Transcript
Podcast Host (0:04)
Welcome to gospel and life. In a world that leaves us exhausted, distracted and searching for meaning, Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer as a guide to true connection with God. Join us today as Tim Keller shows us why the Lord's Prayer isn't just a ritual to recite, but a pathway to deeper communion with God.
Tim Keller (0:29)
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sin. Here ends the reading of God's Word. We're in a series on the Lord's Prayer. We're continuing the series on the Lord's Prayer, and it won't be over today either. The Lord's Prayer is Jesus model for prayer. And it's a wonder. It's a wonder. I am a cautious person. Those of you who know me realize that I've got a cynical streak in me that I've got to always keep under control. I don't tend to believe in large claims. I don't tend to believe testimonies. Got a cynical streak in me. And yet I can say to you now, without any reservations at all, that all of the answers to all of your problems, when they're rightly understood, are here. They're all in here. The answers to all of your problems, if you rightly understand them, are in the Lord's Prayer. If you would. If you would simply do what Jesus tells you to do here, that's it. That's the answer. And that's from a cynic. Think of the wonder of that. Look here. Because every week we're looking at a particular aspect of prayer. It's helpful occasionally, or at least in the beginning, to always give ourselves an overview and look at the theme we said last week. And I'll repeat, this prayer is a healing process in which the heart is brought back into its true orbit. That is to center on and worship and glorify God. If a satellite goes out of its true orbit, it might get too close to the atmosphere and begin to burn up, or it might come too close to the sun and begin to burn up. And the Bible says, literally that's the reason all of us are burning out. If we are, we're burning out. If we center on anything besides him, if we center on anything or on our ego, we burn out. But prayer is healing the heart, bringing it back into its true orbit. Or put another way, the Lord's Prayer is a vision of a whole new life and it will not work for you until you see it as such. Did you hear that? The Lord's Prayer is actually a vision for a whole new kind of life and it will not work for you until you see it as such. What is that vision? Well, the vision goes like this, that you and I would have a life of such full hearted response to the heavenly love of God, the fatherly love of God, that we would live first of all in complete peace because we totally trust in him for our daily bread, our daily needs. And secondly, we would also live with happy submission, glad anticipation. We would joyfully see God's loving purpose in everything that happens to us. Thy will be done, which we'll look at next week. And we would know tremendous freedom and power because our conscience would always be totally clear and all relationships would be perfect because we are not only feeling forgiving, forgiven by God, but we are forgiving. A life of absolute peace, a life of tremendous clarity, a life of total power and freedom, a life of high beauty. That's the vision of the Lord's Prayer, a life that revolves around God. So the Lord's Prayer is not just a little how to, it is a how to manual on prayer, but it's a vision of a whole new life. So we come back to the central thing. Since prayer essentially is centering on God, it's essentially adoration. And we said everything starts with adoration and everything has to be understood as flowing out of it. When you ask for things, when you confess your sins, when you do anything else in prayer, it has to flow out of adoration. We said that. It's so important to see that I know personally that I have to constantly pull myself up. I've got to do this all the time. I run into God and I sit down and I start to say, God, you've got to help me. And I run right away to requests and asking, instead of doing what Jesus says in the prayer, which is to sit down and to collect yourself, collect yourself, and then to say, oh Lord, I remember. And I rejoice in your fatherly love and your heavenly power. And I realize now, and I rejoice in the fact that you are more wont to give me things than I am to ask for them. You are, as the Anglican prayer book says, he is wont to give us more than we desire or deserve and he has the power to do that. And as you adore, then you turn and you actually feel like you feel the fear and the anxiety and the resentment draining out your back like somebody came in and lanced a boil or lanced a sore. You feel the pus just coming out as you say, lord, forgive me for forgetting your wisdom. Forgive me for forgetting your power. And then you begin to just let your needs be known with quiet power. The Lord's Prayer is a process that if you obey it, if you discipline yourself according to it, you pass into new way of life. Now, I think I mentioned last week that basically you can think of prayer in terms of three A's. That is adoration or praise, admitting or confession of sin, repentance and asking, which is petition or request. And even though the outline in the bulletin looks like I was going to hit on admitting and asking, I can't get to asking today. We're going to have to get to it next week. And today we're going to talk about admitting. But let me reiterate in the beginning and I'll come back to it at the end. If your repentance, if you're admitting, doesn't flow out of adoration, if your asking doesn't flow out of adoration, you're stuck. In fact, you're worse than stuck. If your repentance doesn't flow out of adoration of the Father, it will not only not deal with your guilt, it will make it worse. Do you hear me? If your repentance doesn't flow out of adoration of the Father, it will not just not deal with your guilt, it will make it worse. And if your requests do not flow out of adoration of the Father, they will not only not deal with your anxiety, they will make it worse. Because when you pray to God for your needs, that's supposed to get rid of anxiety. And when you confess your sins to God, it's supposed to get rid of your guilt. But I know from experience, and so do you, that praying over your sins can make you feel more guilty, and praying about your needs can make you feel more anxious. Why? Because we don't fit into the Lord's Prayer, which is the perfect and ultimate and infallible model for this new kind of life and for prayer itself. And today we will only talk about admitting confession, repentance, and how Jesus Christ in the context of the Lord's Prayer tells us we should do it. And I just want to show you that Jesus teaches an awful lot in the Lord's Prayer about repenting and about confessing your sins. Before God. The first thing. Listen, let's deal with it under these headings. Number one, why do it? The reason for repentance. I know they're not the headings in the bulletin. I changed my mind. I'm sorry. Okay. Repentance. Why? What's the reason for it? Surely some people out there, thoughtful, reflective and sensitive people would say, isn't telling people to confess their sins and repent of their sins every time they pray isn't that dangerous? Isn't that emotionally and psychologically dangerous? Aren't people already weighed down with their own guilt? Aren't people already full of self loathing and self hatred? Isn't this just going to make it worse to tell people they have to go to God and confess their sins all the time? Well, let me ask you, let me ask you. You're thinking people, you are. Let me ask you, how else do you deal with guilt? Guilt is unavoidable. And I would like to propose to you that there is no way to deal with guilt except to go to God and be religious. There is no other way other than religion to deal with guilt. No way. There's no other way to deal inside religion with guilt except repentance. No way. A pastor friend of mine once was absolutely astonished when a psychiatrist approached him and asked him to go into practice together in the counseling. And my pastor friend said, why? I have no training in counseling at all. Not at all. This is a psychiatrist. He was not a Christian. And he said he wasn't a Christian. Not only that, he wasn't religious. And that really amazed the pastor said, well, why? Why would you want me? And here's what he said. Quote, I'm finding that many, if not most of my patients need a priest more than they need a doctor because what they're dealing with is guilt and they're all tied up over moral issues and God. Now here's why he had to say that he was smart and right. The key to dealing with guilt is to determine the difference between true guilt and false guilt. Right? That would have to be it. Because you see, if guilt is false guilt, then you argue with a person. You say, cut it out. There's nothing wrong with what's going on here. You see, you argue with a person and you argue lovingly with a person and you show them that they're not feeling, they're feeling guilty in inappropriate ways and they shouldn't do that. And so you argue. But if it's true guilt, you say, well, you're going to have to fess up. To that, you're going to have to own up to that, own that, and you're going to have to deal with that, and you're going to have to confess that and be cleansed. So the whole key is guilt, true or false. Now here's the that nobody, by the way, nobody believes that all guilt is false. Nobody with a brain in their head would dare say all guilt is false guilt, all guilt feelings are false guilt. Because nobody wants to say that nobody could do anything wrong, that there's no such thing as a wrong action. So granting that, how do you decide? How do you scientifically determine the validity of guilt or the invalidity? If that's the key to dealing with guilt, the key is to determine whether it's valid or not. How do you do that scientifically? The answer is it's impossible. No scientist in the world will tell you that there's any way to discern whether guilt is true or not. That's not what science does. You're into the area of morality, you're into the area of religion, you're into the area of God. Whoops. How do we get there? When this particular counselor admits that guilt is one of the main problems we've got. When a head of a leading British mental institution was quoted as saying, if I could assure all of my patients of complete forgiveness, I could send 50% of them home. And yet they also realize that the key to dealing with guilt is to determine whether it's true or false, whether it's real or imagined. And there's no scientific way to do that. What are we doing here? The answer is there's no way to deal with this unavoidable problem in our lives unless we go face to face with God. Because, you see, ultimately, psychology will tell you those things which you deny control you. Those things that you deny and keep down and hide control you. And this is all confession, repentance is. It's admitting it's making real. It's to end the denial. It's to admit those things which, if you do not admit, are going to control you forever and then go to the only possible person that could deal with it, and that's God. The only possible person. You can't deal with yourself. A good counselor can make it. A good counselor can bring it up and make it helpful for you to see, but then in the end, they can't actually determine its validity unless you immediately jump out of the area of scientific psychology into the area of religion. You know, I think I may have mentioned this before, Becky Pippert in her book, tells about how she was auditing a class at Harvard University in the School of Counseling. And a professor. Professor was saying, now here's how you help a man. He was giving a case study. Here's how you help a man surface the fact that he's angry at all, as all get out about his mother, that he hates his mother, he's hostile to his mother, he's angry at her, and he feels guilty for the way he's treated her. And he shows how you can surface that. And then somebody, I think Becky Pipper herself, the Christian writer, raised her hand and says, okay, what if he comes back and says, oh, Doctor, this was very helpful to see that. And that's very lightening and very important. And yet I still doesn't seem to be helping. I need more help. Because now that I see how angry I am at her, how do I forgive her? And now that I see how guilty I am for what I've done and she won't forgive me, how do I overcome the guilt? In other words, how do I forgive and how do I be forgiving? And the professor said, there's no way I know what to say. In fact, the professor literally said to Becky, he said, I would say to that man, lots of luck. And then what happened was all the students started saying, but I thought the whole purpose of counseling was to give people a cure. And the professor turned around and said, listen, there's only so far you can go. And what we've done is very helpful. But in the end, if you're looking for a changed heart, he said, and I'm quoting, you're looking in the wrong department. That's true. That's fair. So the question is, why repent? Is it unhealthy? Absolutely not. You know, Charles Chaplin in the One. One of his great silent films, there's this great place where he's a. He's a prisoner. So he's got a ball and a chain on his foot, his leg, and he. And he is shipwrecked on an island. And he says, here's my chance to escape what he's going to do what he has to, but he has to deal with a ball and a chain. So the first thing you see him doing is you see him telling jokes to it. Tells a lot of jokes and tries to get it laughing. And then he tries to run away and immediately, wham. Falls down because, you know, the ball won't let him go. So he comes on back, he says, this time he'll fool it so you see him. You know, you can just imagine Charles sort of whistling and acting like maybe. Maybe if he's not watching, maybe I can fool him. And then suddenly he runs, and of course, wham. Falls down immediately because the ball won't budge. Then finally we see him burying the ball. He just takes the sand and he just starts to bury it. And he puts it down so he can't see it, says, that will do it. And then he tries to run away and whammy. Falls down again. And it's only after this very funny and excellent little scene at the end of it, he suddenly starts to realize, I can't escape. I'm going to have to be rescued. I can't escape. And he starts to look for a ship and listen. That's. I see my. Do you see yourself in that? You see, you can spend a lot of time blaming other people for your problems and your sin. They might go through another phase in which you justify and rationalize it. You might go through another phase in which you analyze it, another phase in which you deny it. But in the end, unless you go to the only one who can deal with it, analysis won't work. Even though it's helpful, it only goes so far. Ignoring it certainly won't work. And denying it, until you go to the only one that can deal with it, you're still chained to it. The only escape is rescue. In Greek, it means salvation, deliverance. Why repent? Because there's absolutely no other way, emotionally or spiritually, to get freedom. And I proved it, I hope, as much as I possibly could. There it is. Now, number one. Number two. Jesus Christ teaches us here also the motivation for repentance. Now, the word motivation has in it a little word from which we get the word motor. And I would suggest to you that we have to ask ourselves, what drives your repentance? What is the motor? What is the dynamic? What is the thing that drives your repentance? The reason we ask that is because Paul in 2nd Corinthians 7 says this godly repentance leads to deliverance and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. This is a frightening verse. You know why? Paul tells us there's two ways to be repenting of your sin. And there's a certain way that brings freedom and brings healing and brings sweetness and brings zeal and increased strength. And there's another way to be sorrowful about your wrongdoing that actually leads to psychological and maybe even physical death. And they look alike. Now, here's the question. How do you know whether when you repent or when you are repenting, how do you know whether it's healthy, spiritually, liberating, or whether it's just a function of an expression of an unhealthy self hatred, an overactive conscience that's full of unrealistic and unfair and unnecessary standards that have been put in there by your parents or by your peer group or by your culture? How do you know, in other words, whether repentance is liberating? You are killing you. And the answer, Jesus Christ tells us, is it flows out of adoration. Real repentance comes after our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You do not get the confession until you are firmly until you are grasping, until you're looking at the dying love of Jesus Christ who enables us to not see God as just a king, but as a father.