← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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Welcome to Gospel and life. Why is the world so broken? And why are we capable of inflicting such harm, even toward those we love? People point to politics, poverty, or psychology, but none of these fully explain what we see in ourselves and in history. This month on the podcast, Tim Keller is teaching from a series exploring the question, what's wrong with us, showing us how the Bible's teaching on sin offers the only explanation deep enough to face the truth in all its complexity and the only hope powerful enough to transform us.
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Isaiah 64, verses 1 to 9. And then it skips on down near the latter part of this long passage. Isaiah 65, 17, 18. So read 1 to 9 and 17 to 18. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you, as when the fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil. Come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you. For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times, no one has heard, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. We all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name name or strives to lay hold of you. For you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord. Do not remember our sins forever. O look upon us we pray for we are all your people. Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. For I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people to be a joy. This is God's word. Now what we're doing is we're looking in a series on what the Bible says about sin, and we've been digging into the Hebrew Bible in particular and actually into Isaiah in particular. And tonight we come to the most unpopular part of what the Bible teaches about sin and what I'm about to Tell you. I'm about to tell you. I mean, I'm about to tell you what I'm about to tell you. And I've asked the ushers to bar all the doors so that you stay for at least the first point after hearing the very, very galling and unpalatable introduction to the sermon. What this is teaching is that God is an angry God. God gets angry. Look, verse five, you were angry at us. Verse nine, don't be angry at us. The Bible's presenting to us a God who gets angry at sin. Now, need I say this isn't one of his, you know, his polls aren't very high on this attribute. One of the ways that you can see this is that in the, in the. If you went to school in the United States, somewhere in middle school or maybe junior high school, very possible that you came across when you were studying US Colonial history and you were looking at the life in the early 18th century, mid 18th century, you may have come across an excerpt from a sermon which is one of the more famous sermons ever preached here, Preached back in 1741 by Jonathan Edwards, and it's called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And you might have had some little excerpts. You know, very often in your, you know, your Little History, your 8th grade history book or whatever, there's a little bar over here, and then it has some excerpts from Sinners in the hands of an angry God. And you raise your hand and you say, teacher, did the people really believe that back then? And the gist of the discussion goes something like this. Well, you know, it used to be that most people in this country did believe in an angry God who punished people. But today, more and more, we believe in a loving and good God who's more accepting of people. And that's the gist of it. I don't know. I was there. I mean, I had that in eighth grade, ninth grade. But here's what I'm going to say. The biblical angry God, the angry God that's presented to us by the Bible. Yeah, we have lost it. We have lost connection with it in our society and our culture. And I'm here to tell you it's a bad thing. In fact, I'll go this far. You need an angry God. You need in your mind and in your heart a God that gets angry at sin. You need an angry God to live with hope. You need an angry God to live with humility. And you need an angry God to know how loved you are. And if you don't believe in an angry God, a really angry God who hates sin and is going to punish it. You're impoverishing yourself. You're taking away all sorts of hope and humility and love. That's what I'm here to tell you. And you know, you say, how does that work out? Well, okay, let's go first of all. And basically, you just work right through the text on this. First of all, verses 1 to 3 tell us that you need an angry God, the biblical angry God, to live in hope, to be able to live in hope in a broken world. One of the things that's easy to miss when you study these books like Isaiah, Ezekiel, in fact, big parts of the Old Testament, is that they have a historical situation. They were not just written as essays, they weren't lectures. They were written into historical situation. And everybody agrees that Isaiah, chapter 40 and following after chapter 40, was written to a nation, to Israel, that was facing exile, that was facing tremendous injustice, that was going to face or did face, or had faced when they read this, their capital city Jerusalem torn down, their own children slaughtered. Go read about it in Psalm 137. Their infants, their little heads of their infants dashed against the rock by the victors. Captivity, chains, terrible injustice. And so what are they doing? Well, we see in verses one to three, they're asking God to come down and judge the injustice. They're saying, oh, you would rend the heavens and come down, the mountains would tremble before you, as when fire sets twigs ablaze, come down and make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake. And what they're really saying is if you came down with all your justice and you went after the oppressors, and you went after the perpetrators of injustice, they would be like dust before you, they would crumble, they would be like burning twigs that the wind drives away. And so they're saying, of course, this is what verses one to three saying, how in the world could you possibly live in a world filled with injustice, with any hope at all, unless you believed in an angry God, a God who gets angry and injustice. And so here's the first point. First point is that God's anger in the Bible is not like our anger usually is. It's not crankiness, it's not ill temper, it's not ego, it's not explosion, it's not out of control. It's a settled, fixed, implacable, irrevocable, incorruptible opposition to injustice and evil, so that no debt will go unpaid, every account will be squared, and nobody will get away with anything. And that's what the Bible means when it says there's an angry God. That's the kind of God that we have. That's what the Bible presents. Now, right away, objection. I know. Right away people immediately put up their hands and say, wait a minute. One of the problems with that, one of the reasons why many people, most people in New York City certainly believe that that's a primitive idea, is they say, you know what? This idea of a God of vengeance, oh my. It's primitive. We've got to get beyond that because we need to work for a peaceful world. This idea of a vengeful God who bears the sword, oh, my word. That leads to intolerance and eventually to violence. What you really need is you need to believe in an accepting God. If you're going to believe in a God, you have to believe that sin is in the eye of the beholder. You have to believe that sin is sort of a matter of perspective. This idea of a God of vengeance, that's going to lead to nothing but violence. Nothing but intolerance and violence. Well, recently I read a book that is one of the most powerful refutations of that extremely common belief that we have to get beyond a God of vengeance if we're going to have a world of peace. Incredible book, actually, in many ways. It's a book written by me, Miroslav Volf, who's Croatian, and the name of the book is Exclusion and Embrace. And let me tell you, let me read you his thesis. He says in this book, Listen, he. Because he's Croatian, he's part. He was, he was raised in the former Yugoslavia. He has seen all the stuff, the people who this passage was written to, who are crying out for vengeance and crying out because of the injustice. He's seen all that. He's been through that. And this is what he says. The practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance. I'll say that again because it just. I mean, if nobody's eyebrows are raised, you're not listening. The practice of. There we go. That's better. The practice, the practice of non violence requires a belief in divine vengeance. He says the only way to non violence is to believe in a God who gets angry at injustice. Without an angry God, you'll never get out. You'll never get into nonviolence. You'll be stuck in the cycle of violence. Now, how does he make that point? Well, here it is, here's the quote. And he says, my. Whoops. My thesis that the practice of Nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially in the West. But to the person inclined to dismiss it, please imagine something. Imagine you're delivering a lecture in a war zone where I delivered this chapter as a paper. And among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have first been plundered, then burned and then leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, and whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. Now, the topic of your lecture is a Christian attitude toward violence. And the thesis is we should not retaliate and be sucked into the cycle of continued violence. We should not pay back. Why not? And here's what he says. Violence thrives today secretly nourished by the belief that God refuses to take the sword. And then he says, if you do this, if you lecture like this, soon you will discover that it takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence is the result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. In a world of violence, it would not be worthy of God not to wield a sword. If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not take a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship. Now, can I put it in a nutshell? Here's what he's saying. Anybody who says that a God of vengeance will lead to violence has not actually been a victim of violence themselves. You live in a nice suburban little bubble or a very, very nice area where you haven't yourself been the victim of injustice. He says, when you're the victim of injustice, you will have to pay back unless you're assured that there is a God of vengeance, that there is a God who hates injustice, that there's a God who's angry with injustice, and a God who's going to settle every account so that nobody gets away with anything. He says, unless you believe in a God of divine vengeance, you will not be able to resist picking up the sword and being, you know, being the avenger yourself, or else you'll just die of despair. That's the reason why he's able to come back and say it's a practice of nonviolence that absolutely requires a belief in divine vengeance. And so here's our first point. You know, people say, oh, why do I need an angry God? He says, non violence is impossible without belief in a judge. In fact, let me press A little further. If you are what he calls a victim of one of these liberal pieties, you've always heard, oh, if I believed in a God of justice, that would not lead to peace in the world, that would lead to more violence. He says, you will be absolutely. If anybody ever comes and actually does something bad to you, you will be sucked right into payback. Actually, you've been already. You just haven't had, maybe in many cases, you haven't had actually somebody actually attack you and draw blood or kill you or kill people in your family. Anybody try to do that, he says, because unless you believe in a God of vengeance, you will not be a peacemaker. You will not be able to live a life of peace in the world. You will not be able to live a life of hope in the world. In fact, one of the things that worries about me as I look out at many of you, many of you do live in that bubble because most of us live in a world far more safe and far more happy and far more secure than most other people who have lived anywhere else in the world or anywhere in any other time in history. And if that bubble should break and you have a namby pamby God who does not wreak vengeance on injustice, you will either get sucked into the violence, you have to pay back yourself, or else you'll die in despair. That's the first thing. You need a God. You need an angry God, or you won't be able to live in peace in an unjust world. Secondly, you need an angry God if you're going to live in humility. Now, here's what's so intriguing. Let's move right on to the next three verses. All the commentators say it is extremely interesting to see the ironic relationship between the first and second stanzas. The first stanza is verses one to three. We just read it. What they're saying is we are the victims of injustice. And so we call down into the world the God of judgment. If you would only come down and make the mountains shake, what would happen? Well, the enemies, the wicked people, the enemies, the bad nations. What they would do is they would. They would just. They would be consumed, they would become dust, they'd become consumed and they would. The wind would blow them away. But get this, see before you, verse 2. The nations would quake before you. But now look, verses 4, 5 and 6. Here's the great irony. Who's shriveling up now? Who is wasting away? See, who is shriveling up like a leaf? Verse 6. And like the wind our sins sweep Us away. They are. The very thing they called God down to do is happening to them. And this is what we're saying. And this is, at this point, by the way, this is an extremely important little test to know whether or not you're understanding the difference between the angry God that maybe you were taught about or you taught other people. Maybe somebody taught you about this as you were growing up, or maybe you were taught other people believed in an angry God and the angry God of the Bible. When you meet the angry God of the Bible, you will find out, you will come to see what they see. You'll get out of verses one to three. When you're in one to three, what you're thinking is if God would come down, the bad people would be judged. But in verses 4 to 6, they find out that we deserve as much judgment as anybody else, that we too are under judgment, that we too absolutely deserve punishment as much as those people that we thought were the wicked perpetrators. That's absolutely critical. And this is one of the great tests to know whether or not you're getting in touch with a biblical God. Let me show you what I mean. There's two kinds of people in the world that seem to be opposites. Two kind of people. By the way, there's two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide everybody in the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. Did you know that? What I meant is there's. There's two groups of people that are very prominent. I wouldn't say there's only two kinds of people here. On the one hand, you've got people we would call religious people, traditionally religious. And they certainly believe that there are absolute standards and that there are absolute moral values and that we're going to be judged by them. And therefore they believe that if God were to come down, he would judge the bad people. And people who are religious, they say, well, you know, I don't cheat on my spouse and I'm good to my family and I obey the Ten Commandments and I go to church or synagogue and I. I'm, you know, I give to the poor and so on. I'm a good person. And so in verses you're. In verses one to three, you say, if God were to come down, you see, the bad people would be judged and they feel pretty good about themselves. On the other hand, you've got their nemesis. I mean, in our society, the nemesis of the people who believe in traditional moral values are that you might call the secular people, progressive liberal people. And what they say is, you know what? Everybody, sin is in the eye of the beholder. Everybody's got their own way of defining sin. What's sinful for you wouldn't be sinful for me. And what we have to do is we have to, we have to embrace them, we have to embrace everybody, we have to tolerate everybody, we have to accept everybody. And they look very, very tolerant, except they're just as much in verses one and three because what they are saying is, yes, you know what the trouble with this world is, is all those people over there who are intolerant. I'm not like them. You see, the religious people and irreligious people are all walking around saying, if only everybody in the world was like me, we wouldn't be in trouble. If only those people over there that are causing the trouble if somebody would just, you know, knock them down. And so you see, it really doesn't matter whether you're religious or irreligious, whether you're conservative or liberal, if you live in verses 1, 2 and 3. But what happens to Christians when they finally get close and to see what God really is like? Inevitably, what they say is verse six, all of us have become like one who is unclean. And all our righteous acts are filthy rags. Now that is a stunning statement. In fact, you know, when you first read through it, you say, wait, what? He didn't say all our sins are as filthy rags. Of course they're filthy rags. All our righteousness. And he's not just saying righteousness as if it's sort of a general thing. Our righteous deeds are filthy rags. What happens is a Christian has begun to look past the externals into his or her own heart. Start looking at motivations. That's the only way you could possibly say that my righteous deed stinks. I mean, how could a righteous deed stink? How could doing the right thing stink? How could it be a stench in God's nostrils? Well, the answer is the gospel turns you into a kind of Nietzschean person. When you look at your own heart, you begin. Nietzsche, of course, was always looking at motives. Nietzsche almost invented what's called the hermeneutics of suspicion. Looking inside and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're real good. You go to church, you do this, you do that. But why, why do you, you say to everybody, we should love everybody, but why do you say everybody? What aren't you really trying to do is you're trying to keep people down. Are you trying to be superior? You say, ah, we should obey and should be very moral. But why aren't you really trying to stay in power? You see, a Christian looks at your own heart and here's what the Christian is saying. Christian is somebody who says, I come to realize that the reason for my sins and the reason for my good deeds is the same and it's wrong. I don't even when I do a bad deed, I'm trying to be my own Lord. But when I do a good deed, I am too. When I do a bad deed, I'm trying to be my own savior. But when I do a good deed, I'm trying to be my own savior. When I do good deeds, I'm really trying to get God to do right by me. And I'm trying to control him. I'm trying to put him in my debt. I'm trying to. You see, one of the ways you can tell your righteousness is a filthy rag. A lot of you are very righteous. Some would think you'd do many good things. But are you always angry because God's not letting your life go right? Why is that? You know why? He said, I've lived this very good life and my sister in law is not living a very good life for my brother. Why is my life going so bad? Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Nietzsche says, wait a minute. Why were you being good? Trying to get God to do your will. That's the essence of sin.
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Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty and heartache. We feel it in the world around us and in our own lives. How did it get this way and what can be done about it? In his brand new book that's releasing this month, what Is Wrong with the World? Tim Keller offers a clear and compassionate answer. Drawing from a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Dr. Keller shows how the reality of sin explains the pain we see all around us and how only the gospel offers lasting freedom and healing. Whether you're overwhelmed by the state of our world, struggling with your own mistakes or choices, or looking for hope and joy, what Is Wrong with the World will help you see how the Gospel speaks to both the heartache of our world and the pain within each of us. This newly released book, what Is Wrong with the World is our thanks for your gift this month to help gospel and life share the good news of Jesus. Request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give that's gospelandlife.com give me now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
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The very essence of sin is everybody does my will. See you know, your life for mine, not my life for yours. Our wills cross, I get my way. You know, your righteousness is as a filthy rag. Now, here's what goes on. Unless you believe in a God of judgment and justice and you come into the presence of that God, you're never going to be humbled. I'll tell you, and it's Christians who understand this who are the most civil people. What do I mean by that? Unless you believe in an angry God, you won't be civil. How are you going to live in a place like New York City with all these people that are so different, different beliefs, different races, different cultures, different philosophies, different religions? How are you going to be. Now, people with traditional religious values have a tremendous trouble living in a city because they say, I've got the truth. I got the truth, and therefore I feel so superior to so many of these other people. You're not going to be good citizens. You're not going to serve them. You're not going to sit down and treat them as equals. You're just not. But if you say, oh, I passed that, you see, I believe everything is relative. But what are you going to do? You're going to be so upset with people who believe in absolute values. You're going to write, you're going to say, I'm so much better than they are. I hate those kinds of people. But wait a minute. Do you realize how many people believe in absolute values in New York City? Look at all the Muslims. Look at all the Orthodox Jews. See, look at all the, you know, look at all the people, if you're Protestant, who are Catholic, if you're Catholic or Protestant, and so forth. I want you to know that unless you believe that you deserve judgment, you're going to be a lousy neighbor. You're not going to look up next door and say, hey, I deserve as much judgment as any perpetrator in this world, and therefore I don't look at myself as superior to you. Unless you have that, you can be a lousy neighbor, you're not going to live civilly. You're also not going to be able to forgive because you're going to put yourself in judgment. One of the reasons why you have to believe in an angry God who's going to square all accounts is because there's a tremendous burden that some of you are carrying right now. When you look at what other people have done to you. In fact, when you look and see what life has done to you or even what God has done to You. And you get upset because you don't understand, why did that happen to me? What you've done is you. You. You don't have an angry God. You. You're putting yourself in the shoes of a judge. You don't believe in a God who really is going to judge. And that's the reason why you can't forgive. If you're having trouble forgiving somebody right now, it's because you're stuck in verses 1, 2 or 3. 1, 2, 3. You haven't gotten to verses 4 to 6 yet. If you're having trouble. In fact, if you're having trouble even understanding why God let this or that happen, if you're just so upset because God didn't let this happen, God didn't let that happen. This week I was reminded of something that happened to me a long time ago. It had a big impact in my life. I was. Why am I here tonight? Why is this church here? Because my Presbyterian denomination sent me to New York. Well, why was I Presbyterian? Well, because I fell under the influence of a particular teacher. My last semester in seminary, my last semester in graduate school. And he all. He just got there, barely, because, you know, at the very end, but because I found her, his influence, I became a Presbyterian. Therefore, I was sent here, and therefore we're here. You say, well, why did that person come to that school? Well, you know, he almost didn't make it, but he. Because he was British and he was having visa problems. But somebody in the State Department knew somebody at the seminary, and that person at the seminary pulled some strings, and he got there just in time. So that person hadn't pulled those strings. He wouldn't have gotten there. I wouldn't have come under his influence. I wouldn't have been Presbyterian. I wouldn't be here. Well, somebody says, that's interesting. Why did somebody at the seminary have power with the State Department? Well, there was a student at the seminary then named Mike Ford, whose father was Gerald Ford, who was the President of the United States at the time. Well, why was his father. That's why he had the pool. Well, why was his father president of the United States? Well, because Nixon resigned. Well, why did Nixon resign? Because of the Watergate scandal. Well, why was there a Watergate scandal? Because two burglars at the Watergate building kind of botched the job because one of them forgot to close the door and latch it. And a night watchman noticed that the door was open, came in, discovered that there was a burglary, et cetera, et cetera. Now, here's the point. What if that door hadn't been left open? We wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. Do you dare think you ever know enough about what's going on in your life to be mad at God for it? Do you know why this and that happens? How could you ever be in a position to be the judge? Why are you worried? Because you don't have an angry God who's working everything out justly? Why are you worried? Why can't you forgive? Why can't you live in this city civilly, looking at everybody else as an equal? Because you don't have an angry God. So first of all, you need an angry God if you're going to live in hope. Secondly, you got to have an angry God if you're going to live in humility, civility. Thirdly, and lastly, you need an angry God if you're really going to understand how loved you are. Now, I know this sounds the most contradictory. What? The angrier you understand God to be against sin and evil, the greater his wrath, the greater his justice, the greater his judgment. The more you believe in hell to the degree you grasp those truths, to that degree, you'll know how much he loves you. Let's move right on down through the text. First of all, look, verses eight and nine. Something very interesting happens here, especially. Let's take a look here at verse 8. Yet, O Father, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter, we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord. Do not remember our sins forever. Now, you know, this is very interesting. First of all, God is characterized here as a father and as an artist. A father and an artist. Because, first of all, he says, you're our Father. That makes us your children, his children. And you are the potter, which means he's the artist and we are the clay. We're the artwork. Now, first, there's two things that actually are derived from this verse. First of all, look, the first thing we're told is that God's love is the cause of his anger. Because. Notice he doesn't say yet, O Lord, you are a father and you're our artist. So you shouldn't be angry. That's not what he says. He said you shouldn't be angry forever. You shouldn't be angry beyond measure. Beyond measure actually literally means unto muchness, which is the same as ultimately forever. Go back. The first thing this teaches us is because He's a father and because he's an artist, his anger Is justified. Very important to see. He doesn't say, because you're a father, you shouldn't be angry. Oh, no, not at all. Fathers and artists get angry. Oh, my, do they get angry. It's so interesting that this verse, in light of this famous quote by C.S. lewis in the Problem of Pain, chapter three, Lewis says this. You ask for a loving God. Well, you have one. The great Lord of terrible aspect loves you not A senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way. Not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels somehow responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire himself. The love that made the world persistent as the artist's love for her work. A father's love for a child, inexorable and exacting as a man's love for his wife. Now, what is he saying? I'll tell you what he's saying. The opposite of love is not anger. Oh, no. The opposite of love is hate. And the ultimate hate is indifference. But see, when you're passionately hating somebody, you're really giving them quite a lot of attention. I mean, you're treating them as important. I mean, that's not so bad. To passionately hate. The ultimate hate is to be, not care. And therefore, if God looks down at this world and sees how we're treating each other and sees how we're living and sees how we're treating him, If God looks at this world and is not furious, he is not a father and he is not an artist. And we are not his artwork and we are not his kids. If God is a. Because, as Lewis says some other place, anger is what Love bleeds when you cut it. If someone really loves you and you're screwing up and you're doing something wrong and you're blowing it and you're doing a lot of bad things, that person is furious at you. And if they're not furious at you, doesn't matter what they say. That's just sentimentality. They don't love you. And therefore, what we see, first of all, and it's very important, is God's. God's love is furious love, and his fury is loving fury. They really are. They come together. You've got to believe in both. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to show you that they're really two sides of the same coin. So God's love is the cause of his anger. But the second thing we're told Here. And this is the tension almost. God's love also is not just the cause of his anger. God's love is also the satisfaction of his anger. It's not just here we're being taught that it's his love that causes his anger. It's also being hinted at, but it's very strong yet. Because you're father, you should be angry. But do something about your anger. Don't be angry forever. Don't be angry unto muchness. Don't be angry. Ultimately, do something. There's a fascinating place where Louis C.S. lewis is writing a guy named Malcolm. And Malcolm says, oh, you know, I don't like this idea of an angry God. I just can't buy this idea of an angry God. And Lewis says something fascinating. He says, my dear Malcolm, think of the fullest reconciliation between people. Is peace restored through a moral lecture? Or is peace restored if the offense is not said to matter? Now, that's pretty interesting because on the one hand, there's moralism and there's relativism. There's two ways to deal. Let's just say somebody's done something wrong. You're unreconciled with somebody. You're unreconciled. What do you do? A moral lecture or else? Oh, I guess. Who's to say whether what you did was wrong? Moralism relative. No, listen what he says. What should you do if not moralism and not relativism? Anger, he says, think of the fullest reconciliation between peoples. Peace restored through moral lecture, where the offense is not to matter. You know better anger. Not peevish fits of temper, but just generous, scalding indignation. It is anger that passes, not necessarily all at once, but anger that passes into embracing, exultant re. Welcoming love. That's how friends and lovers are truly reconciled. Hot wrath and then hot love. Such anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. Now I know what he's talking about, and so probably do you. But you know how rare that is because usually, usually when somebody sins against you, you're not angry because you don't love them. Other times you are angry because you do love them. But when you get that anger expressed, you blow up at them. You don't know how to do a surgical strike with your anger. What Lewis is saying is, he says a moral lecture where you hold the anger in, or you try to blow it off, or you shrug it off, or you pass it over. That doesn't work. Here's what works. When you come in, you express your anger and you say, I love you. That's why I'm angry. And I hate what you're doing to yourself and I hate what you're doing to my relationship with you. And I won't put up with it anymore. And I'm mad. And when you do a surgical strike, when you actually put the anger on the sin, when you put the anger on the evil, when you pour out your wrath on the sin itself, it's keeping you from the other person. Very often that kind of anger is what really wakes the person up. That kind of anger is what really embraces, makes you eventually fall into each other's arms. Oh, yeah. Hot, hot anger, hot love. God did do it. We know he did it because remember our sins no more. Do something. Your love is the cause of your anger, but let your love be the satisfaction of your anger. And of course, verse 17 says. Yeah, of course. He says, I will recreate you, I will change you. I will remember your sins no more. How did he do it? Well, it's pretty simple, but it's critical on the cross. We read about it last week on the cross. Is God going to be a God of justice, but a God of fury but not love? Is he going to punish us but then he loses us? Or is he going to love us and then not be just? Only if the cross happened. Only if the cross happened, can he be a God of furious love and loving fury all at once. Here's what the Bible teaches. Jesus Christ is the judge who was judged. Jesus Christ took all of the anger for all the wrath, for all of the injustice, and it went into his heart so that when you believe in him, there's nothing left for you. Now, here, let me ask you this question. Now let's go back to. This is the point. Do you believe in a God of wrath? Ah, somebody says, no, I don't. I don't. I believe God is a God of love. I don't believe he punishes people. What did it cost your God to love you? Well, you say, I don't know. Nothing, I guess. Well, then how do you know how much you love. He loves you. This is the reason why you're not thrilled by the idea. This is the reason why you haven't had your life changed by the idea. It's just sentimentality. To the degree you believe in justice and you believe in anger and you believe in hell. To that degree, you know how much you're worth to him because he paid it. If you don't believe in hell, if you don't believe in punishment. If you don't believe in justice, if you don't believe in judgment, you have no idea what God did for you. You have no idea what Jesus did for you. You have no idea how valuable you are. You don't walk around feeling love to the sky. You don't. You don't. And it's your fault. Because you don't have an angry God. Because you're just going along with what everybody said. Don't do it. If you know what he did for you, if you know there's no judgment left for you, then when you're walking down the street like this happens to everybody, and something comes along and hits you and you say you call yourself a good person, that voice, depart, you wretch. Retreat in shame. And Jesus says, come here, my love. I bore the blame. You must sit down and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat George Herbert. But look, here's what. How do you know he loves you? How do you know how much he loves you? How do you walk around feeling love? Angry God who paid the penalty himself. Now, look, let's just conclude with this. Just a couple thoughts. Remember I said in the beginning, unless you have a God of both fury and love, loving fury and furious love, there'll be distortions in your life. Just think about this with me for a second. Okay, let's apply this. Do you have a God of love? Only love, without anger. You know, love. Do you have a God who never says no to you? If there's anything in the Bible you don't like, you say, well, I can't believe in that anymore. Therefore, you don't have a God who can contradict you. You don't have a God who can say no to you. You don't have a God who actually does anything but always accept you. That means you don't have a God but yourself. And here's what you're like, try to raise a kid like that. Try to raise a kid where you never contradict them, you never cross their will, you never chasten them, you never discipline them, you never say no to them. Raise a child like that. Listen, abusive parents are pretty bad. Permissive parents are every bit as bad. Kids that grow up like that feel like orphans, and they are. And people who grow up with an idea of a God who just loves them and accepts them in every way, they grow up feeling like orphans spiritually. And they are. You know, you say you have a God of love without fury, you don't really have a God. But then on the other Hand. Do you have an angry God who's not a God of love, a God of standards, a God of righteousness? It won't work. Your life won't work. You know, it's interesting. At the end of Luke 16, that very famous parable of Lazarus and the rich man, there's a place where Abraham's called, pardon me. The rich man is down in hell. And he calls up to Abraham and he says, father Abraham, if I knew about hell, you know, I wouldn't have lived the way I live. So my brothers are still alive. Would you please send somebody back from the dead to go and tell them about this place so that they'll judge them in their lives? And what does Abraham say? It won't be enough. Listen, you said what? Somebody coming back from the dead saying, stop. You know, Marley's ghost? Oh, stop, please. Obey the Ten Commandments or you'll be like me. That won't be enough. It was enough for Scrooge. That's fiction. That's fiction. I'm a pastor. I've seen an awful lot of people make promises to an angry God. Promises when they felt like they were stuck. Promises when they felt like, oh, I better do something or God's going to get me. They never work. Because fear cannot awaken love in you. Only love can awaken love in you. And if you have nothing but an angry guy, see, if you have a loving God without fury, you've got nothing. But if you have a furious God without love, you've got something and it'll crush you. You will be a driven person. You'll never be able to live up. You'll always be fleeing with no one pursuing you. Always. You'll be like two little butter stretched over too much bread. When Paul said, the love of Christ constrains me, he was thinking of Jesus Christ under the wrath of God. And that turned him into a man of courage. It melted his heart. And he can do the same thing for you. If you have never seen, surrendered your life to this God, do you know what that means? His anger is at work in your life. What? Yes, to drive you into the arms of his love. Because that's what his anger is always after. So go along. Let's pray. Our Father, we. I pray if there's anybody here tonight who's certainly upset with the idea of an angry God, I pray that they would think and not just react. Father, for many of us, we have the intellectual belief that you're a God of justice and judgment, but we haven't thought out what the implications of that are we pray that you would give us more peace, you would give us more civility, more humility and a greater sense of our lovedness. And we ask that you would help us. Let us do that tonight by the power of your Holy Spirit. We thank you Lord that you're a God like this. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.
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Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you are encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the Gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com there you can subscribe to to the Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other great gospel centered resources. Again, it's all@gospelandlife.com you can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 1999. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.