A (27:02)

You may know the story of the Prodigal son, but it's not just about a wayward younger brother. In fact, Jesus tells this story to speak both to those who run from God and to those who try to earn his love by being good. In his book, the Prodigal God, Tim Keller shows how this well known story reveals the heart of the gospel, a message of hope for both the rebellious younger brother and the judgmental older brother, and an invitation for all to experience God's prodigal extravagant grace. Whether you're a Christian or you're still exploring faith, the prodigal God will help you see your relationship with Christ in a whole new way. The Prodigal God is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel and Life share the hope and joy of Christ's gracious and relentless love with people all over the world. Request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give. That's gospelinlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

B (28:02)

If some of you stock analyst types suppose I could send you back in a time machine, but there's nothing that a stock analyst would rather have than a trip back about five years, isn't that right? Just go back five years, 10 years, whatever. Send you back and you sit down, you're back in time now, and you sit down with the Wall Street Journal and you start to read the stock stuff and you're sitting alongside of your stock analyst friends. And of course, they're there from their own time and they don't know what you know. They don't know anything about the future. And you're going down the list and all of a sudden you come to Microsoft and you say, oh my gosh, it's selling for that. Hmm. If I buy a thousand shares of that, I'll be a quadrillion zillionaire in seven years. I will do everything I can. See, I'm gonna borrow, I'm gonna beg, I'm gonna do anything I can to buy everything I put. How do you know? You know what they don't know? They go down all these little lines and one of them jumps out at you. He says, Microsoft, why? You can appreciate it. You know the value of it. You know the influence of that information. There's information on that line. Nobody else can see what it means. Nobody else can see the significance of the information. Nobody can see that knowing that will make all the difference. They can't appreciate it. They're blind. They don't have eyes. You see, but you do. What does it mean to become a Christian? It means to look at stuff that you've looked at for years, and suddenly it jumps out at you, and you say, what's the matter with me? How could I have never seen the power of this? How could I have never seen the meaning of this? How could I have never seen the value of this? That's what the spiritual blindness is. I know there's people in this room who say, well, of course I'm a Christian. I've always believed. And yet that's never happened to you. You have no idea what that experience is like. Then you're blind. You're spiritually blind. You need to have someone break through, see. Break through. De Inoigo Open Some years ago, there were two women that I was counseling back in my first church in a little town. And I didn't know much about counseling. And they both came to me within a week of each other. And they had the same problem. They were facing a very devastating loss in their lives. And they came to a pastor. Actually, there was no counselors in town. So people came to pastors back then because there was nobody else to talk to about their problems. And they came on in at various times. And in both cases, I laid out a passage of scripture. And then I gave them a book. Same passage, same book, same basic theme. And a couple, maybe a month later, I saw both of them. And the one woman came back and said, you know what? She says? When I began to see what God has given me and what I have in Jesus, I began to realize, if I have that, then I can bear the loss of this. And I could see she was healing. And the other woman, same age, same situation, same Bible passage, same book. She came back and she says, yeah, well, that's very nice, and I guess I believe it, but what good is that if I have lost the thing that I've lost? She was inconsolable, and she was broken, from what I can tell, permanently. What was the difference between them? Illumination. The same truth. But the one woman was able to appreciate the truth. She was able to see the value of the truth. She was able to sense the power of the truth, and the other woman did not. Let me tell you what illumination means. You say, I want peace, friends, until the Goodness of God is more real to you than all of the threats around you. You will never have peace. You'll be worried sick. You say, I wish I could forgive the person who's hurt me. Until the forgiveness of God is more real to you than all of the injustice that's been done to you, you will never be able to overcome your bitterness. It's a matter of illumination. It's a matter of appreciation of the truth. Because we're blind. And only as we break through. You want to overcome guilt, the truth has got to break through of what he's done for you. You want to overcome worry, the truth has got to break through of how good he is. You want to deal with boredom, the truth has got to break through, and so on and so on. You're blind, we're blind, okay? That's what he's done. He gives us eyes. Why he's done it because we're blind. Lastly, how he's done it. And I guess I have to be brief about this, though I've already, in a sense, answered your question that issue. How does he do it? How does he deal with the opaqueness? How does he break through the blindness? And the answer is, it's pretty mysterious. But there's one word here that gives us a bit of a clue. It says, then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. And the word understand is a Greek word which literally means to assemble a puzzle. And that's the best clue I can give you. Look, If I lay 20 pieces of a puzzle out at random on a table, and you look at it, but then I assemble it, put it into places, and then you look at it, what's the difference? Well, you know, it's the same 20 pieces. You're actually not looking at one bit of different content. It's the same content, the same 20 things. But once I put them together, you see the connection. And see, to me, I think that's probably the key principle. As to what. As to how Jesus does this. This is all very mysterious. Listen, if you were raised in a Muslim country and you've never heard anything about Christianity, and you come here and you start to listen and you learn about Christianity, and as you learn about it, you love it, and you say, I want to become a Christian, that's where you're getting light and sight at the same time. But for most of us, it's different. We have the pieces of the puzzle. We have had the light for a long time. But becoming a Christian means, though you've always had the light. You're finally getting the sight. Though you've always had the pieces, you've never seen the connection of the pieces to each other. And especially to you. There's a connection. You know, when I put the 20 pieces of the puzzle together, it's hard to even think of it as 20 pieces anymore, even though it is, because the connection makes you see it as a whole. Or if you're looking at one of these books of ink, blotches, splotches, and somebody says, do you see anything in there? And you say, no, I don't see anything. Then somebody says, ah, there's an elephant there. Look, here's the trunk, you know, here's the tail, here's the body. And you say, oh. And once you see that, you can't not see it. Once you see the connection, you can't see the pieces anymore. Same, no different content. No different content. The connections. That's the closest eye can come. And that's what the text is telling us, what it means to say, I understand something. You know, the word. Even the word understand means to stand under something. These disciples had seen the truth, but they'd never stood under it. They had seen the pieces, but they'd never seen the connections. And that's what it means. I don't know if I can go any further than that. You see the connections. You see the pieces, you see how it all fits. So let me ask you this. Let's use this as a test. If that's how he does it, if that's how he breaks through the blindness. He makes you connected. He shows you the connections. Jack Miller puts it this way. He says the gospel, real Christianity consists mainly in personal pronouns. And then he says, always says it this way. He says, you know, a formal nominal Christian says, jesus died for sins. A Christian says, jesus died for my sins. Jesus died for me. He suffered for me. In other words, a Christian. See, a formal nominal Christian looks up on the cross and sees the blood of Jesus running down. And a Christian sees the blood of Jesus running after you, coming after you. You know, a formal nominal Christian sees Jesus up on the cross, sort of moaning. And a Christian sees Jesus looking at you and saying, it's for you I'm doing this. You must sit down and taste my meat. You must let me serve you. You must let me die for you. You must let me love you. You know, that's. You hear it, you sense it. Connection, personal pronouns. Now, so I've already, in a sense, answered my questions. How do you know that he's doing this for you. What are the tests to see whether or not the illuminating ministry of Jesus Christ is operating in your life? The prophetic ministry of Jesus from heaven. How do you know it's happening? Let me just give you three tests. Number one, newness. There's always a newness about what you're learning that just figures. See, dianoigo means a breakthrough. And that means. If you say. And I talk very often to people like this, they say, I've always been a Christian. And I say, fine, that's possible in a sense of meaning. You've been a Christian from the very, very earliest years and so on. But what I want to. I have to say, let me ask you. Has there ever been a time in which you looked and said, aha? I've never seen that before. I've been totally surprised. This truth revolutionizes me. Anybody who's a real Christian knows what I'm talking about. There's a newness. William Cooper puts in one of his hymns. He says, sometimes a light surprises the Christian as he sings this morning. Don't ask me why, but when I was singing the second hymn, I heard the voice of Jesus say, it just started to surprise me. Do you know what that means? See, that's what the illuminating work of Jesus is. I've sung that hymn a lot. That's why I chose this stupid thing. I mean, you know, generally, I choose the hymns that I like. One of the few advantages to my job. I choose the hymns I like. I like that hymn. I like how it goes from minor to major, you know, it's kind of cute, maybe a little. Some people would consider it sort of a cutesy hymn instead of minor key, you know? And then we see the resolution. Here's the problem. Here's the resolution. But in the middle of the time, it started to dawn on me, you know, I started to hear Jesus saying these things to me. What do you mean? You're a Presbyterian minister. You heard a voice. No, Presbyterian ministers don't hear voices. We start hearing voices. We join the assemblies of God, but, you know, we don't hear voices. We belong to this Presbyterian church. But. But I did. Because what happened was, as William Cooper says, sometimes a light surprises the Christian as he sings. It is the sun who rises with healing in his wings. There's a surprise. There's a newness. Sometimes you feel like it's being broken through. Does that happen to you? Has it happened to you? If not, you're still spiritually blind. Okay, another mark. See? Connection. Another mark. Of course, Illumination always is characterized by an engagement of the whole person, mind, will and emotions. You notice that as he opened their minds to the Scriptures, you see what happens. It says, then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Why did they return to Jerusalem with great joy? Because he told them to. He says in verse 49, go back. Don't come out here. Go back and wait there, and I'm going to do something for you. And so you see, you have the mind, the will and the emotions. You don't just have the mind. It's not just that they open. They understood the Scriptures better in an intellectual way. They didn't grow simply in information, the way you kind of grow in knowledge of your computer program. Every week you read a little more in the book and you try another couple of operations. Nothing like that. We're talking about spiritual understanding. And you're moved to the bottom of your being. Some people cry when they're moved. Some people don't cry when they're moved. It's not a matter of crying or not. It's a matter of being moved. They're told to do something, and now they obey, return and they return, but they return with joy. There's the mind, there's the emotions, the joy and the will. Now I'm doing what I'm told. They say, go. He says, go. They go. He says, return. They return, but they return with joy. The whole being. It's one thing to have wonderful Bible study and to find that you cannot amend your life according to his will. Then you haven't really had this illumination. The mind, the will and the emotions are together. There's the engagement of the whole person. But newness, the engagement of the whole person. And then last mark of this illuminating work of Jesus in your life is it's always gradual. It's always unfolding. You know, there's a place in Second Peter where Peter says, we have the word of the prophets made more certain. And you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. We have no idea exactly what that means, but what it means is it's gradual. The light that God gives you when you have your eyes first open to the truth and you appreciate it and you see the connection and all the stuff we've been talking about, it's gradual. It doesn't start right away. I mean, it doesn't go right away into fullness. It more and more, you see, you pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day you see the morning rises and the star rises in your heart, and so on. And that's the reason why, you see, in verse 52. Pardon me. In verse 45, he opens the mind to understand the Scripture. But in verse 49, he says, I've got to. I'm going to do more things for you. I'm going to visit power on you. I'm going to give you even more. So go back to Jerusalem and wait for it. It's always a gradualness to it. There's always an increase. A person who's truly illuminated sees it as a gradual thing. You see, you're getting more and more and you're breaking through more and more. Now, that's what he does. He gives his eyes. That's why he does it, because we're spiritually blind. And that's how he does it, by making connections and some ways of telling whether it's happening to you. Now, now, let me just conclude by applying this a little bit. Some of you. Let me just take this. If this is true, let me apply it to some of you first of all, and I'll be real brief on this. And afterwards, we go downstairs and we have questions and answers. And some of you might want to. If you feel like I'm going too quickly here at the end and you would wish I would explain more, come on down to the end, East Lounge afterwards, and we'll have questions and answers and talk about it. Some of you don't realize the holistic nature of Christianity. You say, I know what to do, but I don't have the power to do it. You say, I know I shouldn't blow up, but I don't have the. I can't control my temper. I can't control my sexual appetites. I can't control my obsessive attitude toward work. I can't control my emotions. You say, I know what's right. I know it. I really do, but I just don't seem to have the power to do it. So you're praying to God for power in the abstract. God doesn't work that way. Look at the beauty of it. You say you think you know, but you don't have the power. If you don't have the power, you don't know. Let me just show you the organic. See, the organic way that Christian power works. I know something about my wife and insects. And now you will, too. If I see my wife reading the paper and crawling down the side of her hair is a big spider. And I say to Kathy, I said, kathy, there is a big spider crawling down the left side of your head on your hair. And she says, yes, I know, yes, honey. And she doesn't do anything. I say, well, dear, I don't know that you hear me. There is a spider crawling down the left side of your head. It's getting near your face, near your skin. And she says, yes, honey, I hear you. There's a spider crawling down the side of my head. I know she hasn't heard me. Why? Because if she heard me, she'd be getting animated, you see, she'd be, oh, ah, you know, pushing it away. She may have sort of heard me and sort of said it. So what do I do? I push away. You know, this is typical. She's distracted. And by the way, when she's reading the paper, she gets very distracted as I push the paper down and I say, there's a spider on your head. And when it sinks in, she's illuminated because her entire being, mind, will and emotion is engaged. Now. That's the way God gives power. Look, a lot of people, people will say to me, I need self control when it comes to sex. I can't control my sexual appetites. Okay, how does the Bible help? The Bible never says, control your sexual appetites or God will get you. It doesn't do that. Let me show you how the Bible does it. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says, you are not your own. You're bought with a price. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, therefore flee sexual immorality? Let me say that again. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, therefore flee sexual immorality? Look at that. What's the secret? It's not coercion, it's not, you better control yourself sexually or God will get you. That wouldn't give you any power. You know, people are always saying, I know what to do. I don't have the power to do it. What does Paul say? He says, know ye not. There it is. He says, look at what Jesus has done for you. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. Look at what Jesus has put in you. You're a temple of the Holy Spirit. He says, you know why you don't have any, why you have problem with controlling your sexual appetite. You don't know these things. Know ye not. Power comes with the knowledge. You're a whole being. God doesn't separate you out. You can't say, well, I know what to do. I just don't have enough willpower. That's an abstract, that's a stoic, that's a pagan, that's a Greek. That's a modern. That's a secular way of thinking. What you've got to know is that Jesus Christ has given me truth. And if I let it affect me, if I look at it, if I say, teach me, set my heart on fire with it. If you look at it, don't you know? Don't you know? Don't you know? And the more you know, the more you will be able. The more you know, the more you'll be able. That's what's so beautiful about this. You say you don't have the power. I say you need Jesus to teach your heart, and he can and he will. And he wants to talk to people, study. Pray over what you study. Reflect on it. Don't give up. Don't just look at this stuff and say, oh, I know it. Say, I don't know it like I should, and I'm gonna know it better. And I'm gonna use every means possible. I'm gonna worship in it. I'm gonna pray it in. I'm gonna sing it in. I'm gonna talk to people in. I'm gonna. But in it all, I'm gonna say, lord Jesus, open the scripture, open my mind to the scripture. Can you do that? Will you do that? If you'll do that, there's the key. Okay, one more thing. Some of you are absolutely and totally spiritually blind. He says the ones who are sure that there's nothing wrong are the ones who are totally blind. The ones who have begun to have their blindness, their spiritual blindness healed are the ones who know that they don't see. Right? Who are you? Which one are you? The same Jesus Christ who raised Lazarus from the dead, however, can also raise your soul from the dead. And somebody says, well, I'm spiritually blind. What the heck am I supposed to do about it? It's very simple. Jesus already told you. I'll just reiterate it. As soon as you say, I don't see, at that very second, you've begun to see. As soon as you know that you don't see, Jesus Christ is helping you to actually say that. And you're finally responding to what he's doing. So the moment you say, I don't see, that moment you begin to see the moment you say I'm blind. That moment your blindness begins to be healed. That's the beauty of the gospel. That's grace. Are you willing to admit that? Or is there anybody here who says this is primitive and obscene? I'm a good person. I'm a moral person. I don't need all this hokey stuff. I don't need all this dramatic stuff. I'm as good a person as possible. I'm as decent a person as possible. You're blind. I stake my life on it. I'm more sure about that than you could, than any. I'm sure about that as anything. But say I don't see and you do. And say I do see and you don't. Gospel Christianity. That's the way it works. Hey, one more thing. Christian friends. Oh, well, Christian friends, on a very cold day like today, if you leave a pail of water out, you can't just break the ice on it once. You have to keep breaking the ice. And even if Jesus gets rid of your cataracts when you first become a Christian, it's still possible, you know, for your eye to cloud up. It's possible for it to come back and you have to go back to the doctor. And that's true spiritually as well. Can you remember when the word of God seems so radiant to you and when the truth of God seems so overwhelming to you? Let me ask you, does it feel that way this week, this last week? You see, unless you're continually breaking the ice and continually going back to Him. Illumination is growing. It's a growing thing. The truth of God is like a great ocean. And we're all like little children paddling around on the outskirts of this incredible ocean. No further in than 3 inches in the surface. We haven't even begun. Have you? Do you sense God continually giving you greater and greater spiritual understanding? Do you feel that you're being led through a kind of mansion and every room is greater and greater and more ornate and more beautiful and grand and high vaulted? Do you sense that you're growing in your understanding of truth and you're grasping your understanding of truth and that you have hardly even begun? There is nothing more inappropriate than a smug Christian who thinks. Thinks he or she knows it. There is nothing more inappropriate than a bored Christian who thinks he or she knows it. Smugness or boredom simply means that your eyes have started clouding up again. Jesus is the light. Rejoice in his light. He is not just a counselor. He's the wonderful counselor. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us first of all to see that we don't. We pray for that. First. We pray for the humility and the candor that leads us to say to your son, I don't see a right. Touch me again. I also pray that you would help us to be a church and a community where we lay out your son's teaching, where we study his external word, but always with the understanding that not our smarts and not our great teaching ability, but only the illumination of your son's spiritual work will ever open our minds. So give us that desire for anointing, that desire for the spiritual work, and yet also a kind of hard nosed and rock ribbed desire to master the truth. We pray that we'd be a community like that and we be a place where people are constantly having their minds open and that there'd be constant breakthroughs of the truth. We thank you that this is a place where that can happen. We ask that it would become a place that could happen with your help. We ask it in Jesus name, Amen.

A (53:27)

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were 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 the Gospel and Life 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 1994. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.