Latest Sunday Video - Entreating the Extravagant Generosity of God

The following message by Alistair Begg is made available by Truth for Life.

For more information visit us online at truthforlife.org.

I invite you to follow along as I read two brief passages from the New Testament,

first from Matthew chapter 7 and from verse 7,

where Jesus says, ask and it will be given to you,

seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds,

and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.

Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone.

Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him.

And then in Ephesians and chapter 3, from verse 14,

For this reason, I bow my knees before the father,

from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power

through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,

that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend

with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,

according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus

throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.

And just a brief prayer before we look at this.

Father, what we know not teach us, what we have not give us,

what we are not, make us for your son's sake, we pray. Amen.

Well, it is a wonderful privilege to be here with you.

I've found it difficult to realize that the threshold of entry was the age of 18

and to go back to, when I might have qualified as an 18-year-old to get in here,

I have to go back some 58 years.

So it's fun to be around the young folks.

And I have been delighted to be entrusted with the privilege of our topic for this evening.

I don't know who came up with it, it has a kind of piper-esque dimension to it.

And I want to make sure that we understand the topic.

First of all, we know who God is, that He is plural, He's powerful, He's perfect,

and He's praiseworthy.

Also, we understand the word generosity for unselfish kindness.

We understand extravagance, that which goes beyond what might be expected.

And the word in treating, perhaps you haven't used it recently.

Perhaps you haven't found it necessary.

It means more than asking, another word might be besieging or imploring.

If you know the story of Ruth, and you read it as I did in the King James Version,

you will remember that Ruth says to Naomi,

entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee.

So, entreating the extravagant generosity of God is in short order, a talk about prayer.

Why didn't they just say a talk on prayer?

Because that wouldn't have been such a good title.

What the evidence of being adopted into God's family is that we actually pray.

You remember in Romans chapter 8, Paul says this, he says,

and the Spirit of God in our hearts enables us to say,

Abba Father.

In all of our conversations today, as we've spoken with one another,

we have in our words revealed essentially what's going on in our minds.

When we pray in the secrecy of our lives to God,

we're actually declaring what's going on in our hearts.

And prayer is a spiritual discipline, it is a privilege, and it is a challenge.

You will remember the disciples who lived in the company of Jesus

needed the encouragement that Jesus gave to them, which is why we read from Matthew 7.

And here we are, many of you arriving here for this event,

aware of the amazing generosity of your parents over Christmas.

And what we're discovering is that parental generosity doesn't even come close

to matching the extravagant dimensions of God's provision for his children.

The challenge in it should not be evaded.

Charles Simman, who was the minister in Cambridge for 54 years,

on one occasion pointed out to his congregation that it was easier for a pastor

to preach and study for five hours than to pray for his people for one half hour.

And so we do need the encouragement and the pattern that is provided for us,

certainly in Jesus and definitely here in Paul.

You remember that when people ask Jesus about praying,

he told them, I don't want you to be like those folks who posture in their public displays

of devotion to God.

I don't want you to be like those who just prattle on and on, adding word upon word.

Quite famously, Whitfield, on one occasion, commented to a friend about a brother of his

who he said prayed in his company and prayed Whitfield into a blessing.

And then he kept praying so long that he prayed him right back out of the blessing itself.

So we must be cautious.

Now, all that by way of introducing the text,

we come to this text and I want us just to consider three straight forward questions.

What does Paul ask?

That's the in treaty.

On what basis does he ask?

That's the generosity.

And to what end does he ask?

And that is the glory.

So I will spend longer on the first than on the other two.

I mention that to you now because you may be extrapolating from the length of time I spend on the first

and you're saying we're going to be here for about midnight.

Relax. You will be fine.

He's addressing them as the family of God.

At the end of chapter two, he describes them as citizens, as saints, as stones that are being built into the temple of God.

And you will notice that he approaches God on his knees.

For this reason, he says, the wonder of all that you've done in the gospel and in the church,

I bow my knees.

Paul would have been well aware of the Psalm 95, which begins, oh come, let us worship and bow down,

let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

Customarily, Jewish men stood to pray.

And therefore it is a matter of some significance that we have this picture of Paul.

He comes boldly because he has access, as he says in verse 12,

but the boldness of his access is combined with the humility of his pasture.

Because he recognizes that he is coming to a God who is great and awesome.

He, in comparison, we in comparison are small and we're finite.

And therefore, when we draw near to God in worship, as Ecclesiastes reminds us,

we should take care how we come, so that we guard against presumption or casual familiarity,

that is often the result of entertaining big views of ourselves and small views of God.

Some years ago, Peggy Noonin who writes in the Wall Street Journal made this comment,

for 30 years, the self-esteem movement told the young they are perfect in every way.

It's yielding something new in history and entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

The selfish should need not pray. We're just perceived on the basis of what we know.

It is when we are aware of our own inadequacy and the grandeur of God that we approach as Paul approaches.

But what is it that he prays for? Perhaps we should ask the other question,

what is it that he doesn't pray for? You'll notice that in his prayer,

he's not preoccupied with material things. He's not preoccupied with his own predicament.

Not because those things weren't present or weren't valid, but because they weren't the issue.

Jesus says to his disciples, why are you worrying about this and about this?

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

Paul understood that the people in Ephesus were real people like us this evening.

They had concerns about marriage or about singleness, about parenting, about enjoying life,

about welfare, about employment and all these other things.

But there is no mention of these matters as he prays for them now.

Again, not because they aren't present, but because that's not the issue.

Praying about health incidentally is very rare in the Bible.

Some of you may have heard Don Carson years ago commenting on this and saying

that at the average church prayer meeting, more time is spent by people seeking to keep the saints out of heaven

rather than sinners out of hell.

So then, if he's not doing that, what is his entreaty? It's there in the text

that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power

through his spirit in your inner being, in your inner being.

Do you have an inner being? Yes, of course you do.

Our inner being is our essential self, hidden from view, yet real.

It is the sharpest focus of our existence.

Our inner being, if you like, is what will remain when our bodies are laid to rest in the grave.

And here is the realm that Paul focuses in his prayer, that you would be strengthened with power in your inner being.

In other words, this is the real core.

Now, you can tell from looking at me that I don't know much about core or about free weights or about anything at all,

but I am familiar with the terminology that people are talking about.

Your golf swing is not directly related to your musculature.

It's directly related to your core.

And so a tremendous amount of time and energy is spent, understandably, on the core.

Well, let me tell you, we're wasting away, while our inner self is being renewed day by day.

And I assume you have grasped this.

Otherwise, why would you be here for these few days, unless you recognize that the real you fashioned according to the plan and purpose of God?

The core of your existence is the direct concern of your Heavenly Father.

When Paul writes to Timothy, he says to him,

physical fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential both for this life and for the life to come.

If you doubt this, you could go to your bedroom before you fall asleep for the night and just read Ecclesiastes 12, where you have this amazing picture of a body being like a house that is becoming increasingly dilapidated.

Now, when you're your age, you don't think anything of this.

That's why the writer says, remember your creator in the days of your youth before the days of trouble come when all of the things start to collapse.

It is quite humorous, actually, when you have to ask for reading glasses, when your hands begin to tremble, when you have to have your meniscus repaired, when your legs give way,

when you have inadequate occlusion that your top teeth can't meet your bottom teeth, and you have a problem there.

When you drag yourself eventually along the street like a grasshopper, what a picture.

It's in the Bible. It's your future.

There will be a day when you will go to CVS and go down aisles that today you can't imagine why they even have the aisles.

And you'll find yourself asking for things that people like me could be heard asking for when you bumped into us.

Why does Paul entreat God on their behalf in this way?

Why is he so concerned about their inner being? He tells us in verse 17,

so that, it's a purpose clause, so that Christ made dwell in your hearts through faith.

The strengthening work of the Holy Spirit, enabling us and assuring us, is actually in conjunction with what the Westminster Confession calls the ordinary use of the means of grace.

Which means this, that the work of the Spirit of God within our hearts as we pray to God and as we look to Him,

we do so hearing His voice as we hear it from the Scriptures.

We do so engaged in His body where we belong, and we do so having access to His ear, hence our prayer.

So that Christ does not take up residence in our lives simply to cheer us or to soothe us.

He comes to reign in our lives.

You remember our CS Lewis uses again that picture of a house, where he says, imagine yourself as a living house.

God comes to rebuild that house.

At first, perhaps you can understand what he's doing, basic repairs.

But then he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and doesn't make sense.

What is the explanation?

You thought, writes Lewis, you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace.

He intends to come and live in it himself.

What we have here is the issue of God's authority as he comes to reign and God's intimacy with us as he meets with us.

I have friends who think that I am a dreadful sentimentalist for all kinds of reasons and they may be right.

Because I actually find some value in an old song that seldom sung, which begins, I know it's got a kind of Thomas can cade feel to it, I think.

I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses.

And the voice I hear falling on my ear, the son of God, disposes.

And that is says, and he walks with me.

And he talks with me.

And he tells me, I am his own.

You say, well, is that sheer sentimentalism?

Or is it not closer to what Jesus is saying to his disciples in the upper room discourse when in John 14, he tells them, listen.

You follow along the road I have set you on and you will discover that I will come to you and I will show myself to you.

In verse 23 he says, we will come to him and make our home with him.

Why? Because of the extravagant generosity of our Heavenly Father.

Now you will notice, too, that he then says, your condition is being rooted and grounded in love.

It's a horticultural metaphor, followed by an architectural metaphor, rooted, familiar material.

I am the vine, you are the branches and so on.

And the architectural picture of being built into a spiritual temple.

The imagine thing is that we were once alienated from God, we were hostile, we were hopeless.

And what he's been saying to these Ephesian believers is that God has done something absolutely dramatic.

He has made one new man out of the two.

These believers that were present there are brought together by the power of God in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now listen carefully, only in Christ are the longings of our generation for hope, for humanity, for peace and for unity only in Jesus Christ are they answered.

It is perfectly understandable that imagine by Lenin became the mantra of an entire continent.

What are they longing for? What are they hoping for?

The same thing that Michael Jackson and Springsteen and the rest of them got together.

Night time in Hollywood to sing, we are the world, we are the people.

Actually in that song they sing, we are saving our own selves.

Well how are they doing?

Or even in a more trivial level, I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

I'd like to buy the world a coke and keep it company.

You are going to go out into this generation, you are out in this generation.

A generation that longs for things that are understandable and yet has not been able to discover the key that unlocks the reality for them.

And you have the privilege as God by His Spirit dwells in your inner man, strengthens you with power, equips you, encourages you so that you rooted and grounded in love for Jesus and for the people of God you may then go on to have strength to comprehend with all the saints.

This is verse 18, to comprehend this is the second part of His in treaty.

One that we've just looked at and now that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now if you just take that and write it in your journal tonight and think about it before you go to sleep, clearly what Paul is asking of God is something larger and greater than our own personal preoccupations, our own longings for self fulfillment,

our own concerns legitimate to one degree and yet overreaching in another.

Paul is taking us in another direction altogether.

He's not asking you will notice that we should love God more, we always want to love God more, but that we should have the power to grasp God's love for us.

Paul of course understood this, he was an arch enemy of Jesus and the church and yet his life was changed wasn't it?

He understood mercy, he understood grace.

This is true of anyone who really becomes a Christian.

We may not be lying by the side of the road struck blind by a great light, but when you become a Christian you will have a whole new view of Jesus.

You will have a whole new view of the people who love Jesus and you will have a whole new view of mercy.

And it's out of the fullness of that reality that he speaks in this way.

Spatial objects are usually say the length, the breadth or the height.

Here you will notice it is fourfold.

I'm not sure what this means or what he's saying, I know what he's saying, he's saying it's overarching all of this.

Ferguson my friend says he may not only be thinking in terms of the length and breadth that reaches to the four corners of the earth,

but perhaps involving contemplating the depth through which the Son of God stooped and the heights to which he has been exalted.

That you might know the love that surpasses knowledge.

That's a paradox, isn't it? Knowing what is unknowable.

It's far easier to sing about it than it is actually to articulate it or to define it.

When Paul writes to the Corinthians at one point, he says,

I has not seen, it's invisible nor earhered.

It's inaudible.

Nor has it penetrated the imagination.

It is inconceivable the things that God has prepared for those who love him.

What he says, this he has revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

And here now he prays for this fledgling church in Ephesus that this might be their experience as a result of God's generosity.

Now that knowledge, which is ours, is experiential, but it's not exhaustive.

But his plan is that we might be filled with all the fullness of God.

All the fullness of God.

He's going to in chapter 5, say, you shouldn't go and get drunk with wine and waste your life in that way.

Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And out of the fullness of God, then live your life, sing your praise, command the gospel.

And this he prays for.

Oh, it's so wonderful, isn't it?

The hymn writer puts it,

Oh, fill me with thy fullness, Lord, until my very heart or flow in kindling thoughts and glowing words,

your love to tell, your praise to show.

Well, very well, that's all under in treaty.

What he asks, strength to know this in our inner being and power to grasp the immensity of God's love for us to be filled with his fullness.

Well, if that's what he asks on what basis does he ask?

Well, the answer is in our title on the basis of God's generosity.

And what he's telling us here is wonderful, isn't it?

God is able to do what we ask.

God is able.

He's able to do what we think of asking, but aren't sure that we can.

He is able.

He is able to do far more than we ever thought of asking.

In fact, there is nothing we can ask for or think of asking for about which God does not say,

I'm able to do better than that.

Romans 8, you know, what a wonder that having given up his son for us.

Will he not also with him freely give us all things?

I guess that's why Jesus so masterfully encourages the disciples around him at that time arguing from the lesser to the greater.

I mean, what a ridiculous idea, isn't it?

It's almost humorous.

You came down in the morning, he asked your father for a boiled egg and he gave you a stone.

Or he came down and asked for a sausage and he gave you a serpent.

You said to yourself, it couldn't possibly ever be.

If even that were the case, even though you know that your parents are so generous, how much more?

That God is far more willing to bless us than we are even to take the time to ask him.

Newton, of course, when he discovered the reality of this,

wrote out of the fullness of his own heart.

Listen to him.

Come my soul by suit, repair.

Jesus loves to answer prayer.

He himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not say thee nay.

Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power are such that none can ever ask too much.

Surely part of the reason for the loss of momentum in prayer gatherings, where it's in your university or in your church,

where there is a loss of momentum, it may be traced in part to the repetitive focus of the average midweek prayer meeting,

which focuses again and again on the material and the physical.

Of course, we can bring everything before God.

But the problem in our prayers is not that we ask for things too great, or that our prayers are too big.

The problem is that we're guilty of doubting God's ability and His generosity, and thus we become fearful of entreaty.

I don't want to harm anybody in saying this, but let me just give you a word of excitation.

Well, maybe you shouldn't do it this way. Let me just give you the word of excitation.

Quit using the word just in your prayers.

We're coming to you just, we just this, we just that, we just the next thing.

It's an apologetic way of asking God.

Like, we know that you don't really want to do this, so we're just asking.

We just wondering.

No reason for just wondering, or just doing it in that way at all.

No, recognize the generosity of God, and then come boldly.

Remember, James says you do not have, because you do not ask.

And when you ask, you don't receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

Love ones, if I could convince you of one thing, it surely must be what Paul is saying here,

that in the great span of your life, and the span of my life is, is hastening on, I can tell you.

And this is where I am, tonight, in addressing you, why would I receive the privilege of coming?

Because I'm in the position of the Samist in Psalm 71, and this is what he says,

oh God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

So even to old age and gray hairs, oh God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation,

your power to all those to come.

You're sitting where I once sat.

I'm the old man that I was listening to when I was 18 and 19 and 20.

And then I listened carefully, being reminded of these amazing truths.

Spurgeon, as he reflects on this, says of God, my master has riches beyond the count of arithmetic,

the measurement of reason, the dream of imagination, or of eloquence or of words.

They are immeasurable, or in the words of Annie Johnson Flint.

God's love has no limit, his grace has no measure, his power has no boundary known unto men.

For out of his glorious riches in Jesus, he giveeth and giveeth and giveeth again.

Well, what does he ask that's in treaty on what basis that's generosity to what end?

Well, that's glory.

You notice how he finishes to him, be glory in the church, he ends with a doxology.

Every so often in his letters he breaks in, essentially, and starts singing, praising God.

For a doxology is really just the theologically informed praise of God.

And he concludes by praying that God will get all the glory he deserves.

Just as God's glory has been is and will be revealed in Jesus.

So his glory is revealed in his people in the church.

Those believers in Ephesus, reading this letter, comprised Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians,

called by God from cultures and identities that actually hated each other,

and were raised to be deeply suspicious of each other.

And yet here they are, they meet and they sing and they pray together.

And in that context, that which the world longs for is displayed amongst the people of God,

in his power to transform in the wonder of his perfect compassion, his love being displayed.

But it's not simply that God's glory is revealed in Jesus and displayed in the church,

it is to be declared to the nations.

This is a mission's conference.

Habakkuk looks forward to a day when the earth will be filled with a glory of God

as the waters cover the sea.

That huge vision is what took William Carey to India in 1793.

That's what kept him going as God's plodder.

It was seven years of him laboring before he ever baptized an Indian Christian,

the same thing for CT Stud who dedicated his life to foreign missions after reasoning this.

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice that I could ever make for him could ever be too great.

It is this which took John Peyton from Scotland to the New Hebrides,

a way out there of God to New Zealand and start looking for them somewhere out there.

You'll find them.

When he got there, a man by way of encouragement said to him,

John, the cannibals, you will be eaten by cannibals.

To which he said, eaten by cannibals or eaten by worms, what's the difference?

I am here to declare the glory of the gospel.

And here we are.

This is now 24th century America.

We represent all kinds of possibilities, all kinds of longings, hopes, dreams.

You sit out there. I can't see you.

It doesn't matter. God sees you.

He's concerned about your inner being.

He's concerned that you would be overwhelmed by his generosity.

He's concerned that you would be prepared to say, you know, I'll give myself up for you.

And the invitation to the church is to do just that.

When Town and Ingette wrote the hymn, oh, church arise, they wrote these words,

when faced with trials at every kind, we know the outcome is secure.

And Christ will have the prize for which He died and inheritance of nations.

So to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.

Well, what about this generation?

Do you believe that what God has done before He can do again?

Your students of history, you know what it was like in 18th century England.

If you chose to look it up, you discover it was a dreadful place.

It was a dark place, a godless place.

People could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, little children were in the most dreadful circumstances.

And it was brutal.

But what happened?

God raised up two brothers by the name of Whitfield, rose up two brothers by the name of Wesley,

a man by the name of Whitfield, and a Welshman by the name of Howell Harris.

And in the space of some 60 years there was a revolution that was brought about,

not by political energy, but was brought about by the transforming power

of the generosity of God unleashed amongst His people.

God is a specialist when it comes to the impossible.

If God does not transform our culture in your generation by way of revival,

it will not be because He can't, because He specializes in things thought impossible.

How about you say, what are we going to do?

All you old guys are dying off.

We didn't hear from Carson, MacArthur's gone, Sproles gone, Keller's gone.

And some of you guys look like you're going as well.

That's what you're saying.

You're looking up, look at that old guy.

Well, they said the same thing to JC Ryle.

I hope you bought those volumes on JC Ryle of $50.

That is amazing.

It's difficult for me as a Scotsman to see stuff given away so kindly.

But anyway, they said to Ryle, what are we going to do now that all the good guys are dying?

This is what he said.

Fear not for the Church of Christ when ministers die and saints are taken away.

Christ can ever maintain His own cause.

He will raise up better servants and brighter stars.

The stars are in His right hand.

Leave off all anxious thoughts about the future, cease to be cast down by the measures of statesmen

or the plots of wolves in sheep's clothing.

Christ will ever provide for His own church.

Christ will take care that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

All is going well, though our eyes may not see it.

The kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.

What does He ask?

On what basis and to what end?

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we want to live our lives earnestly desiring your will to be done,

and that your name would be glorified.

We want to live and die believing that in Jesus we may receive grace upon grace beyond our asking or imagining.

And tonight we pledge ourselves to be ready as instruments in your service.

Ready to go anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

When we ask that you will send our workers into your harvest,

we are willing to be the answer to our own prayers.

Lord, hear our prayers, and let our cries come to you in Jesus' name. 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 Alistair Begg, visit us online at truthforlife.org.

To learn more about Truth, we are willing to be the answer to our own prayers.