A (21:06)

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.

B (22:11)

If you say sin is breaking rules, God's rules, and that's partly, that's one perspective. But if you, if you start there, here's the problem. Let's just say you just cheated on a test. You cheated on a test. Well, that's nothing like robbery. So you think of sin and, you know, you can actually say, well, it's just a very small sin. You just, you know, it seems so insignificant and therefore you're thinking of sin sort of like a pile of ceramic, you know, pots, and they're all in the pile and you throw a baseball into the pile and you break one, whoops, you go on over, take it away. Who's going to know the difference? I mean, the, the pile is intact, basically, but sin is much more like throwing a baseball through a window. Either the window is intact or it's shattered. And here's the point. Either God is God in your life, either he calls the shots. You might say, either you let him be God. It's another way to put it. Or else you're God in your life. Let me put it three ways. First of all, either your will is law and his will is advice. Or see, his will is law and your will is advice. Let me put it another way. If you say I'll obey when it makes sense to me, if it fits in with my opinion of what is, you know, good for me, if it fits my feelings, if you say I'll obey if what you're saying is my will, my wisdom and my goals sit in judgment on gods. If you say I'll obey no matter what, I'll obey if it kills me, I'll obey. If I'm the last person on the earth that does, I'll obey no matter what it costs me, I'll obey whether I understand it or not. I'll obey whether it's practical or not. I'll obey whether it's relevant or not. Then, and only then, are you saying God's wisdom, God's will and God's goal sit in judgment on mine? Now it's one or the other. There's no in between. It's not like you break a couple of rules, but you know, basically the piles intact. It's a principle of God's Godness. Who's the shepherd, who's the sheep, who's the Lord, who's the servant, whose will is law and whose will is advice? It's one or the other. There's nothing in the middle, nothing at all. And this is what's so interesting. It says, if you decide you're going to be the call the shots in your own life, this isn't so much. Hey, this is not so much, for example, cheating on a test. This is essentially living for your own happiness, living for your own comfort, living for your own glory. Just making your decisions without reference to God, just ignoring God, is that you've broken the glass. You've bent your soul. Nothing's going to work if you read through here, and I don't have time to do it. Your emotions won't work. It tells you that your intellect won't work. You esteemed him not. We thought he was zero. That's literally what it means. Your emotions don't work when you look at them. You don't desire them. I mean, nothing will work. Now, one more before we go on to the last point. That's why he came. He came because there's some undeletable, seemingly insignificant thing on the internal microchip of every human heart, which is, I want to be God. I want to be my own God. Me first, which is the cause of all the misery. That's why he came. But here, one little thing. You know, think about this for a second. Christians are often accused of having their head in the sand intellectually. And by the way, it's true. However, it's awfully easy. More than easy. The average person, when it comes to their relationship with God, definitely has his or her head in the sand. Here's why I want to put it. Here's how I Want to put it according to this? If God's your maker, if God made you, if you're. If you've been created by God, you owe him everything, absolutely everything. You owe it to have him be the one who calls all shots, right? Otherwise you're bent. Otherwise it's terrible, it's wrong, it's. It's unjust, it's unfair, it's stupid, it's foolish. And you're going to die as certainly as those shaped sheep that think they can be shepherds will die. So if. See, if God made you, then you have to go all the way with him totally. It's gotta be number one. If he did not make you, then it's warranted for you to go your own way. If you haven't been created by anybody, of course you belong to yourself. But then your life's meaningless when if you're not created, you're an accident. You came without purpose into the world. No matter what you do, everything's going to rot, everything's going to burn up. So nothing you do makes any difference. And if your origin is insignificant and your destiny is insignificant, have the intellectual guts to admit your life is insignificant and this is all you've got. If you've been made, you have to give everything to him. If you haven't given everything to him, then your life is utterly meaningless. And that's it. You're either bent or you're meaningless. It's one or the other. And almost nobody thinks like that. Because almost nobody. Well, everybody I know that says, look, I have to decide what's right or wrong for me. They won't say, well, that means my life is utterly meaningless, or I am bending myself against the very God who made me. You don't do that. What do you say? Well, you just go along with what everybody else is saying. You're not thinking it out at all. Your head's in the sand. Now. Your unconscious knows something about it. Something here. Am I still on? Yeah, I think I kicked something. Pardon me. You're unconscious. Your semi conscious knows. It's why Kiergar calls it the. The sickness unto death. Sartre calls it nausea. Deep down inside you know this. Either there's a God now whom absolutely everything, or I don't. I can be my own maker and there's no meaning to anything, one or the other. Well, almost nobody thinks that out. You don't want to think it out, but I'm respectfully asking you to think it out. Now lastly, see who he is, why he came, what he did. Now, what we have here is one more essence. You know, the essence of who he is. Arm, noble Lord. The essence of sin. Ah. What is the essence of sin? Didn't really define it, did I? The essence of sin is us substituting ourselves for God, putting ourselves into places where only God deserves to be. In your own life. Well, then, what's the essence of salvation? And the answer is right here in verse 4, 5, and 6. It's God substituting himself for us. This is the meaning of life. Substitution. Look, first of all, in verse 4, it says, Pardon me. Verse 5, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And now in Hebrew, it doesn't say four. It just wouldn't work in English to put out exactly what it says in Hebrew. It says, he was pierced from our transgressions. He was crushed from our iniquities. And that's a Hebrew way of saying he was crushed as a result of. See, it's what it's actually saying. He was pierced as a result. Wait, wait, wait. Our transgression consequence goes to him. See, our iniquity consequence goes to him. And then look down here at verse 11. Whoops, sorry. Look over here at verse 11. It says, by his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many. My righteous servant will justify many. You know what the word justification means? You think about it. In English, it works. What if you make a statement and I don't like it, or I'm upset by it, or I don't. So I come to you and I say, you made a statement, justify that statement, and you say, well, let me explain, and you make some explanations and you. I say, oh, fine. Okay, good. You justified. That's fine. What did you just do? Did you change the statement? No, you didn't change it a bit. You didn't change a word, you didn't change a letter. But what you did do, you change my attitude toward it, you changed my relationship to it. When it says that our transgressions have gone have a cause, and the cause of the transgressions have gone to him. It's also saying he has lived a perfect life. And the cause, the consequence of that perfect life will come to us. Just as God here, the essence of being a Christian. What's the essence of being a Christian? Trying hard to live like Jesus. No, that's a consequence. In fact, in most of our cases, that's an accident. What's the essence? When Jesus, you know, 2nd Corinthians 5, 21, is absolutely summarizing all of Isaiah 53, here's how it goes. God made him sin. Who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. What does that mean? What does it mean to say Jesus Christ became sin? Does that mean he became sinful? No. Does that mean he became wicked and nasty and awful? No. What does it mean? It means he was treated by God as if he'd done every bloody thing that humanity had ever done. Well, then, what does it mean to become righteous in him? I know what most of you think. You say, I want to become a Christian. I'm going to have to clean up my act. Well, yes, you are, but that's not the essence. What makes you Christian is that the moment you believe in him and you say, father, for Jesus sake, because of what he did in history, except me. That moment, according to this, it means every God gives you credit for absolutely everything that Jesus ever did. One of the things that comes out in here now, you say, how could that be? Let me show you. One of the things that comes out in here is the voluntariness of Jesus death. While the voluntariness of his death comes out when it says he took up our infirmities, very active word. He picked them off of us, in a sense, and put them on himself. Or all these places where he said, he opened, not his mouth. He opened out his mouth. He opened not his mouth. What is all that? He's voluntary. He voluntarily died. Well, you say plenty of people have voluntarily died. No, they haven't. Nobody voluntarily died like Jesus. Well, you say there's people who've given their lives for others. There's people who committed suicide. No, no, no, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute. They volunteer. No, what they did was they took. They chose when to die. They didn't choose to die. You can't choose to die. You're going to die. They choose how to die. They didn't choose to die. Even when you say, I choose to die and you commit suicide, you're still. Listen, you're still a victim of death. You haven't chosen to die. You were going to die. You could never have stopped it. You could never have held it off. Jesus is the only person who ever died who wasn't a victim of death. Jesus is the only person who ever died voluntarily. The only person who didn't have to die. Ever have to die. Jesus was beautiful and he voluntarily became ugly. Jesus was. Was unlimited and he voluntarily became limited. Jesus was eternal and he voluntarily died. It was an act of supreme Authority. Yeah. That's the reason why one. One guy says Jesus Christ alone, his death was like this. It's. It's almost as if Jesus Christ took his body in one hand and his soul in one hand and tore himself apart. He says, I lay my life down according all my own accord. Now, what does that mean? Well, it means something for your heart and something for your understanding. And then we're going to end. Here's the thing, it means for your heart. The heart. What held Jesus to the cross? Think about it. What held him to the cross? You mean? There's a lot of people who've died for other people and it's. And you know, those that they moves you. Something deep in our soul tells us substitution is the meaning of life whenever you get near it in a story, you know, the movie version of screenplay of Last of the Mohicans, remember, where the women are about to be killed and in comes, you know, you know, Daniel Day Lewis, Wawanga, Caribbean, you know, Nathaniel Poe, at least in the story. And he comes and he says to the memory, says to the Indian chief, me for her, you see, Me for them. Me for them. Kill me instead of them. But he doesn't know French, you see, and he doesn't. He doesn't. Or he doesn't know the. The language, so he has to do it through an interpreter. Remember who the interpreter is? Duncan. Duncan, the spurned suitor of one of the women. And Duncan starts speaking, but Duncan says, me for them. And they string Duncan up, remember? And they kill him so they can flee. And you. You watch that. Something moves you. This is the meaning of life. This is something. Something amazing. Or, you know, Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens, fascinating place. Sydney Carton is in love with the woman, but she marries Charles Darnay. But Charles Darnay is soon in prison and he's going to be executed. He's going to go to the guillotine. And Sidney Carton, who looks quite a bit like Charles Danae, comes in to see Charles Darnay and says, I'm switching with you. What? And he basically knocks the man out and he puts on the cond, you see, he puts on the condemned man's clothes. The condemned man is given the free man's clothes and Sidney Carton dies. And by the way, near the very end, Sydney Carton, who's playing like he's Charles Darnay, he's in line, he's ready to go to the guillotine. And there's a woman. There's a young girl who's there and Says, hey, you know me. I used to be with you. Back in here and back in there. And she looks up and she realizes it's not Charles Darnet. And her face goes white. And she says, are you dying for him? And he says, yeah. And she says, hold my hand. Somebody like you, I think I'll be able to face anything with somebody like you. And to see what. What's going on there. There's nothing more moving than that. It's the opposite of sin. And the opposite of sin is me first. Salvation is you first. The essence of sin is, see, your life for mine. The essence of salvation is my life for yours. And when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, what was holding him there? His love for you? Nothing else. Nothing else at all. And that means no matter what you do, you couldn't possibly break his love for you. Think about it. What did it take? It took his. It took God's wrath, It took punishment, it took all this stuff. And now some days you're sitting around, you're saying, I've been so inconsistent. I've been so stupid. I've been so foolish. I've done all this and I've done that. I wonder whether God's gonna wait. Jesus is gonna give up on me. Your inconsistency, your foolishness is going to break poor Jesus little love when this wouldn't break it. This love for you took everything hell could give and it didn't give up. It was absolutely voluntary. He gave himself for you. That's something your heart's gotta know. It's a strong love. You couldn't possibly wear it out. You couldn't possibly wear through it. But then here's. Here's the. The last thing is for your understanding. This is not only something you need to know for your heart, but you need to know this for your understanding. Jesus Christ essentially fulfilled the law of God twice when he came to Earth because he didn't just die to fulfill the law. He lived an incredible life in that he voluntarily gave himself for someone else. He actually did love his neighbor, you see, Completely. Another way to put it is this. I don't know how much it costs because I have some of. You know, there's the law of the stoplight in New York City, I think you know. And there's two ways to satisfy the law of the stoplight. One is stop. The other is pay $75. I think either way, you satisfy the law of the stoplight. How do you satisfy the law of God? Love your. Love your God with all your heart. Soul, strength and love your neighbor as yourself or pay the penalty. And Jesus Christ, as he was paying the penalty, was loving God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and his neighbor as himself. So he fulfilled the law of God twice. You see, he took our sins. That leaves his record for us. His perfect record for us. Listen, put it this way. What does this mean to you? It means the meaning of your life is the cross in two ways. Unless the cross makes sense to you, life won't make sense. Unless you begin to see first of all that through the cross, you. You're not going to have to worry anymore so much about your comfort because the great disease has been taken away from you forever. You don't have to worry that much about your looks because the great beauty has been put on you forever. You don't have to worry that much about your reputation because the only one who matters loves you. What does that mean? It means as you go out into the world, the stuff that used to bother you just doesn't. Suffering will happen. You'll get sick, but the great disease you see has been cured. You'll get abused. But you see, the great reputation is yours. And so what happens is, as you move on through the cross not only gives you enough emotional wealth to handle the problems of life, but then secondly, it gives you the wisdom to see, look, this is the way Jesus came. This is the weakness of the arm of the Lord. So often the best things that happen in life are because of. Through weakness and suffering and trouble and difficulty. Until the cross is the joy of your life, life won't make sense to you. Until the cross makes sense, life won't make sense. And then, not only is it true that the cross will make sense of your life, the cross then becomes the pattern for your life. Here's what's so wonderful. You feel so rich if you understand the cross that, that you start to live like Jesus. You basically say, not your life or mine, my life for you. You spend yourself. You know what's interesting about this suffering and oppression. He's. He's. He is oppressed. He is the victim of injustice. He was cut off from the land of the living. He's the recipient of a violent death. Most of us in this room are never going to experience any of that kind of injustice. Oh, what's so great about this is this. If you don't believe in God, injustice and suffering is a horrible problem. You know why? It's a tremendous mystery. It's a mystery why you're upset. Because, you see, if There is no God, then the strong eating the weak is utterly natural, totally natural. And what warrant have you got for insisting it should be some other way? This is the way it is. So he says suffering and justice is a terrible problem if you don't believe in God. But if you do believe in God, then it becomes a terrible problem because why doesn't he stop it? But of all the gods that we have, in all the different religions that are at least presented to us, there's only one God who's been involved. See, when any other God says, I've got good reasons, you know, it sounds pretty hollow, but when you have a God who actually was the victim of injustice, you're gonna, you better trust him and you better start living your life for other people who have been through the same thing. My life for yours. This is the essence of being a Christian. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great survey. In some ways, it's a great way to start a service, a community, worshiping community in a new place. We see the essence of what the Gospel is and the essence of what sin is, and the essence of salvation and the essence of how we are to live. Now we thank you that we have the only God who was the victim of injustice, not the perpetrator. A God who then makes us so rich that we can spend ourselves for other victims. A God who has become weak so that we, we can see the way in which weakness is strength. Father, we pray that you would help us to understand these things and work them into our lives, not just as individuals, but as a worshiping community here in this place. We thank you Lord. And we ask that during the rest of the service, as we pray to you, as we offer these things to you, you might shape us and mold our hearts more into the image of what we have just seen, that of the great servant Jesus Christ, the righteous one. In his name we pray. Amen.

A (43:35)

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life Monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life giving power of Christ. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.compartner. that website again is gospelandlife.com partner. 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.

B (44:19)

Sam.