← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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Welcome to Gospel in life. You don't have to look far to see that something's deeply wrong with our world and with us. But is there an answer that gets to the root of why? In today's message, Tim Keller explores the human condition through stories in the Bible, uncovering what scripture says about sin and why it's the only explanation deep enough to face the truth about our.
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The teaching this morning is based on this passage in Jeremiah. I'm going to read chapter 2 and what's printed there. Verses 2 to 13 and verse 19. Jeremiah is one of one of the last prophets that God sent to the people of Judah before their nation and culture collapsed completely. They were invaded, they were carried away into exile. And this, the book of Jeremiah, is a series of sermons and from God, in a sense, to the people through the prophet Jeremiah. And this is the first of all the great sermons in which Jeremiah is trying to show the people of Judah what's wrong with them, why their lives are falling apart, why their culture is falling apart, why their psyches are falling apart, why their families are falling apart. Let me read, beginning here at the top, verse 2. I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest. All who devoured her were held guilty and disaster overtook them, declares the Lord. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob. All you clans of the house of Israel. This is what the Lord. What fault did your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives. I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable. The priests did not ask, where is the Lord? Those who deal with the law did not know me. The leaders rebelled against me. The prophets prophesied by baal, following worthless idols. Therefore I bring charges against you again, declares the Lord. And I will bring charges against your children's children. Cross over to the coast of Kittim and look. Send to Kedar and observe closely. See if there has ever been anything like this. Has a nation ever changed its gods? Yet they are not gods at all. But my people have exchanged their glory for worthless Idols be appalled at this, O heavens. And shudder with great horror, declares the Lord. My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the springs of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Your wickedness will punish you. Your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then, and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me, declares the Lord. The Lord Almighty. This is God's word. Starting today, stretching on for about three months, all the way up to Easter. Easter is about three months away. We're going to be doing a series of teachings on the subject of sin. What it is, how it operates, what its effects are, what kinds, what types there are. And we start this week, and you'll see us again next week with this first sermon by Jeremiah to the people of Israel. Because they were saying to themselves, and they were saying. They were calling out and saying, what's wrong with us? Why are things falling apart? What's wrong? You know, that's interesting that it seems like after every election nowadays, everybody's been thrown out, new people have been brought in, and the papers are saying, why is everybody so unhappy? What's wrong with us? And actually, everybody's saying, what's wrong? What's going on? Well, the people of Israel were asking that question, and God came through and said, let me tell you what's wrong with you? And he gives them a sermon on sin. The nature of sin, the character, the characteristics of sin. And as we look at this, it's interesting. I feel like it's a huge sermon. It's a. It lasts 37 verses, but it's really summarized in verse 19, sort of the summarization of. It's in verse 19, there's several summarizations, but I'm going to look at that mainly. There's three things that we learn from this passage about the nature of sin. The definition, you might say, or the characteristics, the character of sin. And here's what they are. First of all, we learn from this passage and from the Lord, therefore, that sin is by essence, denial. Sin is denial. Look. Look at the language he uses. Consider, then, and realize how evil and bitter it is for you. See that? Consider, then, and realize how evil and bitter it is for you. You know what this language is? This is intervention language. You know, let's say you have a friend who calls you up. Let's say the wife of a friend calls you up and she says, you know, for years he's been covering something up. There's a self. There's destructive behavior in his life. He's been covering it up. He's been hiding it, but it's come out. But he still won't see it. Please come over here. Tell him what he's doing. So you go on over and you sit down and you hear the story. And how do you start to talk? What do you say? What's your language? You say, can't you see? Don't you see what you're doing to yourself? It's clear. Everybody else can see it. You're killing yourself. How can you do this? You don't get it. You have to get it. You have to see. That's how you talk. That's the language of intervention for a deluded loved one. Don't you see? This is the language that God uses on us. He assumes by this language. Consider then and realize. What does that mean? Consider? You're not thinking. Realize. You don't get it. You don't see what your problem is. You don't realize what the source of the evil and bitterness of your life is. You don't see it. You don't get it. You have to see it. This is the language of intervention, the language of pleading. In other words, what we learned from this verse, what we learned from this passage, what we learned from the Bible, the root of our problems is the force field of denial that sin always entails. Let me put it a couple of different ways. It is not fatal to be a sinner. It's not being a sinner that's fatal. According to the Bible, it's the denial that you're a sinner that's fatal. I mean, let's look at the. At the most obvious. It's just an, you know, it's crying out. And I've already, in a sense, alluded to it. The most obvious parallel here. It's not fatal to be an alcoholic, is it? Plenty of alcoholics are leading productive lives. What is fatal? It's fatal to be an alcoholic and to deny that you are, that's fatal. And we also know that there's something about the evil of alcoholism, which is what it is. It's an evil. There's something about the very nature of it that puts out a force field of denial. Isn't that right? Well, in a sense, that's just a metaphor in many ways, a very small metaphor, just a dim reflection of what God is talking about here. God is saying, if there's evil and bitterness in your life and if there's not evil and bitterness in your life, you're just very young. In other words, if you have evil and bitterness and you just wait, you know. Wait, right. You know, I saw the Addams Family Values last night and you know, this little preppy girl's looking at Wednesday and saying, why are you dressed as if there's a funeral? Why are you dressed as if someone's died? And she looks and she says, just wait. Well, it's the same idea. God says, it's your life is evil and bitter. You say, my life isn't evil and bitter. God says, just wait. When you see the evil and the bitterness of your life. God says, the root problem of our society and of humanity is that we will not admit that we're sinners. There's nothing fatal about being sinners. God says there's lots you can do about that. What's fatal is to deny that you are. That's why there's evil and bitterness. Because you don't consider. Because you don't realize. Consider that and realize that's the thing you've got to do. That's the thing you've got to see. If I could. If I could. There's a force field that comes out from sin. You know the old radio shows based on the shadow, that character that had learned over in the east to cloud the minds of people around him so they couldn't see him. And it became a movie that nobody went to see this last summer as well. That's the. But the whole idea is the shadow is someone who clouds people's minds. That's what sin is. Sin is the shadow, the real shadow. By its nature, sin entails denial and you will not see the extent and the magnitude. Oh yes, we. Of course, I'm a human being. I, err. I'm flawed. That's not to admit you're a sinner. That's not to admit you're a helpless sinner. That there's. That, as Dorothy Sayers says, there's a radical interior dislocation in the heart. That we're way off center because we center on ourselves, that we're capable of tremendous evil. I wish if I could do it, I would make everybody read the poets and the philosophers and the great thinkers of the end of the 19th century, both sides of the Atlantic, you know, over in Europe and here, what they said they were getting rid of Christianity, they were getting rid of religion, they were getting rid of what they considered superstition. They said, ah yes, we are finally bringing in a rational approach to government, a rational approach to poverty, a rational approach to human beings. We've gotten rid of superstition, and we're going to see incredible things happen. We're going to see an end. You ought to read this stuff. They're going to see an end to poverty in the 20th century. We're going to see the end of war in the 20th century. The end of war. They almost all said this. And now where are we? What was their problem? Denial. They look, I mean, here are two great, two terrific examples. I mean, there's just zillions of examples, you know, H.G. wells and W.H. and I love to quote them, you know, I hate to see the pain, but you see years of. You know, they start off with this idea, we are not sinners. And by the end of their lives, after years of disillusionment and years of brokenness, why? Because of the denial that we are sinners. Finally, in the end, they're brought kicking and screaming to the place where the Bible could have pointed to start, with years wasted over it. There's a lady. Two people who were at the very foundation of the reconstruction of the British social welfare society. Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Two great people, did a lot of good, but they got rid of Christianity in their own lives. And in 1890, Beatrice Webb put in her diary this word. She said, I've staked everything on the essential goodness of human nature. 35 years later, in her diary, she reminded herself of what she had said in 1890. She cited that, where she said, I staked everything on the essential goodness of human nature. But then she said, I realize now how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in us, that mere social machinery will. Will never change. She had staked her whole life on the idea that social machinery will get rid of the poverty, will get rid of the violence, will get rid of these things because we're essentially good. At the end of her life, the one thing she decided would be the solution, she came to realize, I now see, I now know how permanent are the evil instincts and impulses in us. She'd given her whole life to something the Bible could have told her to start with. She was in denial. More recent, a guy named Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize. He was a social psycho, social scientist. He wrote two books on evil. The first book on evil was the Structure. He called it the structure of evil. And in that book he says, the real problem in the world, the reason we have poverty and the reason we have war, the reason we have violence, is because the privileged are oppressing everybody else through oppressive social structures. And therefore he says it's social science applied to government will deal with evil. Right after he died, his last book was published called Escape from Evil. And in the preface, you know what he says he had changed completely. He says, I am now in this book looking at humanity full in the face for the first time. He says, in my previous works, I had failed to see how truly vicious human behavior is. And then get this. This is a dilemma that I have been caught in along with many others who have been trying to keep alive the Enlightenment tradition. This enormous problem to see that humanity is so evil causing now requires some third alternative beyond bureaucratic science or despair. Do you know what he's saying? My whole life I figured that bureaucratic science, which simply means social sciences applied better schools, legislation, better regulations, better work on people. You see, social science applied to bureaucracy that would deal with evil. Now that I see for the first time, after years of basing my whole life, I now see there's gotta be some third way because bureaucratic science won't work and we can't just despair. What is that third way? Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is when you forsake the Lord your God. In other words, what the Bible says is what's wrong? What's wrong? Why spend your whole life in denial and at the end be pulled kicking and screaming to the place you'll never see? Thinkers ever start out saying people are scun. Scumbags by the end of their life. They're saying, now I realize that people are wonderful. Never happens, never. It's always the other way around. At the end of their lives, they're saying, I've based my whole. How could people be so wicked? How could people be so evil? They've been in denial. What was the problem? What was the problem? It's not the economy, stupid, it's sin. It's sin. We got to move on. The first point is this. Sin by its nature entails denial of itself. Sin puts out a force field. Sin is denial that we're sinners. And I'll just quickly. Do you believe it? Do you apply it to yourself? You know, sometimes I think I'll make these points and I got to show you the application. For example, just a couple ways. For example, surely there's some of you, many, many people say, you know, I believe in the law of God in general. I think the ten Commandments are great. I really do most of the time. But you know, we can take these two things too far. I Mean, if you were honest all the time in New York, you'd never make any money at all. If you were sexually pure all the time, you'd never have any fun. I mean, you know, I mean, the moral law is pretty good up to a time, up to a place. But, you know, you can overdo these things. Consider and realize you are in denial as to how powerful sin is. You cannot cut corners of the law of God. To do that shows that you have no idea the power that's within you. You have no idea about how pernicious and how pathological. You have no idea how deadly sin is. When you say, I can play around with it, this is a gray area. I don't know if it's right or wrong. It doesn't seem wrong. Who knows what the heck. Consider and realize. We all tend to deny. We all tend to underestimate. Let me give you another example. Some of you are saying, and I occasionally find you. But most of you, I don't. For the very reason. Many of you are saying, here's an area of my life in which I've got a problem. I know it. There's a flaw. There's a character flaw. I keep falling into it. I keep getting into it. Maybe I should tell somebody. No, no, I'll do it myself. I'd be too embarrassed. I wouldn't want to tell anybody else. I wouldn't want to go to anyone for counsel. I wouldn't want to share this with a good friend and say, please hold me accountable. No, no, no, that'd be too embarrassing. I can do it myself. Consider then, and realize you're in denial. We're always in denial. We always underestimate the power of the sin. We always do. You always think, I can handle it. You know, one more. Just one more example. There's an awful lot of folks, I think, who. There's an awful lot of people who are in a position where they are getting, from somebody right now, criticism. And it's very easy to write it off 100% because the criticism is truly exaggerated. Or it's. You can see that the motives of the person is bad. Are bad. Okay? Or you can see that there's a lot of error mixed in it. It's not just exaggerated, but. But much of what they're saying is wrong with you, really isn't wrong. Okay? So maybe you look at it and you say it's mainly wrong or it's exaggerated. Or you can, you know. You know, I mean, you consider the source. We, you know, who that person is and what a mess that person is. Or, you know, what kind of motives that person is. But remember this. You ought to say to yourself, if you take this seriously, that sin is denial by its essence, in its nature. You ought to say continually, you know, it may be exaggerated, it may be mixed with error, it may be from a fairly unadmirable source. But is God trying to tell me something? Because I know by my nature I tend to deny the things that that really are wrong with me. If you believe what I'm telling you here, you should be the most gracious when it comes to criticism, the most open when it comes to criticism. When you get it, you should be the most willing to listen to people who have something to tell you that's wrong with you. You should be the least defensive person if you take this seriously. Do you.
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Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty and heartache. We feel it in the world around us and in our own lives. How did it get this way and what can be done about it? In his brand new book that's releasing this month, what Is Wrong with the World? Tim Keller offers a clear and compassionate answer. Drawing from a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Dr. Keller shows how the reality of sin explains the pain we see all around us and how only the gospel offers lasting freedom and healing. Whether you're overwhelmed by the state of our world, struggling with your own mistakes or choices, or looking for hope and joy, what is Wrong with the World will help you see how the gospel speaks to both the heartache of our world and the pain within each of us. This newly released book, what Is Wrong with the World Is our thanks for your gift this month to help gospel and life share the good news of Jesus. Request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give that's gospelinlife.com give us. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
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Sin is denial. But secondly, and mainly, sin is not just denial in general, what is sin denial of? We said sin is a denial, but in particular, God here tells us what the essence of sin is, what the nub of it is, what the heart of sin is. What is it? Well, he says, consider and realize how bitter, evil and bitter it is when you forsake me. But then he goes and he tells you why they forsake and have no awe of me. Now this is the essence. This is the essence of sin. If you ask somebody what you know, define sin for me, and they'll say, well, sins are breaking the rules. Sins are breaking God's laws. If you believe in God. Sins. That's what sins. Sins are. Sins are. That's right. That's what sins are. But sin is a disposition. It's an attitude, it's a stance, it's a posture of the heart. And Paul, and here I keep saying Paul, that's because I'm remembering other times God in this passage says, the heart of why you forsake him, the heart of why you sin, the reason you break the rules, the essence of it all. No awe. You have no awe of me. Let me show you why that. This is the whole thing. This is. This is the heart of it all. The new international version that we're reading, this translation, the NIV translation, says, you have no awe of me. But the word that's here is the word that's used throughout the Bible and it's in most translations. It says, you have no fear of me. Now, one of the central themes of the Bible is the fear of the Lord. And all through the Bible there's all this talk about the fear of the Lord. And that's what God is saying, is the essence of sin. You do not have the fear of the Lord. Well, what does fear mean? Now here's the problem. In the Bible, the word fear is used in two different ways. And we in our modern common use of the word, only use it one of those two ways. So first of all, the Bible says there's a fear. In First John 4, it says, There's a fear that hath torment. Now what does that mean? Well, it's pretty simple. When we use the word fear, we mean it in this way. Fear is the anticipation of pain. Fear is the anticipation of pain. But look how fear works. Fear means you suddenly get fixed on what's going to happen to you. And when you're paralyzed by fear, you might say, or when you're in the grip of fear, you are focusing on what is coming and everything is done in reference to it. See, if you're afraid, you know, in other words, for example, I'm not afraid of. At least I'm not creeped out by insects. So if I see a spider or I see in New York a roach or something like that wandering around, I'll say, oh, there it is. I don't like it. Somebody else might find, maybe it's irrational. They cannot sit and read a book in a room with a little roach running around. Why they can't? Because they're afraid of it, okay? They're creeped out by it. It appalls them. It obsesses them, which means they cannot do anything without reference to it. They can't forget, dominates everything they do. They can't get up and just, you know, have a cup of coffee. They can't read. They can't. They must deal with that roach. Why? That's what fear does. Fear absorbs you. It obsesses you with an object so that you cannot do anything except with reference to it. But then the Bible talks about a different kind of fear. In Proverbs 28:14, it says, Happy is the one who fears always. What? Happy is the one who fears always. We read. Jeff used it for our words of encouragement. It says in Psalm 130, verse 4, because you've forgiven my sins, I fear you. What? And here's what's so interesting. There is when it comes to God, something the Bible calls fear. It's a positive fear, not a negative fear. But you see why you say, well, why use the term? It's an inward awe before God. It's an inward condition of delight in the magnitude of who he is. You say, well, why call that fear? Do you see what they have in common? Positive fear does not have torment. In negative fear, you're totally absorbed in yourself. In positive fear, you're blessedly free from thinking about yourself. In negative fear, you're parallels. In positive fear, you're empowered. But here's what they have in common. The fear of the Lord means He is absolutely central. You can do nothing without reference to him, no matter what you do. You say, how does this involve God? How does this affect my relationship with God? How does this relate to God? Because you see the magnitude of who he is and the greatness of who he is. And he is now utterly and absolutely central. There is nothing that you can possibly do or think without reference to his glory, his greatness, his love, his power. Do you see that? Now God says, that's the essence of sin. That's the essence of everything. In other words, God is so wise. God is getting beneath the violations. You say, well, you say, sins are violating the law. You know, when you lie, when you are selfish, when you're cruel, when you do these things, that's sin. Well, God says, but why would you ever do it? Why would you ever disobey? Why would you ever be cruel? Why would you ever lie? Why? And the answer is, whenever you sin in a particular way, at that point you are holding something in more awe than you are holding God in. Something you find more wonderful than God, something more dynamic than God. Something more captivating than God, something more awesome than God. Do you see? And that at that point is the reason why you sin. Let me apply this as we start to close up here. Let me apply this. Do you understand? First of all, let me apply it in a couple different ways. There's a number of ways. First of all, do you see, therefore, that there is no way, no way that there can be halfway measures when it comes to God? God says the essence of sin is to not have me smack center in the middle of your life, smack center in the middle of your thoughts. There is no if you are a little religious, if you are a little moral, if you are kind of religious. In other words, you can't have a God at times, you can't have a God as a vitamin supplement. Years ago, a lady was teaching. I've never forgotten what she said. Lady was teaching at a Christian conference. And she said, if the distance from the Earth to the sun that 93 million miles was just the thickness of one sheet of paper, do you know that the distance from the Earth to the nearest star would be a stack of paper 70ft high? Do you know that just the diameter of our galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high? Do you realize there's trillions and trillions and trillions of galaxies that we know of? And do you know that if there is a creator God, that creator God holds it all together with a word of his power. Now she said, if he's there at all. How can you possibly ask a person like that, a God like that, into your life at times to come when he's called as an assistant as a way of getting you over the hump. Don't you see why Sin is denial. Sin is denial in its essence because it's to be out of touch with reality. If there's a God at all, how can you relate to him in any other way than with. Unless you relate to him with complete and utterance, utter and unconditional devotion. That's the reason why Paul says in Romans, I finally got one for Paul. Paul says in Romans 12, verse 1, in the Old King James, it's rendered this way. Make yourself living sacrifices to God, which is your reasonable service. Sin is irrational. Either there's a God, but if there is a God. Okay, we'll get to this in a second. If there is a God, he must be central. He must be someone with. From whom you can do nothing without reference. You have to do everything with reference to him. Everything. There's never an Area of your life where you can say, well, you know, I ought. You know, you don't even think about. What would God say about that? What does God say about that? Never. Do you understand that? Aw. Your problem. The reason your life is so evil and bitter. There's no awe. Let me give you another application. Intellectually. Intellectually. You know, when the Bible. The Bible says that a lack of centrality of God Is not only the cause of all of our personal problems, but it's the cause of all our intellectual problems. And in a place like Manhattan, I ought to say something about this. So many of your students, scholars, thinkers, counselors. God says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Is the beginning of wisdom. Unless God is obsessively in the center of your intellectual scheme. If. Here's what's so interesting about this verse. Don't you see how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake me? If you don't have awe before God, it's not just that you're trampling on his glory. You're trampling on your glory. If you don't understand God, you won't understand yourself. Stephen Gould, teaches at Harvard. Doesn't believe in God. As a result, he says what everybody has to say who doesn't believe in God. He says, why are we here? We are here because one odd group of fish. Had a peculiar anatomy that could transform into legs. We may yearn for a higher answer, but there is none. We cannot read meaning in life into the facts of nature. Now, here's what he's saying. Take out God. If there's no awe of God, then there's no awe before yourself. If God has no glory, you have no glory. You're a meaningless animal. There is no higher answer to that. And you know what you're left with? You're left with a senseless life. You know why? Because you're left with an incredible discrepancy. Between how you feel and how you operate and what you must be. You must be a meaningless animal. When you're in love with somebody, you sit down and you never say as you're kissing him or kissing her, you never say, this is just neurochemistry. There's no such thing as love. I'm just an animal. This is the way my brain is working. But that's the case unless there's a God. If you have no awe of God, it is evil and bitter for you. If there is no awe of God in your thinking, there can be no wonder or awe before the Idea of love. Love is nothing. It's just neurochemistry. As soon as you think of the idea of good and bad. Do you believe there's some things that are really wrong? Have you seen things? Have you heard of things? Have you read of things that you say that's really wrong? Not if there's no God. That's just a social construction. That's nothing but culture. No. Don't you see? Nothing matters. There is nothing awesome. There is nothing wonderful unless God is wonderful. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If you have no awe of me, you will have no awe of anything. You won't have any awe of yourself. The doctrine of sin, they say, is pessimistic. You're kidding me. If you don't have the doctrine of sin, there's despair, there's nothing else. What we say. Don't you consider and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake me and have no awe of me? All your personal problems come because God is not central in your life. All of our intellectual problems come because God is not central in our thinking. And here, lastly, dear friends, Christian friends, I want you to think about this. All of your self control problems are coming because God is not central, you say, how could that be? Well, it's pretty simple. Are you having trouble with worry? Are you having trouble with self pity? Are you having trouble with guilt? Whatever you're having trouble with, just see it in these terms. When you worry, you are in more in awe of the power of some factor than you are in the power of God. When you're guilty, you're more in awe of the power of your sin than you are in the the magnitude of his grace. The power of his grace. When you're in self pity, you're more in awe of some great benefit which you've lost than you are in his mercies. When you are sure that everything's going wrong in your life, you're more in awe of your own wisdom than you are of his wisdom at the moment. And therefore do you know what you need? That's the reason why the psalmist says the fear of the Lord is clean. There's nothing that cleans you out like this. You know, when you sit down, you don't just study your Bible just to get a little knowledge. When you come to church, I hope you're not just coming to get wisdom. You need to see God, the fear of the Lord awe. You need to actually say, oh Holy Spirit, open my eyes so I see the Awesomeness. Because you know your worries are gone when you see him as more awesome than any factor in your life. Your guilt is gone when you see his grace is more awesome than any sin in your life. Your self pity is gone when you see his mercies is more awesome than any missing factor in your life. Your anger is gone when you see God's wisdom is more awesome than any of your wisdom and any of your little agendas for your life. You need more than anything else to see. See him, say, oh Holy Spirit, magnify him. Let his glories be known. You need to wrestle until you see him, until you feel him. It's possible the Bible says you can have access to him. You need that. Whatever your problem is tonight, today, whatever your problem is this week, whatever your problem is, it can be cleaned with the fear of the Lord. No matter how defiled you are, it can be cleaned. If you go to him and you say, it has been evil and bitter for me. I've denied you and I've denied your centrality. You know what he'll say? He'll say, of course I'll have you. Of course I'll have you. And if you don't do that, if you come out of this saying, well, I'm so wicked and I'm so evil and I'm so bad that why would God have me? Here's the one thing that you're not in awe enough about. His grace. Up in verse six and over and over and over again throughout the whole passage, he says, nobody says, where is the Lord who brought us up out of Egypt? You know what he's saying? He's saying, think about me. You know why you don't obey me. You know why you don't make me central? You don't trust my love. You don't trust my grace. He says, remember the Exodus. Think about it for a minute. Remember the fact I didn't give you the law in Egypt and then said, now if you obey that, I'll bring you out. I brought you out first and then I gave you the law later. I'm a God of grace, so why in the world are you afraid to make me central? I know why. He says, you feel like you'll lose your freedom, you'll lose your joy. You see, you won't be free. You won't have your options. If I obey and make God central, I will be limited in some way. God says, why don't you say, where is that gracious God who brought us up? Where is that gracious God? Who operates by grace. And that's the reason why here I say to you, unless you are ultimately in awe of his grace, not just in awe, you can't say, I should stop sinning or God will get me. You should say I should stop sinning because here's the gracious God who brought me out, who brought me up. So if you go to him and say my life is evil and bitter because I've been living in denial that I'm a sinner, and I've been living especially in denial of your centrality and greatness, what will God say? I am the one who brought you up. I am a gracious God. Of course I'll take you back. I sent my son to live your life and to die your death. That's how I bring people up out of Egypt now. That's how I bring people out without the law, but strictly through grace. That's how I bring you up and put your sins away. Because Christ fulfilled the law. Consider and realize it is evil and bitter for you if you are not in awe of my grace and mercy. So this is the solution to all your problems personally. This is the solution to our society's problems. This is the solution. God says, this is what's wrong with you. It's not the economy, stupid. It's sin. And it's the best news I can give you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that it's now possible for us to know what's really been available to be known for thousands of years. But people continually turn away from it. They continually deny it. We realize, Father, that we have to cut through our own force field of denial to see your greatness and your reality. We pray, Father, that you would show us your love and your grace so that we will trust ourselves to put you first. We ask, Father, that you would show us how we can solve our individual problems by seeking your fear and seeking your awe and seeing your awesomeness. Apply these truths to our lives through your holy Spirit. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
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Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel Unlife podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged you to go deeper into God's word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 1995. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.