ever necessary but he wanted to protect it and i understood why because when i unveiled what he had given me i discovered that what he had given me was a picture taken probably around 1958 or 1959 in the church in glasgow where i was brought up as a small boy and it was a picture of an evening attendance with 2 200 people in this auditorium and apparently i am somewhere in that picture but it's like where's waldo and uh i took it back to my room and my arms are not long enough to find myself in the picture and it's a i need a magnifying glass but i looked through it and i could see oh there's mr clark he was the leader of the junior choir he was a nice man i found myself saying oh there's john moore who wrote burdens are lifted at calvary he was a kind man i found myself saying oh look at her i said i'd forgotten about her and so i went through as many as i could and in every case every picture tells a story your picture is telling a story now let's just look at those who left a harmful legacy here into timothy i don't want to belabor the point i just want to draw your attention to them and you can follow this up with your own homework this is a sort of thumbnail sketch it's not an in-depth study at verse 15 of chapter one we have these two characters phy jealous and hermogenes imagine having only one mention in the whole of the bible and this is it you only get one line in the bible and you're in there as a deserter that's your legacy hey good news fight jealous you're in paul's second letter to timothy i am yes bad news you're in as a deserter whoa see because you can only write if you're going to be true what is true and if paul had written about phy jealous and homogeneous and said i'm so thankful for our high jealous and homogeneous and he made up a bunch of baloney about them the people who read the letter said that's bogus why would he even say that about these characters these characters were worthless they bailed on paul why would he do that he couldn't do it it was his legacy by jealous and hermogenes they deserted me they were one of a larger group but maybe they were the ringleaders go to the 17th verse of chapter 2 and you have hymonaes and philetus not described in the most glowing terms i think you will admit their teaching will spread like gangrene like sepsis from a wound ugly disgusting thought and among them are hymenaeus and philitis who have wandered away from the truth when you're around these people they give you blood poisoning he says that's their legacy anybody that comes in contact with them has to have pieces of themselves chopped off demas chapter 4 and verse 10. do your best to come to me quickly he says to timothy for demas has deserted me legacy you're right demas you're right desertion demas has bailed out on me as well now that he bailed out on christ well i think probably so but the inference here is not that so much as it is the sense of personal pain that paul feels in relationship to the fact that this individual who was his friend who was his co-worker in the gospel just left him and now when the word demas comes to mind the very next word that comes with it the verb that goes along with a noun is desertion demas deserted what about alexander in verse 14 alexander the metal worker did me a great deal of harm so many years at where brings up the picture of alexander in his mind it's not a helpful picture as a harmful picture we don't know what he did to it except we know that it was somehow related to the cause of the gospel it's not a personality issue it's not that paul is concerned that you know alexander didn't like his preaching or didn't think he was that good of a pastor or didn't like him for some personality venture who cares about that stuff no no he says alexander did me a great deal of harm and you should be on your guard against him because he strongly opposed the message that's the issue you see paul's great concern is that the legacy of the gospel will be passed like the passing of a baton in a relay race in those what is it what do you have 20 meters there or 15 meters in that in that box i don't know what you have it's a short distance and you've got to get it out of your hands and into their hands and if you don't do it then it doesn't go or if you drop it then it doesn't go and there's little time to drop it and pick it up as many of us have found to our great disappointment and when he thought in terms of that and he brought alexander's picture up to mine said he harmed me and what about the crowd in verse 16 and my first defense no one came to my support no one came to my support isn't that a dreadful thing to have in your recollection you go back through your journal as it were do you keep a journal don't let anyone else read it no one will be interested first of all and probably you got stuff in there they shouldn't read in any case at least not until you've been dead for long enough for them to sort of revere your memory but if you go back through your journal and i've kept a journal over many years now you go back in there and you bring pictures to mind and you say you know just when i needed the encouragement no one came to support me just when this guy needed help no one was there why was that because they all united against him they said now don't anybody go and help paul and they sent word around probably not i think it's more likely that it happened like this everybody sitting there said someone else will support him someone else will do it someone else will be there it's not important that i'm there someone else will carry it out and the result of thinking like that was that no one supported well someone else will go to the service they don't really need me do you realize that every single one of you thinks someone else will go to the evening service tonight there'll be nobody at the evening service so the legacy of this crowd was harm let's move to the helpful side of the picture because there is that which is helpful as well incidentally and in passing another thing that drove this home for me was that last sunday evening against my better judgment and allowing my heart to rule my head i agreed to go and speak in a church on the other side of the country in stockton on teas which is near which is actually in cleveland england and it's near newcastle and middlesbrough and i had a man pick me up and drive me to the um to the place and i i got in the car and there was there was also a lady with him they were at a youth camp and uh we drove away from the hotel and they started to say and what about your wife and what about your children and and i i had only just come from this side which is much worse and i could feel myself just just going off and then coming around and not knowing if they'd ask me a question and just sitting in the silence hoping that somebody would give me an idea of what was going on and so eventually i said you know i think i'm going to fall asleep so i fell asleep and wakened up when i got there and then i was there and then i got back in the car and fell asleep and woke up when i got back and the man when he shook my hand he said it was nice having fellowship with you but the the the reason for my journey was to speak in a church where i hadn't been for 29 years 29 years can you imagine that i can even go somewhere that i had been 29 years ago this is impossible there's nowhere that i watched 29 years ago that i can go back to especially i can't possibly have been 17 29 years ago yes you were did you hear the bell ring do you hear the minutes pass and i went back out of deference to the pastor who had been there a gentleman by the name of neville atkinson who had been such an encouragement to me as a young man i used to go there on saturday night with two of my friends we had a singing group the other two guys could sing before anyone mentions it and we used to do some things in a youth coffee bar and so on we used to go there in time for the football results on a saturday night soccer results to you philistines and we used to i will not forgive you for not watching the world cup i'm sorry i am sorry and so this church called me and they said would you come back and speak for us on sunday night i said it would be a great privilege and i went and i was in the vestry and the fellow said to me now you you don't need to go up into the pulpit oh i said fine i said that's okay what do you want me to do he said well why don't you just speak from down at the communion table i said i can do that and i walked out and there was no one there they had a huge wraparound balcony totally deserted they had seats all in three sections down below and when i say no one that is hyperbole there was a smattering of people there oh i said to myself what has happened here this is not neville's legacy because when we were there uh 29 years ago the place was vibrant and then i found out that after 31 years of ministry he passed it into the hands of another young man who in the last two and a half years has singularly decimated the congregation to the point that it is split and divided and disintegrated and what i was speaking to was simply a remnant i don't know his name and if i knew it i wouldn't tell you it but i do know this that his legacy is harmful what about yours what about mine what if they wrote our epitaph tonight what if we were in tomorrow morning's plane dealer in the obits and you you're not going to waste a lot of money on those things i told my wife that don't get somebody don't get my photograph and stuff in there just get get a line and a half just something you know like the lady whose husband died and uh she phoned up the newspaper she didn't want to spend a lot of money on it i think she was scottish she said my husband died i need to put it in the newspaper so the fellow says well what do you want to put she said put hamish died so the guy says well you know there's a there's a minimum number of words i mean you know i put more than that she thought about for a moment she said well put hamish died volvo for sale so when we put our sentence and a half in there or whatever else it is try and sell the lawnmower at the same time whatever they do if there's one summary statement what will it be and will it be harmful or will it be helpful come to the helpful side with me and i'll go through this quickly helpful look at verse 5 of chapter 1. what a helpful legacy was left by lois and eunice the grandmother and the mother eunice i can tell you what a wonderful thing it is to have a godly heritage we shouldn't think for a moment that lois and eunice were self-aware in relationship to this the sincere faith which lived in your grandmother lois and in your mother eunice i can't imagine that the grandmother would come over to the house and say timothy now here i am your godly granny's here come along timothy and i will expound to you the great wonders of things because after all i'm your godly granny no i think she was just granny and his mother do you think his mother used to get up in the morning say now come along timothy i'm your godly mother and i'm here to bestow my heritage upon you know she just did the laundry she just sent him off to school she just clipped him around the ear she just did mother things but down through the corridor of time as people reflect on it and bring their photographs to recollection says you know what this was tremendously helpful having this grandmother and having this mum and some of us haven't had that but we may have had it in a sunday school teacher or a bible class leader or someone who was influential like that and that is our heritage and their legacy is wonderful another thing that happened to me this past week that all fed like tributaries into the stream in which we are now swimming or drowning depending on your perspective was that a lady came to me at the end of one of the talks and she said to me you won't know who i am but i was your sunday school teacher when you were a wee boy primary one first grade oh i said i i don't remember you and i don't remember your name but i have known all of my life that there were two ladies who taught me in the room that was like underneath the platform because the platform was extremely high and i said you know i only remember two things about that sunday school one is when the big man sat on the children's chairs and he had no right sitting on these little collapsible chairs because he collapsed them in a way that they weren't supposed to collapse he went down like a ton of bricks and that's one of my vivid memories i remember dashing over to help him no i don't i remember just killing myself laughing this guy just went butt down on the floor i thought it was one of the best things that had happened in the sunday school for many a week because i was really into that sunday school whoa yes and i said i remember that and she smiled benignly and i said and the other thing i remember is that somehow or another you two ladies made clear to me one sunday and i don't know what day or what date it was but you made clear to me the issues of the gospel because i said it was after your sunday school class 40 years ago that i went home to my dad and i asked him how old do you have to be to trust christ and i said the reason i asked my father that question is because of your instruction in that class she never knew that and here she was came to listen to the bible readings at keswick given by some boy that never paid attention in our sunday school class how she must have marveled and under god i think she went away with a wee bit of a spring in her step realizing that again on another sunday morning just like so many of you with these kids looking here looking there poking pulling pigtails doing everything scribbling on the sheets flicking coins doing everything at all she must have gone home said oh god don't send me back under the platform again just take all those kids away from me i can't stand it and who's to say how many other men in their mid-40s and girls in their mid-40s are walking the path of faith as a result of the legacy the encouraged grandmothers be encouraged moms we encourage sunday school teachers kindergarten workers junior choir teachers somewhere behind those vacant stairs god does his work what about this chap on a cipherous in verse 16 may the lord show mercy to the house of honor ciphers or maybe it's one sip horus i don't know maybe there's a guy a guy called horus and they said would you like a drink and he said just one sip and uh and ever after he was known as one sip horus now please don't send me letters about this cut me a bigger spit of slack i'm not all the wires are not joined up this morning so they weren't joined up the last time we heard you either but what was your excuse then but look at this guy onociferous he often refreshed me wasn't ashamed of me searched hard for me and helped me in all kinds of ways what a legacy often refreshed me wasn't ashamed of me searched hard for me and helped me in all kinds of ways i like that don't you what about timothy himself to whom the letter is written when paul writes to the philippians in 220 he says of timothy i have no one else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare he's my main man he says that's him when i think of him that's his legacy go back into chapter four and look at what we're told of luke in contrast to the desertion of demas we have the loyalty of luke in verse 11. there's no indication here that luke was a great evangelist or a wonderful bible teacher indeed the whole influence is that he was none of that but that he was marked by fidelity by loyalty by integrity by humility and he had lived his life over the long haul you see long after people have forgotten eloquence and long after they have ceased to read whatever cleverness any of us may have been able to commit to the printed page long after cleverness and eloquence are gone human kindness will live on in the lives of people people remember kindness my sister will bear this out but when our mother died and all the people sent the notes you know with isaiah 40 on it and isaiah 26 3 and philippians 4 and john 14 1-6 all of which was very very helpful i don't think any of us remember any of the notes or anything about them i'll tell you what we do remember we do remember the lady from around the corner who kept coming back with another pile of freshly completed laundry and when i think of her what a legacy don't fall into this trap of thinking you know the key to success in the christian life is being a teacher is being a front person is being a notorious person just think about your body think about your renal function think about your neurological function think about the double circulatory system of the heart how much of that is out for public display none how vital is it crucial and all the stuff we fiddle with this morning before we came here is irrelevant in comparison to those hidden functions oh thank god for the hidden heroes of the church the lukes we walked down the street in keswick steve brady and i another speaker and a friend over the last since 1972 and a man stopped us in the street a small man and he said he wanted to thank us for the things that we'd shared from the scriptures and we thanked him and we were humbled by his interest and we asked him what he was doing and why he was there and he said you know i've been a baptist minister for the last 30 years who knows him god knows him who knows his work all his congregation and god and when we walked away i said to steve doesn't that give you a bit of a chill he said what do you mean i said simply this you know when it says in the bible the first will be last and the last will be first i said i got a distinct feeling that those of us who have been given positions of notoriety limited though they may be when the final reckoning is squared away in heaven it's going to be guys like that who'll be up the front of the line and guys like you and me brady will be hanging on the back of the bus steve said you know i think you're right now our time is gone i need to come just to the final thought but you'll notice that mark is there and he's helpful and tychicus is there and he's helpful and the crowd is there at the end between verse 19 and 21 priscilla and aquila and onociferous and erastus and trophamus and eubulus and putin's love the name putin's don't you whether that was a guy that was really fond of dessert or not i do not know but nevertheless he's there might have been a lady called putin's uh it's a great name putin's you can tell i've really done a lot of in-depth study on this can't you yeah so i'm really digging deep into the material well there we have some with a harmful legacy some with a helpful legacy the question is what about you and me and with this i draw it to a close how are we going to establish this number one determined to live so as to be missed determined to live so as to be missed but to be missed for the right things to be missed for the right things don't let's be missed at meetings because the meetings go so well without us people are going that was a great meeting tonight seemed to go very smoothly i don't know what the difference was oh oh yes i do he wasn't here she wasn't here you don't want to have people look up candankerous in the dictionary and your face comes up beside it be missed live us to be missed be missed for kind words for good deeds for short notes for quick telephone calls for good laughs be remembered for humor happiness do it good like a medicine fill your portfolio with this stuff who the world cares about the size of the house the cubic capacity of the engine of the car the the stock options glory almost whatnot all of that's going in a garage sale but what will live on in the minds of our kids and our grandkids and kind words good deeds short notes quick calls good laughs don't be seduced into putting all of your treasure in the wrong place and pass to your children a treasure trove which is harmful not helpful secondly do not underestimate the impact of a solitary life lived to god's glory a solitary life lived to god's glory don't let the evil one come and say to you well nobody really knows you and you're not really significant in what you're doing and where you're going is largely irrelevant and nobody really cares and so on hey tell old schmutty face to go back where he belongs and say with the words of the anglican bishop as i do regularly well lord i may not be very much but i am one and i can do everything but i can do something and what i can do i ought to do and what i ought to do i will do i'm reading at the moment the book that the children gave me for father's day uh the biography of uh jack nicklaus i'm on page or just for your interest you know 339 and um there's a wonderful statement in here concerning barbara nicholas whom i met just once it's an andrews golf course and she seemed a nice lady that day too but this is what a chap a journalist says of this girl barbara nicholas lee neal had surgery once in miami who drove her down and back twice barbara nicholas lee neal once broke her arm in four places who drove her to the hospital barbara nicholas when young jackie was four he cut off half his finger in an ice crusher who saved the finger by not pecking panicking and getting him to the doctor so it could be sewn back on barbara nicholas when bruce fleischer's wife was in the hospital recovering from surgery barbara nicholas drove down to miami regularly with home-cooked meals when her great friend from columbus jenna cevic was dying of cancer she entrusted barbara nicholas to give everyone their marching orders before passing on when laura norman needed someone to lean on when her husband greg was getting ripped in the press she sought the advice of barbara nicholas and speaking of her help and her influence within the home and her support of jack nicklaus is a wonderful tremendous illustration she says if i can't fix it we call our repairman right after we got married i asked jack to put up a cup rack for me mind you it was three screws 45 minutes and a few choice words later his shirt was ringing wet and he still didn't have the screws in and it goes on to talk about the influence of her solitary life now i don't know where she is in relationship to faith i'm not using it in that respect just talking about the impact of unseen people in the same way bobby jones nobody knows the name of bobby jones unless you're into golf bobby jones dies and nicholas reflecting on the death of bobby jones with whom he had said ever since he had won as an amateur in the early days of his career he says i wondered how my own life might have differed without bobby jones inspiration and friendship during my early years and decided i would surely have been a lesser golfer and probably a lesser man why because of a legacy left by a solitary life determined to live source to be missed don't underestimate the impact of a solitary life live to god's glory particularly and ultimately if you're going to be remembered as one of the crowd make sure it's the right crowd say well you know i think my name will be isolated from the group that's okay but make sure it's in the right group make sure it's not in verse 16 no one came to my support make sure it's in verses 19 to 21 with linus and claudia and putin's in the rest and finally in prospect of leaving a legacy determined that with god's help you will seize the day because we never know when we've just made our final deposit into the legacy that we're leaving behind can i tell you this one final story because it's all again in this confluence of these past few days 23 years ago i spoke at a conference for missionary candidates and missionaries with the overseas missionary fellowship it took place in pitt lockery in scotland and the folks who were there were a fairly high level group of individuals in the sense that they were well educated many of them were medics and quite a number of them were theological students and they asked me to speak on mission in the last days and i in my full heartiness and youthfulness determined that what i would do is i would expound second peter which has three chapters and there were three talks so i figured i'll do one chapter at a time the first of which was to begin around 9 30 on the friday evening after everyone had worked or studied for a full day dragged themselves to put lockery had a meal and then sat down in rose and waited for this fellow to stand up behind the box i was totally overawed by the prospect of it i was in my room in the center by myself and i felt very much then the way i used to feel before physics and chemistry exams along the lines of god if i was going to die young this would be a very good time to to exercise your providential over ruling because if i go into this thing the lord only knows what's going to happen to me so that's exactly how i was feeling i don't say that for a fact that is truly how i was feeling but i had to go there was no option the the the the the bell tolled and uh and the tail had to be told and so i stood up and i started at the beginning of 2 peter 1 and i wasn't into it before three or four minutes i couldn't get any saliva in my mouth i didn't know what i was on about i kept saying like i'm sure you know more about this than i do and what peter is trying to say is this and we'll find it on oh oh and there was a man sitting on the front row with greying temples navy blazer gray flannels black shoes you know the kind of standard package and he just never took his eyes off me just looked at me the whole time and when i dribbled to a conclusion i said a brief prayer and then i shot off and as i showed off he shot beside me i'd never seen him before in my life and as i went away i was conscious of an arm around my waist this man put an arm around my waist and he started to walk with me and he didn't let me go my own direction he spun me around and he took me behind the book stall and he trapped me in the corner of a cabinet that opened up and made into a book stall and i didn't know what he was going to do i don't know i had no clue what was about to happen to me but i didn't think it was going to be very good and i can go into all of it now for our time has gone but essentially this is what he said to me he said i felt that i have to i had to do what i am about to do i don't make a habit of doing this he said you should know that and he said there was one thing you said in your sermon tonight that really lifted my spirits and was a great encouragement to me when you mention the idea of making an abundant entrance into heaven he said that was good he said but that was about all that was good let me tell you this he said peter wasn't trying to say anything he was saying it you're trying to say it and don't be so deferential to the people out there who cares if they know more than you they probably do but you don't have to say that and you don't have to defer to these folks he says don't you understand that whether you have sirloin steak or filet mignon or a pound of mince and minces scottish or english for chopped hamburger you know and and the fatty kind you know not that kind of beautiful stuff he says whether you've got a pound of mince or a sirloin steak get up and deliver it because you're not there by accident you are there by god's appointment so don't let me ever hear you doing this again young man and by the way he said i believe that one day you will speak before thousands and i believe that god has asked me to say what i have now said to you now let us pray and we prayed and i went back to my room and i wept i wept for the hash that i made of the talk i wept for the fact that this man said what he said to me and my pride was wounded i went more for the fact that he must care about me somehow although he didn't know me from all on the ground otherwise he would never have done this and be so faithful because the wounds of a friend are faithful and there's hardly a time when i move into a new context and many times on a sunday when i can see davey patterson's face saying go on son you're not up there by accident you're up there by appointment mincer steak mincer steak what is it thursday morning keswick convention thousands of people sitting out there from a human perspective hanging on your every word trying your best to get through the material feeling again all kinds of feelings not most of which stir your ego coming to the end of it and saying to myself now i'm going to go through that door and before they open their eyes i'll be gone because i don't ever want to see anybody after this incidentally for those of you who think that i finished my sermon so i'm going out going that doesn't happen i don't remember one in a thousand that i feel like that i'm more i feel like i merge with the pavement so i said i'm going to make a dive out of that door grab the umbrella grab the galoshes which i needed swans were swimming through people's tents and i'm gonna i'm gonna make a beeline for my car and i came through the door down the thing down the two steps and into the arms of a gray-haired man with a weather beaten face wearing on our royal blue cagoule shorts and tennis shoes and this big bear hug grabbed me and as he pulled me to himself i heard the voice say was it steak or was it mince and i and i said as i looked over his shoulder i said davey i don't know and he's still not looking at me his head's over here he says son i told you it doesn't matter until the day i die i will revere his legacy you have people like that we all do you are leaving a legacy make sure it's helpful not harmful let us bow in a moment of prayer god out of all of the abundance of these words we pray that we might hear your voice that your word might fill us that your love might constrain us forgive us for the times when by our attitudes and our actions we've painted real ugly stuff on the canvas of our lives and thank you that you the master artist are able to take the brush in your hand and not only do touch-up that is superficial but transform the portrait oh god we need this us then so to live that the legacy may linger that the fragrance may be sweet that our lives whether short or long will count for you rather than against you and that our children and our children's children might arise and call you blessed for jesus sake we ask it 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: 2,833

Rating: 4.9365077 out of 5

Keywords: Death, Friendship, Giving, Loving Others, Meekness, Obedience, Priorities

Id: zC0vh_1YcZI

Length: 53min 49sec (3229 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021