Those Who Have Hope (Part 2 of 2)

Bob Lepine: When Christians live their lives in a way that is pleasing to God, people should notice. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg examines the apostle Paul's teaching to find out how we can point others to Jesus even by the way we grieve and prepare for death. Let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
Alistair Begg: To become a Christian is a mind-altering experience. Anyone who says it isn't doesn't understand what it means to be a Christian. We are not to be afraid of that phrase, although it has negative connotations in certain places. To become a Christian is to change our mind about everything. Now for those of us who are brought up in Christian homes and wonder about this and say, "Well, you know, I haven't been living long enough to be like a Hell's Angel and everything and go worship in a shrines. What's supposed to happen to me?" Let me tell you what's happened to you. If God in His grace has reached out to you in your tender life, understand this: you have been saved from a lot of stuff, and it will become increasingly apparent to you the older you get. Some are saved out of a lot of stuff. And if you talk with them, they surely would love to have been saved from it rather than out of it. But whether you were saved from it in prospect or out of it in reality, it is a radical change. I want to say to you that the absence of such teaching has not only led people to spurious professions of faith in Jesus Christ, but confuses the watching world about what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. If what we present to people is this: "Listen, all that it means to become a Christian is you just do this belief thing. It's a kind of esoteric thing. You trust Jesus." Well, what does that mean? "Well, I don't really know what it means, but you just do that. And then you can do what you like." There are enough of a lot of people who apparently plugged in and they are going with the flow and they don't know who in the world they are or what they are, and nobody knows what to do with them. The difference and the difficulty is that someone never told them, "Listen, new life, new lifestyle." Before you got married, ladies, you had a certain name. When you got married, you got another name. You got a change of name and a change of identity. Your husband loves you exclusively—or should—and demands all of your affections. You share a little with the children and your parents, but by and large, all of your affections, all of your time, all of your devotion are his. And rightly so. It's the explosive power of a new affection. The old guys, the old cronies, the old haunts, the old places are gone. Why? Because I have a relationship with this individual. It would be a strange husband who said, "Now look, I want you to sign here and I want you to become my wife, but I want you also to know you can do what you like, anytime you like, with anyone you want, anywhere you want." You would look at the guy and say, "I don't think that's a marriage. I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's a marriage." And you would be right. It's not a marriage. Let me tell you young people, you commit your life to Jesus Christ, you just signed up for a holy life. You just signed up for a different life. You signed up for a radical change. There must be a change in your behavior. There must be a change that issues from the way you think. Previously you thought about things in a certain way, and now you think differently. The reason you think differently is because the Spirit of God has come to live within your life. Like the people there in Thessalonica, they turned from the lifeless idols to the worship of the living God and their friends said they no longer worship at those shrines. It's got something to do with Jesus, though I haven't the time to ask them. You may say, "Well, that's Thessalonica 2,000 years ago, this is Cleveland." Let me tell you something, Cleveland is full of idols. Contemporary Western culture is full of idols. People have come out of a week of worshipping idols: worshipping money, worshipping power, worshipping fame, work, sports, entertainment, food, alcohol, drugs, sex. There are at least half a dozen magazines dedicated to every idol that is on offer. Just go in Borders Bookstore and drown yourself under the magazine racks. If you look at them, they are the preoccupations of our culture. They are idols. If Jesus Christ cannot break the bondage of those idols, then He is less than the person He claimed to be. In the case of these Thessalonians, He broke the bondage for them. They were once always there, and now they're over here. People said, "Why is that?" and they were unashamed. A radical shift had taken place on account of their discovery of the gospel under the grace of God. Biblical standards of behavior are absolutely vital. So it is that to suggest that Christianity is a private internal experience which matters a little bit to us and may be interesting to others is to misunderstand the New Testament. These Thessalonians were committed to a life that is pleasing God, and that's why in chapter 4, Paul says we instructed you how to live in order to please God. You see, they're no longer like the rest. Let's finally get to the verses that we're supposed to be studying, verse 13. It says, "Brothers, we don't want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men." Just look at that little phrase, "like the rest of men." That is an obvious distinction, right? It's the distinction between the rest of men and them. Who are the rest of men? And were they once like the rest of men? Absolutely. That's the point. They were once like the rest of men. The rest of men were without hope and without God in the world. That's what Paul says in Ephesians. He says you were formerly without hope and without God. Phillips paraphrases it in this way: "You were without Christ, you were utter strangers to God's community, you had nothing to look forward to, and no God to whom you could turn." That's a picture of the rest of men. The rest of men this morning in contemporary culture have got nothing to look forward to and no God to turn to. That's why hopelessness so pervades our generation. After all the anticipation and all the excitement of the sixties—that you got to admit it's getting better—it didn't get better. We went into the seventies trying to fix what we broke in the sixties. We went in the eighties to try and fix the seventies, and now the children of the nineties have grown up with no basis of belief whatsoever and they're checking out faster than we can ever stop them. Why? Because they have no God to whom they might turn and they have nothing to look forward to. Do you realize that's the average teenage kid in America? No God to whom they may turn and nothing to look forward to. They've got to fill their life with something. That's why at the end of the week on Friday, the radio stations and all the DJs are always hyping it up. "Well, it's the weekend. Oh, we're looking forward to the weekend." You get them on Monday morning, tomorrow morning, tune in at 5:30. "Oh, well, I've just had my 15th cup of coffee trying to get started. What a drag, man. Monday." "Don't worry, don't worry, it's already 6:30, we've already been through an hour of it. We'll get it hyped up." Then they find little things to help you. You're driving in your car, there's nowhere to go, nothing to look forward to. And then it says, "Channel 43 plays favorites." "Is it? Oh yeah, Channel 43 favorites. Hogan's Heroes tonight at 9:00." "I know nothing!" "Yeah, yeah, I like Hogan's Heroes. That gives me something to look forward to. Yeah, okay." So you make your calls—cold calls, hot calls, medium calls—and you say, "You know what, I'll get some peanuts and I'll sit down, I'll watch that stupid dumb program, and then I'll check out and then I'll have got rid of Monday. Then I'll give Tuesday a shot." You see the great sense of utter emptiness and alienation? I don't care what level you're living at. I don't care whether you fly executive jets. I don't care whether you make a million and a half every month. The more I live and move and breathe in this wonderful country, it doesn't matter how many zeros are at the end of these guys' paychecks. They are without anything to look forward to and no God to whom they can turn. It is the responsibility of the Christians so to behave our belief that they will be caused to say, "Excuse me, could you come into my office and close the door?" Not so that they might fire you, but so that they might say, "I noticed there's something different about you." I had a wonderful testimony just this week from one of the streets in Seoul, and I asked a young man, "And how did you come to faith in Jesus Christ?" He said, "We noticed that the couple across the road had gone weird on us." I said, "What do you mean, gone weird on you?" He said, "Well, we used to do a lot of things as a family, we'd go over and do things in the backyard and everything else. The father said they'd run dirty jokes that could just knock your socks off. Suddenly this couple stopped laughing at the jokes. That was the first sign we had." Why did they stop laughing at the jokes? Because a change of belief brings a change in behavior. He said, "Eventually they remained so nice, such wonderful neighbors, that when we were having one of these backyard events, I asked one of the kids, 'What's the deal?' And the boy told me that he had trusted in Jesus Christ as his Savior. I said to him, 'Why don't you tell me more about that?' He told me more about that and I trusted in Christ. My brother asked me and I told my brother. My mother did the same thing and my father came last. The whole family today has had a profound, personal, permanent change as a result of the inroads of discovering a radical new belief." In the context of the world in which Paul was writing, the hopelessness was revealed in the most obvious of ways. The tombstones revealed emptiness. But down in the catacombs, in the dungeons where the Christians were being kept for hors d'oeuvres for the lions, the story was different. Up on the high street, you had all these tombstones that basically said we're without God and without hope in the world. Then you went down into the catacombs where the Christians had been imprisoned ready for their imminent death, and you found scrawled on the walls, "Jesus is coming back. Jesus is alive. We're looking forward to seeing Jesus." Our world today with all of its technological progress is unable to address the real software issues because the real software issue is the issue of the human heart, and there's not a computer program that can answer the cries of the human heart. America might be online with itself, but it's out of line with God. To those of us who've been put online with Jesus Christ has been given the responsibility of going to those who are out of line with God and telling them about this same Jesus, and that He's definitely coming back. Do you believe He's coming back? Lord Shaftesbury, one of the prime social movers in Great Britain in an earlier generation, said, "I do not think that in the last 40 years I have lived one conscious hour that was not influenced by the thought of the return of Jesus Christ." He was one of the key politicians of the day. "I haven't lived one conscious hour," he says, "without the thought of the return of Jesus." It absolutely fired him. Soon and very soon we're going to see the King. Soon the roll will be called up yonder. They'll call your name tomorrow in various contexts. Some of you go back to school, they'll get you in a room, they'll take one of those computer printouts, they're going to read the list, they're going to call your name and see if you answer. There's a day coming when God is going to read the list. He's going to call the names. If your name's there, fine. If not, you got a problem. I like to know the end of the story, don't you? I like to back my car into parking spaces. I don't like these signs that say "nose in only." I know what it's about; seemingly it's to speed up the progress of getting you in and consequently to slow up the process of getting you out. So as long as no one's looking, I always back in because I'm thinking about leaving when I'm arriving. Let me tell you something, if you haven't started thinking about leaving, about checking out of life, you're not in any position to face Monday. You got to get your exit planned so that you can enjoy your time at the game. Have you got your exit planned? You got to know what the downside risk is in going into an investment, don't you? What's the worst possible scenario here? How much do I lose on this deal? What if it goes belly up? What happens to me? Let's find out what the eventuality is before we all chip in. You guys do that all the time. Have you done that with life? Do you know what the downside risk is of continuing to disbelieve in Jesus Christ? The Bible says it's eternity in hell. That's quite a downside risk. And yet some remain stubborn in our unbelief, unprepared to face the challenge. All of that is by way of introduction to the sermon which will follow next Sunday. Let me make some concluding statements to the longest introduction for a while. People are asking, "Where did I come from? Where am I heading? What will happen when I die? And how is this all going to end?" They are. They may not be asking it just in that way, but they drive in their cars and every so often say to themselves, when the sky comes really dark and it's 3:00 in the afternoon and you get one of these dreadful thunderstorms, some bright spark's bound to say, "I think it's the end of the world." Everybody laughs, a kind of nervous laugh, hoping of course that it isn't, and wondering how it will be. Some have decided that history is circular, it's not linear, that like the Hindus, we're just coming around and around and around. If history is linear and has a point of beginning and a point of conclusion to which we're moving, as the Bible says it does, then we can look back to the beginning and we can look forward to the conclusion. Here it says that Jesus who died, who was buried, who was raised to life, is coming again. For some of you I recognize that in speaking to your friends, until you deal with the issues of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, you're not going to be able to deal with His return. That is why we labored so hard in 1 Corinthians 15 to provide material on the resurrection of Jesus Christ because it is such a pivotal doctrine. Paul says, "Because we believe that Jesus died and rose again," and so we believe He's coming again. Anybody's got every right to say to us, "Well, how do you know it's not just a pipe dream? How do you know it's not just something you dreamt up? After all, life is tough and then you die, and so the Christians just made it up, pie in the sky when you die. You need to have something to look forward to, you mentioned that earlier, and so you got this idea that Jesus is coming back again. Where do you take that up from?" That's a good question. What do you say to the person who says that? "Well, that's just my belief." The person says, "Guess what? It's just not my belief." Someone says, "Well, it's my belief over here." So here's the question: does belief make it so, or is truth the basis of belief? We were eating in a hamburger joint in Santa Barbara last week. The waitresses were an interesting group. Every so often they'd grab the ketchup bottles and use them as dummy microphones. They sang to the music that was playing in the background. In the course of engaging them in conversation, we asked one of the girls where do you study, presuming she studied. We felt sorry for her, we hoped she wasn't simply spending the rest of her life grabbing ketchup bottles and singing. She said that she was a student at the University of California in Santa Barbara and I said, "What are you studying?" She said, "I'm studying philosophy." I said, "And what do you want to be?" She said, "Actually, I want to be a professor of philosophy." A professor of philosophy that pretends that ketchup bottles are microphones and sings in a hamburger joint. She said, "Yeah, I suppose anything for a buck." I said to her as she was coming back and forth, "Hey, by the way, Samantha, what do you think of the idea of objective absolute truth?" She said, "I think it's a crazy idea." She went back somewhere else. She came back again and I said, "Hey, Samantha, is there anyone on your faculty that would believe in objective absolute truth?" She thought for a while and said, "Well, you know, there's one guy who's really, really, really weird, way out. I think he might." She said, "But nobody does." I said to her, "We got a lot of discussions to have. We have some major discussions here." We started at first principles, the whole idea of conscience, the whole idea of an innate awareness of morality. Where does it come from? So that we might eventually get to the position where I ask, "Did you ever consider the thought that Jesus of Nazareth might be the person He claimed to be?" That's the starting point. "No, I never. Why would I ever? How would I ever go about considering that?" Well, the Gospel of John would be a help to you because John said these things were written that you might believe and that by believing you might have life in His name. We're going to have to talk about the fact that Jesus of Nazareth died, and He died for an express purpose. He died on the basis of sin. That means you and me, therefore we got a problem. And that He was risen from the dead, and that's a complete mind blower, and that'll take time. Here's the real piece de resistance: He's coming back again. Personally, visibly, bodily. It's going to be dramatic. It's going to be decisive. It's going to be like lightning across the sky. Can't you just see her picking up the ketchup bottle and saying, "Excuse me, there's a whole lot of shaking going on?" The fact of the matter is that the culture into which you and I are returning tomorrow morning—and understand this clearly—you can talk to them and they might listen, but nothing will make a greater impact than when your business buddies, your college roommates, your high school friends, and your bridge playing partners see that you have turned from idols to serve the living God. True belief issues in transformed behavior. New life, new lifestyle. Let's pause just in a moment of prayer. I could probably call that the sermon that might have been, and I recognize that it's not where we felt we would go, but it is where we've been. For those of us who profess to be changed but whose behavior is less than it might be, we know, Lord, that You are speaking to us concerning that. As we think of this afternoon and the opportunities of telling others, we pray that the thought of the soon return of Jesus Christ may produce within us a desire to live a holy life and a genuine desire to see our friends and our neighbors become committed followers of Jesus Christ. Lift our gaze to the time when Christ will come and take us home. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen.
Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. As we are learning, becoming a Christian will change the way we think about everything, including the world around us, all of creation. The book we are recommending today will encourage you to slow down, spend more time in nature, and form a deeper relationship with the Creator. The book is called *The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God*. This book reflects on the beauty and power that is displayed in nature and the cosmos, and how it reveals the creativity, the intelligence, the awesomeness of the Creator. The author uses the days of creation as described in Genesis as a framework to invite you to discover, interpret, and respond to the voice of God in all His many varied wonders. Reading this opens your senses to your surroundings and makes you more aware of how God speaks to you through His creation, even in the desolate places. You could read this book cover to cover or enjoy it as a daily devotional. Here's what Alistair said about the book: "This is unlike any book I've ever read. The work of poetic theology is as beautiful as it is faithful. It has impacted me to the extent that even walking in the park is a new experience, one of awe and wonder." Request your copy of *The Language of Rivers and Stars* when you donate to Truth for Life today. You can give securely online at truthforlife.org/donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884. By the way, if you request the book *The Language of Rivers and Stars* with your donation and you'd like to purchase additional copies to give to others as a gift, they're available for purchase at our cost of just $5 while supplies last. You'll find them in our online store at truthforlife.org/store. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening this week. Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church. Next week, we'll consider the return of Christ. How will we know when it's really Him and not just a charlatan? Study along with us as we explore the clear answers given in Scripture. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the learning is for living.