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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Gospel and Life. When someone you know is contemplating life's deepest questions, who am I? What's wrong with the world? What can truly make me whole? Jesus doesn't just give us answers, he gives us Himself. In this month's podcast, Tim Keller looks at how we can share the hope we have in Christ as the answer to a person's search for meaning and purpose. As you may know, August is Go and Share Month at Gospel and Life, and we've curated a wide range of free resources to help you take simple steps to share the gospel with someone God has put in your life. You can access these resources@gospelandlife.com share we believe God uses small acts to do great things, and we're inviting you to do simple small acts to go and share the Gospel this month. Because the Gospel changes everything.
- [00:59]
Reader
Our Scripture reading tonight is from from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verses 1 through 10 when all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you, and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, according to everything I command you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from the nations which he scattered you, even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens. From there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live. The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. You will again obey the Lord and follow all his commands I am giving you today. Then the LORD your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock, and the crops of your land, the Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers. If you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this book of the Law, and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. This is the Word of the Lord.
- [02:38]
Tim Keller
We said that the book of Deuteronomy is a series of sermons that Moses preached at the very end of his life. And when you're about to die, there are no tangents. You get right to the point. You only say the things that are the most important that you've ever learned in your whole life. And here at the very end of the end of all of the sermons, at the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses gets to the most crucial things he could possibly tell anyone. And tonight, I would say, in some ways the most crucial of everything he said so far. Here he gives us a solution to what could be called the ultimate human problem. So let's ask, what's that problem? What's the solution? How do you know if you have it? And if you don't, how can you receive it? What's the problem? What's the solution? How do you know if you have it? If you don't, how can you receive it? Okay, don't fall off your chair. It's four points, not five points. It's only be about two hour sermon instead of the ordinary hour and 45 minutes. What's the big problem? It's actually there in verses one to four. For weeks and months we have been looking at the book of Deuteronomy. And basically the book of Deuteronomy is God's blueprint for how he wants human beings to live. And it's in a marvelous blueprint. It's a vision of a life of integrity and joyful unselfishness. And if we really live the way it says in the book to do. Oh my, you know, if you were here on Labor Day, we looked at Deuteronomy 15 and there's a statement in Deuteronomy 15 that I've just been struck by for years. God says, if you obeyed everything I said in this book, in the law, there would be no poor among you. He's saying, if you had a community, a society of people that obeyed God's law fully and wholeheartedly, there would be no permanent class of poor people in that society at all. It would be a test. It's amazing. It's another sermon. Of course I won't stay there. But the point is. Wow. And God over and over says, if you live according to the law of God, this will be the blessedness that you will experience. This will be the blessed society that you will have with. But throughout the book of Deuteronomy, Moses has said, the warning is, if you don't obey God, if you turn from him, if you live lives without integrity, and of Selfishness and pride and self centeredness, you will be cursed, you will be cut off, and you will be eventually exiled and banished. And see, verses 1 to 4 is Moses looking down the corridors of time and saying, finally, here at the very end, and by the way, O Israel, you will, you will fail. You will utterly fail in the end to obey the law of God. And you will be. See verse one, you'll be into. You'll be dispersed. All these curses will come upon you, and you, verse four will be banished. That's bad news. However, we shouldn't pick on the Israelites. It's only in the story of Israel. We only see what is writ large in the entire human race. There was a book put out just earlier this year by a philosopher. Jacob Needleman wrote a book called why Can't We Be Good? And you know, the basic point of the book is so obvious, and yet he points out that all social theorists are writing books about how we ought to live. And therapists are writing books about how we ought to live, and political leaders are writing books about how we ought to live. But they're just missing one point. We know how we ought to live. We can't do it. The point of the book is in the book, for example, Needleman says human beings who know what is good nevertheless remain mysteriously helpless to internally adopt and do the ethical, moral and religious ideas bequeathed to them. He says, this is maybe this is the ultimate human problem. We know how we ought to live. You keep telling, giving us books on how we ought to live. We know how we ought to live. We just can't do it. We can't summons up the ability to across the board, live the way we ought to live. And that's the reason why we still have the world in the mess that it's in. We know what it's right to do. We can't do it. That's the ultimate problem. The human race. Becky Pippert wrote a book called Hope Has Its Reasons. And years ago, she was auditing a course in counseling psychology at Harvard University, and she was listening in a class to a case study, a great case study of a young man who hated his mother but didn't know it. And the case study showed how the therapist helped him see that he did hate his mother, he was incredibly bitter, and that it was distorting his whole life. And when the case study was over, Becky raised her hands and said, well, now how is the therapist going to help him forgive his mother? And the professor, the whole class is shocked, said, well, that's not therapy. He says you're asking a lot. After all, we just gave him what he really, you know, we showed him what was going on in his, you know, insides and all that. And Becky and everybody started raising their hands, and finally the professor said, listen, if you're looking for a forgiving heart, you're in the wrong department. And what he simply meant is, he says, psychology is a science. We can't give you a new heart. Which is what Needleman is trying to say. That's the biggest problem. We know what to do. We're powerless to do it. What's the solution? Verse 6. Look at this. It's amazing. This is a gift of God. This is not something you can do. It's something that God does. Verse 6. In spite of being banished, in spite of all the curses, in spite of the fact that you've, you know. You know, you've blown it. Verse 6. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts. What does that mean? Well, if we're going to understand what a circumcised heart is, we have to understand what hearts are and what circumcision is. All right, first of all, what hearts are? You say, well, I know what a heart is. No, I don't think you do. You say, well, the heart is the source of the emotions and the feelings as opposed to the head, which is the source of the mind and the thoughts. And if that's wrong, according to the Bible. The Bible does not mean. Does not use the word heart that way. It does not use the word heart the way we use it in modern English or in our society. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the entire acting self. And the heart controls not just the emotions, but also the thoughts and the actions. Why? Because in the Bible, the heart is the seat of your most fundamental commitments. The things that you most hope in, you most believe in, you most look to and you most live for the things that you look at and say, if I had that, that then I would be happy, then I would have meaning, then I would have value. Whatever those things are that you look at like that, that determines everything. See, for one of you, your greatest joy isn't what is your greatest joy, and your greatest fear isn't what your greatest fear is. Why? Because. Because your emotions are flowing from these fundamental commitments. They're shaped by your fundamental commitments and all your decisions and all your thinking and all of your imagination is, too. The heart is the place where you decide what most turns your crank, what's most exciting what most captures your imagination, what you most love, what you most find beautiful and attractive. And whatever those things are, that affects everything else, that shapes everything else. All right, then. What's a circumcised heart? Circumcision was the ritual that the Israelites went through when they committed to obey God in his covenant. Circumcision was obeying God when they committed to serving God in his covenant. So what would a circumcised heart be? Obviously, it's not a physical thing. Obviously, it's a metaphor. But what is that metaphor for? It's this. To say you need a circumcised heart is God's way of saying, and Moses way of saying, it's not enough to obey God out of duty alone. It's not enough to obey God externally only. See, circumcision represents external, the body, the physical. And what the circumcised heart is saying is it's not enough to only serve God because you have to. You ought to serve God because you. You want to, because you love to. I had an older minister who was a mentor to me that used to say this. The being of God, the greatness of the being of God demands a love that can't be the response to a demand. The being of God, the greatness of the being of God requires a love that cannot just be a response to a requirement. What does that mean? See, look. What do you do with your solitude when you don't have to think of something, when you have nothing to do, when you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs, you're waiting for a bus and the bus doesn't come? What do you automatically, instinctively love to dream about, wish for, plan for? What do you most like reading about? What do you most instinctively, automatically love to do? Not cause you have to, just because you want to. That's where your heart is. And those things, Those things are the things you set your heart on. But what are those things? Everybody, come on, you know what they are. They're somebody of the opposite sex. They're your career, there's money, there's these things. But the greatest thing in the world, the greatest thing in the universe, the most beautiful thing, the most worthy thing, the most great thing in the world is what? It's God. But our hearts don't fix on that. What if, however, you had a circumcised heart, what if, however, God came in from the outside and fixed your heart so that the thing you most ought to do was the same thing you most wanted to do and love to do. That's a circumcised heart. That's an astounding thing that the thing you most want to do, the thing you most is the thing you ought to do. And that's the reason why you've got this. You know, this John Newton hymn that goes like this that I so often like to quote. Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite, before, since we have seen his beauty are joined apart, no more. That's a new heart. The moment you find your pleasure and your duty that are always different, I've got to do it. I ought to do it. You know, I believe in God. I know I've got to do it. I need to be good. But here's your passion, here's the things that you most desire to do, here's the things that you're attracted to. Our pleasure and our duty. The opposite before us, since we have seen his beauty are joined. And when that happens, you've got the circumcised heart, you've got the new heart. Now, something this big ought to be all through the Bible and it is under different names. Ezekiel and Jeremiah say, God will give you a new heart, not just a circumcised heart, or the Spirit of God will come and write the law on your heart. That's also in there. And when Jesus talks to Nicodemus In John chapter 3, he quotes Ezekiel 37, and he says, you must be born again of the spirit. Same thing. To be born again, to be born of the spirit, to get a new heart, to have a circumcised heart is the same thing. And that is the solution to the ultimate human problem, that we know how we ought to live, but we can't live it now. Thirdly, how do you know if you've got this thing? How do you know if you have a new heart or a circumcised heart? There's actually three signs embedded in verses six, seven and eight. Six and eight, actually, that I think are extremely important signs that you have received, that you have this circumcised heart. Here's the first sign. Well, the three words, by the way, that tell us the three signs are love, obey and live. See them in there? Love, obey and live. First verse 6. God will circumcise your heart, so you will love him with all your soul. Ah. What's that mean? Well, the first sign of a changed heart is not a change in the quantity of religious knowledge, but in the quality of spiritual awareness. This is really important. I'll say. It Again, it's not a change. Conversion or the new birth or the new heart is not a change in the quantity of religious knowledge. It's not just learning new things, you know, religious things. It's the quality, a whole new quality of spiritual awareness. Whenever this new heart is talked about, it's talked in terms of sensory language. So if you go back to, say, Deuteronomy 29, 3 and 4, it's only the chapter before it says, God will give you a heart to understand. Eyes to see and ears to hear. See. Eyes to see and ears to hear. What does that mean? You've known about the doctrine, you know about God, you know God's holiness, you know God's justice, you know God's love. You know these things. But when you get the new heart, you will see it. You won't just know about it, you will taste it. Sometimes that is in the Bible. Taste it. You will hear it. Finally, what? Jonathan Edwards was a pastor in 18th century New England, 1730s and 40s, and in 18th century New England. In that time, everybody believed Christianity. And I mean everybody. If you went to Northampton, Massachusetts, everybody went to church, everybody was a baptized member. Everybody believed in the Trinity and believed in the deity of Jesus and believed he died for our sins. Everybody. And yet Jonathan Edwards learned what he knew, what actually all pastors know, and yet we're always a little afraid to talk about it. And that is in spite of the fact you have all these people out there and they're living according to Christian principles and they're believing the Christian doctrines and they're baptized and they're members. Some of them have a new heart and some of them don't. Some of them have the circumcised heart and some don't. Edwards saw that. Any minister can see that. But Edwards, unlike the rest of us cowards, talked about it a lot. And he actually wrote four books on the subject, which are tremendous. And I've tried to work through them. There's nothing better on this subject. But I believe that in the end, here's what Edwards says the main difference is between a person with a new heart and a person who believes and obeys and comes to church and does all the good things, but doesn't have a new heart. Here's the difference. He says people with a new heart love and obey God for the beauty and attractiveness of who he is in himself. They don't love and obey God because they have to. They don't love and obey God to get things. They don't obey love and obey God as a means to an end. They obey God because they love him as an end in and of himself. They love him aesthetically, what.
- [18:30]
Podcast Host
We always say the gospel changes everything and we believe it really does. That's why here at Gospel and Life, August is Go and Share month. Throughout August, we're inviting thousands of our listeners to take a small step in sharing the gospel with someone God has placed in your life. For those of you who make a gift to Gospel and Life, this month we'll send you two copies of Making Sense of God by Tim Keller. It's a powerful resource that explores how Christianity makes emotional, cultural and rational sense in today's world. It's our thanks for your gift and provides a way you can do a small act to share the gospel by reading the book with a friend, giving one to a co worker, or passing on both copies to people who are exploring the Christian faith. It's a simple way to start a gospel conversation or continue it. To request your two copies of Making Sense of God, simply go to gospelandlife.com give again. That's gospelandlife.com give now. Here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
- [19:31]
Tim Keller
Now. Yes, listen. For those of you who heard this illustration before, for, you know, be patient, but a lot of you haven't. It's my favorite and best illustration on this subject. When I was in college, I took a music appreciation course and I had to listen to a lot of Mozart because they was on the test and I had to be able to identify Mozart for the test. And I so I listened to Mozart. They get a passing grade in a class, so I get my degree. So I get out and get a good job. I listen to Mozart, in other words, to make money. But today my wife and I will spend a lot of money just to listen to Mozart. What happened? Well, why do we listen to Mozart now? To get a good grade. No, I'm not in a class so people will think I'm cultured. No, nobody sees me listen to Mozart. Well, why do you listen to Mozart? You know, you can say, I don't know. But what that means is it's beautiful. It used to be that listening to Mozart was useful, but now it's beautiful. And beautiful means it's satisfying in and of itself. It's attractive, you know, it fulfills in and of itself. It's not a means to an end. You don't do it because it will get you something else. It's what you want. It's one of the Things that gives you meaning in life. Now, here's what Edwards said. A person with a new heart stops obeying God just because he has to. Or she has to just stops obeying God because it gets you somewhere else, but begins to aesthetically find God beautiful in and out of who he is in himself, just to be near him, just to delight him, just to please Him. You see, people without a new heart obey God to get things, to get forgiveness, to get blessing, to get heaven. They obey God to get things. But people with new hearts obey God just to get God, just to get him, just to be near him, just to delight Him. And as a result, the people with this new heart may actually have been in the church for years and know all about various doctrines. But once you get the new heart, the doctrines start to live. That is to say, they were abstractions, but now they become realities. You see the love of God, and before you just knew about it. You taste the power of God. But now, before, maybe you just believed in it. In other words, things that were just sort of abstractions become incredibly galvanizing and moving and life changing. Which brings me to the third point. Love. Oh, the second point. Okay, pardon me, the second point. So the first sign of a. Pardon me, of a changed heart, a circumcised heart, is that you love God for who he is in and of himself, and you begin to sense who he is, as opposed to just believing them abstractly. But secondly, it changes your life. It changes you. You see, the whole point of this whole passage, the whole thrust is because you have this changed heart, now, you obey, right? You don't obey to get the changed heart. The changed heart is not the result of obedience. The obedience is the result of the changed heart. The changed heart comes as a gift of grace. And from the changed heart flows a life now in conformity to the joyful unselfishness of the law of God. But you know what this means. If you really have a new heart, you get changed. See, there are people who say, oh, I like what you just said about Jesus moving me. Well, I love it when I come to Redeemer. The songs move me, the preaching moves me. Good. I love your servants. That's great. But Jonathan Edwards is not impressed. Unless here's the. Really, Jonathan Edwards says, I'm glad you like Tim Keller's sermons. I'm glad I don't care. And maybe they make you weep. That's wonderful. And you feel. Oh, I really feel God's spiritual reality. Well, let's see. Do the people who know you best, the people around you who really see you, are they saying you are becoming more and more unselfish, more and more generous, more and more kind, more and more self controlled, more and more courageous as the weeks go by. If you're not changing in the way you actually live, then you don't have that new heart. You're just being stirred, your emotions are being stirred, that's all. So you have a new heart, you have a new sense of God's spiritual reality on you. Secondly, you have a changed life. But thirdly, you start growing. I love you know, you'd almost miss it unless you're looking for it carefully. Verse 6 says, the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts that you may love him and live. Live. What does that mean? Weren't they alive before? It's not talking about biological life, it's talking about spiritual life. And here's what's important. Biological life comes gradually. So does spiritual life. See, I'm sure some of you are a little worried from these first two points. You know, love God, meaning he becomes the ultimate beauty of your life. And you start to change and you start to say, well, I don't, you know, well, this might, this point may comfort you. Think of how biological life starts out. Look at babies. Look at them. They're basket cases. They can't do a thing. They can't do a thing. Have you ever had a baby? I mean, they just take and take and they can't do anything. You got to take them everywhere. You got to protect them from themselves all the time. I can't tell you how many times when my kids were 18 months old, they were screaming and crying about something, and I said, if only I could reason with you. Didn't help but think of how slow that works. Well, spiritual life, look, in spite of the fact that the moment your heart is circumcised, the moment you receive the new heart, there is a new love implanted in you. It's a seed. And it takes a long time to grow into a tree. Just takes time. You know, Paul says in Romans 7, I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self. Huh. That's a new. That's a circumcised heart. He says, the thing I most want, the thing I most passionately love, is I want to delight him. And yet, he says, I see all these other desires still in my life that vie with that, and they draw me away from doing what I should do. In many cases, I'm improving. But you know, it's gradual, it's fits and starts. It takes time. Yes, but it's also organic. What I mean by organic is real spiritual. A real new heart grows organically, not mechanically. Now, for example, you can grow a pile of bricks, couldn't you? You could just put the. How do you grow a pile of bricks? You just keep throwing bricks on it. It's growing, but it's growing through an external action and it's growing only in quantity. But now how does a bulb grow into a tulip? That's growth too. But it's organic growth, not mechanical growth. It's growth from the inside, not the outside. And it's growth in quality, in complexity. The organism is becoming more and more complex. It's not just growing in quantity. And that real spiritual growth, the sign of a new heart is you don't just grow mechanically. You don't just learn more Bible text and learn more doctrine and get more perfect attendance pins and, and you know, rise up in the church and heap up good deeds. No, no, no. Organically you become wiser person as the years go by, deeper, happier and sadder at the same time, more tender hearted, more sensitive to other people at the same time, happier yourself, more able to admit you're wrong. Tougher and tender at the same time. You know, more. You grow in grace, you grow in spiritual life, you grow in spiritual character. Very different than just mechanical growth. Do you have this heart? Do you have this heart? Maybe I should. This new heart, maybe. Look, some of you say, well, I mean, have you been born again? I'm asking you, some of you may be saying, well, isn't that's. For some people there are born again Christians. Sometimes they've had hard lives, it helps them. Jesus said to Nicodemus, pillar of the community Bible teacher, you must be born again, period. And if Nicodemus needed to be born again, he was so good and so great, anybody has to be born again. And that's Jesus. Point. And you say, well, I don't know. Are you talking about a dramatic kind of conversion experience? Not necessarily. You know, when John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, describes his conversion experience, he was at a meeting and they were reading the Bible or reading a book about the Bible and he says to describe his conversion experience, my heart was strangely warmed. Now maybe that is dramatic for an Englishman. Sorry. But put it another way, you can have an experience like that and have no idea that that was the beginning of your new heart. It might be weeks later, months later, years later, you look back and say that was the beginning of the new spiritual awareness. That was the beginning where I stopped just knowing about God and began to be a spiritual reality. That's where all the changes started. Sometimes it's not dramatic. You don't know it right away. You have to look back and find it. But you must be born again. You must get your heart circumcised. You must get a new heart. Do you have it? Do you see these things in yourself? Well, if you don't, how do you get it? And here's my suggestion to you. Don't say, God, give me a new heart. You know, I need a new heart. Why? Cause I want to be a better person. It won't come that way. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to see how God procured a new heart. How did God get a new heart for us? Look, we've been banished. We've been exiled. Go to Adam and Eve, you say, well, that's the Jews, okay? Adam and Eve. That's all of us. Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden paradise. And because they wanted to be their own master, their own saviors and Lord, they were banished. They were exiled. So we're all in the same boat. How could God possibly, in spite of all the curses that we deserve, just give us a new heart? How can he do it? The answer is in the rite of circumcision. Let's go back and for a minute think about circumcision. A lot of you are saying, I don't want to think about circumcision. Gee, why is that? The way the Israelites made their contract with God, you know, made their commitment with God. Why? I mean, how about a tattoo? How about a, you know, cutting a lock of hair? Why circumcision? Ew. Gross and bloody and. Ugh. That's the point. Yes, now you're getting the point. Because when Abraham made his covenant with God In Genesis 15, he walked between the torn pieces of a dead animal. Why? As he was making his promise, he walked through the pieces of the dead animal. Why? He was acting out the penalty for disobedience. He was acting out the curse of the covenant by walking through the pieces. He was saying, I promise you my allegiance, and, Lord, if I don't do what I'm promising today, may I be torn to pieces. That's what circumcision is. When the Israelites were circumcised, what they were saying is, we will obey you, and if we are not obedient to you, may we be Cut off because circumcision was an enactment, a dramatization of the curse of sin, the curse of the covenant. What is the penalty for sin? When you lie, it cuts you off from other people. When you cheat, when you're cruel, it isolates you. You can even see it there, the punishment of sin. The curse for sin is banishment. It's exile. It's being cut off. Cut off from people, cut off from your country, cut off from God. Circumcision represents the thing that we ought to experience. Circumcision. How did God give us a new heart on the cross? Centuries later, on an afternoon that turned into a dark and stormy night, Jesus was cut. A spear. Thorns in his brow, spear in his side, nails in his hands. He was being cut. And when he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What was happening? He wasn't just being physically cut.
- [32:51]
Podcast Host
He wasn't.
- [32:54]
Tim Keller
It says right here in Isaiah 53, what happened to him? He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds we are healed. For he was cut off from the land of the living. And now, and only now, because you just sat through 30 minutes of this sermon, you'll have any idea what that strange passage in Colossians 2, 11 and 12 means. Because when you, Colossians 2, 11 and twelve says, Christians, you have been circumcised in the circumcision of Christ on the cross, and you were baptized in the baptism of Christ on the cross. And you read that and you say, what? But now maybe you understand, on the cross, Jesus Christ was experiencing the cosmic cutting off that circumcision represented. He was experiencing the circumcision of judgment. He was being cut off from us. He was getting what we deserve for not doing the good we know we ought to do. He was taking the penalty, you know, at the gate of the Garden of Eden, barring Adam and Eve, going back, was a flaming sword, the sword of God's judgment. But the sword came down on Jesus. He was cut. He was cut off so that now we can go in. As you see now. Did you hear all that? As you think about Jesus doing that for you, as you think about him doing it for you, as you think about how Jesus Christ procured a new heart for you, does it move you? If the way he procured the new heart moves you, that's the beginning of the new heart in you. Did you understand that? See, if you Just ask God. Oh, God, you know, give me a new heart. Why? Oh, for blessing. Because I just need something in my life. Never work. But if you look at what Jesus Christ did, if what Jesus Christ did, his cutting off his experience, what he did for you, if that moves you, what he did to procure your new heart moves you. That's the beginning of the new heart in you. Why? That's the beauty that makes pleasure and duty 1. Because the hymn goes, our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before, since we have seen his beauty are joined apart no more. But what is the beauty? The next verse goes, to see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice, transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. The beauty of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, taking your cosmic cutting off for you. If that moves you, then that's the beginning of the new heart in you. You wouldn't be moved except God's already working. Isn't that amazing? He's already working. You know, birth isn't something you can just decide to do. Nobody ever says, I think I get born. Birth is something that happens to you, but you're active in it. And that's what I'm suggesting to you. Do you have this new heart? If you don't, then look at what Jesus Christ did. And if it begins to move you so that you say, now give me this new heart, not because of anything I have done, but because of what Jesus Christ has done. He took it all for me. That's the beginning of the new heart. You wouldn't even be asking, except God's already working in you. That's how you get the new birth. That's how it works. And guess what? If you've already got the new life in you, maybe you've had it for many years. That's also how the new life is stirred up to greater organic growth. Look at what he did and receive it. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us what we need in order to have new hearts and then to have that new life in us stirred up. So we pray that you would show us the beauty of what Jesus did and weld together our pleasure and our duty so that you, O Lord Jesus Christ, become the center of our lives. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
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Podcast Host
Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. As you may know, August is Go Share Month. At Gospel and Life, we believe God uses small acts to do great things. If you've already taken a step, maybe you've shared a resource or started praying for someone. We'd love to know. You can encourage others by marking your location on our Go and Share map. Just go to gospelandlife.com share and let us know you've participated. Today's sermon was recorded in 2007. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded. Recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.