Truth For Life

Bob Lapine: Does your life, the way you interact with others everyday, or the way you deal with disappointment or suffering, does that make the Gospel appealing to others?

Alistair Begg: Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg explains how we can be attractively righteous, like Christ, instead of being superficial or condescending like the Pharisees. Let's turn in our Bibles to Mark chapter 14. We're beginning with verse 32.

Alistair Begg: For those of you who may still not be believers in Christianity, who may not have come to trust in Jesus, I was greatly helped some time ago when I read John Stott's little sentence. And this is what he said.

"I could never believe in God were it not for the cross. I could never believe in a God who was removed from the pain and overwhelming distress of human suffering."

For what we have in this, in this description of the suffering servant, is not a reluctant Jesus. For he said, "Nobody takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to give it again." It is not that Jesus is reluctantly going to the will of God the Father, for he goes purposefully and obediently and submissively, the way the Christian ought to go.

But in his humanity, he inevitably recoils from it. Because you see, without substitution, the cross of Christ is unintelligible. And I think that's why people disregard it. Because the way in which many of us talk about it is completely unintelligible. Because if all we say concerning the cross is concerning something about the manifold love of God, and in order to show us how much he loved us, this is what he did to Jesus, the person says, "Well, there must be a missing piece in this puzzle, is there not?"

Well, of course, there is. It was the love of God. Let's put it this way: We were so messed up that Jesus had to die for us. And we were so unbelievably loved in Jesus that he was pleased to die for us.

But as he comes to the point of departure, the Gospel writers tell us that he was distressed and he was troubled and he explained he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. The atonement, the death of Jesus on the cross for sinners is not a theory. It's not a mathematical equation. It's a flesh and blood reality. And there was nothing, there was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or to anesthetize his sensitivity.

Did you hear that? There was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or anesthetize his sensitivity. Have you ever pondered what was going on when they offered him a branch with a sponge on the end of it, and it was wine mingled with gall? It was an anesthetic potion. And it says in the scriptures, and they offered him wine mingled with gall, but he refused to drink it. He refused to drink it.

Why? In order that he might experience suffering in all of its unmitigated dimensions, in order that no one might be able to say, "Oh, but someone has suffered worse than this. He had anesthetic before that happened." No, he went to it completely without anesthetic help. And as a result of being entirely compos mentis, and perhaps in the immensity of his love, this was part of it. If he had taken that drug potion, how could he have looked down and said to his beloved disciple, "Look after my mother, will you?" Or how could he have been available to say to the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise." He refused the wine mingled with gall. He suffered at a level that no one has ever suffered. He endured everything for the sake of his own. What an amazing thing it is.

And what a stupidity it is that 21st century Western Christianity offers itself to the world as a panacea for all ills, as the best grades at university, as the most significant job, as the cutest girls, as the high school quarterback boys. We are the people who've got it all together, you see. Why not come and join us? And then these interested agnostics begin to read their Bibles and say, "How did you get here from here?"

What is this fellowship of suffering that the Apostle Paul was on? What was he talking about when he said, "I want to know Christ." We stop, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection." That will be enough for us. Finish the verse right there. There is no power of his resurrection except as it is experienced in the fellowship of his sufferings. It is only through his sufferings in Calvary that there is the reality of the resurrection. And the same, my friends, is true for you and me.

And whenever we attempt to deny that, is known by our own hearts as fraudulent, is condemned by the scriptures clearly, and every well thinking cynical agnostic friend that I have says, "You're full of absolute bunk." And you know what? If I were to suggest that that was the essence of Christianity, they would be absolutely right.

Now, let me just say parenthetically that some of you are staring at me, staring at me, because you're saying to yourselves, "This cannot be. This cannot possibly be." Some of you are stumbling over my words. And I know why it is, because you, like me, are very concerned to safeguard the divinity of Christ. Any notion of a weakened divinity is abhorrent to us because we know that it is contrary to the Bible, right?

And liberal theology throughout the ages has always been weak on the divinity of Jesus. Fundamentalism, conservatism, evangelicalism, has distanced itself from that danger. But I want to suggest to you, flirts with the opposite danger. Not now of a diminished divinity, but a diminished humanity.

So now we have a less than human Jesus, because we are so concerned to make sure that we have an absolutely divine Jesus. Now, we ought not to be surprised by that, because the early centuries fought through all these issues. And later in the fourth and fifth century, the church had to deal with a man called Apollinarius, and you can Google him. It's great being able to say that, and you can Google him. I don't know what Apollinarius would think about it, but anyway, if you Google him, you will find out that Apollinarius was a problem in the late fourth and fifth century because he was diminishing the humanity of Jesus.

And so the councils got together and affirmed, "Just as in Christ there was complete and perfect Godhead, so there was complete and perfect manhood. Nothing that was necessary to humanness was lacking in him."

Look for yourselves. I spent too long on the first, but you know my pattern now, don't you? Catch up for the rest of the time. Look, secondly, listen. Listen. "My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death," he said. And going a little further, he fell to the ground. He fell to the ground. All our pictures, all those Christian pictures, I think they ought all be taken out and thrown away, the most of them. Because we have all these pictures of Jesus, as it were, you know, before the cross, he's just, he's just so, you know, yes, oh, yes. No, no, no, no.

You can't have deeply distressed, you can't have troubled, you can't have overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, and then, no, you've got everything is, everything is everywhere.

And if you doubt that, listen to his words. "Abba, intimacy. Father, everything's possible for you." Sovereignty. "If you're willing," we're in Luke now, "inquiry, take this cup from me." You could say that is the intensity of his expression. You could actually say that is the integrity of his expression.

"I have to be honest, Father," he says. "Right now where I am, here, I wish that you would take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Now, at that point, Luke tells us that an angel was dispatched. Angels are fascinating, and we have no time to think about it. But I have this picture of like, if you play golf a lot and you play at nice golf courses, they always have good caddies for you. And and there's a place or there's a wall where the caddies lean, at least in St. Andrews at the old course, or there's a little box in which they stay out of the rain, a little shack, and and they're all there. And they wait until the caddy master calls them up. "Hey, Billy. I got a bag for you." And off they come. The Scottish ones, big red noses like this, because of what they spend their money on after they've finished. They glow in the dark. You can see them through the mist.

Anyway, and Billy comes out, and somehow or another in the angelic host, it has to be like that, you know, that like the chairman of the angelic band says, "Hey, hey. You're I need you to go somewhere for me."

"I know you went to Bethlehem. I'm sure you remember that. Well, if you remember that, I want you to go now down to Gethsemane."

And an angel came. An angel came to strengthen him. And we might have assumed that the angel would have fixed things. Here we go, angelic visitations. It's kind of a new age idea, isn't it? You know, big angel came, everything was nice after that. Uh-uh. Angel comes and then it says, "Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly."

So an angelic visitation never took care of the thing for him. And as he prays to his Father, he prays as an expression of his humility. He bows beneath the Father's will because he recognizes that Father knows best. And you will notice that it is not that he is somehow or another relying on prayer here.

Don't misunderstand me when I say this, but there is no power in prayer. All of the power is in God. He's not trying to employ the power of prayer in order to rectify a situation. He is bowing before his Father, and he is acknowledging as he speaks to him in prayer, "Father, you have power over all of heaven and all of earth. You you can you can do anything you choose."

"From eternity, we determined together with the Holy Spirit that this was the plan. You planned it, I would procure it. The Holy Spirit will come behind me and apply it." "Oh, Father."

Because you see, Jesus knows that he is about to enter the one experience in life for which he has no preparation. When the Father turns his face away, he has never lived absent the communion that he enjoys within the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, coming up, if you're like, in the the wonder of the wisdom with this great plan of redemption. And now we're at the point.

It is God who works in response to prayer. It is not prayer that works. And this incidentally and parenthetically is the answer to all the prayer stuff that you can read in Newsweek magazine and everything else. The Cleveland Clinic and MIT and Boston hospitals and UCLA and everywhere else, they're all very interested now. So let's get all in and talk about the healing powers of prayer.

You tell them, "No, there is no healing power in prayer. The only person who can heal is God Almighty." "Well, no, we don't want that. That's not the program we're looking for." "Yeah, but the only person who can heal is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We'd love to come and tell the whole Cleveland Clinic about how they can come to know the living God through Jesus." "No, get out of here. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the power of prayer." "There is no power in prayer."

Look, listen, learn. I will only make one point of application. And that is not in terms of prayer itself, but in terms of Christ's humanity and his passion. The word, remember, we're told, became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus comes into humanity. He is not detached. He was in touch with the religious establishment. In fact, he was opposed by the religious establishment. When he added Matthew to his disciple band, and they had that big party at the house of Levi, nobody was more annoyed about it than the religious folks of his day. Apparently, he's gone to eat with sinners and to and to attend a party with them.

And Jesus came out and said, "Yeah, that's exactly right. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Jesus in his humanity lived among sin. He lived where he could hear swearing, where he heard blasphemy, where he observed and confronted disease and mortality and sadness and squalor. That's where Christ lived. That's the nature of the incarnation. He did not come into our time-space capsule and live at the top of a high hill in a large palace behind gates, inured from the experiences of the common person. This is not the Buddha. This is not somebody who is in a rarified environment. This is someone who is down now. He says, "Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

And in the midst of all of that, he finds himself, let me just say to you, I am so challenged by this. The challenge is obvious. How can we effectively impact a world we're not in?

How many non-Christian friends do you have? How many non-Christian friends have you cultivated having? And when you go with them, I hope that we don't just give them a bunch of sanctimonious cliché-ridden stuff.

"Nice" is good. Do you understand that? That there is something attractive about the Gospel? That in Greek there is agathos, which is intrinsically good, like a good apple. And there is kalos, which is agathos plus attractively good, intrinsically and attractively good. It is not enough for us to be intrinsically righteous. We are supposed to be attractively righteous.

And our attraction does not lie in our willingness to play the game of those who don't agree with us, to join in their jokes, to affirm their nonsense, but it's just to be like Jesus.

Three imperatives, and we're done. Be real. Be real. Be real. Everybody's asking about everybody the same question, "Is this guy a phony?" "Is this for real?" And every time you stand up and preach, I guarantee you they will ask what I've said, "I don't know about him, look at him there. Wore the same jacket every day, filthy character. I don't know what's wrong with the guy."

No, I wear this jacket every day because it's my favorite jacket, and my son bought it for me for my birthday, and I feel close to him when I wear his jacket. Be real. Be done. Be done with what? With superficial triumphalism. It's not true to human experience. It's not true to the Bible, and it only attracts silly people. And it does not answer to the cries of the sick and the sad.

Be real, be done, and be sure that Christ stands beside us when we are emotionally overwhelmed. You see, this little section in Gethsemane gives place to the Christian experience of distress, of being overwhelmed. And some of us, with a significant dose of the Pharisee in us, who've never really been distressed or overwhelmed. We have nothing to say to our Christian friends, brothers and sisters, when they're distressed and overwhelmed. We say, "Would you stop being distressed and overwhelmed? You're annoying me."

Or worse still, you know, if you were really a Christian, if you really had faith in the God, the risen Jesus, I don't see you'd be distressed at all. I don't understand why you would be overwhelmed. What do you mean you're overwhelmed? You want to curl up in a ball and pull the blankets over your head and stay there till a week from next Friday?

Well, this is fantastic, isn't it? Because now I've found somebody who understands. Now I'm introduced to the ultimate counselor. Now I'm introduced to the one who was overwhelmed to the point of overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. So in my distress, and in my fearfulness, and in my quiet desperation, Jesus knows all about my struggles, socially, emotionally, physically.

I can never go beyond his pain. My darkness, no matter how deep, is never more intense than his. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our sufferings.

Alistair Begg: No, look, listen, learn.

Bob Lapine: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair will be back in just a moment to close today's program. As we're learning, we don't have a distant, disconnected God. We have a God who knows us intimately, who loves us sacrificially, and who can relate to each of us in our suffering. Our current series is titled To Know Christ, and if you're benefiting from Alistair's teaching and would like to go deeper into what the gospels have to say about the identity and work of Jesus, you can now download the companion study guide for free on our website. This study guide includes nine lessons that accompany each of the messages in this series. You will learn to love others like Jesus did, all to the glory of God.

Download the free To Know Christ study guide when you visit our website. Go to TruthForLife.org/KnowChrist. And feel free to pass the link along to family or friends, including your Bible study group, so that you can get to know Christ better together. Again, the link is TruthForLife.org/KnowChrist. If you'd prefer a hard copy of the study guide, they are available for purchase at our cost of just $3.

And while you're on our website, check out the 14-day devotional we're currently recommending. It's called Christ Our All, Gaze at Him. It's an excellent supplement to our current series, and it's yours for a donation to Truth For Life. Just go to TruthForLife.org/Donate.

Now, here's Alistair to close today's program with prayer.

Alistair Begg: Father, write your word in our hearts so that it is helpful and true. May it be stored up for the evil day if it hasn't as yet come upon us. That which is unhelpful or untrue, which is distinctly possible from my lips, may it be banished from our recollection.

Grant that none of us may walk away without settling the issue of what it means to be in Christ. And may none of us evade the challenge nor miss the immense privilege of becoming increasingly like Christ in his humility, in his compassion, in his zeal for the souls of others, and yes, even in his experience of suffering.

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest and remain with all who believe, now and until Jesus comes or calls us to himself, and then forevermore. Amen.

Bob Lapine: I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. What possible hope do we as sinners have before a pure and holy God? Tomorrow we'll explore that question together. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.