Discipleship in 3D — Part One
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Discipleship in 3D — Part One

 (ID: 3034)

The Christianity Paul described is rigorous and demanding, calling for people to face suffering and opposition while actively pursuing Christ. As Alistair Begg explains, in 2 Timothy 2, Paul used three metaphors to illustrate this reality, depicting individuals with absolute commitment to a goal. As Christians, we must exhibit the devotion of the good soldier, the discipline of the athlete, and the diligence of the farmer. Without commitment, there will be no victory in battle, no medal at the race’s end, and no harvest in the field.

Series Containing This Sermon

A Study in 2 Timothy, Volume 2

A Portrait of the Christian Soldier 2 Timothy 2:3–26 Series ID: 15503


Sermon Transcript: Print

Two Timothy 1:15:

“You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me earnestly and found me—may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day!—and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus.

“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

Amen.

And before we pray and look at that passage of Scripture, I think from time to time it’s good to remind oneself of just exactly what our aim is in teaching the Bible. I was with somebody in the last couple of days, and as I was driving the car, a fellow in the backseat said to me, he said, “What is the purpose of attending church on Sunday mornings?” And he asked it in such a way as to suggest that he had either never believed there was any purpose in it, or he had lost confidence in the doing of it and the gathering and so on. And I’m not here to give you my extended answer to him, but I tried as best I could, and at the same time to point out to him what I need constantly to point out to myself and to my colleagues who have the privilege of opening up the Scriptures: that when we teach the Bible, our primary aim is not to achieve an increased biblical understanding.

You say, “Well, that doesn’t sound right. I thought we were supposed to achieve…” I’m talking about primary aim. Our primary aim is not to achieve an increased biblical understanding with a few practical applications to help us understand how beneficial it would be to our lives. No, the primary aim is that as the text of Scripture is proclaimed, we will encounter God in his Word—that the song that we’ve just sung as a prayer is a realistic prayer: “You speak, God. This is your Word, and we want you to speak. And we want to encounter you, God, in the preaching of the Word, in the teaching of the text, in a life-changing way.” So that at the end of the teaching of the Bible, it is not simply that people going out saying, “Well, I think I understand a little better what 2 Timothy means, and I think there are a couple of practical points that might be useful for me as I consider the opportunities of the week.” No. Rather, that we have been encountered by God, that his Word has actually produced change in our lives. Change in our lives. That we are changed by its truth.

So, for example, when Paul writes in his letters, he is seeking to see his listeners, his readers, re-created in the image of God. And that is the primary aim. That’s what makes it such a daunting task. And that’s what makes it such that only God can achieve that objective.

The primary aim of Bible teaching is that as the text of Scripture is proclaimed, we will encounter God in his Word.

So with that as a little preamble, we pray together:

Father, we are amazed that you use the voice of mere men, and yet you do, to bring about life change through your Word by the Holy Spirit. So accomplish your purposes in this hour, we pray. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Well, the verses to which we’re going to draw our attention both this morning and probably this evening, if the first service is anything to go by, are verses 3–7 of chapter 2. Verses 3–7 of chapter 2.

Let me begin in this way: if one were looking for an approach to the Christian life that is weak, careless, thoughtless, one would have to bypass the instruction of 2 Timothy. Because we have already seen that the Christianity that is described here by Paul is no encouragement to the softies, to the dummies, or to the lazies.

Now, I don’t anticipate that any of you would fit under any one of those categories, so there’s no reason for alarm. But if you look very carefully at the text, you will realize that he is calling for people to think: “Don’t be dumb. Think.” He’s calling for people to face up—to man up, if we might say—to the peculiar and stressful challenges of a biblical Christianity. And he is calling for his readers to make sure that they are actively, committedly, diligently engaged in pursuing Christ. That’s what makes it so compelling. It is a muscular Christianity. It is a thoughtful Christianity. It is a demanding Christianity.

And here in this particular section, Timothy’s being made aware of the fact, and his congregation along with him, that if this gospel—which he has summarized in some measure in verses 9, 10, and 11 of chapter 1—if this gospel is to be preserved for and proclaimed to the coming generations, it will only happen at significant cost. It will only happen at significant cost. This will never take place in a church family, in the context of a nation, without facing up to the clear demands of Christian discipleship—the demands that Paul lays upon Timothy as the pastoral leader in Ephesus but on all who are under his care, who are themselves disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this makes sense in light of the teaching of Jesus, doesn’t it? Because Jesus didn’t say, “You know, if anybody’s got something they would like to do, just go ahead and do it. It doesn’t matter; if you could squeeze me into your life, come when you can.” No, he said some striking things, didn’t he?

“I need to go and conduct the burial of my father.”

Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their dead.”[1]

“I married a wife, and I want to hang out with her.”[2]

“Forget it.”

“I bought a field, and I want to go and look after it.”[3]

“Come, follow me.”

“Well, who does this person think he is?”

So, what you discover when you read the Bible is that people who began to follow Jesus, instead of life getting easy for them, it often got much worse for them. It’s very different from the way we present it to people in the community, don’t we? And that’s why people look at us and say, “I don’t know where you are getting this stuff from. ’Cause you’re not getting it from the Bible!” If they’ve read the Bible at all, they know for us to come and say to them, you know, “Wouldn’t you like a nice life of ease? And wouldn’t you like everything to fit in perfectly for you? Wouldn’t you like to be all these things?” Well, of course they said they would, but that’s not what Jesus says.

And Paul himself bore it out. Listen to how his life was going. He gives us a little summary in 2 Corinthians 11. He says, “If you want to know how good it’s been since I became a follower of Jesus Christ, here you go”: “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.” So he got a beating to a bloody pulp five times.

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger…[4]

And I can’t even keep going; you can read it for yourself in 2 Corinthians 11. It doesn’t sound like floating to heaven on flowery beds of ease, does it?

Now, let’s just register this for a moment, especially those of you who are young people. The bailout on the part of young people and the part of teenagers is not because the gospel that has been presented to them is so daunting; it is so apparently pathetic! It is so weak! It is so useless! It is so undemanding! It is so inside of them, because they’ve never actually encountered what the story of the gospel really is—that it demands a wholesale turnaround, a Spirit-endued encounter with God that shapes our lives and establishes our destiny.

And when you read this here in 2 Timothy, he is saying to Timothy, “I have experienced these challenges, and you should expect them too. If you’re going to be serious, Timothy, in guarding the good deposit…”[5] And that is a reference to the gospel. He says, “If you’re going to guard the good deposit…” Incidentally, he’s not saying, “If you can keep the philosophy. If you can proclaim a few bright ideas.” No: “If you can guard the good deposit—the news that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself—if you’re going to do that, then you’d better be ready to face the demands that come.”

Now, let’s just be clear on this, shall we? Because it’s so vitally important. What are we talking about when we talk about the gospel? We’re not talking about saying to people, “Would you like to have Jesus in your life?” It’s fine to talk in those terms, but that is not the gospel. That question conveys nothing of the gospel. You’re asking people to make a response to something without ever giving them the information necessary upon which to respond.

“Why would I ever need a Savior?”

“Because the gospel says that you’re messed up without him.”

“I thought I was okay.”

“No, the gospel tells you you’re not okay. There was only one person who was okay, and that person was Jesus. And his okay-ness gets credited to your un-okay-ness in the power of the gospel.”

“You mean I get in on account of him?”

“That’s right.”

“Wow! I never thought about that before.”

No, the gospel is that Christ died for sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.[6] It’s always “according to the Scriptures”—that the confidence of heaven is in the Word of God. He spoke this Word into being. We either believe that and take our stand on it, or we just fiddle with it to our own detriment.

It’s perfectly honest for us to say we really don’t know too much about suffering, any one of us. There may be one or two that have experienced things. Most of us have not. The worst that some of us face is just those quizzical looks when we are bold enough every so often to take the line.

The confidence of heaven is in the Word of God. He spoke this Word into being. We either believe that and take our stand on it, or we just fiddle with it to our own detriment.

I was with a fellow this week… I was with a number of chaps this week, but one in particular I engaged in conversation: a bright fellow; tall, bright, Ivy League boy, and Jewish. And very quickly in conversation, I could tell the way he looked down on me, not only from the vantage point of his height but also from the advantage point of his intellect, that he was frankly looking at me as if, like, “Oh, what a poor soul he is. What a shame that he’s fallen foul of that ridiculous story.” That’s really how he was feeling. It felt very uncomfortable. I wanted to say, “Oh, no, I’m not like that. No, no, I’m not like that.” But I am like that.

So I asked him, I said, “Do you believe in a historical Moses?” He said, “Depends what you mean by that.” I said, “Wait a minute. You went to the Ivy League, and you don’t understand that question? That’s a really straight question. Do you believe there was a man called Moses?” And it was clear that he didn’t. He said, “No, I don’t think so. There’s not sufficient archaeological evidence for the existence of a Moses. I don’t believe in him.” So here you have somebody whose cornerstone of their whole Judaism is based on the liberation of the people of God from the land of Egypt at the hand of Moses, and Moses… There’s no Moses. If there’s no Moses, there’s no nobody.

Now, you see, this is the world, this is the climate, in which we go to school. This is the place we live. This is the environment in which we’re going to step forward—if we’re prepared to engage in the discipleship course—we’re going to step forward and say, “I know that this is against the run of play here, but no, I’m actually prepared to affirm that Christ died for sins according to the Scriptures, and that he’s actually alive today, and that we might know God in him and through him.” You see, this and nothing less than this is vital to be instilled in the lives of the generations that are coming behind us.

So Paul is urging Timothy to proclaim this story boldly and to suffer for it bravely. And in order to reinforce that, he provides three metaphors, three pictures. You’ll see them there in the text: in verses 3 and 4, a soldier; in verse 5, an athlete; in verse 6, a hard-working farmer. It is absolutely impossible to read this letter and miss Paul’s emphasis on the link between gospel ministry and hardship. What he is saying is, “Timothy, Jesus suffered, I have suffered, and you, too, will suffer.” To serve Christ in this way at certain points along the way will inevitably mean suffering.

In each of the pictures that he provides, there’s an absolute commitment on the part of the individual involved or the idea involved, an absolute commitment to a valued goal. And he’s pointing out—and this is the theme of this section—that without that kind of commitment, there will be no victory in battle, there will be no medal in athletics, and there will be no harvest at the end of the season. And the reason he does this is to say, “No less a commitment for you, Timothy, as a pastor, or your congregation with you, will then achieve the results that God has for you.”

Now, let me try and summarize it. I wrote for myself, “This is discipleship in 3D.” I just came up with three words that begin with D.

Devotion

The first word is devotion—the devotion that is here identified in the solider. In the soldier. “Share in suffering.” Well, like what? Well, like “a good soldier.” There’s no point in saying you’re going to be a soldier and then run away every time they start the war. You’re not a soldier. You might have a uniform, but you’re not a soldier. You’re only a soldier in name. A good soldier, a faithful soldier, one who is enlisted and aims to please his commanding officer, is the kind of individual that Paul is picturing in Christian discipleship—a soldier who’s willing to take his share of suffering, to remain focused on his or her objective.

I’m told, but I haven’t verified it, that the dropout rate among army recruits is pretty high in the first three months. About 25 percent bail out in basic training. And apparently—and there’s no condemnation in this observation; I think I’d be out earlier than most—but they’ve just underestimated the challenges and the commitment that is necessary in order to make it through. So Paul is not soft-selling this, is he? He says, “I want you, Timothy, to share in suffering. I’m not inviting you to a good time. I’m inviting you,” as he’s done in verse 8, “to play your part.”

Well, how will that work out? Verse 4: “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits.” That verb is important: “entangled,” tripped up by, diverted by, sidetracked by. We’d have to do some pretty intricate dance maneuvers to teach from this passage that Paul is urging upon Timothy and those who follow him some kind of monasticism—that he’s saying that if you’re a really devoted follower of Jesus Christ, you’ll be like Francis Assisi, you know; you’ll be living in a cave, and you’ll never read any book other than the Bible, you’ll never listen to any other music other than, you know, whatever it is, and that’s the indication that you’re a good solider. That’s not what he’s saying at all. You’re sensible people; figure it out.

What he’s saying is that if you’re enlisted in an army, if there is a commanding officer, if you are an enlisted man or a woman, you come to that service with all kinds of desires, goals, opportunities, and interests. But all of those goals, desires, opportunities, and interests, as long as you are serving, must then be subservient to the overarching goal that is established in the warfare to which you’ve been called.

If I had a dollar for every time somebody asks me, “Why are you in Cleveland?” That’s how they usually ask it. “Why are you…” Or sometimes it’s “Why are you in Cleveland?” And depending on who they are and how I’m feeling, I have multiple answers for it. One answer is, “Well, you know, Australia was a penal colony, but they filled that up, and they’ve been looking for other places, and Cleveland is one of them, and that’s why I’m there.” Some of them are like “Oh, I didn’t know that! Oh, wow.” (Stick with me. You’ll eventually get it, you know.)

But, you know, if I give them the real answer to why I’m in Cleveland, it’s the answer why you’re in Cleveland. It’s the providence of God, isn’t it? You know, God is overruling our lives. He has set you down in your street, in your neighborhood, in your office, in your school, in your leisure center, in your golf club. That’s why you’re there. That’s why I’m here. In the place of God’s appointing there is joy. There is fulfillment. There may be stress, demands, of course.

And in actual fact—and I can only tell this in the first person. And I have young people here, and I want them to hear this. I can only tell it in the first person. If I put it in the third person, it would be fake. But in actual fact, the answer to how I ended up here goes way, way back in my life. In fact, it goes, as in your life, it goes back into the counsel of eternity, really.

But as a boy growing up in suburban Glasgow, I was sent to a Bible class on a Sunday afternoon. The Bible class was overseen by young men. It was a boys’ Bible class. They were usually very good at sport. They were usually fairly clever fellows. They were successful in what they did. And they were committed to Jesus. It was called the Crusader class. Crusader. They’re not allowed to have that name anymore. It’s been banned in Britain, because it’s not politically correct. They’ve changed it to some unbelievably bad name, even worse; but nevertheless, we were Crusaders. And I was nine years old when I began. You started in the front row at nine, and as you eventually got another year older, you could move closer to the back. That was the goal in life: get out the door.

But the Crusader chorus goes like this. It goes like this:

The Lord has need of me,
His soldier I will be;
He gave himself my life to win,
And so I mean to follow him,
And serve him faithfully.
So although the fight be fierce and long,
I’ll carry on—he makes me strong;
And then one day his face I’ll see,
And oh! the joy when he says to me,
“Well done! [You] brave crusader!”[7]

So a nine-year-old boy says, “I’ll try that. I want to be in your army, Jesus. You’re the commanding officer. I want to be a lawyer. I want to marry an American girl. I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want.” He gave me the girl, and he gave me you. And I could not be happier. Because in service that his will appoints—in service that his will appoints—that’s where it is.

And I just feel an increased burden to say to young people, “Hey, give up your small ambitions. Give up your small ambitions. Invest your life, whatever it is, in whatever area of life it is—whether it is in commerce, or in science, or in arts, or whatever it is; whether you get called into the world of pastoral engagement or missionary involvement—whatever it is, remember that you’re invited to share in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and you’re not supposed to get entangled. Don’t get yourself tied up in stuff that will prevent you from pleasing him who is your commanding officer.”

Now, the issue here is not the offensive capacities of the solider but the devotion of the soldier so that he may stand strong in the face of the onslaught of the enemy. Not a chocolate solider who melts as soon as the heat is turned up but a real soldier who stands true, a soldier who understands that everything’s changed now, since he enlisted.

I’ve told you many times before about my father when he was called up in the Second World War and went to the barracks in Maryhill in Glasgow. And they did whatever they do to you when you go in there, and they gave him a uniform. And around five o’clock in the evening, he was stopped by a sergeant as he was getting ready to leave the barracks. And the sergeant said, “Solider! Where are you going?” And he said, “I’m going home for my tea.” And the sergeant says, “No you’re not! You just joined the army. Get in here.” He didn’t realize. He thought you just got a uniform, then do what you want.

That’s, I think, the notion that’s dawned on a number of us: “Oh, you just sign up and then do what you want.” No, you don’t sign up and do what you want. You sign up and do what he says. That’s devotion! Devotion! What are you devoted to? If everybody took everything else away and left you with one thing, what are you sticking with? What have you got? What are devoted to? “I’m hopelessly devoted to you.”[8] That’s to your wife or your girlfriend or whatever else it is. Yeah, maybe.

You can tell what a person is devoted to if you spend any time with them at all. You can tell whether they like something or whether they’re devoted to it.

Do you remember Ray Davies? Do you remember the Kinks?

They seek him here, they seek him there,
In Regent Street and Leicester Square,
Everywhere the Carnabetian army marches on,
Each one a dedicated follower of fashion.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is);
His world is built round discotheques and parties.
This pleasure-seeking individual always looks his best
’Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion.[9]

Some days it’s polka dots, some days it’s stripes. But you can be absolutely sure this is his thing! Everyone who sees him around town says, “It’s not that he just likes clothes. He is devoted to this!”

It’s interesting, but in 1 Corinthians 7, in the Authorized Version, the word that is used is not the “form of this world”[10] but “the fashion[s] of this world.”[11] “The fashion[s] of this world.” And one of the distinguishing features of the Christian is that they are no longer—we are no longer—conformed to the fashions of this world.[12] That doesn’t mean you wear different kinds of clothes. It means that the things that frame the natural man, which are circumscribed by time, which have no eternal dimension to them, these are no longer the things that marshal, that stir, that direct the life of the individual. Because now there’s a whole new goal. There’s a whole new eternal dimension to our interpersonal relationships, to our material possessions, to our temporal activities—all of them prioritized under Christ, because of our devotion to the commanding officer.

Discipline

Now, let me just take you into the next one, and then we’ll stop. There is a clear line of command for the soldier, and there are rules for the athlete. There are rules for the athlete. So the second word is the word is discipline. And I think that is inherent in the verse, isn’t it? “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”

Now, be careful on this, because Paul is not describing here self-imposed rules of discipline. He talks in other places about self-discipline. But he’s identifying the fact that in the games of that time, whether it was the Isthmian Games or whatever it was, there were actually rules that had to be adhered to both in the training program for being in the games and then for participating in the games themselves. And so he picks up that picture, and he says, “An athlete could never be crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”

Some of you remember Ben Johnson, [1987, 1988]: two consecutive years he set two consecutive world records in the hundred meters, faster than anyone had ever run. Those of us who saw it on TV could not believe the distance between himself and the second-placed individual—only to discover later on that he’d cheated. And so his victory was rescinded, his record was removed, and his medals as well.

Well, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about people who go off with a flying start but never finish, beginning well but not continuing, enthusiastic for a month or two or a week or two. No, it’s a long obedience in the one direction that is called for here. Paul has not only fought the fight; he’s finished the race.[13] And so he says to Timothy, “I want you to make sure that you finish the race as well.” And he sets before him a picture of Olympic gold, if you like: “You’re not going to be up there standing on that podium unless you compete according to the rules.”

Now, some of us don’t like the word rules. Some of us like the word suggestions. But the Bible is full of rules—the rules that challenge our casual lawlessness. And there is an increased lawlessness amongst many who profess to be followers of Jesus. They think somehow or another that the Ten Commandments were sort of a bunch of suggestions, and you should try and get as many as you possibly can out of ten, but don’t worry if you’re only around the 50 percent mark; after all, they don’t really matter. No, they matter tremendously. They were given purposefully. You say, “Well, we don’t get our salvation by rules, do we?” No, of course we don’t. So that the law of God is not there as a mechanism of salvation, but the law of God is there in order to guide the conduct of the Christian.

Let’s go back to Moses for a moment. God comes, intervenes, provides an angel who passes over their homes on the basis of the sacrifice of the lamb; he redeems them with an outstretched hand; he frees them from the bondage of Egypt; and then he gives them the rules. He doesn’t give them the rules as a mechanism for getting out. He gets them out, and then he gives them the rules. That’s the way it works. He provides for us a freedom in Jesus in order that the rules that he has provided for us might be a mechanism for us to know what to do and how to live. You say, “Well, I don’t buy that. I just operate on the basis of how I feel,” or that “love constrains everything in me.” Really? It doesn’t work. Thirty-nine years of pastoral ministry tells me it doesn’t work.

The law of God is not there as a mechanism of salvation, but the law of God is there in order to guide the conduct of the Christian.

The traffic lights are not there as a good idea. The white stakes on the golf course are not arbitrary. They are there in order to ensure that the game is played properly, and that society is ordered correctly, and that marital life is enjoyed fully, and that honesty is engaged in routinely, and that covetousness—no matter how materialistic and acquisitive a society may be—that covetousness is condemned in the Bible and is out for the Christian. Therefore, you see, Christ redeems us, sends us to the law to frame our way of life; the law condemns us again, because we don’t keep it, sends us back to Christ always as our only solution.

I wonder if you’ve thought this out. I wonder if you have thought out the intended and necessary discipline in living out the Christian life. The reason some of you—some of us—are fiddling around with things we shouldn’t be fiddling around with is because we don’t get this. And the reason we don’t get it is because we don’t want to get it.

Listen to Dale Ralph Davis, and I’ll stop with this, and we can come back to it this evening at our Communion. This is Dale Ralph Davis, who writes wonderfully well. He says, “I know some Christians have allergic reactions when [they are] told they are subject to [God’s] moral law.” That’s in Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments.

This, they fear, is legalism and an effort at salvation by works. But that fear misunderstands the function of the ten commandments. The law … comes in the context of grace …. Yahweh lays down [the] pattern in … Exodus: he delivers his people …, then he demands …; he works his redemption before he sets down his requirements. He first sets Israel free and then tells them how that freedom is to be enjoyed and maintained. Glad obedience to [God’s] moral law is simply our “logical” act of worship.[14]

“Glad obedience to God’s moral law is an act of worship.”

“Timothy, it’s going to be very important for you and for your congregation to make sure that you share in suffering for the gospel.”

“Well, what will that be like?”

“Well, it will be a wee bit like a soldier who is just prepared to step up to the plate and please his commanding officer: devoted. And it will also be a bit like an athlete who recognizes that it is impossible to wear the crown of victory unless he or she competes according to the rules.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, yeah, it’s a bit like a farmer.” But we’ll have to come to that later.

Father, thank you that we have a Bible that we can read and that it calls us to think. Thank you that you’ve given it to us not simply that we may have increased information with a few random points of application but in order that we might be changed by you, the living God, through your Word. Effect the changes that are necessary in each of our lives, we pray, so that we might be re-created in the image of your Son.

And may grace and mercy and peace from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of all who believe, today and forevermore. Amen.


[1] Luke 9:59–60 (paraphrased).

[2] Luke 14:20 (paraphrased).

[3] Luke 14:18 (paraphrased).

[4] 2 Corinthians 11:24–26 (ESV).

[5] See 2 Timothy 1:14.

[6] See 1 Corinthians 15:3–4.

[7] Cecil J. Allen, “The Lord Hath Need of Me.” Language modernized.

[8] John Farrar, “Hopelessly Devoted to You” (1978).

[9] Ray Davies, “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” (1966).

[10] 1 Corinthians 7:31 (ESV).

[11] 1 Corinthians 7:31 (KJV).

[12] See Romans 12:2.

[13] See 2 Timothy 4:7.

[14] Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly (Fearn, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 2002), 83n5.

Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.