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Welcome to Gospel and Life. Christianity isn't just a spiritual practice or set of moral teachings. At its heart, it's the person of Jesus actively pursuing us. In today's teaching, Tim Keller unpacks how Jesus actively seeks us, reveals truth to us, and calls us to Himself.
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I'm gonna read to you from Psalm 2. Our teaching this afternoon is taken from Psalm 2. It's all printed in your bulletin. It's a shorter psalm than we have been seems like looking at recently we've been looking at very long Psalms. This is only 12 verses and I'll read it first. Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather to together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, you are my son. Today I have become your father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter. You will dash them to pieces like pottery. Therefore you kings, be wise, be warned, you rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way. For his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. This is God's word. It's Advent. As we approach Christmas, we ask ourselves, what did Jesus Christ come to do? And we've been answering this question last week, this week, next week by looking at some of the Psalms. We've been looking at the Psalms all fall. And I think I mentioned last week that some psalms have been understood by the Christian church as Messianic Psalms. They're called Messianic psalms because Jesus himself picked out a few some psalms. And he said, you know this psalm, like we said last week, John chapter 15. He quotes from Psalm 69 and he says, you know, this psalm talks about this, about David. It talks about the psalmist and the immediate environment of the psalmist. But it's also foreshadowing and talking about me. And these particular psalms therefore can be read on two levels. They have in a sense, two horizons, two reference. They've got the reference to the immediate historical context of the person writing the psalm. But they've also got an ultimate referent to a greater David than David, a greater king than this king, a greater warrior, a greater suffering servant, and so on. Now, this particular psalm is a coronation psalm. If you read it carefully, you'll see that it actually consists of several stanzas, and it has to do with the accession of someone to the throne of Israel. And it can be read, obviously, just on that level. You see someone in David's line. This could either be David. It might have been originally written when David was crowned, but it certainly was also used in other situations when descendants of David were installed as king. And in the beginning, it talks about the nations of the earth plotting against the king. Well, it's natural that if you became a king in those days, you had a whole, whole lot of hostile neighbors who couldn't wait to test out just what kind of king you really were, what kind of general you really were, which was the same thing. And. And therefore this, the context of the psalm is God is seen as installing the king in Israel on Zion, which was one of the hills. Zion was the original hill in Jerusalem on which the original Jebusite city. The Jebusites built a city in Jerusalem before the Israelites built a city. And so Zion was just simply another way of talking about the entire city of Jerusalem. So here in Jerusalem, the king has been installed, but all the foreign hostile kings are conspiring against this king. So the psalmist says, be warned, God is with him. God is going to take care of him. He will give. God will give us aid. And that's how you can read the Psalm at one level. But if you read it carefully, you will see that no earthly king can completely justify the fury of the threats, and no earthly king can completely justify the glory of the promises. The language, you might say, of Psalm 2 spills out over its banks. You know, if Psalm 2 is a river, the language comes up over top of it. And the things that are said about this king, this anointed one, are far too great to really be confined to any earthly king. As a matter of fact, in verse 2, where it says, the kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and his anointed one. In Hebrew, you know what the word anointed one is? Mashiach. The kings of the earth take. They conspire against the Lord and his Messiah. By the way, on just about any subway car you go into now, there's this great big picture of the Lubovitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Schneerson, saying what? Mashiach is coming. Have you been in the subway lately? If you're very, very rich or very, very poor, you're never in the subway, I suppose. But for the rest of us, there it is. Mashiach is coming. The Anointed One is coming. He says, be ready. And it's very good advice. Now, look. That's what it's talking about. The Lord has put his Messiah and has installed his Messiah. And therefore, we can read this Psalm as talking about that greater David, that greater king. And it actually tells us three things. It tells us. And I'll lay these principles out, and we will just examine them. The middle section, from verse four to verse nine, tells us that we have a true king, a king above all the kings, a king behind all the kings. We have a true king installed by God, my king, he Sundays. Then verses one to three tell us, however, also that human beings hate the king. We have a true king, but we hate that true king. And then verses 10, 11, and 12 are extremely practical. They are a summons to us to see that though we have a king and we hate the king, we need the king. We'll never find blessedness without the king. We must serve and we must rejoice, and we must kiss the king. And so there's the three points. We have a king. We hate the king. We need the king. Okay, let's go number one. We have a king. God says, here's all these kings around, but there's a king above the kings. There's a king behind all the kings. There's my king, the true king that I have installed. One of the things that's so incredibly interesting about the literature of the human race is how many in ancient legends in all of our cultures kind of go like this. There was a great king who ruled with wisdom and power and justice and compassion all at once. And therefore, when the king was there, the land experienced a golden golden age. And everyone blossomed, and we all reached our potential. The land blossomed. The arts blossomed. Relationships blossom. Civilization blossomed. But something has taken the king away, and everything has deteriorated. Everything has fallen into decay. But we look for the day in which the king will come back. Do you know how many of our legends are like that? It's astonishing. You have the Robin Hood legend where here's Robin Hood fighting because the good king is gone. And now darkness has descended on the land, and he's fighting just to keep the flame alive until the good king can come back. You have the great Arthur stories, King Arthur, camelot When Arthur was ruling, there was Camelot. But now he's gone. And supposedly on his tombstone it says, here lies Arthur, Rex quandum rex futurus, meaning the once and future King. Not just the once, but the future king. See, that's critical. Behind all the legends, there was a great king. And when he was here, everything was great, and he's gone. When will he come back? I mean, you even have, you know, one of the most successful and powerful modern legends, a legend written in the 20th century. It was Lord of the Rings. All the legends in that cycle written by J.R.R. tolkien. And actually behind all of them, any of you who've read them know that in many, many ways, the basic theme is that there's a true king and he's hidden in the north, but he's going to show up. And when he does, everything will blossom, right? The hands of the king are healing hands, and thus shall the rightful king be known. And on and on it goes. Now, why? Why all these legends when the actual record of human kings is absolutely abysmal? The actual record of human kings is nothing but a record of tyranny and of tragedy and of slavery. And it's been so that all human, practically every single monarchy, has been toppled and in its place has been put some kind of democracy. And as a result, you know, Christians. And by the way, one of the great things about the four o' clock service is you can ask more questions afterwards. We have a question answer time afterwards. Christians have been part historically of trying to topple tyrants and kings and put in place democracy. But the question that comes up is, in spite of that, why this fascination with kings? Why do the old legends have such powerful impact on us? And not only that, why do they still have powerful impact on us? Why is it that in the countries that still have some kind of royalty left, some kind of royal line, that the people are obsessed with the royalty? Why is it that in lands like America, where there is no king, there is no royal line, we have to create them? So we take billionaires and we take athletes and we take media stars and we even take criminals and we turn them in to kings. We crown them, they hold court, we adore them. Why is it that there is a significant, significant part of the population that's constantly giving themselves over to the sway of dynamic, charismatic figures who abuse them? Why is there this need for kings? Why is there this need to crown them? Why there's this need to create them? Why is there this need to adore them? Now, I Can't get into it too far. That's what I'm saying. Afterwards, somebody might want to ask me about this. Christians know the Bible knows that democracy is medicine, not food. You can't live on medicine. It's medicine. We have to have democracy because human beings are so sinful that none of us really are fit to rule. But we need a king. We were built for a king. The reason for the old myths, the reason for the new myths, all the superhero myths are new myths about kings. The reason we adore kings and create them is because there's a memory trace in the human race. There's a memory trace in you and me of a great king, an ancient king, one who did rule with such power and wisdom and compassion and justice and glory, so that his power and wisdom and compassion and glory were like the sun shining in full strength. And we know that we were built to submit to that king. We were built to give ourselves to that king. We were built to stand before and adore and serve and know that king. That's what the Bible says. The Bible says there is a king above the kings. There is a king behind the kings. There is a king beneath all of those legends, that even the greatest kings are just dim reflections of the memory trace in us. And the Bible says if you reject the true king, you will find a king, because you have to. Even if you reject the idea that there is a true king intellectually, you can't reject it ontologically, you can't reject it in your being, you can't reject it psychologically. You will find someone to adore. You will find saviors, you will find kings. You will adore. One of the. You know, one of the most poignant things I've read in the last month. Jeffrey Schmaltz was a writer for the New York Times, and he was suffering with aids, and he was very. You know, he wrote about it for over at least a year, and he just died this fall. And just two, three weeks ago, they published his last column in the New York Times Magazine on a Sunday. And it was a fascinating column because what he wrote, he said, you know, he was embarrassed to admit it, but he admitted it publicly. He says, before this last presidential election. I'm just so embarrassed. I felt that if I could just get a Democrat into the White House, I'd be saved. He says, I looked at this candidate and I said, this is my white knight. These are his words. This will be my savior. He'll get all the resources together. He'll find a cure. And he realizes months later what an idiot he'd been, how naive he'd been. How could he feel that way? Things really aren't nearly as simple as that. Well, it's just what we're talking about here. The Bible says you will find a king. You will find a white knight. You will find a savior. You've got to. It's in your blood. It's in a memory trace. King Arthur. Hmm? Robin Hood. Good King Richard, a Democrat in the White House, or somebody you're sure with someday comes along and sweeps you off your feet romantically, and someone who will save you. You need a king. And if you don't find the real king, you're going to create a false king, and it's going to poison your life. My dear friends, your physical nature will be served. If you deny your physical nature. Food. It will gobble poison. Eventually, it'll eat anything. And if you deny your spiritual nature, the king that it needs, it will gobble something. It'll gobble poison, but it will gobble. God says, I have set my king in Zion, and I give my king the whole earth. In the book of Hebrews, Psalm 2 is quoted. And Hebrews says, you know, to what earthly king or even angel, could God truly say, you are my begotten son? To what angel, what earthly king, or even what angel, could God say, all of the ends of the earth are your possession? Hebrews says, is this just courtly hyperbole? Is this just another one of the kinds of. Is this just the flattery you have to heap on an earthly king at his coronation, just the sort of thing that was done? Or is it possible that God has literally and fully said this to somebody? Is it possible that there's a real king above the kings, a real king behind the kings? And in the New Testament, the Gospel message, the message of Christianity is, yes, there is. There is one and only one. The Messiah. Mashiach is coming. The Christ, the Lord and his anointed one. That's the first point. There is a king, a true king. But secondly, we're taught here in verses 1 to 3, that the natural heart of every human being hates the true king. See, you have down here in verse 1, 2, and 3, why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord as an anointed. And here's what they say. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. Now, that's the translation we have printed out there, the new international translation. Well, what does it mean? Probably when you read it, the way it's translated, you get the impression that the Lord and the anointed ones have the kings of the earth in chains, like captives thrown in prison. That's really probably a poor translation. As I was studying this, I came to realize for people who know Hebrew a whole lot better than I do, the probably that second has. That second word should be translated. Yoke. The kings of the earth are not upset because they're prisoners and that they have chains on them. The kings of the earth are upset because they have an owner. A yoke is something you put on the oxen, or a harness is something you put on your horse. And the idea here is there is someone who owns them. There is someone who demands that they be yoked. There is someone who demands that because they are owned and they have been created, that therefore the Creator has rights over them. And that's what they want to have nothing to do with. They say, I want to be my own. Now, this is teaching us, verse three, that this is the basic impulse of every human heart. I think it was George MacDonald, he was a Scottish writer who inspired C.S. lewis. George MacDonald said, There's one conviction. The central conviction of hell is I am my own. Now, I think what he means is that's the one conviction that everybody in hell shares, but also it's the one conviction that creates hell. It's the one conviction that will create a hell in your relationships, a hell in your marriage, a hell in the neighborhood, a hell in the neighborhood, in the community, a hell in your life if you operate on this principle. I am my own. Take the yoke off. I belong to no one but myself. I am the captain of my own soul. I am the master of my faith. That, says George MacDonald, is the essence of what every human being feels. You feel it from the beginning. If you're trying to raise any children, you know exactly that that is something that completely affects and dominate, dominates the thoughts and the feelings and the decisions and the worldview of every human being as they grow up. I am my own. Take off the yoke. And the Bible therefore says that we hate the idea of a king. We hate the idea of someone who has rights over us. We hate the idea of a king who has a yoke on us, who says, you belong to me. You are not your own. You must do as I say. And that's the reason why the Bible says that human beings don't just disbelieve in God. We Hate him. Jonathan Edwards wrote a whole book on this subject. He called him, and the name of it was men Naturally, God's enemies. And it's based on passages like Romans 8 where it says the natural mind is enmity with God. You know, there really was a sermon once. There was a sermon in 19th century Britain that ended like this. These were the last words. Oh my friends, if virtue incarnate would only appear on earth, we would fall down and worship. That's pretty incredibly stupid, isn't it? Because you know, virtue incarnate did appear on earth. And what did we do? We ran, we choked him, we hit him, we nailed him, we whipped him, we killed him. Why take this yoke off my neck that we all hate the king? There's a true king, but we hate him.
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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 gospelandlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
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Now before I move on, I just, I need to respond to the normal kinds of objections that people always give and they raise and they're understandable objections. People say that's silly, that's, that's preacherly hyperbole. You know, preachers like to over dramatize everything and so on. And sure, there's a lot of people who are indifferent to God. There's a lot of people who don't obey God like they should be. But the average person is not hostile. The average person doesn't hate God, doesn't hate God and conspire and plot against him. Oh really? Let me give you a couple of. Let me answer the two basic objections. One, people say most people really believe in God. Recently, Michael Kinsley in the New Republic wrote an interesting editorial. He'd been hearing so many people say that America was getting more and more hostile to religion. And so he wrote an interesting article saying. He says, that's really bull. He says. He says, I know that some places like Washington, D.C. and Manhattan and places like that, there's a lot of people who don't believe in God, but over 95% of all Americans believe in God. And he says, he said, in this country, is it easier to get up in public and say, I don't believe in God, or is it easier to get up in public and say, I do? Now, of course, you know, it depends on whether you're in Manhattan or Peoria, I'm sure. But you know what his point was? He was saying, hey, it's popular to believe in God. Most people believe in God. People aren't hostile toward God. People aren't hostile toward religion. This is a very religious country. He's wrong because actually he's defined things wrong. The Bible doesn't say people are hostile toward the concept of God or toward the idea of God. No, no, no. What? The Bible says people hate the biblical God. You see, it's the biblical God that thunders from Mount Sinai and says, be holy, for I am holy. Have no other gods before me. It's the God who thunders and says, I will by no means clear the guilty, or it's the God who sets. The biblical God, gives us the Messiah, and the Messiah shows up. And what does the Messiah say? He said, you cannot be my disciple unless you hate your mother and father. You know what that means. He says, you must love me so much that any feelings you have toward anyone else will look like hatred by comparison. That's how much you have to love me. I have to be supreme in your life. I have to be number one in your life. I must have total control of every dimension of your being. God says, that's the God of the Bible who puts a yoke on you and says, I own you. I am your creator. You belong to me. That's the kind of God the Bible says that people hate. And surely there's some people here that are squirming as I talk like that. You know, your back is starting to get up. You say, oh, my gosh, what a primitive view. I rest my case. That's the normal way a person reacts to the depiction, to the expression, to the revelation of the God of the Bible. Not just God in general, you know, if I start talking like that, do you believe in the biblical God? The God that thunders from Mount Sinai, be holy as I am holy. Who says, I will by no means clear the guilty. What's the average person say? Who? Those 95% of the people say they believe in God. You know what they say? They say, well, I believe in a God of love. I rest my case. The Bible says we hate the God who is the King. We hate the God who says, you are my possession. All the ends of the earth are my possession. See verse eight. I own you. Here's the yoke. That's the God that we reject. And careful, one more mistake you might make. Some people say, oh, okay, so the people who hate the King are skeptics or people who've rejected religion or rejected Christianity? Not necessarily. Don't forget this. There's a great place in one of Flannery o' Connor's stories where she says there was a deep black, black, wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. I've never gotten over that. Such a great line, such an insight. Now, I've used it before, but let me show you how I apply it. Here. She says, here's a guy who's very religious. He figures that the way to avoid Jesus is to be as good and as moral as possible. Why? Well, you see, many people use religion to avoid Jesus. They use religion to avoid the King. Let me put it to you like this. Do you believe you're a pretty decent person? Do you believe you're better than most? Do you believe you're a pretty straight shooter? That you've got moral standards and you stick with them? Do you feel like if God showed up now and he was going to decide who he was going to accept into his heaven, that you would feel like you'd have as good a chance as anybody? Or do you believe that you are such a helpless sinner that you have absolutely no hope of ever being received by God except that Jesus died for you? That you'd have no hope except for the mercy of God, which was shown in Jesus Christ? Do you think you're a helpless sinner? Or do you think, frankly, you're a fairly moral person? Friends, don't you see you're using morality? If it's the former, you're using morality to avoid Jesus, to keep from having to really be dependent on him, to keep from having to really submit to Him. I tell you this either through morality and religion or through skepticism and licentious living, people hate the King and they express that hatred by trying to avoid the King. And they deny and repress their very anger. So here's just. We have to move on here. But here's. Here's a concluding little point about this. How do you know if you're a Christian? How do you even know if the Holy Spirit's working in your life? Life like this? Do you know you hate God? Have you seen your hatred? Have you seen that there's an enmity in your life against God? Have you seen how much you hate the yoke? When you hear Herod and Jesus Christ Superstar saying, get out, you King, get out of my life. Do you know that that's the words of your own heart? If you know that you hate God, if you know that that's a big part of your heart that proves you're a Christian, because only Christians know that. Only Christians can admit that. Only the Holy Spirit Spirit can allow you to surface that repressed traumatic material. If you don't admit today that you're an enemy of God, you're really an enemy of God. The only way to become his friend is to admit you're his enemy. The only way to know that God's Holy Spirit's working in your life is if you're able to see that resentment. We have a king. We hate the king. Lastly, thirdly, we need the King. Verses 10, 11 and 12 says, look, if you see you have the king and you also see you hate the king, the only recourse you have is to persuade, is to be persuaded. Let me explain that. To be persuaded that you need the king, serve the king, kiss the king, rejoice in the king. But you see what verses 10, 11, 12 says. There's no in between. You can either serve and rejoice and kiss the king and you'll find a refuge in him and be blessed. Or you won't serve, you won't rejoice and you won't kiss the king and you will perish. You will be destroyed in your way where you stand. It's a tremendous statement. What it's saying is there is no refuge from the king. There's only refuge in the king, see? No in between. There's no refuge from the king, only refuge in the king. You need the king. You have to be persuaded of that. Let me put it to you this way. The principle of verses 10, 11 and 12 is that the yoke eventually becomes a refuge. That confinement eventually becomes spaciousness, that service eventually becomes freedom. That if you pull the yoke off of your back because you think it's bondage and slavery, you will find that you will perish. You need that yoke. In fact, the yoke is the only way to get you into freedom. So, you know, just maybe a perfect illustration. Let's just say here's a young lady and she wants to be a great musician. So what. How do you. How do you. Maybe some. Maybe you. Or maybe she. Maybe if you're her parents or something, you see this great artistic gift in her and you want. You want that artistic gift realized. Well, what do you do? The yoke. She's yoked to her piano. Hours, every day. Some days she wants to go, some days she doesn't want. Some days she likes to practice. Some days she doesn't want to practice. But every day she's yoked to the piano, she's yoked to her practice. And as time goes on, the yoke becomes a refuge. You see, as time goes on, her artistic skills start to blossom. As time goes on, she begins to be able to express herself in a way that she never could have otherwise if she hadn't gone through the routine. And let's face it, the drudgery of practice. The yoke becomes a refuge. The yoke becomes blessedness. And let me tell you, there's nothing more tragic to have a kid come to you and say, mom, dad, why didn't you make me practice? Why didn't you make me study? My potential is ruined. My. My chances have gone by. Why didn't you make me? And you know, the only thing to say to a kid is this, because, you know, ultimately you can't make somebody do that. The yoke always has to be eventually received by you. You have to take it on. I couldn't, you say, make you practice. I couldn't make you study. I couldn't show you that the yoke was the way to freedom. There's nothing more tragic than that. All right, see how the analogy works. The Bible says that in every human being, there are potential. There's potential. There are things you know you have got blossom. You will blossom if you come in under the king in places you didn't know you had buds. You've got potential that only will come if you come in under the yoke, under the yoke of the king. To believe and obey and love a king means you confine yourself. It means you no longer in charge of your life. But that's the same. You're yoked. That's the way it is. That's what it means to come in under a king. And the Bible says, because you need a king. You can't understand yourself psychologically, you can't understand yourself culturally, you can't understand yourself unless you see that you're driven by this need for a king. You're trying to get back to Camelot and there's no alternative for you. And therefore, unless you submit yourself to what you were built for, you will perish in the way. Do you see that? Until you submit to the king, the king, until you give yourself to him utterly and completely. Your heart, the Bible says, is like an eight cylinder engine running on one cylinder. Have you ever tried that? It spits and it coughs and it lurches and it halts and it's terrible. Don't you see the your two deepest needs, you need to feel that you count, that you're accomplishing something. And you need to feel that you're loved, that you're valuable to someone. And when you serve the king and you kiss the king, those two needs. And only then are those two needs satisfied. Because when you serve him, he serves you and when you kiss him, he kisses you. That's the way it is in a relationship. And then, oh, blessed are they who take refuge in him. Now, let me just conclude by giving you a couple of fairly practical examples here. The Bible gives us right here in verse 10, 11 and 12, what it really means to submit to the king. Let me just give you three. Actually, let me give you four. And afterwards I'm going to be real brief about it, and if people want me to draw them out, you can draw them out afterwards in the question and answer time. How do you treat Jesus as a king? A lot of you have believed in Jesus in a general way. A lot of you have even asked Jesus for help in your life, but you're not treating him as a king. And this is the reason why you're not seeing the blessedness in your life. You're not treating him as a king. If you want to treat him as a king, you got to do four things. Obey, submit, rely and expect. Obey, submit, rely and expect. Look, obey. Maybe that's too easy. Maybe I shouldn't spend much time on it, but wait to obey. Some of you think you're obeying and you're not. If you say, okay, here's the rules. Look at all the things that the king says. Always forgive. Always, always tell the truth. Always, always return. Never return evil for evil, but always return evil for good. Use sex as a commitment. A covenant renewal ceremony for a permanent exclusive marriage contract. You know, don't Envy, don't be bitter. And so on. Now, there they are. Look, nobody in this room, none of us are going to be perfect at keeping those up. But there's a difference between someone who has really let Jesus be king, and there's a difference between someone who is making Jesus nothing but a consultant. You see, it's one thing that when I come to somebody, some of you are bitter right now, some of you are mad at people and you won't let go. You're playing the tapes. You won't forgive. You know you should, but you won't. You're going to perish in the way you're trying to throw the yoke off of yourself. Don't you see? His yoke is easy, his burden is light. If you forgive, if you obey and forgive, it'll heal you. There's a difference. I can sometimes go to people and say, I can see that you're not forgiving. Yes, they say, what are you going to do about it? A Christian always says, I need help. I know it's wrong. I refuse. I'm not doing it. I got to do it. What do I do? But there's another kind of person that says, yes, I know it's wrong, but this person deserves it. Don't tell me how to run my life. If you say, I'll obey if it feels good, I'll obey. If it's practical, I'll obey. If it's popular, I'll obey. If it's pragmatic, you're not obeying at all. Jesus is not in your life as a king. Jesus is in your life as a consultant. He is giving you recommendations, and you're deciding who to sleep with, and you're deciding when to forgive, and you're deciding what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. He's only a consultant. He won't come that way. How dare you treat him that way? Look at who he is. You mustn't obey. Treat him as a king. You have to obey him. You have to say, not my will, but thine be done. Number two. To treat him as a king, you have to accept, submit to the way in which he's ordering your life. This is harder. That's why I'm mentioning it. Real brief. Some people are very obedient as to what he actually says. But when God lets things come into your life, that you just think, this isn't right, this isn't fair. Look at how he's letting the circumstances of my life go. You won't treat him as a king, then you know what it means to treat him as a king. To say, you must know best. Oh, it doesn't mean that, you know, you just put a cheery smile on your face and you say, I'm just praising Jesus. Everything is just fine. I'm sure he knows what's best. In that sense, you have to wrestle and you have to struggle. But you know how? You have to be like Job. There's one great place in Job, chapter 23. In one of his better times, in all of his wrestlings, he says, I don't sense God's presence. And the things God is allowing to happen fill me with terror. But he knows my way, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold. But he knows my way, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold. You know what he's doing there? He's accepting the kingship of Jesus in his life. He's saying, I don't understand what's going on, and it terrifies me. And I wrestle. But I know that if I respond obediently, if I accept what he's giving me, if I am faithful in the midst of this great fiery furnace, I will come forth as pure gold. I'll be humbler. I'll be more sensitive. I'll be more loving. I'll be more compassionate. He submits to the fact that his circumstances are purifying. Do you give Jesus the kingship like that? Okay, number one, have to obey. Number two, you have to submit, accept the circumstances. Number three, you have to rely on him when he says, kiss the Son. You know what that means? If you add anything to Jesus as a requirement for being happy. If you add anything to Jesus as a requirement for being happy, that's your real king. You see, if you say, I'll be happy to become a Christian as long as these things go in my life. Very often you come to Christianity because something's going wrong in an area of your life, something that really is important to you, something that's your real king. And you go to Jesus and you say, ah, you know, I'm going to do this and this for you, but will you please get me that? And if your life doesn't go right in that direction, if those things don't happen to you, you're ready to throw the whole thing over and say, in vain have I kept my hands pure. In vain have I washed my hands and my heart in innocence. What does it mean to kiss the King? It means to obey him and submit to him because you are ravished with his beauty. It means to say, there is nothing I love more than my King. It means I won't make my King a means to an end, but the King's love is enough in itself. And lastly, obey, submit, rely. One more thing, expect. Rejoice with trembling. What does that mean? I believe that if you are too pessimistic with regards to what Jesus can do in your life, you're not treating him as a king. You have to have the expectations that are worthy of a king. You've got a king coming into your life. You know, there's a place where John Newton says, thou art coming to a king. Large petitions with thee bring for his grace and power are such none can ever ask too much. Do you treat him like a king? Or do you look at the problems in your life and say, nothing's ever going to happen there? That's the way it's always going to be. That's the way things are always going to be. Thou art coming to a king. Large petitions with thee bring for his grace and power are such none can ever ask too much. Don't you see? If you're pessimistic about what God can do in your life and what God can do through you, you are not treating him as a king. Can you serve him? Can you obey him? Can you kiss him? Can you rejoice with trembling? There's no refuge from him, but there's a tremendous refuge in Him. Blessed are those who find refuge in the King. Let's pray. Father, we ask now that as we think about these things, because it's your, your word that your spirit would come and open our hearts to how we should be applying these things. I pray that everybody here might find that as they come and they kiss the king and they obey out of love for him, that they'll find that their lives are opening up. Father, forgive us for wanting to pull the yoke off. Show us that the yoke becomes a refuge, that confinement becomes spaciousness, that service, your service is our perfect freedom. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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Thanks for listening to Tim Keller and the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel center 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's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com partner that website again is gospelandlife.com partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. 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.
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Sam.