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Welcome to Gospel and Life. During January, we are inviting our listeners to consider becoming a Gospel and Life Monthly partner. If you'd like to learn more, keep listening at the end of today's podcast for details. Do you ever wish Life came with an owner's manual, a guide to follow when you're facing difficult decisions or just trying to live with integrity in the small, everyday moments? Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller shows us how the Ten Commandments help us align our lives with God's will, not by restricting us with outdated rules, but by laying the foundation from which we can live a life of true freedom and flourishing.
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Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 through 12 therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the Gospel preached to us just as they did. But the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said so I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words. And on the seventh day God rested from all his work. And again in the passage above he says, they shall never enter my rest. It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it today, when a long time later he spoke through David. As was said before today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, for if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account the Word of the Lord. We're in a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, and today we're talking about the commandment that says honor the Sabbath day, the day of rest One of the most important themes in the Bible is the theme of rest. Psalm chapter three is one of my favorite chapters. In the psalm, it says, O Lord. The psalmist David is talking, O Lord, how many are my foes? How many there are that rise up against me? But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter of my head. Therefore I lie down and I sleep and I awake for you. Sustain me. I will not fear, he says, though tens of thousands would encamp against me. That's an amazing passage. You know what the picture is here is a man who goes to sleep the night before a battle, knowing full well that he's greatly outnumbered. And he sleeps. He rests, and he rests. A lot of us have a lot of trouble sleeping because of the thousands of people that are out there. You know, New York City is not a very restful place. There's a relentlessness about it. There's an activity about it, a competitiveness about it. And in many ways, it can really be a very, very disturbing place to live. And yet. And yet, as bad as it can be, at least when you come out in the morning, you don't think that the thousands of people living around you are all aiming their gun at you. But David knew that. And yet he says, I lay down and I sleep. Now, there's a sense in which the Bible says, because it brings this subject up again and again and again all the way through it from Old to New Testament, that the great question in life is, do you know how to lie down and sleep? The great question is that because you see, anybody can lie down, but can you sleep? Can you rest? And I would propose to you that this is the real way for you to tell the validity of your faith. Because it's one thing to say, I believe in God. I believe in this and I believe in that, and I believe in that. But when you come to the situation, you're in a position of tenseness or of danger. You're in the situation. You're in the position. Now, is your faith working? Now we can see what good it is. Now we can see whether it's there really. And, you know, this very test, this is the great test of whether your faith is real faith. But it's also the thing the world wants the most. And what is it? Rest. What is rest? What is the Sabbath? Rest. It's the REM of the soul. You know what REM is? Rapid eye movement. Scientists will tell you that the thing that restores the body is not the length of your sleep. Right. It's the depth. It's not how long you're sleeping, but whether you get into those periods of deep sleep which they call rapid eye movement sleep. That's what restores. And in the same way the Bible is putting forth here, it says, look, there's all kinds of ways that in a shallow way, you can sort of get rid of tension. You know, you can slow down and take those deep cleansing breaths. You can go jog, you can do relaxation techniques, you can think positive thoughts, you can distract yourself, or you can say to yourself, stop worrying. Get a hold of yourself. But all of those things, none of those things. All those things are shallow. And none of those things are the deep rest that really restores the soul. You see, when. When the psalmist says, he restoreth my soul, he's talking about that. He's talking about the REM sleep of the soul. And that is what this passage is talking about. It says, there remains a rest for the people of God. Now, what is that? That's what we want to look at just for a moment. Okay, let's look at it. First of all, let's see what this passage tells us, what the rest is. It helps us understand the rest, and then it also helps us understand how to enter the rest. Okay, how to understand the rest. The key verse, perhaps in this passage, is right here in verse 10. It says, There is a rest. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest rests from his own work, as God rests from his. Now, you know that work, that word work, when it talks about resting from your works. The Hebrews writer here is bringing us into. Into the courtroom, bringing us into the area of the legal again. Because many times the New Testament talks about something it calls the works of the law. And the works of the law are your efforts, my efforts to live up to standards, to legal standards. And therefore the rest that is being discussed here is a legal rest. Or put it another way, this rest has to do with people who are striving and working very hard to get a good verdict. Now, I think to really get a handle on what. What the restlessness is that needs to be remedied is to go to one of the great writers of the 20th century, a strange man, but a brilliant man named Franz Kafka. And he wrote many things, but he wrote a novel I'd like to think about here for a moment with you. It's called the Trial. And that is a strange novel, some of you are saying. Yes, yes, I remember College literature courses. Something. Remind me, remind me. Okay. The trial is about a man named Joseph K. And he wakes up one morning on his 30th birthday, by the way, on his 30th birthday, and he discovers that he has been arrested and he's under house arrest and he's waiting trial and he's on probation, so he's able to move around, but he's under house arrest and he's waiting trial and they will not tell him what he's arrested for. He knows he's under arrest, but he doesn't know what it's for. Now, the novel, in the Early Stages, talks about how Joseph K. Uses the kind of cliches, the pat answers about life that he'd always relied on. And he tries to apply it to the situation. You see, friends, nobody likes people to give them pat answers, except that most of us live our lives and base our lives on pat answers about life. And the pat answers that Joseph K. Uses are things like this. He says, well, I know that if I just sit down and think it out, I know I'll come to the solution. I'll figure it out. Another one he says, is I'm just sure that as time goes on, we'll see. So we'll see that there's a rational explanation for this. Another one is the people that he talks to who are trying to arrest him. His, you know, probationers and his wardens and the police. They don't seem to under. They won't tell him anything. But he says, but I know that the people in authority are intelligent. I know that they will certainly be open to reason. In other words, Joseph K. Falls back on two cliches that many of us use in order to. To make sense of life. He says, the world is a rational place, and I am basically a decent person. But what happens is his life unravels because they don't work. These cliches don't work anymore. And he cannot find a reason and he cannot talk to anybody and people aren't being reasonable. And worse than that, he begins to look his life over and he begins to think his life over, and he begins to realize, you know, there's lots of possible reasons I could be on trial. And he remembers dishonesties, and he remembers betrayals, and he remembers ways that he cut corners, and he remembers all sorts of things. And he begins to real. Begins to realize these things might be things that I'm being called up on charges for. I don't know how they could have known about it, but maybe and eventually he begins to feel more and more of that anxiety, that sense of guilt and that sense of condemnation. And at the end is a great novel. You remember something about Kafka. You know how it ends? You want to know the happy ending? At the very end, he can never get an answer. And at the very end, his warder, the man who's been taking care of and tailing around, takes him into a quarry. And for some reason, Joseph looks up and he sees in some high room, on some balcony, a distant figure with his arms stretched out. Finally, Joseph said, somebody who will talk to him. Instead of everybody else being like this with their arms folded. Somebody with mercy, somebody with understanding, Somebody who will help me. But just as he looks up and he reaches his hand up, the warder stabs him through the heart. And Kafka says, quote, he died like a dog. And that's how the book ends. Nice book, huh? What's the message? Listen, friends, the great art of the 20th century. The great minds of the 20th century continually drive home the same thing. What they drive home is that there's these little cliches that we tell ourselves, and we've got 1980s versions of them. They go like this. Honey, you can do anything you put your mind to. You know, that's almost every TV documentary series. I mean, every TV drama, those miniseries, they always end like that. Honey, you can do anything you put your mind to if you just want it hard enough. We believe that we're basically decent people and we can set standards. And if we try hard enough, we can reach those standards. But listen, that's not what Kafka is saying. That's not what Freud said. Freud wrote this interesting letter to a Lutheran minister named Otto Pfister. And he's got a great quote in there that's been quoted down to the present day. He said, most people are trash. Sigmund Freud. Most people are trash. Read the end. Read Mark Twain stuff, watch Woody Allen movies, and you'll see what's happening is. Listen. The great minds are saying the world is not a rational place. People are not all that decent. And if you look carefully, you'll see that you're not all that decent either. And you'll see that you're not living up to the standards you are not. And the more you start to pick the lid up and look beneath the pat answers and the cliches, you will be begin to sense a condemnation that we thoughtful people already sent. That's what Kafka is saying. And you see they're right. Look, all they're saying is what Romans chapter two said. Romans chapter two years ago went like this. Paul says, you have no excuse. You who pass judgment on someone else for whatsoever point you judge another, you are judging yourself because you do the same things. And then he also goes on and says, the Gentiles who have not the law are a law unto themselves. Since they show the requirements of the law are written in their hearts, their consciences, witness their thoughts. And there is an accusing and a defending in the thoughts. Now, did you hear that? The language of trial. What Paul is saying is that everybody deep down has an understanding of standards. And he says, on the final day, God will judge us by our own standards. Now, let me put it like this. Let me give you the best illustration. I know all of us down deep do not know the Bible says everything that the law tells you. But there are some. Some residual deep understandings. For example, the golden rule. You don't have to teach kids go, the Golden Rule. This you. As soon as they can talk, they're saying, I gave you a piece of my orange, you should give me a piece of yours. They know that golden rule. They know to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's down there. And that's why Paul says, the Gentiles, though they don't have the written word of God, they know in their conscience there is a law down there. There are standards. And Paul also says, you will find that as you look carefully, there will be a little trial always going on in your head because you'll always find yourselves being accused and having to defend yourself because you do not live up to the very things that you call other people to do. Put it this way. Imagine, as it were, that God put a little invisible tape recorder around your necks the day of your birth. Well, better yet, I should say this way. Romans 2 is saying that God did do that. And there is a little invisible tape recorder around your neck. And that tape recorder only clicks on whenever you tell somebody else how they ought to be. Whenever you tell someone else this is how it ought to be. This is how you ought to be. This is how people ought to be. Whenever there's an oughtness in what you say, it clicks on. At the end of time, on Judgment Day, God will just. He'll come up to you and he'll say, excuse me, let me get that tape recorder off. And you'll say, oh, what I'm doing, I didn't even see that there. And they'll say, well, listen, I want you to know that I'm not going, I'm going to be very fair. So fair. I am not going to judge you by the word of God. Especially if the person has never heard of the word of God, right? Somebody never heard of the Bible or never read it or never had a chance to. Fine. He says, I'm going to take that off and I'm just. All I'm going to do is judge you by your own standards. All I'm going to do is see if you were the person that you demanded other persons be. And Romans 2 says, and Kafka says, and Freud says, and everybody who really thinks about it says nobody, nobody will pass that test. And anybody who's thinking about it begins to grow in the knowledge of that condemnation. And there's a restlessness and there's a, there's a sense of guilt. It's a non specific guilt, just like Kafka's friend Joseph K. Because when you begin to look at your life you see all kinds of problems. It's nonspecific, it's difficult to get a grip on. And by the way, it gets worse as you get older. And that's the reason that Joseph K. Woke up on his 30th birthday, you see, and suddenly realized he was on trial. Now listen, every single person in this room knows about that trial. Some of us, it's very conscious in our lives. And what happens is you're going to find that some of you are perfectionists, you're workaholics, you're very, very sensitive to criticism, you've got a very tender conscience because this sense of the trial is very, very close to the surface in your life. Some of the rest of us are a whole lot more self assured looking, a whole lot more cool looking and maybe a lot more successful. And in that case the same anxiety is down there. But it's sleek, steep, it's more like an underwater oil leak that messes things up but you can't really tell where it's coming from. And you see, everybody's got it. Some people, the sense of the trial drives them away from religion. They say, I want to get as far away from religion as I can because all religion does is make me feel guilty. In some cases the sense of a trial drives you to religion and it's not necessarily good because you can come into religion and do everything you can to defend yourself against this sense of guilt. And the reason you may be into your religion and into your church or into whatever faith you're in is a way of defending yourself from a little prosecution that you always hear up there in the conscience. And this is what your way of saying, I'm okay, I'm a decent person. Look at all the things that I've done. There's no rest for you because you haven't rest from your works. You can't be rested from your works. Your works haunt you. Your standards haunt you. Your failures haunt you. But the Bible says the reason for that is because it's true. And the reason that Freud says what he says and Woody Allen says what he says and Franz Kafka says what he says is because they're saying something that's really there. Romans 1 and Romans 2 says all people, regardless of the Bible, can begin to sense in their own consciences that sense of condemnation.