Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: At the cross, Jesus firmly established his victory over Satan, sin, and death. So why are these evil enemies still active? And where can we find rest when world events or personal trials are keeping us awake at night? Alistair Begg answers those questions today on Truth For Life as he teaches from John chapter 12.

Alistair Begg: The earth is not in its present form going to remain as is because the King is going to transform it. So our concern for it as Christians is a legitimate concern, just as our concern for animals is a legitimate concern. But interestingly, in America, they're now advancing Earth Day. Pretty soon you won't be able to do anything or say anything about Easter Day, but you can do just whatever you please concerning Earth Day.

It is routine on the weather forecast for the person's face to open up with the line, "Good evening, and let's see what Mother Nature has for us this evening." That is a routine introduction in America. It is the very threshold of an almost all-consuming pantheism. Against that notion, the Scriptures exalt Jesus Christ as Lord and King, sovereign over all of the cosmos.

Abraham Kuyper, who was the Prime Minister of Holland in a better day, says, "There is not one inch of the entire universe concerning which Jesus Christ does not say, 'This is mine. This belongs to me. I made this. I am the king over this.'"

Now, you should know that I know very little about science. I know very little about a lot of things, but I know a tremendous amount of very little about science. I'm the fellow who when they gave out the report cards, it said things on it like, "Alistair has decided that chemistry is not for him, and he is very firm in his decision." So I have to be very careful on this and to jump into the realm of astrophysics is dangerous. But here I go.

I know that we have a solar system. We can agree on that. I know that we're in a galaxy, and the galaxy is called the Milky Way. I also know from reading books there are apparently 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. I've also discovered that the physicists estimate that there are 100 billion galaxies.

That can keep me awake a long time just trying to multiply, apart from anything else. 200 billion stars in our galaxy and 100 billion galaxies. Why do I mention this? To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name because of his great power and mighty strength. Not one of them is missing.

What do scientists call it? Nuclear glue? Their attempt to explain the inexplicable. Why our solar system doesn't just fracture and blow apart? Why anything holds together at all? We turn to Colossians chapter one and verse 17, and we read that the Creator of the world holds everything together.

That the reason for interplanetary connections is because Christ is King of the cosmos. And as a result of that, without him nothing has been made that has been made. And in him was life, and that life was the light of men. It takes us into the realm of the imponderable, doesn't it? And into the realm of the mysterious. Certainly into the realm of faith. But don't let anybody tell you that scientists are the ones who deal in terms of that which is simply rational and deductive. They also deal in the realm of faith as well.

Each of us starts with presuppositions. The presupposition of the Christian begins in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God." The presupposition of the scientist who is secular and atheistic begins in the beginning... The kingship of Jesus in relationship to salvation, the kingship of Jesus in relationship to the cosmos, the kingship of Jesus in relationship to the future.

It's great that the future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute, isn't it? It's unalterable. I noticed along the esplanade there, if you go far enough right to the end and stop and look at some of those lovely houses, there are some with thatched roofs. One of them has the statement carved into the front of it: "Time and tide wait for no man." And again, the Christian has a view of time.

The Christian's view of time is that God created time. He is the creator of time. He is the controller of time. All the days of my life were written in his book before one of them came to be. Therefore, I can put my head on the pillow at night and rest content that since he is a sovereign God and cares for his children with immense care, I may rest in his sovereign purposes.

And whatever the future brings, I don't need to be unduly alarmed. I don't need to be going around wringing my hands all the time and talking about the good old days. I just need to remind myself that Jesus Christ is King. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. For each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him.

Then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. If you're a Christian, this is Christian doctrine. If you're a Christian, the kingship of Jesus has this to say concerning the future.

It's fantastic. It's really encouraging. And Christ's future reign throughout all of eternity is the perspective from which all of present history needs to be viewed. And it is that which then allows us to develop a view of the world which is distinct from our friends' and our neighbors' secular view of the world.

We understand the concerns of ecology because God has given to us this earth to care for and to tend and not to abuse and not to destroy. And therefore we pay attention to those things. We understand, however, that he's planning another version, which is going to be even better.

And so our view of the world, at least this is the way I remember it so I can talk to people at the bus stop, my view of the world that I get from the Bible in four words is the good, the bad, the new, the perfect. Good, bad, new, perfect. If you keep that framework in your mind, you'll be able to talk to all kinds of people. They'll just sit down with you at the bus stop and they'll say, "Can you believe what a horrible mess we're in? Goodness gracious, I've never seen anything like this at all. It's as if everything is collapsing."

Now, where do you want to go from there? Whatever way you want to do it, you can say, "Yes, surprising, especially when you think about how it started." And someone will say, "Yeah, I can tell you how it started with those jolly politicians and stuff." No, no, that's not what I'm talking about. "Well, what are you talking about?" Well, I'm talking about when God made the whole thing. He made it really good. Everything was bang on. It was perfect. It was super. There was none of this junk then. "What? Like in Genesis?" someone says. Yeah. "You believe that?" Yeah. "Man, I didn't know anybody believed that anymore. You believe that?"

Parenthetically, isn't it fascinating when Paul takes on the intelligentsia in Athens? Do you remember where he started? "The God who made the world and everything in it does not dwell in temples made by hands." He starts with the doctrine of creation. It's fantastic.

And the person says, "Well, if he made it all good, why are we in the mess we're in?" I'm glad you asked. Because things are bad, aren't they? By hooky, they're bad. Yes, they're bad. Why? Because we've turned in upon ourselves. We're selfish folks. We're greedy folks. We're all greedy. We're all selfish.

"Well, is there any way out of this?" Glad you mentioned it. Jesus is king, and he'll come and reign in your life and make you absolutely brand new and give you a fresh start. "Did he give you one?" Yes. "Well, I've been your next-door neighbor for a few years, and I'm not sure it's working entirely." Well, that's because it's not all finished yet. We're in the new, but we're not in the perfect.

But the reign of Christ is unalterable and unassailable and unequivocal. The Bible tells us so. The Lord God omnipotent reigns. It doesn't always seem so, but it is so. Nothing is out of control, and nothing is going to get out of control.

I love that hymn we seldom sing it, and it comes to my mind now. "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended. And the darkness falls at thy behest. And so unto thee our morning hymns ascended. Your praise will sanctify our rest." And then it goes on through the story and comes to that great conclusion. "So be it, Lord. Your throne shall never, like Earth's proud empires, pass away. Your kingdom stands and grows forever, till all your creatures own your sway."

Loved ones, that is biblical faith. That is biblical Christianity. So if the kingship of Jesus impacts the nature of salvation, if the kingship of Jesus impacts the reality of the cosmos, if the kingship of Jesus impacts all the issues of the future, surely the kingship of Jesus has something to say to our tiny lives before we go to bed on a night like this.

And with this, I just want to finish, because it is an opportunity for us to realize again that God is sovereignly in charge of what's going on. We live underneath the authority of the lordship of Jesus. That when Paul says in Philippians 2 that one day at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that is not an expression of devotion. That is a statement of fact.

The word that is used there is the word which in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is used about 6,000 times to translate the divine name, Yahweh. And when they translated it into Greek, they had to decide how they were going to translate it, and they translated it using this word.

And Paul, as a converted monotheistic Jew, knew exactly what he was saying when he said it. One day at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus Christ is Lord and King over all the earth. Buddha will bow. Muhammad will bow. Krishna will bow. Lenin will bow. All will bow.

Christ will bow before the Father and kneel before him and say, "Father, here the children that you have given me. I asked you to give me the desire of the nations. I asked you to give me the nations as my inheritance, Father, and here I am, and I bow before you and they with me."

Now, if you believe that, you see, it is transformative. You cannot simply be brought down by all the nonsense and the skulduggery of our day. You cannot simply be dragged down into the mire of all of this. You must lift your eyes and look up. Jesus as King is a wonderful King. Not a pompous king. Not the kings of the Gentiles. Remember he says to his disciples, because you remember after he'd done his miracles they came and they wanted to make him a king, and he slipped off into the darkness. You read that and you said, "Well, I thought he was supposed to be the king. So why is he not becoming the king?" Timing, folks, timing.

And also because he knew that what they anticipated and what he'd come to do was vastly different. The kings of the Gentiles, he said, lord it over the people, but I am among you as one who serves. A king who serves. A king who stoops. A king who dies. An approachable king. So I can come to him with all my fears, all my hurts, all my losses, and all my failures. Because there's not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one. Not one.

By the time I get to the end of my sermons, I'm just devolving into old choruses from Glasgow. And I'll give you two old choruses from Glasgow and then a quote from a hymn. We were taught to sing a song. The poetry is poor, but it's well-intended. Did you ever sing this? "Come leave your house in Grumble Street and move to Sunshine Square, for that's the place where Jesus lives, and all is happy there."

And you know sometimes I think we've got to really look at one another and say, "Hey, hey, come on. Would you like to move house, honey?" That's my wife talking to me. On one occasion, Luther came down for his breakfast and his wife was dressed in mourning. She's dressed head to toe in black. He sat down at the far end of the table and he looked at her and he said, "Who died?"

His wife said, "I believe God died." "Come now," said Luther, "God cannot die." Said his wife, "Then why have you been acting as you have been acting for the last two or three weeks? Come on now, Luther, leave your house in Grumble Street."

And the other one was, "Cheer up, you saints of God. There's actually nothing to worry about. Nothing really to make you feel afraid. Nothing to make you doubt. Remember Jesus never fails, so why not trust him and shout? You'll be sorry you worried at all tomorrow morning."

And when Eric Liddell left for China, he was it in terms of a little boy's dream. When Liddell died, all the boys in Scotland got the day off school. When Liddell left from the Waverly Station, the crowd that gathered was not made up simply of the folks from his church or interested members of his extended family, but many of the people that gathered in that Waverly Station platform area were just folks off the street. Folks who knew him as an Olympic gold medalist, who knew him as a rugby player for Scotland, who knew him as a sterling athlete.

And history records that when he got into his compartment and put his cases up on the rack, he got back out of the compartment—remember those old days with the sliding door into the compartment and then the corridor that went along when trains were trains and travel was fun? And if you put your head out the window, you got stour in your eyes.

And remember those big leather belts that held the windows with the brass bits where you let the window down and your mother told you, "Keep your fingers out of there" and because if you let it go, it just walloped right down? And he let the window down and the crowd hushed to see what he would say. And he thanked people for coming, and he told them where he was going. And then, quite unexpectedly, he shouted out apparently at the top of his voice, "Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ!"

And then extemporaneously, he led them in the singing of the hymn: "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run. His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moon shall wax and wane no more." Liddell went to China with that message. Liddell died in China declaring that message.

And we stand on the shoulders in this great nation. On the shoulders of men who died under the kingship of Christ. Don't be afraid, Master Ridley. Today we shall light a candle such as will never be extinguished. Nobody will ever say that unless they are absolutely convinced that they have been called into the service of one whose kingdom will never end. One day, loved ones, the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

Bob Lepine: We are learning about our divine and yet approachable King on Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. He'll return to close the program in just a minute. In today's message, Alistair explained the storyline of the Bible in four simple words: good, bad, new, and perfect. God made the world good, sin made it bad, in Jesus it's made new, and one day it'll be made perfect. This teaching has been so popular that we recently made it into a tract to help you tell others about Jesus and his gift of salvation. It's titled "Ever Wonder Why Your World Feels Broken?"

This little tract explains God's redemption plan in a simple, personal way, and it closes with an invitation to read John's gospel and listen to a message from Alistair. It's perfect for giving away to others as you go about your day. You could include an invitation to your church's worship service. You can buy five tracts for a dollar or a pack of 25 for just five dollars. You'll find them online at truthforlife.org/tract. Again, the title is "Ever Wonder Why Your World Feels Broken?"

By the way, if you are in pastoral ministry or church leadership, you still have time to join Alistair at Basics 2026. He'll be hosting the conference in Valencia, California, this fall from September 29th to the 30th. Basics is an opportunity for pastors to enjoy some time of fellowship as they learn together from the Bible and encourage one another to do the basics of ministry well. Alistair will be joined by guest speaker Hershael York, who is dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more information or to register, visit basicsconference.org. Now, here's Alistair to close with prayer.

Alistair Begg: Father, we thank you that your word is such a clarifying book. It recalibrates us because we listen to the news, we read the papers, we read history, we think, we look at the future, we realize where we were, where we are, and we're almost tempted sometimes to believe as if the whole thing is spinning hopelessly out of control.

And that's why we need to be Bible students. That's why we need to be those who are not only reading our Bibles but putting them into action and practice. And so I pray that out of myriad words now, that just this central, undeniable reality of the kingly reign of Christ may help us as we pray for our loved ones, as we pray for our politicians and for our nation, as we pray for the work of mission throughout the world, and as we pray for our own tiny lives, aware of our own finitude, aware of the fact that we're frail as the flowers of summer. The wind blows, we're gone, and its place will remember us no more. But one day we will see you face to face. And so help us then to get ready as best we can, for we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Bob Lepine: I'm Bob Lepine. Tomorrow we'll consider Jesus, the lamb on the throne, and we'll find out what this tells us about him and why it's significant for us as believers today. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.