← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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Tim Keller
Each year we make a special free resource available during the season of lent for the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday. Gospel and Life would like to send you a daily devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email@gospelandlife.com Lent now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching.
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Going to read to you from chapter five. I'm going to read verses three. I'm just going to read verses three, three, six. And this week and next week we'll be looking at this passage. This is Ephesians 5, 3, 6. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure, no immoral, impure or greedy person, such a man as an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient and therefore do not be partners with them. Let's end our reading of God's word right there. This is a new section and tonight we're going to talk about the negative. That's not a very popular subject, but that's what we have. Can't you tell, especially after the last couple times in which we were looking at Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2, that we suddenly, when you go past the beginning of verse three, when you get into the however, depends on how it's translated. Here in our translation, it's translated with the word but however. Yet there's a huge change. And verses 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 is all a downer. Don't do this, don't do that. Don't do this, for the wrath of God will come upon the disobedient. For people who do these things will never inherit the kingdom of Christ and of God. Do not be partners with them. It's a very different atmosphere last week and the last couple times. We saw Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2. We saw God, we saw Paul talking about wonderful truths, wonderful principles, the kind of things that if you have a grip on them, if you believe them, if you know them to be true, you can face anything, you can handle anything. Nothing can overwhelm you, nothing can defeat you. We were looking at the fact that we are dear children. See in verse 1 and 2, we are dear children, beloved children, and we have Jesus Christ. We were adopted as sons and daughters of God. And we have Jesus Christ who made himself an offering, a sweet smelling offering for, for us. And last week we said this. And let me just give it to you in a sentence. And somebody says why didn't you just give it to me in a sentence last week? Why did you take so long? Because I've been thinking about it since then, that's why. And this is what it's saying. Jesus Christ offered Himself up and fulfilled all of the obligations that we owe God so that he has completely satisfied God. Do you know what it means to satisfy God? I mean, you think you're hard to satisfy? This is God with a heart of God, with the purity of God. This is God whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity. Do you know what it means to satisfy God? And therefore whenever God turns to you, if you believe in him, all he sees when he looks at you, all he smells when he looks over at you, all he hears, all he tastes is complete sweetness. When he sees you, all he sees, all he smells, all he tastes, all he hears is just beauty and sweetness. Jesus is a sweet smelling savor. That means he has satisfied God for you. You are satisfying to God. God sees nothing and senses nothing but sweetness when he regards you. Now that's the kind of stuff we were talking about. And, and isn't that tremendous? Now suddenly in verse three, four, five and six, we're in a very different atmosphere. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the story of the transfiguration. God took Peter, James and John up into a mountain. Christ did, I mean, and took Peter, James and John up into a mountain. And there we're told that Jesus Christ was transfigured. That means that the veil was taken away. And the apostles saw Jesus as the glorious person he really was. He wasn't veiled. You know, we always sing and hark the herald angels sing every year. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see well, the veil was taken away and they could see the glory that he was. They could see the magnificence of his being. I don't know what that must have been like. You know, beauty is something, is not just nice. Beauty is addicting. And beauty is addicting because we need it. Beautiful music, beautiful sights, light shows you can't take your eyes off because we need it is an interesting place where Martin Luther says the poor die as much for lack of beauty as for lack of bread. He says the poor are always made to live in Ugliness. They're not just made to live in simplicity, they're made to live in ugliness. And there's a place where. Where Luther says beauty is such a necessity that to have beauty continually withheld from you, beggars you spiritually just as to have bread withheld from you, beggars you physically. He says the poor are as much starved for beauty as for bread. It's a very interesting insight, but it all comes in. Beauty is something we've got to have. We're addicted to it. What must it be like then, to see the Lord in his beauty? That's what they saw on the mountain. Must have been amazing. Incredible. It's like having your soul electrified, the way your mouth gets electrified when something incredibly sweet hits it, hits the tongue and the joy overflows and the beauty overwhelms. And they're up there and they're seeing him transfigured. And they're there with Moses and Elijah, and they want to stay. They even say, let's build some tents. Let's stay here. What will Jesus have? He'll have none of that. He takes them by the hand. He leads them down. And as they come down the mountain, there's a fight going on. They get to the bottom of the mountain. There's the apostles fighting. There's a man who had come with a crazed child, a child who was demon possessed, a child who was out of his mind. And the disciples couldn't help him. And then there was an argument, and there was all this arguing and all this backbiting and scratching. And so you see, you know, Peter, James and John are saying, why here we are, why Jesus will not ever let you stay on the mountain. He brings you down. Because you still live in a world twisted and broken by sin. You've got to deal with the realities of that. And therefore, there's always a negative. Now, verses 3, 4 and 5 and 6 are the negative part of being a Christian. There are prohibitions. There are limits. There are warnings. There are prohibitions that cannot be altered. There are no exceptions to them. This is the limit. Don't cross this line. You mustn't cross this line. That's the way it is. That's the negative. And I. And let me just for a moment. Let me just for a moment show you the importance of this little word. However. This little word. But at the beginning of verse three, unless you see that there's both a positive and a negative to your Christianity, unless there is a positive and negative, you'll die. You will die. You see, unfortunately, many of us have had, and some of you have generally had to choose between churches or styles of Christianity that are all positive without negative or all negative without positive. See, for example, there are churches that are all negative without positive. Some of you were raised in them. And what I mean by that, this is a church that says, repent, you're a sinner, obey the law, or you're dead meat. And all that's true as far as it goes, repent, you're a sinner. These are things in the Bible. The wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. Obey the law or the ramifications will be overwhelming. That's all there. But. But there's the negative. But what's the positive? The positive. Oh my. The positive is this. That's all true. But you have. For every one look at your sin, you have to take 10 looks at your Savior. And here's what you have to see. First of all, Jesus has fulfilled the law. Remember, he came and fulfilled the law when he was being baptized. John the Baptist says, what do you need to be baptized for? Are you kidding? Why don't you baptize me? And Jesus looks at him and says, it is thus appointed that we fulfill all righteousness. It's my job, he's saying, to completely obey the law for my people, for the people who will unite with me by faith and who I will represent. Not only that, he not only obeys the law completely for you, but he also takes the penalty of the law. He's been beaten up, he's been crucified. He's received the penalty of the law. Listen, friends, you know what it means when the Bible says you died with them. There's a little voice inside of you that often goes off. And the little voice says some nasty things. And generally speaking, it's your conscience. It would be there anyway. Some of you have had backgrounds in childhoods with lots of stuff that other people said that now the conscience has grabbed onto. It would be there anyway. But maybe things have happened to you that have aggravated. And there's a little voice down there that says you deserve to be kicked, you deserve to be tramped upon. Look at what you have done. You deserve to be spit upon. You deserved. You don't deserve to live. Some of you have got that voice. All of us. All of us, the Bible says, has a voice down there that says, you're a failure. Thou art the One and you don't deserve to go on in some of our lives. That Conscience, that thing that's down there that says you have disobeyed the law. That conscience is really sublimated. It's down there pretty deep, and it's not very conscious. Somebody once said it's a little bit like an oil leak. Deep, deep, deep under. It's like an oil tanker leaking, but the leak is way down underneath the surface of the water, so everything's polluted, but nobody can really tell exactly where it's coming from. In some of our cases, that little voice is very, very conscious. And the voice goes, you deserve to be tramped upon. You deserve to be kicked. You deserve to be beaten. What does a Christian say? What does a Christian say, oh, no, that's not true. I'm a wonderful person. Come on, that little voice will make duck soup of you if you talk about that. They say, oh, sure, you're a wonderful person. What about on March 7th? What about, you can't do that. What does a Christian say? Christian says, I've already been kicked. I've already had a crown of thorns. I've already been run through with a spear. I've already paid all these things that you say I owe. And you're right. Well, may the accuser roar. Of sins that I have done, I know them all and thousands more. Jehovah knoweth none. What it means to say that you died with Christ. He already took all those things upon himself. The law has been fulfilled. There's a part of you that will also say, well, you ought to do this, you ought to do that. And you need to turn to it and say, yeah, but I do love the Lord my God, with all my heart, soul, strength and mind. I do love my neighbor as myself in my Savior, Jesus did it for me. And now when God looks at me, I am sweet to him. And not only has Jesus fulfilled the law for you legally. Romans 8, chapter 8, verse 4 says, and now the just requirement of the law is being fulfilled in those who walk according to the Spirit. And that means not only did Christ obey the law for you, but now when the Spirit comes into your life bit by bit, gradually and gradually, you're not longer just legally righteous, but you're becoming actually righteous in stages. And you're becoming a person who can walk in accord with the law. See, that's the negative. But you've got to attach it to the positive or it'll crush you. And then there's a kind of Christianity, there's a kind of church that's all the permissive, all the positive, none of the Negative. And those are the kinds of churches that say, God loves you just as you are. He accepts you just as you are. You have to just claim your acceptance. You've got to see that God is not a God of wrath. God is not a God of wrath. He's a God of love. Now, as far as it goes, that's true, too. He does love you and he does accept you. But you've got to keep this in mind. The positive out, the negative will turn you just as shallow a person as the negative without the positive. Don't you see the Pharisees? And don't you see the people who live in the legalistic churches and the permissive churches? Legalistic Christianity and permissive Christianity. What kind of Christianity does that produce? It produces Jordan River Christianity ankle deep. Now, what happens when you realize that God accepts you? Does he accept you? Yes, that's the positive. But here's the negative. Of course, the Bible says if you're a Christian now, your sins can never bring you into condemnation. Never. We've talked about that last week. I've just been living. I've been all day. In the morning we read from the Heidelberg Catechism, and all day I've been just sucking on the sweetness of a particular answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. It says that I believe that the Son of God, through his spirit and his Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects and preserves for himself a community for eternal life and united in faith. That's saying that God for all of history, has been bit by bit out of the human race, gathering people into a community of people who love him. And then it says of this community, I am and always will be a living member. If you die tonight and you're a believer, if you die tonight, May 5, on May 6, you will still be a living member of that community. You'll still be surrounded by men and women, spirits of just men and women made perfect. You will still be surrounded by people who love God and love you. You will always be a living member that can't be taken away from you. No matter what comes. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. We talked about that last week. But your sins can't bring you into condemnation. But here's the negative that goes with the positive. Your sins are far more grievous to your father than the sins of a non believer. Your sins can't condemn you, but they're much more grievous. Look, his special relationship with you. Hey, if My next door neighbor. Suppose my wife and I get to know our neighbors and they're a nice couple, and we find out that. And we find out that the wife of that couple has decided to leave her husband or commit adultery, let's say. Won't that hurt us? Of course, that's not going to hurt me nearly as much as if my wife commits adultery. It's a big difference. Why? Because my relationship with her is a little bit more intimate. And of course it's going to destroy me in a way that my neighbor's sin won't destroy me. Do you not know that God is in that relationship with us? So, a sin, the same sin before you were a Christian, that of course offended God, now grieves him in a new way. Do you understand that? Your sins can't condemn you, but they're far more grievous. You see, there's the positive and the negative. They have to go together. Besides that, the whole purpose of. Of saving you from sin, the whole purpose of saying you are accepted is so that you can be more honest in your repentance. Before I understood justification by faith alone, before I understood that I am satisfying to God, before I understood that in Christ I am no longer condemned or condemnable, before I understood that I couldn't be honest about my sin when somebody showed it to me, I. I would have to say, you're exaggerating. You're exaggerating. Why? Because deep inside me there was something that said, if you're that bad, you don't deserve to live. So I couldn't even admit how bad it was. But when my conscience was framed with an understanding of grace, it didn't get me to the place where I said, well, since I'm not condemned, since I'm completely accepted, I don't need to worry about sin. I'm more sensitive than I ever was. And not only that, I can admit it. See, I've got the strength of soul. I've got the psychic strength. I've got the psychological strength, because I no longer have all of my emotional eggs in the basket of my performance. I got a lot of them there, and we've talked about this before, but not nearly as many as before. What that means is that the more I see the positive, the more I rest in who I am in Christ, the more I'm able to deal with the negative, the more honest I'm able to be about my sin. That's why Paul says, what shall we sin? That grace may abound. He's talking about how Great it is to be completely accepted by God. Then he turns around and says, what? May we sin? Shall we sin? That grace may abound me. Genoto never, may it never be. He says, the whole purpose of my salvation was to get me out of that. The reason you've got to think about this is that some people, many people who've been raised in one kind of setting, it's the old pendulum problem. If you've been raised in the kind in a super duper situation, super duper positive without negative, completely permissive. Therefore there's no authority in your life. You were told everything is okay, you're fine, just find out what you want to do. Nobody can call what you want to do right and wrong. You have to fulfill your own needs. People like that are absolutely famished for authority. And very often they will find themselves sucked into the most incredibly authoritarian cults with all the negative. They need that little internal gyroscope that's been robbed of them. And some of you may have been raised in Christianity or in organizations or a culture in which it's all negative and no positive. So what are you going to do? You might make a beeline over for the kind of Christianity, the kind of church that's all acceptance, all permission, beware. To some degree or another, we've all suffered under the unwillingness to live. Both with Ephesians 5:1 and 2, along with Ephesians 5, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. I mean, it's all here, it's all everywhere. I mean, the Bible is an amazing place in some sense. Sometimes I feel like if God just gave us any one chapter, we could still may do because so much of the stuff is, it's just restated and restated. Here it is again. If you have, if you are able to live both the first two verses and the next five verses, you're going to have a faith that swings. You're going to have a life that is making progress, otherwise you're going to die. Okay? The negative is necessary. It's necessary because at some point you have to say no. People make fun, rightly so, of some of the just say no campaigns, just say no to drugs, just say no to this, just say no to that. But all of us realize there's no substitute for that. You know, those of you, for example, who have tried to deal with an addiction, you know that support groups are helpful, you know that steps are helpful, you know that all that stuff is helpful. But at a certain point, if you're going to overcome it, you've got to just say, no, there's a negative, right? People are supporting you, people are calling you, people are helping you, people are picking you up. But the fact is people are not going to be able to walk with you and watch you 24 hours a day. At some point you have got to just say, no. There is no trick. I've got people who often say, well, I'd like to stop this, I'd like to get out of this, but I'm just weak. And I've been praying to God for the strength. I've been praying to God for the strength. God will give you strength, but there's, there is no substitute for the negative. Can you imagine somebody saying, I've been praying for upper body strength, but every time I do bicep curls, they just seem so hard. And you say, well, you know, don't stop praying for upper body strength. You need to pray for upper body strength. But yeah, bicep curls are hard. You know, God doesn't. You see God? Praying to God and asking for upper body strength does not eliminate the negative. There's no substitute for it. No substitute at all.
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Are you holding onto a grudge or struggling to forgive someone in your life? Would you like to experience the freedom and healing that forgiveness brings? In his book, why Should I and How Can I? Tim Keller shows how forgiveness is not just a personal act, but a transformative power that embodies Christ's grace to a world fractured by conflict. Far from being a barrier to justice, forgiveness is the foundation for pursuing it. In this book, you'll uncover how forgiveness and justice are deeply intertwined expressions of love and how embracing Christ's forgiveness equips us to extend grace to others. We'd love to send you Dr. Keller's book Forgive, as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the hope and forgiveness of Christ with more people. Visit gospelandlife.com to request your copy. That's gospelandlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
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Don't you know that Christianity is a fight? JC Ryle, one of my favorite guys. He was a bishop of Liverpool. He was an Anglican bishop in the. In the 19th century. And there's a place where he says this. He says there are thousands of men and women who go to church and chapels every Sunday. They call themselves Christians, but it's not real, genuine Christianity. It satisfies sleepy consciences, but it's not good money. Why you never see any fight? In their religion of spiritual strife, of Exertion of conflict with sin, of self denial of watching and warring, they know little at all. A true Christian is as known for new inner warfare as for new inner peace. See, there's places where there was pain, that when you become a Christian, now there's peace. But there's places where there was peace. And now when you become a Christian, there's pain. See, for example, your fear of death, you become a Christian, that begins to lift. Your lack of meaning and certainty of what I should be doing with my life, that begins to lift. You experience that new meaning, your moral vertigo, not knowing which end is up. How do I know how to make decisions? How do I know what is right and wrong? That lifts. You're dealing with your guilt and your fears, that begins to lift. You see all those places where there was a lot of conflict, peace begins to reign. But becoming a Christian, whereas it comforts places you were disturbed, it also disturbs places you were comfortable. It begins to show you things about yourself that you never believed. It brings you up against the Word and the Spirit and shows you things that you never believed. The reason there's got to be a negative is because Christianity is a fight. And if you don't think Christianity is a fight, if you think it's enough just to stay in verses one and two, if you think it's enough to simply think about and claim all the great things that God has given you, if you don't think that there comes a time in which, unavoidably, you say, no, I am one of God's holy people. I can't do that, I won't do that. I don't feel the power to say no. But I'm going to say no anyway. No excuses. If you don't understand that, if you don't understand Christianity is a fight, you're going to die out there in the world. Understand this. Now, believe it or not, looking at the clock here, this has been an exposition of the Word, but so just gives more fodder to people who say, hmm, he's long winded now. It's true. What I'd like to do for what time I got remaining is actually open up the rest of these verses. As you know, I get back to them later next week. Let me open up the verses. If you look carefully, you'll see that though there seems to be a lot of things that are forbidden, a lot of no's, there's really only three. There's three categories of negatives, sexual, immorality and impurity. They're basically Talking about the same thing. Sexual immorality is the activity of fornication. Get back to that in a minute. Impurity. It has more to do with the thinking and the attitudes that are attached to it. In other words, what you have there is really what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, you've heard it said, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery. That's the same thing. Flee fornication and impurity. So they're basically. That's one category. Secondly, you've got the category of covetousness, which Paul returns to later in a couple verses later. And in that place he says, covetousness is idolatry, greed. And then thirdly, he gives you three more words, but they're all categories of speech. All categories of speech. He talks about obscenity, he talks about foolish talking, and he talks about coarse joking, but they're all having to do with speech. Now, let me just run down the first two. Not the sexual morality. I'll leave that to last because that takes a little bit more time to explain. Let me talk about greed and let me talk about the speech things real briefly. First of all, covetousness. Isn't it marvelous, the integrity of the biblical ethic, that sexual immorality and materialism are right together? The Bible has never made a distinction between those two things. You see, sexual immorality, fornication, and enjoying spending money on yourself too much are together. There's no distinction made between personal morality and social morality. There's no distinction made between public and private. You see that, you go back to the Book of Amos. You look at the prophets. I noticed that Jeff and Scott are teaching in the mornings a course on the prophets. You'll see it there like nowhere else. When the prophets are denouncing sins, they never categorize them in one mouthful. In one sentence, Amos will say, you sell the poor for a pair of shoes. You gouge the poor. You charge them too much. You make shoes and you charge them too much, and you go into harlots. Same sentence, same sin. They're both sins. There's no distinction made. One of the things that always I find intriguing is that liberals say, hey, what I do with my body is my business, but we're going to legislate and make people be generous with their money. And conservatives say, hey, what I do with my money is my own business. We can't have anybody tell me what to do with my own Money. But we have to have family legislation. We've got to support the family. In other words, you see your different political ideologies try to bifurcate things and say, we're going to put it to you. We're going to make you be moral in this area. But in this area, really, anything goes. You won't have the Bible talking like that. You won't have the Bible fitting in either the Liberal or the Conservative Party. It doesn't do that. Greed, covetousness. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of forms of it. One of them, of course, is living at the level of your means. The Bible says that anybody who lives as well as they could is covetous. You're supposed to be generous. And some of you, of course, because you're living right on the edge. You know, when you make out that $5 check to charity or that $10 check to the church, that's a lot for you and you're giving up something. All right, there's the rest of us where $10 is just nothing. The point is, if you're covetous, if you're living as well as you can. Another form of covetousness for sure, is doing things strictly for money that aren't very helpful to the rest of the world. People that produce products that you know are useless, maybe even bad for people, but they make money. And so I'm going to do it. That's a form of covetousness to trample on people, to cut people out. So you, for the sake of money, for the sake of keeping your job, that's covetousness. In the Bible, there's two marks of covetousness, two tests. One, envy. Envy of people for their standard of living. And two, worry. Worry about money. It's called the cares of the world. Now, secondly, kind of intriguing, it talks about obscenity and. Wait a minute. Obscenity. Foolish talking and coarse joking. Oh, brother. Listen, first of all, the word obscenity really has to do with sexual immorality and purity. But the foolish talk and the coarse joking is fascinating. Isn't it amazing that Jesus Christ. Isn't it amazing that Christianity can be at the top of the mountain? Like verses one and two talk about imitating God, having the adoption of sons and daughters, and next thing you know, three verses later is saying, to be a Christian means you even have to examine your humor. Christianity means you have got the word and the spirit. You have got something that has got to be apply to every area of your life, every Detail of daily living, everything. If you don't understand that, if you're not wrestling with that, you don't understand Christianity. And what Paul says here is foolish talking. The word foolish literally means weightless or thoughtless. Thoughtless. The book of Proverbs says that good words are like a tree, the mouth of the righteous is like a tree, and people can eat from it. What that means is, do you say things that people ponder? Do you say things that are obviously thoughtful and wise, or do you say things that are actually nurturing and nourishing? Can people take the things that you say to them home and live off the encouragement, live off the compliment, live off the insight? Are you the kind of person that when you talk, you're saying things that are obviously wise and obviously encouraging? I mean, some. There's people that when I'm with them, anytime I'm with them, I'm remembering what they said to me. Even if it wasn't a heavy time, it may be just lunch or something. I'm remembering things they said to me because of their kindness, because of their sweetness, because of their encouragement and because of their wisdom. And I'm remembering the things they said. I'm taking them home. I'm saying to my wife, oh, so and so said this and boy, that was interesting. And oh, that really helped me. Or I'm thinking about it all day. Do you have that kind of. Is that your kind of language? That's what foolish talking is. Weightless, frivolous, forgettable, and then coarse joking. Coarse joking. What this is talking about is humor. It's kind of interesting. Tomorrow night's comedy night. And maybe I should wait till next week too. I only got five minutes here. Actually. Some. If you came to the. I have to do it tomorrow night too. If you came to the first comedy night, I offered a couple of ideas. I found it interesting that I have tried to say that for a Christian, humor is not just tolerable, it's inevitable. And I found when I was studying one of my commentaries on Ephesians, one of my heroes, David Martyn Lloyd Jones, uses the very same sentence. And I know I didn't get it from him because I'd never read that chapter before, but he says, for the Christian, humor is inevitable. And here's why. Number one, real Christians are having their self importance destroyed bit by bit by the spirit of God. And therefore you see the kind of sarcasm and the kind of cutting humor or the kind of humorlessness that comes from being a stuffed shirt is slowly being pulled away. But on the other hand, real Christianity also slowly destroys self hatred. And that's where a lot of, a lot of deeply cynical and a lot of self deprecating and the kind of humor that makes you very, very uncomfortable when you hear it comes from. Great sentence. But ultimately the thing that makes Christians inevitably humorous is that nothing but God is sacred to a Christian. See every one of us until, until you really become a Christian and make God God, you have to worship something. There's something that is too serious to make fun of, like your body, like your appearance, like how much money you make. There's certain things that are just too serious. There's certain things that are. This is what I live for. When you become a Christian, there's nothing left that's sacred except God. Nothing. There's no sacred cows. And therefore a Christian finds that he or she is developing a kind of humor and a kind of sparkle that arises out of. Look. It says, do not have obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking which are out of place, but rather Thanksgiving. A person full of gratitude is sparkling. A person full of grateful joy is bubbling. A person in that situation is not dull at all. Is your talk forgettable? Are your jokes sarcastic or cutting? Do they arise out of self importance or self hatred? Paul says the Christian life has to be applied to everything. Hey, last, last sexual immorality. Let me give you a definition. And next week when we come back, do a little bit more talking about this and get into, and try to finish off the rest. But it's very, very important to realize a lot of people give me some trouble over this. A lot of people. One of the more interesting things about New York is that it's a blip in the history of the church. All Orthodox churches, all Roman Catholic churches, all Protestant churches, historically all, all the branches of Judaism and all of Islam has always said this and that is that sex was designed by God to be used as an expression of love only in the context of a permanent, fully committed relationship. They've all said that. The fact that you live in a city where most of the Protestant churches stare at that teaching like a cow stares at a new gate, like, I can't believe it. It's a blip. It's an aberration. You have to understand in history and in the world, there's very, very, very few churches that really have ever been able to. That's like in the last 10 years, the last 20 years out of 2,000 years of Christian history. It's all, it's, it's not like a Crazy idea. It's not a cultic idea. It's not my idea. All right. Yet a lot of people look at it that way. The word here that's used is the word. It's a Greek verb, porneo, and it's usually translated in the old translations, fornication. It's a different word than the word moikoi. Moikoi means to have to be adultery. In adultery, it's to adulterize. In most of the lists in the New Testament, porneo and moikoi are put together. I mean, pornoi, which means fornicators, and moikoi, which is adulterers, are put next to each other. They're not the same in a sense. You know, adultery is sexual immorality, but all sexual immorality is not adultery. Fornication means sex between people who are not married to each other. Adultery means sex with somebody that you are not married to, but who may be married to someone else, or you may be married to someone else. Why does the Bible say that? And here's how I have to end. Because the negative always comes with a positive. That's what I've been trying to say all night. Did you hear it? The positive? The positive is that sex is not dirty. The positive is this sex is actually biblically an analogy. The Bible is always saying the reason that God invented man and woman and in the marriage relationship, the reason that married sexual love is so wonderful, is because it's an analogy of the relationship between God and us, between Christ and the church. It means that the most blissful, incredible, rapturous sexual love between a husband and a wife is just an echo of what it's going to be like to see God face to face. That's where it comes from. That's what it's a sign of. Is that going to be fun to see God face to face? I'll say so, if you can use the word fun. And is sex therefore a delightful and fun thing? Of course it's supposed to be. But therefore, because it's such a positive thing, there are limits. Can you imagine God giving his intimacy to you in any other context, but a fully and permanently committed relationship? Do you think God says, I'm going to pour out my love into your heart, but you don't have to commit yourself to me fully and finally and completely and permanently. You don't have to do that. Does God do that? No. God says, if you want to have emotional oneness with me, it's got to be total oneness. And in the same way, if you look at somebody else and say, I want to have sex with you, but I don't want to marry you. That's another way of saying, I want to be physically naked with you, but I don't want to be personally naked or vulnerable to you. I don't want to bind myself to you in such a way that I have to make all my choices with you and all my decisions with you. I don't want to be that committed to you. I don't want to be as fully and as legally and as economically and emotionally committed to you as possible. I would like to have intimacy, but not without that kind of total commitment. And to have physical oneness without the total oneness to which sex obviously points is a monstrosity. And to have that kind of physical oneness without the total oneness that it points to in heaven is a monstrosity. There's no positive without the negative. And of course the negative without the positive will destroy you. The whole purpose of God's love and saving mercy is to bring you into his presence, to make you fit for his presence. And therefore the negative always leads to the positive. It doesn't say, as you know, I try to make this a proverb around here. Doesn't say, blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after blessedness. Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after something besides blessedness. Righteousness. Don't be like Esau. It says in the book of Hebrews, esau was a fornicator and a profane person who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. He walked on in and he says, I'm so hungry. And Jacob says, give me your birthright. And Esau says, like a fool, well, I have these needs. I'm hungry. Who cares about anything else? Here, take my birthright. Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after something besides blessedness. Hunger after righteousness. Limit yourself. Go for what God has said. Just say no. Aim for the righteousness and you'll get the blessedness. Aim for the blessedness and you'll get neither. Because the whole purpose of the gospel is to bring us into the kingdom, to bring us under the King. In his name we pray. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that now, as we conclude, we'll see that we can't be a people of the negative, not the positive, or of the positive and not the negative. We pray that you'll help us to bind these together in the gospel. For it's Jesus who came to us and said that we have to lose ourselves. That's the negative to find ourselves. Father, we ask now that everybody here will work this out. I know, Lord, that we wouldn't have looked at this passage unless you wanted to say something to us in it. We pray, Lord, that every person here will recognize that there is a way in which we have to act on what we've heard. Help us to open our hearts and take the seed of the Word in so that we can bear fruit for you. We pray it in Jesus name, Amen.
- [43:16]
Thanks for listening to today's teaching by Tim Keller Here at Gospel and Life, we want to share a special free resource with you that we provide during the season of lent for the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel and Life would like to send you a daily Lent devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email@gospelandlife.com lent that's gospelandlife.com lent Today's sermon was recorded in 1991. 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.