← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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This is Gospel and life. Prayer is one of the primary ways we can truly know God, but it can also help us understand ourselves. Through prayer, we can reflect on the deepest and most private aspects of our lives in the presence of a holy God. And it's in that space that the Holy Spirit works on our heart, bringing us to repentance and making us more aware of Christ's amazing love. Join us today as Tim Keller teaches on the transformative power of prayer. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly journal with stories of Gospel changed lives as well as other valuable gospel centered resources. Subscribe today@gospelandlife.com.
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Tonight's scripture reading is in Psalm 73, verses 1 through 3, verses 13 through 26 Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold, for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted and every morning brings new punishments. If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground, you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors? They are like a dream when one awakes. When you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you. You hold me by my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you and earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever the Word of the Lord.
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So this fall we've been looking at the subject of prayer, and each week we're taking one part of the Lord's Prayer, every part. The Lord's Prayer is so packed that every single phrase is actually talking about another kind of prayer, another way of praying. And what we've been doing each week is going to some part of the Bible that gives you an example of that kind of prayer to help you know what you mean or what or how to Use each part of the Lord's Prayer. So give us this day our daily bread. That's where we have needs. How do you petition for needs? Forgive us our debts. There you have guilt and shame, you have regrets. How do you overcome those? How do you get through those? But now tonight we're looking at lead us not into temptation, but deliver us us from evil. And that's talking about the times in our lives in which you really feel like life is just a battle. Just a battle. A temptation is a situation that brings out something in you that's bad. It brings out your flaws. And so there are times in which you feel like there's parts of your own life that you're not happy with and you feel tempted. Evil. Of course, there's two sides to it. Lead us on to temptation means help me with the evil inside me. And deliver us from evil means when I'm assaulted from outside, help me with that. And there are flagrant temptations, like if you're tempted to have an affair with somebody who's not your spouse, or there's flagrant kinds of evil. So you're in a town and there's an invading army coming, and they're. They're killing and they're pillaging, and you pray, lord, deliver us from evil. But what I want to show you tonight is a prayer, an example of this kind of prayer. How do you pray when you're embattled? How do you pray when you feel like there's bad things inside you, bad things outside you, and you're just spiraling down, you're confused, you. You don't know what to do. I think there are more common. There's the prayer I just. I'm going to take you to. Which you just heard read. Psalm 73 is a considerably more common situation. Let me show you what the problem is. We just had it read. You notice that he says in verse 13, in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I've been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. That's one half of what's wrong with his life. What he's saying is, I've been trying to live a good life. I kept my hands pure, I've keeping my heart pure. It's a way of saying, I'm living a good life. I'm devoted to God. I'm loving my neighbor as myself. I'm helping the poor. I'm telling the truth, so I'm living a good life. But everything is going wrong. He doesn't say what it is. He just says, all day long, I'm afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. Bad things are happening to him, really bad things. He's living as good a life as he can, and everything's going wrong. You notice verse one is ironic. He says, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But then he says in verse 13, I've been impure in heart, but everything's going wrong. Why is God letting this happen? Now, that's only one half of his problem. Because the other half is verse three, where he says, I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And the one part that we didn't have for brevity's sake printed out is verses 4 through 12 in which he's looking at the people around him. And this is what he sees. He says, their bodies are sleek. Pride and violence is their necklace. They are not stricken like the rest of humankind. They scoff and they speak with malice. These are the wicked, always at ease. They increase in riches. And see, what he's saying is, I'm trying to live a pure life. Everything's going wrong for me. And he sees a lot of other people out there who are corrupt, who are abusive, who are ruthless, who are greedy, and they're having a great life. And what is the result? He says in verse two, my feet almost slipped. I'd nearly lost my foothold. Now, in the Bible, to lose your foothold actually is a pretty serious thing. It's a metaphor, of course, if you're coming down a set of steps and you lose your foothold, you could get injured or die. If you're on a mountain path and you lose your foothold, you might be injured or fall to your death. And there's other places in the Old Testament where losing your foothold is a metaphor for spiritual destruction. He's already. He's already losing his grip because he says in verse three, I envied the arrogant. Now, we don't live in a time, partly because of marketing, partly because that all advertisement is based on, by the way. Envy. We don't see envy as. As terrible as it really is. The ancients did. It was one of the seven deadly sins. Here's what envy is. Envy is wanting somebody else's life. That's envy. Envy is wanting somebody else's life. Do you know that? You know what that does? First of all, it sucks the joy out of the life you actually have, the one you actually have. It also undermines the impetus you have for living the life you actually have. Well, because you're looking at. I would like to have his life or her life. I would like to have these other kinds of life. Why don't I have the life that they have? That's envy. It sucks the life out of you. It sucks the joy out of you. And it can make you very hard. It can make you very self absorbed, very cynical, very, very, very skeptical of other people. And you just are a miserable person. And that's what it means to lose your foothold. It's not only to spiral down into things like envy and anger, but also, of course, the implication, especially because of verse one. He says, God, you're supposed to be pure in heart. I'm pure in heart, and you're not good to me. You're supposed to be good to the pure in heart, but I've been pure in heart and you're not being good to me. That he's on the verge of saying, maybe I'll just walk away from this good life, and maybe I'll just walk away from God. Now that's the situation. Do you see why we chose this? Yes, there are overt temptations to embezzle from your employer, or there are, you know, marauding armies that are coming toward your town. But generally speaking, this is a lot more common a set of temptations, is it not? You're tempted just to get hard. You're tempted to give up, to get cynical, because you're having disappointment after disappointment after disappointment in your life. And other people who aren't trying as hard to live good lives, they're having good lives. And what does that do to you? You spiral into despair. You spiral into a kind of depression. It's a spiritual depression, too, because it just makes you doubt, you know, why. Why should I even follow God? See, that's a lot more. I think that's a very common thing. And I certainly, as a pastor have talked to literally hundreds of people over the years who have spiraled down into that kind of despair. What is the resolution? What is the solution? When you're in. When life seems to be a battle like that? Temptations inside, evil outside. How do you get through it? The answer is a particular kind of prayer. You'll see this right here because the turnaround is in verse 17. Verse 16 and 17 says, I tried to understand all this. It troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood, see? And all commentators on this passage say, this is the turnaround. Do you notice something before verse 17? God is always spoken of in the third person, God. But after verse 17, God has spoken to in the first person. You place them on slippery ground, you cast them down to ruin. When my heart was grieved. But I'm always with you. When he goes into the sanctuary, we're going to talk about that. What does it mean to go to the sanctuary? It meant to go to Jerusalem and go into the temple and participate in the temple worship. See, we're not talking here just about what you and I might think a sanctuary might be. Well, you know, you walk around New York City and there's all these big beautiful buildings and sometimes churches you can walk in. You can sit down, and in a pew you can watch some light coming through the stained glass window. And you have a little time of quiet. And then you pray to God. Is that what he's talking about? No, he doesn't say a sanctuary. He says, I went into the sanctuary of God. And that's the temple in Jerusalem. And there he participated in the full range of prayer. He would have participated in praise and singing. He would have participated in confession. He would have have participated in all the full range of prayer. And what corporate worship and prayer does is it brings you into the presence of God. So instead of thinking about God, you actually deal with God. Instead of thinking about God, why is God allowing all these things to happen to me? You actually deal with God and you say, in light of who you are, why is this happening to me and how should I be feeling about this? And that is a. This is where his life turns around. Until I went into the sanctuary of God, I was confused, I was getting bitter. Then I understood. So this is the prayer that Jesus says. When you're in the battle, when you're in the trenches, when you feel like you're falling, when you feel like you're at the bottom of a hole, it's through prayer that you get yourself out. Now, what does he actually do in prayer? There's four things. And I'd just like to spend the rest of our time just looking at these four things. They all can only be done in prayer. And those four things are. He admits the worst. He sees the whole. He grasps God's grace, and he reorders the loves of his heart. So he admits the worst, he sees the whole. He grasps the grace of God, and he reorders his loves. And they come bang, bang, bang in order. Let me show you. First of all, what do I mean when I say he admits the worst? Well, go back to verse 13. It's a remarkable statement. So surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and I have washed my hands in innocence. That is an astounding admission. In fact, Derek Kidner, who is a commentator, an Old Testament scholar, a commentator on the Book of Psalms, writes this about that verse. He says, to say that such earnestness has been a waste of time is pathetically self centered. He's saying, what did I get out of it? But the very formulating of the thought has shocked the writer into a better frame of mind. Now, I think Derek Kidner is absolutely right in some ways. The turnaround is when he goes into the sanctuary. But he probably doesn't go into the sanctuary unless he admits what he admits in verse 13. Do you see what he's saying about himself? Are you and I willing to say the same thing? When he says, surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and in vain I've washed my hands in innocence. Now here's what he's saying. When you say I did something in vain, what you mean is your motive and your purpose has been thwarted. So if you say, for example, I went and I tried to persuade her in vain, which means you tried to persuade her and she wasn't persuaded, and so everything you did was in vain. Okay, when you say I was serving God, I was loving my neighbor, I was helping the poor, I was telling the truth in vain, that means the purpose, your purpose, the reason you're obeying God, the reason you're praying, the reason you're being good to other people, the reason you're caring for the poor has been for what? If something's in vain, that means this is the purpose. I didn't get what was the purpose? Well, he's telling you my life isn't going well. Now, we don't know quite what that means, but almost certainly you know, I'm not making money, my career's in trouble, my relationships haven't gone very well. In other words, my life isn't going well. And you know what he's admitting? I was not serving God for God's sake. I was not helping the poor for the poor's sake. I was not telling the truth for the truth's sake. I was doing it for my sake. I was doing it because I figured if I did all these things, then God would give me a good life. He's not giving me a good life in vain. Everything I've done is in vain. That's the reason why Derek Kidner says that's pathetically self centered, shockingly shallow, unbelievably self. Absorbed. And Kidner thinks, rightly, that even saying it out loud was enough of a shock, because it's right there that he begins to sort of move. Now, I want to know whether you're willing to be as honest as he is. Do you know what he's saying? See, when troubles happen to us, and the troubles are real and bad things have happened, and they're real sorrows, they're real griefs, you know, you can lose a loved one, you can. You can have a tremendous career reversal. I mean, there's. These things are real griefs. And when those things happen, of course they're going to make you feel bad. Of course they're going to weigh you down. But if they destroy you, if they just make. If you lose all hope, if you turn back from living the life you were living before, if you become cynical about people, if you become bitter, that's not because of the griefs. It's because of something going on inside you that you need to take responsibility for which he's taking responsibility. And here's what he's willing to admit that so much of his service to God was really not out of love for God. It was love for himself and using God. So I do remember some years ago being many, many years ago now when I was a new Christian and things weren't going well in my life. And I was having a very similar experience to this. And I also had a kind of sanctuary experience because I suddenly realized one of the reasons I was so despondent was not because of the reversals in my life. Of course I should feel bad about those, but because the reversals were revealing something about my heart. And at one point, I almost heard God say this. And by the way, I want you to know this, since I'm a Presbyterian, I almost heard God say this. I didn't actually hear God say this, and I didn't hear a little voice just to let you know. But as I was thinking and meditating, I almost heard God say this. Now we'll know whether you got into the Christian faith to get me to serve you or for you to serve me. In fact, I go so far as to say, every time you get into trouble, every time bad things happen to you and you really get wondered, why is God letting this happen? I believe he's actually asking me the same question. And I think the answer always is, to a great degree, we like to talk about being devoted to God. We like to talk about all that. But honestly, to a great degree, we get into the Christian faith because we think it'll help us because we think it'll help us have a better life. And we are therefore not so much loving God as using God. We're not telling the truth for truth's sake. We're not telling the truth. We're not serving God for God's sake. We're not helping the poor for the poor's sake. We're doing it. And if bad things happen to us, we say, what the world, I've been trying to live a good life and why is God letting this happen? Do you know why you're so upset? Huh? It's not a philosophical why does God allow evil and suffering? It's because you're having to admit that the reason I've been living this good life is because I thought it would pay off. And it's not paying off. Do you know what you're saying? Do you see what you're saying? And you see that one of the reasons why you're miserable is because of that attitude. It's because of that attitude. And see, this man realizes that he's never going to get out, he's never going to get out of the, out of the hole he's in spiritually unless he admits my problem. My despair is not simply because of the bad things happening to me. It's also because that essentially I, my goodness was really pretty, quite selfish and therefore really wasn't really goodness. Can you admit that? Can you hear every time you really get into trouble, God saying, now we'll see, you know, whether all your good works were in vain because basically you were looking for payoff. Now we're going to see whether or not you got into the Christian faith to serve me or whether you got into the Christian faith to get me to be a slave for you and do your will. So first of all he admits the worst. But then secondly, see that happens in prayer. But then secondly, he sees the whole. It's very, very clear. In fact, we have several verses. In some ways there's more copy here on this than anywhere on any of the other steps. He says, I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood what their final destiny read with me. Until I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their final destiny. He's talking about the arrogant, he's talking about the wicked. The people who live these bad lives but are having great lives. And he says, I suddenly he was envying them, he was upset with them, he was feeling self pity. And then he says, then I saw in the sanctuary, in the worship of the people of God, I understood their final destiny. You place them on slippery ground, you cast them down to ruin, how suddenly they're destroyed. They're like a dream when one awakes, but then just jump down to verse 24 for a second, but afterward you will take me into glory. Now see, when he says I saw their destiny and he says I saw my destiny, what is he doing? He's getting the big picture.
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When you pray to God, is it more like a chat or are you really connecting with him in a deep and meaningful way? We'd like to help you establish a stronger, deeper and more personal prayer life. Tim Keller's book, Prayer Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God offers biblical guidance as well as specific ways to pray in certain situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love and forgiveness. In the book, Dr. Keller helps you learn how to make your prayers more personal and powerful through a regular practice of prayer. Experiencing awe and intimacy with God is our thanks for your gift to help us reach more people with the life changing power of the gospel. Request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give. That's gospelandlife.com give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
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David Martyn Lloyd Jones preached a wonderful series of messages. He's a British preacher back in the 50s, I think 1950s in London, he preached a series of 11 sermons on Psalm 73. And when he got to this, the sermon on this place where they go into the sanctuary, he said this, he says going to the sanctuary, going into prayer, means you begin to see things as a whole and you're reminded of things you have forgotten and ignored. A good illustration of this would be something like this. Imagine you're on a hiking tour and you're under the trees and you think you're going in the right direction. In fact, you think you're heading in the right direction. You think you're not too far from your destination. And suddenly as you're walking along, you notice there's an outcropping of rock over here. And you realize if I climbed at the top of that rock, I could see above the trees and I could see where I was going. So you climb up to the top and suddenly you get your vantage point. You have a, you have a vantage point to see where you've been and where you're going. And oh, you notice first of all, I've turned too far south. I need to start to head north. Uh oh. I'm actually not nowhere near as close as I thought I was. Looks to me like there's my destination. I'll probably be another hour. In other words, the vantage point helps reorient you. You can see the end from the beginning, and then you actually can understand where you are before that you really didn't know where you were. But you stand up and you see. That's prayer. Prayer gets you to that high place. Prayer always helps you see things, the big picture, and you stop getting lost in the weeds. And if you look carefully, here's what he's noticing. It says, you put them on slippery places, they are suddenly wiped away, but you're going to take me into glory. And here's what he's saying. This is actually hard, and yet it's wonderful. Everything in this life is going to be taken away from you. All the wealth, all the love, every good thing will be taken away from you. Those of us who are older, we know this existentially. Those of you who are younger know it intellectually, but you don't know it existentially. Every love relationship you have will be taken away from you. Every dollar you have will be taken away from you. It's all gone. It will be. Because everything in this life wears to an end under the sun at last. All things wear to an end under the sun at last. And he's suddenly realizing something. If the only wealth and the only happiness and the only power that you have is in this life, no matter how great it is, it's all going to be swept away. In fact, the idea of it happening fast again, that's the sort of thing that us older people come to realize how fast life is. And everybody, you know, and when I was in my 20s, I was so tired of hearing people in their 60s say, Boy, you can't. Can't tell you how fast life goes. I mean, I can't. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get to be 60 yourself. And then you realize, oh, we're being swept away. Things happen very, very quickly. We don't have very long. And he's saying, is this all goodness in this life is temporary, it's going to be taken away. And if this life, if this is your greed, I mean, pardon me, if this is your. Because of greed, if this. If money here, if power here, if prosperity here is all you've got, you are to be pitied. See, he's saying, why am I envying these people? I should be sorry for them. I should have compassion for them. Because when he says, I will be received into glory, when he. That's the only wealth that really works that's the only wealth. It's the glory of God. It's a friendship with God. It's the only thing that you can't lose, the only thing that will last. The only real wealth, the only real power. And what he's saying is, wait a minute. As soon as I start to look at, at the big picture, suddenly I've stopped envying. And actually, and by the way, look at the image about dream. He says when you awake, they are despised like fantasies. What is all that about? I'll tell you what it's about. Have you ever been in a dream and in the dream there's some reality, Something seems very real. Maybe somebody chasing you with a knife. And in the dream you're like this. And suddenly you wake up and you wake up and you laugh. You know, I was so scared a minute ago, but suddenly I realized it's just a fantasy, it's just a phantom. I laugh. This is an amazing statement. He's saying all power and all wealth in this world is like a dream. It seems very real when you're in the dream, but actually it's not. Do you know how life changing it would be for you to really believe and continue to believe what he is saying here? See, the world comes at us every day. You walk out in the world and the world says, I'm the only reality. I'm the only reality. And so we get so scared if our career isn't so good or somebody doesn't like us or this was bad, or we put on weight. Oh, if you really believe this. And the only place that you get this view that gives you such poise that in some ways everything here is temporary. The only things that actually last, the only wealth that lasts is what you've done for God. Who you are in God, you know, your relationship with God, if you realize the freedom there would be of fear, freedom from envy, the freedom from anger. Where do you get that? Only in the sanctuary. It's only in the sanctuary. I mean right now, in a sense, you know, you're being. I hope I'm doing everything I can to make God real to you right now. But I tell you, you walk out there and the world will start to come at you again. You need. It's in worship, it's in prayer, it's in listening to the word, it's in the Lord's supper, it's in the sanctuary. It's in all these acts of worship and prayer that you get reoriented and you see the big picture. Otherwise you tend to get lost under the trees. You get lost in the weeds. So first of all, he sees, he admits the worst. Secondly, he sees the whole. Thirdly, he grasps grace. Okay, now that he's seen the big picture, notice what happens in verse 21 to 24. It's lovely. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant. I was like a brute beast before. You see, this is actually just an extension of verse 13. He's now admitting he is like a beast. Do you know what that means? I think it means something like this. Love. And love means meeting the needs of somebody else ahead of your own. Love means sacrificing for someone else, meeting their needs rather than yours. That's love. Love is always an action. Love is deliberate. Love takes thinking. However, selfishness is a reaction. Selfishness takes no thought. Selfishness is an instinct. Selfishness just happens naturally, you know. And what does that mean? Is that when we're is. You have to be really human to love. You have to be very human. You have to be very personal, you have to be very thoughtful. You have to be very deliberate. You have to be extremely intentional. You have to remind yourself, you have to think, you have to be rational. You have to be very human. But to be cruel, to be selfish, to be envious, to be angry, to be resentful, just a matter of instinct. Happens naturally. In that sense, you're like a beast, you're like a brute. And what he says here is, I now realize that I've been like that. And yet see that word? Yet you've been holding me by the right hand all this time. You've never let me go. Now this is a recognition of God's grace. And this, by the way, is the definition of what it means to be a Christian. See, a Christian, unlike a Christian, first of all admits that you're like a beast toward God. Admits that you have been. That you've been trying to use him, that you don't really love him, that you've just been trying to use him even if you followed him. A Christian is someone who sees your capacity for selfishness and cruelty and self assertion and self will, sees your capacity for evil, and yet knows that God hasn't given up on you, that God gives you his undeserved grace and mercy. Anyway, now the real question is, how does he know this? And probably two things in the sanctuary helped him to see that in spite of all that he had done, God was still with him. It was crazy. It was undeserved. But God was still with him. The joy of that. He realizes God's grace, that God never let him go. Probably two things in the sanctuary helped him see that. Number one, probably just the experience of worship. He gets there, he realizes how he's been to God. And now he looks up and suddenly he's still sensing God's presence. He's still sensing God dealing with him. And he just feels like, oh, my goodness, that's wonderful. I mean, but it might be more than that. If you went into the sanctuary, I mean, in the temple of Jerusalem, you would have seen an altar caked with blood. Blood. And he would have known. Well, even though the Jews didn't quite understand what all those bloody sacrifices, how that worked. They didn't understand how it worked, but they knew it meant that God was trying to atone for their sins somehow so that he could still give him. Give them his presence, even though they didn't deserve it. So because in the sanctuary, he sees the bloody altar because of the sanctuary, he senses God's presence. He says, this is amazing. In spite of the way I've been, God loves me anyway. And grasp the grace of God. And it's an exhilarating, wonderful, incredible experience, as I'll show you in one second, our last point. But what's really great about this is this. What does it mean for you and I to go into the sanctuary now? So I've hinted to you that to go to the sanctuary, for you to do what he did would be to pray. For you to do what he did might be to go to church. And I'm all for going to church, by the way. I want you to know that. Let me, Let me set the record straight. Go to church. It's a great thing to do. Come and worship and sing and praise and all that. But to really be accurate, in the New Testament, how do you go into the sanctuary of God? How do you go to the temple of God? How do you do that? Because it's gone. You know, the temple's been destroyed. So how do you do that? Not by trying to rebuild a building. Jesus Christ, when he was throwing the money changers out of the temple, his critics came to him and said, what gives you the authority to do this in the temple of God? And you know what Jesus said? He says, tear this building down and in three days I'll build it back up again. But he was talking about his death and his resurrection after three days. And you know what he was saying? I'm the temple. I am the bridge between Heaven and earth. And I am the final bloody sacrifice that will atone for sins. To go into the sanctuary. If you want to do what he did, if you want to, on the one hand, admit the worst, see the whole, and then realize he forgives you, realize that he's never left you, that he's still got you by his hand, by your hand. It's transforming to admit the worst about yourself and then to have him say, but I still love you. The way for us to do that is not by going into some sanctuary and sitting down and just saying, you know, and praying a prayer. To go into the sanctuary means to go to the gospel. It means to go to Jesus Christ. It means to say, I see you dying on the cross for my sin. In fact, think about it. When he says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What is he saying? Father, I can't feel your hand. There's a sense in which Jesus Christ lost the hand of the Father. There's a sense in which Jesus Christ was. He was rejected, you know, God turned his back on him. Why? Why did the Father do that? Because Jesus was standing in our place and he was getting what we deserve. So we do not deserve to have him hold our right hand, considering how we are. And yet he does. Why? Because Jesus got the punishment you deserve. So that when you do the things you do, no matter how. I don't care who you are, I don't care what you've done. I don't care whether you're a hitman for the mob. I don't care if you've killed people. If you come to God through Jesus Christ, he holds you by your right hand. It doesn't matter how dark the dungeon. This is the shaft of light. That's what it means to go to the sanctuary. Not just to pray in general, but to pray in Jesus name. To say, father, accept me because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. And see, the last thing I mentioned, there's four things. And you can see he was slipping, he was sliding. But now he's standing, and now he's climbing, and now he's soaring. Because at the end he says, whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. Do you know what the transformation is here? I'll tell you what the transformation is. In verse 13, he says, in vain, I have lived a good life because I'm not getting the good things. I'm not getting prosperity. I'm not getting popularity. I'm not getting good things. And so for him to say, I've served you, but I'm unhappy because I didn't get these things means I want these things more than I want you. These things are the real end. You're just the means God. So in verse 13 and 14, there's all these things on earth that he wants more than God. And do you know what that does to you? If the main thing in your life that you love is your family, that sounds very nice. But you'll crush them under the weight of your expectations, and they'll always be disappointing you. If the main thing that you love in life is some person, some romantic interest or a spouse. If the main thing you love in life is your success or your career, you're a slave. If the main thing you like, the main thing you love. You love anything more than God, it'll just. It'll enslave you. You'll be a workaholic. You'll be up and down all the time. You'll be emotionally distraught. You'll be a slave of uncontrollable fears or anger. But what's happened here? There's nothing I love in heaven and earth more than you. I love you most of all. And now that means. See, God's love is the only love that you can't lose. God's love is the only love that you can't lose if you fail. God's love is the only love that if you die, it gets better. And that means only love of the immutable will bring tranquility. Only love of the immutable, unchanging love, loving God will ever get you to the place where you can look out and say, bad things are happening to me, but my foot does not slide. And so, because he has reordered his loves. Because now I saw there's nothing I love in. In life more than that. More than you. Now he's okay. But how did that happen? How do you do that? Well, I think it was because of the grace. When he saw God's grace that made him love God more. But you and I, more than just grace in general. We get to look at the cross. You know, the. The hymn you're going to sing in one second is a hymn called. It is well with My Soul by Horatio Spafford. You know the story behind this? He wrote it. In 1876, he lost all four of his little girls in a boat accident. They were on a ship to England. He was a Chicago Christian lawyer. If I remember correctly, they were on a ship to England with his wife the ship went down. She was fished out of the water, unconscious. But all the little girls were lost. They were drowned. And later on, in fact, supposedly. I mean, I don't know if it's true or not. When he was actually on his way to England on a ship to bring his wife home, he wrote this hymn. Now he was dealing with his grief. But here's what I want you to I want to ask you a question. Why, if he's dealing with the incredible tragedy of four little girls dying, why would he say, my sin? Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. O my soul. Why would he bring that up? Why would this be of comfort to him? He's dealing with the tragedy of his daughters dying. Why does he say, my sin? Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, My sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Just why? Why does that help him deal with his trouble? Why does that keep him from spiraling down into despair? I'll give you two reasons. One is when bad things happen to us, one of the things we say is, oh, maybe it's punishment. No, look at the cross. Jesus got the punishment for you. Bad things may happen to you. We don't know the reason. God knows, but it's not punishment. Jesus got the punishment for you. Well, you say bad things happen. You say, maybe. Maybe it's not punishment. Maybe God doesn't care. Maybe God doesn't care. No, look at the cross. What do you mean God doesn't care? The cross gives us a God who says, I lost a child too. Voluntarily. Not involuntarily voluntarily, to save. You see, Spafford is looking at the cross and that reorders the loves of his heart. He says, if you've done this for me, there is nothing in heaven or on earth that I love more than you. And when you can say that, nothing will cast you down. Let us pray. Our Father, we need to know how to pray during the battles of life. Through the temptations of life, through evil, through bad things happening. How do we get through? This is the way. Teach us how to go into the sanctuary. Teach us how to admit the worst, how to see the whole, how to grasp your hand, the hand of your grace and reorder our lives so that you are our strength and portion forever. Teach us how to do that in prayer. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
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Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you trust God's word and love him more. You can find more resources from Tim Keller@gospelandlife.com Just subscribe to the Gospel and Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other resources. Again, it's all@gospelandlife.com you can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.