← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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Welcome to Gospel in life. You don't have to look far to see that something's deeply wrong with our world and with us. But is there an answer that gets to the root of why? In today's message, Tim Keller explores the human condition through stories in the Bible, uncovering what scripture says about sin and why. It's the only explanation deep enough to face the truth about our.
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Week. Over the next couple weeks, four weeks, actually, we're going to be looking at what Isaiah tells us about what's wrong with us. Isaiah has some pretty fascinating things to say. The longest, in some ways, the greatest Old Testament prophet. And what we have here is one of the great prophecies about the Messiah and what the Messiah will do. Isaiah 61:1 11 the Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated. They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. Aliens will shepherd your flocks, foreigners will work your fields and vineyards, and you will be called priests of the Lord. You will be named ministers of your God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. Instead of their shame, my people will receive a double portion. Instead of disgrace. They will rejoice in their inheritance, and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs. For I, the Lord love justice I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfulness I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed I. Delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. This is God's word. Now, because this is the third in the series, we need to take some stock. What we're doing, why we're doing it, where we've come, we're talking about sin. Doing a series on sin. Why? Well, because early in this century, maybe late 19th century, early 20th century, this isn't. We can't be completely. You can't pinpoint this exactly. Basically, our Western society told us to get rid of the concept of sin, to get rid of it. And there were some pretty good reasons for it. I mean, because of the abuses. They said when you use the word sin and evil, when you use sin with regard to yourself, when you look at yourself and call yourself a sinner, you just crush yourself. Just make yourself feel guilty. You make yourself feel terrible and worthless, see, filled with shame. And when you call other people sinners, when you put sin on them, you do the same thing. You not only crush them and make them feel shame, but. But it probably might lead you to abuse them. They're sinners, so you can just treat them in all sorts of ways. So sin was considered a dangerous and unhelpful category. And the reason at the time, there was some at least logical reason to get rid of it was because at the very same time, many, many people in Europe and America were saying this, they were saying, well, you know, the troubles and the difficulties of our country and of our society, the reason people are filled with the reason for violence and for oppression and for selfishness is really because of unjust social conditions, because of bad education, because of the bad environment. And through political and social transformations and the procedure, the progress of science, we can deal with these things. That's a much better way of putting it. And of course, it does sound much more optimistic. But we got a problem now at the end of the 20th century. We've been through the Holocaust, we've been through two world wars. And a couple years ago, a book that's really had a big impact on me. Andrew Delbanco, right up here at Columbia University, wrote a book called the Death of Satan. Fascinating book. And he says something here, I'll read it to you. He says, a gulf has opened now in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it. And then he puts it perfectly, we now have an inescapable problem. We feel something that Our culture no longer gives us the vocabulary to express. Now it's pretty simple. Look, Marxism, at least that I know it's. We know it's wrong. You know, they had a theory what's wrong, why we're so messed up. And of course, Marxism is done as a movement. Freudianism had a theory about what's wrong with us, but it's over. With a movement, you see, the optimistic idea that if we just educate people and we do this and that, we can deal with, you know, oppression and racism and violence and so forth, that's over. It's gone. And Delbaco says, but here's the weird thing. We got rid of the vocabulary. We got rid of the concept of sin. And now we see it in front of us. When we can't talk about it, we can't deal with it. We feel ourselves in the presence of something that we no longer have the vocabulary to deal with. It's terrible. In fact, next week maybe, or a couple weeks from now, I'll come back and give you some examples that Delbanco gives. I can't do that tonight, but today. But here's the point. We have got to go back to the Bible to get the vocabulary. And here's my proposition to you. The reason that the Bible's vocabulary and concept of sin was jettisoned was partly because it wasn't very well understood. The average person. If I asked you, what's sin? You know, our memory as a society about what the Bible says about sin is pretty simple. Sin is breaking God's law, and that makes us guilty. And that's true. And actually, I've got a sermon coming on that. But I want you to see that if you start with that, you really don't understand the multidimensional, profound nuancedness of the biblical doctrine of sin. We started last week and we said, okay, first of all, sin is. The first thing is that sin is breaking God's scale. It is reducing God, and that creates smallness of spirit. It's refusing to treat him as glorious. Remember then last week we said, sin is not just breaking God's scale, it's breaking God's heart. Breaking God's scale and treating him as something less glorious than he is, making him too small leads to shrunkenness of spirit. But when you replace God, when you break his heart and you reject his love, then what you're actually doing is you create addiction. Remember that. So sin is smallness of spirit. Sin is addiction. Now, this week, we're going to go still, before we get to the idea of breaking God's law, we have to understand it's breaking God's scale. That means it's treating him as less glorious than he is. Otherwise, you don't understand sin. It's breaking God's heart. He says, I want to be the lover of your soul. And we put ourselves in the arms of other lovers, and as a result, we're addicts. This week we're going to look at one more before we get anywhere else. And that is sin is not just breaking God's scale, breaking God's heart, it's also breaking God's design for us. You do not understand sin at all unless you think. Unless you understand that sin is breaking God's design. See, God's law is not just an expression of his heart. So to break God's law, you're trampling on his heart. God's law is also your own. It's your design print of your heart. It's the way you were built to work. And when you. When you break God's law, you break yourself. You're trampling on yourself. Let's get into this. This passage actually is telling us about that because it's telling us what the Messiah is going to do. And the first thing it shows us is the Messiah is going to deal with the problems of life. And that shows us something about sin. So here's how we're going to break this down. We're going to see what the problem is, what God is going to do about it, and how we should respond. Okay, what the problem is, what we should do about it, what God's going to do about it, how we should respond. First of all, what is the problem? Right away, we have to see. This is remarkable. All the things this Messiah does. And the thing that first hits you is the range of them. First of all, take a look here. First of all, he deals with both body and soul. For example, he comes to the poor. Kala, read from Matthew 11. Jesus was very big on this passage. I'll tell you how big he was. The first sermon he ever preached, he chose this text. Now, when you're going to start a campaign, you're really careful what you say that first time, isn't that right? Because you want to make sure it's perfect. It perfectly conveys what you're trying to, what you're all about. When Jesus Christ preached his very first sermon in Luke 4, he preached on this text. Isaiah 61:1 2. Okay? And the first thing that comes up preaches to the Poor. That has to do with. He's dealing with economic brokenness. But then secondly, look it. He binds up the brokenhearted. So he's dealing with emotional brokenness. Then it says, look, he's released from darkness. He releases from darkness. We have to be careful because it says, proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness. And those are two different things. It's not repetitious. And he's talking about intellectual blindness. He's talking about spiritual blindness, not seeing the truth. But then lastly, and this is the one that takes just a moment to massage. All right. He says, he sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and then down to the second verse, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now, this is not something you're going to get by reading it in English. What he's doing here, this person who comes and says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of the Lord's favor, proclaim liberty. He is quoting Leviticus 25. And Leviticus 25 is talking about the Jubilee. And this Messianic figure is coming to say, I have come to bring the Jubilee. What's that? Well, let me tell you. You've heard of the Sabbath. You've heard that in the Old Testament, God said to the people, one day in seven, sabbath rest. But maybe you haven't heard that he also said to the people, one year in seven must be a Sabbath year. He didn't just institute the Sabbath day, he also instituted a Sabbath year. And the Sabbath year was in those days when someone threw poor crops, poor, poor fortune or poor judgment would come to the place where you get so in debt you couldn't pay your debts off. What would happen is you would become an indentured servant to the people that you were, that you owed, and you'd become their servant. And of course, that's the sort of thing that happened. You know, some people got more prosperous, some people didn't get as prosperous. But every seventh year, God says, Sabbath. What is Sabbath? In the Sabbath year, all debts were forgiven. All servants went free, therefore, and the land was to lie fallow, which meant in order to build up its nutrients, the people were to eat out of the storehouses and not till the field. So everybody rested and the land rested. And you forgave your brother from the heart their debts. And you forgave your brother from the heart any wrongs that you had done. That's the Sabbath year. But then on top of that, that was in the Old Testament. You can read about it in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. But in Leviticus 25 we have one of the weirder parts of the Old Testament. It's weird because it's so radical. And from what we can tell, it was never practiced. And it's always a possibility that wasn't supposed to be. But here's what would happen. You said every seven days is a Sabbath day, and every seven years, a Sabbath year. But every Sabbath, Sabbath. In other words, every seven Sabbath years, which would mean the 50th year, the Jubilee year, every seventh, seven of years there was to be a jubilee. And the jubilee was even more extensive. Not only were all the debts free, you know, forgiven, not only were all the servants and the slaves freed, but if you lost your land, anytime in that 49 years, bad crops, bad judgment, if you had lost your land, your family's original land, it came back to you. And the whole purpose behind the Sabbath year and, and for the jubilee was how do you make sure, how do you make sure that if you blow it, you get a running start, a second chance economically? How do you make sure that you don't have long term families getting down into the culture of poverty, learning habits that have to do with poverty, other people getting into the culture of wealth and having those kinds of habits? How do you do that? Well, that's how it was supposed to be done. Now, one of the things that's pretty interesting about this is it clearly goes, the jubilee was an institution that was not only for spiritual rest. It wasn't only the place where you were saying, I'm going to forgive you and God has forgiven me. But it was also, economically, I was forgiven and I'm going to, I'm going to give you so that you can come up out of the place economically where you are. It's astounding. And it really was pretty remarkable. And as far as we know, Israel never observed it. Can you imagine? And the Messiah shows up and says, I bring the jubilee. And he not only shows that this means body and soul are going to be put together, but if you look carefully, it also shows that he comes to not only deal with body and soul problems, but also individual and corporate problems. Because look at verse 3 and verse 4. In verse 3 we see complete individual transformation. I will bring you a crown of beauty. We'll get back to that. Oil of gladness, garments of praise, and you'll become oaks of righteousness. That's what, that's not just symbolic oaks of Righteousness means organic righteousness. God is not just going to declare you righteous, which he does when he wraps you in the robe of righteousness in verse 10. But he's going to make you actually righteous. He's going to put his spirit in you. He's going to put his nature in you. And that's what you have. In verse three, they're going to become inside out, completely transformed. But then in verse four, we see that they're supposed to go and rebuild cities. And if you look at verse four and five, it doesn't just say, oh, you know, forget the cities. You know, let's put up a new subdivision. You go back and you rebuild the cities. And if you look carefully in that city, there's going to be racial harmony. It says aliens are going to be working with you. You have to be a little careful because the English doesn't bring it out. It says, for example, when it says the aliens are going to shepherd your fl. That word for shepherd doesn't just mean they're going to be your hired hands, but that means that they're going to stand with you and they're going to take responsibility with you. There's a racial harmony. There's a rebuilding of cities. There's personal transformation, there's social transformation, there's spiritual wholeness, there's psychological wholeness, there's economic wholeness. See, there's racial wholeness, the whole nine yards. And the Messiah comes back and says, that's what I'm about to do. Now, what does that tell us about sin? That's the first point. And here's what it tells us about sin. The wages of sin is ashes. You notice in verse three, it says, I will put a crown of beauty on where you have ashes. And he's thinking very literally, when somebody died or when anything went really wrong in your life, you didn't just put on black. What you did was you put ashes. You went into the fireplace and you picked up ashes and you put them on your forehead. And not just a little. The little, you know, cute little cross you see that you put even today at Lent, in many churches, where you put the ashes on there for good, for Ash Wednesday. No, you poured it on your head. Think about it. You looked ugly. You were totally dirty. And here's what you were saying. Life is like this. The Bible. What are ashes? You put something in the fire and the fire knocks it apart. There's chemicals that were cohering. You put a wood in the fire and there was a cohesion, there was a coherence. It was integrated. There was all these various sorts of chemicals and various things that turned it into wood. But what does the fire do? The fire destroys that which keeps those things that should be together. It destroys the coherence, and it goes to ashes. If you put your hand in the fire, it'll go to ashes. If you put your paper in the fire, it'll go to ashes. But you see, when the Messiah says, I'm going to give you beauty for ashes, he's actually referring to everything he's been looking at in the whole survey. Because essentially, life is like that. My favorite illustration is this. Let me give it to you. There's a couple ways of putting this. Think of a chicken in your oven. You bring the chicken out, you put it on the table. It's too hot to eat, so you wait for 15 minutes and you're happy. Why? Because now I can eat it. But the only reason you can eat it is because it's losing energy, because that's how life is. Leave it for three hours, then you won't want to eat. Loses energy till it's kind of yucky. Leave it for three days. And now it's a health hazard. Leave it for three weeks. But when you watch it go to pieces, oh, of course, if you could burn it up, you see, in the fire, it goes to ashes very quickly. But don't you see, if you just let it be, it's going to ashes anyway. And as you watch the chicken go to ashes, why? Because that's the way existence is. You're looking in a mirror, you're going to ashes. You put yourself into the fire, you'll go to ashes very quickly. But if you. It doesn't matter. Diet all you want. Go to the doctor all you want, okay? Exercise all you want to keep yourself together, to keep yourself whole, to keep yourself tight. But you're spreading. And you will continue to spread until finally you are ashes. You are dust. Dust thou art. Ashes thou art. Now, what are we talking about here? The Bible says that the whole world is burning in a flame of sin. That when I want to be my own master, when I want to be my own Lord, when I want to be my own savior, what I'm just doing, essentially, is I put fire, sin is fire, against the design that God has for the way he wants things to be, which is peace, flourishing, growth. Shalom, which is the Hebrew word for peace, but it means every kind of human flourishing. Now, you can get this down into the micro. Can I get it out of the micro? Somebody treats you bad and you say, I'm not going to forgive. I will not forgive. And some of you are in this situation right now, Right now. The Bible says, God says, I forgive. Therefore, you must forgive. You must forgive. That's the word of God. If you don't forgive, that's a sin. Now, let's think about this for a second, all right? If you sin, what are the consequences of sin? Well, a lot of people say, I'm just scared. You know, Maybe God won't answer my prayer if I keep my sin in my heart. Maybe that's that. Well, it does say that. Okay, so maybe you think of sin like this. I better not sin because God's sort of watching me. And as long as I stay sinful, you know God's going to get me. He's going to watch me and say, boy, that person's sinning. What can I do to make their life miserable today? But, boy, you misunderstand. You misunderstand. When you hold that grudge, the doctor will tell you that that is actually turning up the flame on your heart. You're much more likely to have heart problems. You're much more likely to have stomach problems. You're much more likely to have physical problems because you're mad. But not only that, of course, you start to break down psychologically. You'll be in denial. It'll control you, but of course, it breaks you down spiritually. Sin disintegrates us. Sin makes us break down. Sin puts. Sin is an invisible flame. It's visible to God. Oh, God sees it. God looks down and he sees us all on fire. He sees us all falling apart. Why? Because what we're doing is we're going against our design. Whenever you want to be your own savior and your own master, it's not like, oh, gosh, you know, here I did what I shouldn't have done today. I wonder whether God's going to get me. Sin is guilty, but sin is, first of all, stupid. Sin does break God's law. But God's law is simply the way he built you. He built you to love, not to hate. He built you to be unselfish, not to be selfish. He built you not to spend all your money on yourself. That's the reason why he says, give it away. He built you to forgive. That's why he says, forgive. He built you to have sex inside a covenant of marriage. That's why he says to do that. None of this is busy work. This is not like my 8th grade algebra teacher used to say. Well, you know, kids got to be stay off the street. So she said, do all these things to keep off the street. That's busy work. There's no busy work in the will of God. God comes and says, I built you this way. You will only flourish. If you break this, you break yourself. If you trample on this, you're trampling on your own heart. If you're trampling on this, you're trampling on your own world. And every time you sin, you're just turning the flame up, turning up the burner, and you go to ashes faster. Do you see that?
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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. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
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Now that's the negative part of this point. Let me tell you what the positive part is. The positive part is the Messiah comes to deal with all the results of sin. The Messiah comes not look it Messiah does not come only to forgive your sins, give you peace in your little heart and take you to heaven. The Messiah does not come to earth and say, let me take you away from all this. He doesn't do that. Instead, he says, I'm going to give you a joy and a power so we can rehab the world. I can give you a I'm going to bring you a joy and a power inside. I'm going to remake you inside so we can remake the whole world together. My power, my spirit, my goal is not just simply to take you into some nether world of esoteric consciousness. Listen, every other religion says that Eastern and Western, what's the ideal what's the ideal paradise or the all soul or something like that? That's never what Christianity or Judaism has ever talked about. It talks about the new heavens, it talks about the new earth. It means matter is good. Jesus didn't just die to save our souls, he also rose to save our bodies. What else is the resurrection for? And therefore when the Messiah comes, he's going to say, I have come back to make things whole. I've come back to first of all turn off the fire and then to rebuild everything, restore everything, say reweave everything, make everything whole. And that's what he's after. And that's the reason that's the only way you can understand so many of the prophecies of Isaiah. So that's the problem. Now how is God going to do that? And the answer is here in this tremendous Messiah. Now, this Messiah in verse 1 Again, I have to give you a little help. It doesn't hit you right away as an English reader so much, but anyway, this particular Messiah, right away we're told, the Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach. Now before we go on any further, the Lord has anointed me to preach. Now this is what that's saying in the rest. If you really read all of Isaiah and you know it's very hard and I want to admit I don't want anybody to go away feeling guilty because you don't, because this is too hard. It's very hard to read Isaiah. It's a long book. But I didn't realize until, because of you, because I had to do this for you. I had to read the whole book. For the first time in my life I realized that there is a narrative and there's an enormous, there's an enormous crisis coming up to chapter 61 when you read the book. Because in the early part of the book of Isaiah we're told that there's going to be this strong, incredible Davidic king, someone who's going to raise a banner. In fact, in Isaiah 11, verses 1 and 2, it says this great king is going to come and he's going to raise a banner and he's going to be glorious and he's going to summons the nation and he's going to put down all evil and he's going to make the whole world right. And it says the Spirit of the Lord will be upon him to do this. And so this is a reference to psalm to Isaiah 11. And that makes sense to us. They say, yes, the World is a mess. We need somebody to come in and deliver us. But then, in the middle part of Isaiah, Starting in Isaiah 42, suddenly a new figure appears in these prophecies. And this figure is utterly unlike the anointed king of the earlier chapters. Utterly unlike the anointed king. This is what's called in the literature the servant. And in Isaiah 42, Isaiah 49, Isaiah 50, and Isaiah 53, we're going to go next week, a new figure arises, and we're told that he's not attractive. He's totally unlike the anointed conqueror. The anointed conqueror is glorious, and we all want him. This one, we're told in Isaiah 53, has no beauty, no beauty with which we should desire him. And we're told, of course, the great anointed conqueror is going to go on to victory. However, this figure is going to suffer. This figure is utterly unstrong. What are we told about this figure? We're told he had no beauty, that we should desire him. But we're also told, as a lamb before her shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth, and he was led to slaughter. He's likened to a little lamb. He's likened to a female lamb. He's likened to one of the most weak little creatures in the animal kingdom. And so this is a person who's utterly different than the first person. Why is Isaiah doing this? What's going on? Who is this person? But we're told in Isaiah 42, verse 1 that this servant is the one who is anointed by the Spirit. And this is the reason why, when you come to Isaiah, chapter 61, verse 1, if you've been reading it all along, and especially been reading in Hebrew, which is what they originally did, you suddenly your jaw drops, hits the top of your chest. You can't believe it, because up to now you've either had somebody who's suffering and sweet and nice and sacrificing and ugly and defeated, or you have this incredibly, you know, this conqueror, this strong one, this glorious one, this beautiful one. And suddenly we see that they're the same person. Isaiah 60:1 says, this is the same one. Because not only does he proclaim freedom to the captives, he binds up the brokenhearted. The warrior is a nurse. How could this be the same person? But Isaiah says, this is my breakthrough. This is my theological breakthrough. This is what the Lord has shown me. The victory will be a defeat. The strong one will be incredibly weak. The salvation will happen not by you summonsing up your strength and Obeying this great king. It will happen because this great king will become incredibly weak and suffer and be defeated and die. Now, somebody says, how could that? Why would that be? I don't get it. And here's the answer in verse three. Three little words instead. Three little words instead. It says, I will provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. Now, that's not too bad a translation. It kind of gets at it. But basically what we're told is that the Messiah is not just simply saying, you've got your ashes. Let me put a crown of beauty on top of your ashes, right? He's not saying, you've got your, you know, you have your. Your morning, but let me, let me, Let me put oil on top of you. No, he's saying, I'll give you what I've got, you give me what you've got. What we have here is the principle of substitution. And all of a sudden we realize, why he's not beautiful. Why isn't he beautiful? Because we got his beauty. He gets our ashes. Why are we joyful? Because he got his joy. He gets our despair. This is the reason why on the cross he cries out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's despair. We got his despair. Pardon me. He got our despair. You see that this means he'd have to be so incredibly strong. Don't you see? It's one thing if you are a lamb to face your shearers or not your shearers. It's one thing if you are a lamb to face the people who are about to kill you, you see, with a certain poise. It's another thing when you're not a lamb to become a lamb. It's one thing if you are ugly to live with it. It's another thing if you're beautiful, to voluntarily become ugly. So nobody else can be beautiful. Do you see what's going on here? Behold the beauty of his voluntary ugliness. Behold the strength of his voluntary weakness. He had to be that strong. He had to be the first figure if he could, in order to be the second figure. And of course, being the second figure, it wasn't something that he was something he had to do. He did it for us. And therefore, substitution. Jesus Christ, when he comes to earth, is able to deal with the fire of sin because he personally has to go through every aspect of the devastation of sin. He is physically broken. That's the reason why he gets ashes. He is psychologically broken. That's why he gets mourning. And he's spiritually broken in that the Father cuts him off. He's my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? So he gets the spirit of despair. Now, what does that mean for us practically? Let's get to that. Let's make a little list. How should we respond? Number one, please trust him. Now, here's what I'm saying. The first thing is, look at verse 11. The soil is what grows the sapling. Do you see that? If I take an acorn and I hold it in my hand, I can walk around for years and years and years. You know what's going to happen? Nothing. Why? Because it's the soil that gives the power of growth to the acorn. Or at least, you know, opens up the power of growth in the acorn. If I. If I. It's the soil, it's the nutrients, it's the moisture. If I just hold on to it, I just walk around all the time with it. Nothing. And verse 11 says, as the soil will finally turn us from ashes. You know, without the soil, eventually the acorn will go to ashes. If I just carry it around, eventually it'll just fall apart. It has to be planted. So what we're being told is the sovereignty of the Lord. That word sovereign lord is pretty unusual. Sovereign means the kingliness of the king. That is the soil in which your soul can grow obedience to him. Now, you see, if we only knew that he was the king of the first part of Isaiah and not the king of the second part of Isaiah. I know you couldn't handle it, but a lot of us can't handle it anyway. Let me be real honest. A lot of you say, I would like something from God. I'm afraid to say I submit. I'm afraid to say I surrender. I'm just afraid. And I know why. Because there's a part of your heart that says, if I really, really say to God, anything you say, I will do. Anything you send, I will accept. See, that's submitting. That's going onto the soil. That's putting your soul under the sovereignty of him to say anything you tell me, no matter how I feel about it, I'll do. No matter what it looks like practically, I'll do. And that whatever you send me, I will accept. That's putting yourself underneath the soil. We're being told it's his kingship that your soul needs you'll never grow till that happens. The fire will never start to be turned. The burner won't be turned down till that happens. And you know what a lot of you are saying I'm scared to do that. Of course he might ask me to do something I don't want to do. Well, of course Abraham didn't want to take Isaac up the hill. Jesus didn't want to go to the cross. I'm not saying he won't ask you something you don't want to do. Of course he's going to do that. But unless Jesus says, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit. Ironically, the seed can either die underground and it becomes something great and beautiful, or it can die above ground, but it's going to die one way or the other. And you're going to die one way or the other. You can either be your own master and your own Lord and you'll go to ashes, or you can die to your will. You can die to leading your own life your own way. You want to go under? I will do whatever you say, whatever I see your will is, I will do no matter what. Whatever you send me, I will accept. And verse one says, the sovereignty of the king. You can trust him. Verse 11 says, the sovereignty of the King, it will grow you. But the whole passage is saying, but this is the king who went under for you. This is the King who lost everything for you. Think about what you what, what might you give up? If you really say, I am going to give myself to Jesus Christ, utterly sure you're going to give up some things. You think you're going to give up anything like what he gave up. He says, if you give up these things, all you're going to give up is this. If you give up your rights, you'll give up your despair. If you give up your rights, you'll give up your ashes. I took your ashes. You're going to get nothing but beauty from me. I took your mourning. You're going to get nothing but gladness from me. Don't you see? That's the first thing. The warrior is a nurse. Go under. That's the first thing. Second thing, very important. Unless you see that he's both the suffering servant and the great Lord, you can't become a Christian. You know why? You see, if you just think of him as this great Lord, and I'm going to obey. I'm just going to obey. That's not what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is verse 10. This is Isaiah beginning to speak? See, Isaiah actually gives us the prophecy. It's the Messiah who's speaking. It's Jesus Christ who's speaking. But when you get down there to verse, you know, eight, nine, suddenly you see, look at. Suddenly Isaiah begins to speak. He doesn't, you know, he begins to speak about this. And here's what Isaiah says. He has robed me. In fact, I deviated from the niv. He has wrapped me in a robe of righteousness. What does it mean to become a Christian? It means to not say, I'm strong enough and I can follow the king. I'll obey, then I'll get his blessing. Oh, no, no. What you have to see is he's stronger than that. He's stronger than that. We do not just have a king who comes and says, follow me. We have a king who first comes and says, I'm going to die and I'm going to be everything you need to be. I'm going to substitute for you. So I don't ask you to achieve a righteousness. I'm going to give you a righteousness. I'm going to plant it in your heart and I'm going to wrap it around your body and your soul. You're going to get my righteousness, my gladness, see my beauty. That's what you're going to get. And so you're not a Christian. If you say, I'm going to try from now on to really live a good life that's not really dying, by the way. You may think, ah, I'm no longer my own Lord. But you're your own Savior. And if you're your own savior, you are your own Lord. You have to be willing to say, I give up my rights to my own life because you have done everything for me. Accept me, oh Father, for what Jesus has done, that'll make you Christian. You got to put the two together or you can't become a Christian. Thirdly, Christian, friends, until you see that he's both the conquering hero and conquering, you know, the anointed conqueror and the suffering servant, you're not going to understand actually, even the way he deals with you in your own life. Here's one thing that I know. Sometimes I do something very stupid and God just gets me off the hook. He just, you know, I say, I did something very stupid. Please help me. And somehow he shields me. He. He lets it go. Okay, Right. So sometimes I do something really stupid and everything's fine. And other times I do just the tiniest little sort of stupid thing. And wham, wham, wham, wham. And you say, hit me again, Lord. I'm still breathing. Why would that be? I'll never forget when I listened to a tape by Dick Lucas on John 11, where Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus and two sisters come out to him. Do you remember this? Martha comes and says, if you had been here, my brother Lazarus wouldn't have died. Okay? And like three verses later, Mary comes to him, the other sister, and says, if my brother. If you had been here, my brother Lazarus wouldn't have died. If you look carefully, it's the same words. It's the same spot. It's the same circumstances, the same condition. My goodness, women who. Their names both start with ma. I mean, everything's the same. And in the first case, what does Jesus do? He says to Martha, martha, I am the resurrection and the life. It's really in the face. I know. When we read it, we hear, I am the resurrection and the life. He who. You know. Yeah, but look at the context. He sort of. He's getting Martha like this. He's really saying, martha, I am the resurrection and the life. If I had been here. When I'm here, you live. Doesn't matter. When he said, I am the resurrection and life. So he's kind of confronting her. But when Mary comes up, says the same question, makes the same statement. Excuse me, comes after him the same way. What does he do? You remember? He just weeps. See, the first time he gives the ministry of truth, and the second time he gives the ministry of tears. One time he just kind of, wham. And the other time he just listens. Now you know why? Because the warrior is a nurse. He is the wonderful counselor, you and I. Some of you are counselors, aren't you? You're not perfect. I know. I've tried so hard to be a perfect counselor. And here's the problem. Sometimes where I really need to just listen and patient and hold their hand, and instead I confront them. Doesn't go right. They really needed to be listened to. And other times I listen and listen and listen and listen. And I should have confronted them. I mean, I tend to confront when I should be listening. I listen when I should confront. Sometimes I do the ministry of truth when it should be just a ministry of tears. Other times I do the ministry of tears when I really should be doing a ministry of truth. But Jesus is always spot on. And that's the only reason why he seems like a schizophrenic to you, because he knows exactly what you need when you need it. And there's times in which, for some reason, he just. He just comes in and he sort of lifts the ship and takes you right on through. And other times he does. Other times he seems to completely abandon you. Why, he's the perfect counselor. He's the warrior and a nurse. He'll change your bedpan. He'll punch you in the chops. See, nurses very often can't do that, or they don't want to do that. They're not that kind of person. And wires also can't change bedpans. They're not that kind of person. But our Savior is the wonderful counselor. See the wonderful counselor. Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, the whole thing. Fourth, when Jesus Christ preached this text, he says, listen, he gets to the middle of the verse, and he says, the year of the Lord's favor. In other words, when Jesus Christ preached this, he got up and he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, right? Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he stopped right in the middle of the sentence, right in the middle of the verse, and he sat down and he says, today. It begins, well, why didn't he go on to this last part of this passage here? Why in the world didn't he come on and say, and the day of the Lord's vengeance? What's the matter with Jesus? And here's the answer. It's pretty clear that they're not the same thing. There's a day of vengeance coming. There's a day of judgment coming. But it's pretty intriguing that Isaiah, the Messiah here in Isaiah, says, I've come to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance. That means there's a period of time that's called the jubilee. But eventually it'll be over and there'll be day of judgment. And this is really simply what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying, not seize the day. Jesus is saying to Christians, seize the year. Now, what does that mean? It means from now my first coming to my second coming, I want you to live on the principles of the jubilee. From what we can tell, when Jesus Christ preached this in the very first time, and he literally said, I've come to declare the jubilee, there is no indication that he tried to set up a social program in Israel. He didn't say, look, we got to go back and everybody's got to get their old land. But he didn't do that. On the other hand, okay, didn't do that. On the other hand, it is silly to think that he is really talking about this only spiritually. That is not what the text. That's not what Leviticus 25 is like. And here's my best answer. A New Testament scholar named N.T. wright has a really good passage on this in one of his books, and he says, Jesus Christ is calling Christians between the first and second coming of Christ to live themselves on the Jubilee principle. That means Jesus is coming and saying, my kingdom of God, My kingdom is here partially but not fully. And I want you to begin to sacrifice. I want you to be radically generous with each other. I want you to forgive each other your debts. I want you to create a community in which people really lay themselves out for the poor. I want a community in which you really lay yourselves out for the brokenhearted. I want you to say, because of what you've done for me, I am now going to be working to bind up people in every way. I'm going to try to bring them to Christ spiritually. I'm going to try to bring them together and bind up themselves psychologically. I'm going to try to bring them up socially and economically. If they're poor, I'm going to do everything I can. Does that mean I'm going to have to be spending money? I'm going to be giving a lot of my money away? Does it mean I'm going to have to be involved in people's lives? Yes. Jesus is not saying Christians get into power and make the jubilee the program. That hasn't worked. That's not the point. Doesn't mean that Christians shouldn't be working for justice in society in general. Yes, but what he is saying is let's not get out from under this Christians now Redeemer, you right now begin to live on the principles of the Jubilee. That means forgive each other spiritually and also means be unbelievably generous with each other in every way. Bring each other into each other's homes.
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Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encourages you to go deeper into God's Word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 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.
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Sam.