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- [00:04]
Tim Keller
Welcome to Gospel and Life. How do we share what it means to truly know Jesus, not just as a historical figure or moral teacher, but as savior and king? This month, Tim Keller explores what the Bible shows us about being public with our faith and sharing the hope we have in Christ. The reading today is from the Book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 16 through 21. For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith, from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. This is the word of the Lord.
- [01:53]
Unknown Speaker
So we are again in a fourth week of a series we're doing called called Public Faith, Sharing the Hope that's Within. And each week into small groups, we're talking about what we are talking about here on a Sunday morning. And we don't live in a society that encourages people to be public about their religious faith and their religious beliefs, which is really ironic because we are encouraged in our society to be public about everything else. We have to tell people who we are. But think about it. There's nothing more fundamental to your identity and who you are than your religious beliefs. And therefore, if we're going to have a truly open and pluralistic society, we all have to learn how to be public about who we are, about our deepest faith beliefs, and yet to do so in a way that's respectful to others and promotes peace. And that's what we're exploring in these morning messages in the small groups each week. Now, this week, we want to talk about how do you talk about God and about God's existence. You're not going to be able to talk publicly about faith if you can't talk about God and his existence. And how do you go about that without getting into a shouting match? And it goes like this. God does exist. No, God doesn't exist. That's the Internet right there, you know, and sometimes actually out on the street. I think one of the ways to make people more reflective is to not ask the question, does God exist? But how do you know? How do you know whether God exists? How do you know God? Or if you say you can't know whether there's a God or not, how do you know that? See, as soon as you start to ask the question, how do you know whether there's a God? Or how do you know whether you can know whether there's a God? It just, it slows things down and makes people reflect a little bit more. And there is no better, more ingenious and brilliant answer to that question, how can you know whether there's a God or not? Than Romans chapter one. In this particular part of Romans chapter one, written by St. Paul, I don't think there's any more brilliant and ingenious answer to the question, how can we know whether there's a God or not? Than here? Because Paul actually gives you four answers pretty much all at once. We're going to look at them all just in these few verses. Here's what he says. He says, we can know God, we do know God, we don't know God. And we can truly know God, we can know God, we do know God, we don't know God all at once, by the way. And there's a way to truly know God. And he says it all right here. Let's take a look. First of all, as I said, he does say here that you can know that there's a God. So, for example, famous verses 19, they're all famous, 19 and 20. What may be known about God is plain. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made. Now what's he saying here? He says in what has been made, that's nature, the created world, there are clues, plain clues to God's existence. He's actually saying that it's possible to infer God's existence from what you see in nature. Now, the reason I use the word clues is many people have, sometimes people have, I think, misnamed these clues as proofs. And so some people say by looking at nature and looking at the world, you can prove there's a God. And if you go online or if you go to any philosophical textbook, they'll give you those proofs. And the proofs that come from looking at nature and the created order are proofs. They have these great Big long names. And once if you know how to say them, then you feel so much better about yourself. That really helps your self esteem. So there's the cosmological argument and there's the teleological argument. Now Paul doesn't use the term proof here and I think that's reading too much in a proof is something that no rational person can deny. No rational person can find any reasons not to believe it. And I don't think Paul's saying that. I think he's actually saying that if our cognitive faculties of our hearts and minds were in better condition, we would acknowledge those clues more readily. But. But they're there. What are they? Well, I'd rather he doesn't tell you much. He just says that God's reality, his divine nature and his power are there's clues to it. I'll just go into the 2 for a minute just to show you how it works. But they're not proofs. But they're clues. The cosmological argument works like this. How could something come from nothing? That's it. So for example, you know the Big Bang theory, the universe started with a bang. How could nothing have exploded? You know, nothing can't explode. So how could the explosion come from nothing? Well, somebody says, well, it wasn't that, it was nothing, there was something. Okay, but where'd that something come from? And if you keep asking that question, where did that something come from? It came from that, or where did that something come from? And if you all would go back to say, well, there was something that had no cause, that it didn't come from nothing, it was always there. Since we know nothing in this world like that, everything we know has a beginning. Every, everything we know is an effect with a cause. As soon as you start talking about an uncaused cause, as soon as you start talking about something that has no, that was always there, you're talking about something supernatural, something that we don't know here in nature, something beyond nature, something divine. And see, that's how the cosmological argument goes and says, how could all this, this come from nothing? And if it didn't come from nothing, then what brought it about? The teleological argument is actually kind of fun too. And again, I'm looking at my watch. They're just fun. They're not enough to make people believe in God. They haven't. But they are there. The clues are there. The teleological argument comes from the word telos, which means design. And it talks about the fact that the world is so perfectly Designed. How? Could it have come about by accident? Now, physicists will tell you this, and I have to look at my notes just to say it right, that the fundamental regularities and constants of physics, things like speed of light, gravitational constant, the strength of weak and strong nuclear forces, all of these things have to be perfectly calibrated. It's almost like there are a hundred dials and every single dial has to be exactly at the right spot. Not a single one can be off a hair. They all have to be so perfectly calibrated in such a way for matter to coalesce. Unless all those things were exactly the way they are, we wouldn't have matter. We wouldn't have a world. We wouldn't have human life. And so what many people have said is so many things had to happen exactly the way they are for there to even be human life, even to be life, even to be matter. That couldn't have happened by accident, so God did it. That's the teleological argument. Now, people like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking, who are atheists, spend a lot of time refuting that argument. And you know what that means? It means it must have force or they wouldn't spend the time. But you know what they all say? You know what Dawkins says? You know what Stephen Hawking says? What they say is that at the Big Bang, there could have been an infinite number of possible universes formed, and we just happen to be in the universe where matter coalesces, where all the. The various fundamental regularities and constants of physics are exactly the way they ought to be for life to happen. So there we are. There's zillions and zillions of those universes, and we just happen to be in the one where it happens, okay? And of course, there's a lot. The philosophers have a lot of fun with that. Let me just give you one. Imagine John Leslie is a philosopher that tells you this story. John Leslie tells you this story. He says, imagine there's a man about to be executed. And so the sergeant gets 50 crack marksmen and lines them up six feet from the prisoner. And so 50 crack marksmen with their rifles six feet from the prisoner. Ready, aim, fire. And they all miss. The sergeant says, what happened? Every single man says, gosh, Sarge, I just had a twitch. My nose, you know, Something in my eye, you know, I'm sorry. All 50 at once. And the sergeant says, it can't all be 50 at once. And then one guy who took a philosophy course says, but, sergeant, at The Big Bang. There could have been a zillions of possible universes formed and we just happened to be in the Universe where all 50 crack marksmen happen to, you know, have a twitch in their nose at the very same moment. Now, you know, first of all, the sergeant, if he also took a philosophy course, he would have to say, you're right, I can't prove that this was a conspiracy because we just happen to maybe be in the, in the one universe, right? I can't prove it, but I know it was a conspiracy. I would never in a million years, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume that we just happen to be in the one universe where all that can happen. I want you to assume it's a conspiracy, that it was, that somebody did it, that it was contrived, that there was some personal action, there was some personal design involved, right? He wouldn't assume the one in a zillion chance happened. He would assume there's a personal design. And for you to say there's a one in a zillion chance that maybe there is no God, does that make sense? To base your entire life on that? So these are the cosmological and teleological arguments. And these are basically, you know, forms of the kinds of clues that people have seen over the years. And Paul says, are there, there really are clues. But Paul says something much more radical than that, a lot more radical because he doesn't just say it's possible to know God by looking at nature. He actually goes a little beyond that, way beyond that and says every human being actually does know God. See where he says that, he says God is mad. And why is he mad? The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of people. This is everybody, humanity, who suppress the truth. What truth? What is known may be known about God. And then down in verse 21 he says, for although they knew God, they wouldn't glorify him as God. What he's saying is people, all people, are suppressing the truth about God's existence. Now you can't suppress something unless you've got it. And what he's saying is at some very deep level, every human being knows that God is there. Now this, by the way, is a very offensive statement to people. In fact, just in the newspaper yesterday, in the New York Times yesterday, there was a letter to the editor. The letter to the editor had to do with some op ed piece that I happened to miss. But some op ed person had said this term in one of the op ed pieces earlier this week that there are no atheists in foxholes. You've heard that, that when the shooting begins and even the atheists show that they actually believe in God. And well, one atheist wrote in and he was very offended. And this is what he said, and this is fair. He says, quote. He says the implication that atheists are all really theists at heart and that our convictions are casually and shallowly held and easily abandoned in the face of adversity is simply untrue. He says to say he's an atheist. He says to say that I'm really a theist at heart and my atheism, my beliefs are. Our convictions are casually and shallowly held and easily abandoned. It just isn't true. Well, see, Paul is not saying anything like that. Here's what Paul is saying. Yes, Paul is saying that at some level everybody knows there's a God. But as we're going to see in a minute, he's also saying at a profound level, everybody, we all believe in God and yet we don't believe in God. And what's interesting, the, the, the translators can never get this right because it's a very awkward construction. But Paul deliberately, when he says what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world's. For the, since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, have been clearly seen being understood. The verbs, there are present passive participles in Greek. And what it means is, and this is what the commentators say, what it means is that, that the reality of God bears down on us constantly. That is that there's part of our heart that doesn't believe God's there. And yet there's another part of our heart that's sensitive to his reality and that reality bears down on us. So what Paul is describing is a deeply conflicted dialogue between the part of our hearts that denies the existence of God and the part of our hearts that's sensitive to his reality. There's nothing casual or shallow about that. And yet Paul is saying that at some level, in some part of our heart, we know God's there. Now you say, how would you. What's the evidence for that? See, we're not talking here that, you know, you can look at the arguments for God and infer his existence. We're saying Paul is saying that all people already know about his existence. At some level, they know he's there. Well, how do you. What's the evidence for that? I have, after many, many years of finding it interesting to read the biographies of atheists who've become Christians. I see what Paul's talking about. There's a whole slew of prominent, some more famous than others, British intellectuals who are atheists and who became Christians. I mean, some of them are more famous, like T.S. eliot, W.H. auden, C.S. lewis. Some are a little less famous, like C.E.M. joad and a N Wilson, people like that. They all have initials, lots of initials there. I'm sorry, but these are. A lot of. These were British intellectuals, brilliant men, and they were, you know, biographers and literary critics and thinkers and that sort of thing, and poets. And even though they had rejected Christianity growing up and they became part of the intellectual elites, all of whom laughed at religion and Christianity, they shocked their contemporaries and their peers by embracing Christianity in one form or another. When I look at them and I study them, I see that very seldom, if ever, do they look at the evidence, like the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, and they come to conclude, I guess there's a God. Rather, when they talk about how they found faith, they come to say. They come to see that they believed God all along. They were living as if there was a God. They weren't admitting that they were living as if there was a God. And they finally admitted, he's got to be there. Very interesting. Let me just give you two. One is not as interesting, not as well known as the other. A Wilson, he's more recent. A Wilson was a Kathy. And I know him because he. He really turned on Christianity and he wrote a terrible biography of C.S. lewis, basically attacking him for his beliefs. He wrote biographies of Jesus, of Paul. He was very skeptical of Christianity, rejected it. Very brilliant man. But on Easter 2009, he put an article in the paper, said, I have embraced Christianity, just shocked everybody and gave an Easter testimony. And in it, this is what he said. He says most public voices, he's talking about in Britain, most public voices have accepted the idea that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity. As a matter of fact, it's materialist atheism that is not merely an arid creed, but is totally irrational. For materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat. And he goes on and tries to say, he says people who believe there is no God and that we are just, you know what he called us? You know, he said, we're just bags of chemicals. And animated pieces of meat that have evolved. Then we say, we need to be noble and we need to believe in justice and we need to love each other. And he says, there's no basis for that. Now you say, where does that come from? Let me give you a second case study because it's a little clearer and more fascinating. W.H. auden, a poet, was considered one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century. What's interesting to me is that his conversion happened right here in the Upper east side years ago. He was British, but he was living in America during World War II and he had embraced atheism just like everybody in his intellectual class. But it started evidently when he was, you know, that just the northern part of the Upper east side, sort of the north eastern part of the Upper east side, Yorkville was back in World War II and in the 30s and 40s, a very, very German place. Lots and lots of German people lived here and there were a lot of. In fact, when we got here to start the church, there were still lots and lots of German speaking churches and restaurants and places like that. Still in the late 80s up in the Upper east side largely vanished. But during the 40s, W.H. auden was. Went to, he was working on his German actually, and there were a number of German cinemas, places that show German films. And he went into a film house somewhere in the late 30s and saw a film that had obviously had been, you know, influenced by Nazism. And he saw, he saw American, Jew, German people, American, German, American people, at least Germans living in America yelling at the screen slurs against the Jews that appeared in the story. And it shook him. And eventually this is what he wrote. He came back to Christianity, shocked everybody. And this is what he wrote. Let me set this up for you because it's very important. Auden thought that all educated, enlightened people would believe in freedom, reason, democracy and human dignity. Basically believe that all educated people, all cultured people, you know, all reasonable people, people who believed in the importance of human reason and her culture, that they would believe in the values of freedom, reason, democracy and human dignity. What happened was that Germany had embraced Nazism and Germany was second to none as a sophisticated, educated society. Tremendous science, tremendous music, tremendous art, scholarship, you know, Germany was second to none. And yet they had embraced the idea of that you. That, well, that loving your neighbor and justice and human rights was a fiction.
- [21:31]
Tim Keller
We always say the gospel changes everything. And we believe it really does. That's why here at Gospel and Life, August is go and share month throughout August. We're inviting thousands of our listeners to take a small step in sharing the gospel with someone God has placed in your life. For those of you who make a gift to gospel and life this month we'll send you two copies of Making Sense of God by Tim Keller. It's a powerful resource that explores how Christianity makes emotional, cultural and rational sense in today's world. It's our thanks for your gift and provides a way you can do a small act to share the gospel by reading the book with a friend, giving one to a co worker, or passing on both copies to people who are exploring the Christian faith. It's a simple way to start a gospel conversation or continue it. To request your two copies of Making Sense of God, simply go to gospelandlife.com give again. That's gospelandlife.com give now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
- [22:32]
Unknown Speaker
So this is what Auden wrote. It created a crisis for him. And here's what he wrote. Quote, if I am convinced that the highly educated Nazis are wrong and that we highly educated English are right, what is it that validates our values and invalidates theirs? The English intellectuals who now cry to heaven against the evil incarnated in Hitler have no heaven to cry to. The whole trend of liberal thought has been to undermine faith in the absolute. It has tried to make reason the judge. But either we serve the unconditional absolute or some Hitler monster will supply an iron convention based on reason to do evil by. And here's what he means. He says he believed in human rights, liberty and freedom. Why? Why should you believe in human rights and freedom? Why especially? Well, he said, let's use your reason, huh? And let's look at nature. But what you see when you look at nature, reason looks at nature. It's science, empirical. What do you see? You see the strong eating the weak. That's nature. That's how you got here. The strong eating the weak. So now, on what basis do you see a strong country eating a weak country or a strong race eating a weaker race? You know, destroying, oppressing, mar. On what basis do you say that's wrong? What reason? See, just using your reason. Not morality, not heaven, not moral absence, just your reason. How do you decide that human freedom and dignity and human rights and justice for all. Why believe that when that's not how nature works? He says Hitler was using reason. And reason is, hey, we're products of evolution. And so here's basically what he says. Yeah, of course, without God, you can have moral Feelings. Oh, listen carefully, everybody. Without God, you can have moral feelings. Sure, you can feel it's wrong to oppress people. You can feel human rights are right, okay? But without God, there can be no moral obligation. That is, you have no right to say that your moral feelings should determine them, their behavior. See, you have moral feelings. You're English. They have moral feelings. They're Nazis and they're Germans. How dare you say that your moral feelings are right and theirs are wrong when there's no standard. And therefore, here's what he decided. If you believe that human rights and justice are not imaginary values, but are real, and if there is no God, they would be imaginary, but they're not imaginary. Therefore, there must be a God. See, without God, there can be moral feelings, but there can't be moral obligation. You can't say you are obliged to follow my moral feelings. But if you believe, well, they. The genocide is wrong. Oppression is wrong. Human rights are right. They're not just my feelings. They're right. There must be a God. And Auden realized he was believing God all along. He just wasn't being honest with himself. We know there's a God deep down. We suppress it. But that's the third point. See, the other thing that is so brilliant about Paul's analysis is this is the human condition. We can know God, and we do know there's a God, and yet we don't know there's a God. See, when he says, in the very moment he says we do know God, he also says, we suppress it, we repress it. So we are. We don't know it, and yet we do know it, and yet we don't know it. And both are fundamentally the same. I mean, they're equally strong. Now, what kind of stuff do we modern people know? We tend to suppress or repress. Why do you suppress something? Why do you repress something if it's traumatic? You know? Now, sometimes memories can be traumatic. One of my favorite Agatha Christie novels is Sleeping Murder, and it's about a young woman who buys a house. And in the house, she starts to have flashbacks of a murder she saw. And it turns out that as a little girl, she was in the house and she'd repressed the memories of a murder. And that's how the murder works. Now, the fact is that psychologists will tell you that there's really probably not that many truly repressed memories that are traumatic. I mean, there's a lot of fiction about it, and there are a lot of people talk about it in the media, but the Reality is, it's probably not true that some memories are so traumatic we simply repress them. It's pretty rare. But I'll tell you what you do repress. If you're really angry, you can repress that. No, I'm not that angry. If you're really feeling guilty about something you've done, you can repress that. No, I don't really feel guilty. Anything about your heart that doesn't fit in with your identity, your way that you like to think about who you are, so you have a chosen identity. I like to think of myself as this or as this. Or this. And when data comes in, things that you've done or feelings you've got that doesn't fit that data, you screen it out, you suppress it, you repress it. And Paul says, that's exactly what we're doing with God. Why? Because the knowledge of God is incredibly traumatic. How so? Well, it tells you right here, verse 21, key verse. For although they knew God, they didn't glorify God. And what does glorify mean? They didn't treat God as. As big and as glorious as he truly is, as multidimensional, as great, as magnificent as he is. Why? Because they didn't want to thank Him. Now you might say what? That's the big sin. That's the whole problem, is we don't want to thank God. Yeah. By the way, even at the legal level, there's this thing called plagiarism. What's plagiarism? Refusing to thank somebody for the intellectual property you're ripping off, Refusing to thank somebody, saying. And I want to acknowledge that I got all these ideas from. We don't say that. Why? Because then we are showing our dependence and showing our obligation and showing we may actually not have complete control over what we're saying. But you see, if there's a God, then we are utterly dependent on him and we are totally obliged to Him. See, if there's a God who made us and keeps us alive every second, then that's traumatic because it means we need to thank him for everything. Which means there's not a single spot in your life that you don't owe him allegiance. And we hate that. Because, see, our image of who we are is that we can call the shots. We are our own masters. We decide what is right or wrong. Especially our Western culture tells us that. And so along comes the God of the Bible in particular, and there is no God that's more traumatic than the God of the Bible. Why? Well, see, what if you say, well, I believe in a God of love. Just a God. There's a spirit of love everywhere. See, that does not get in. First of all, you don't have to thank that person, do you? That's not a person. You're still in control. You can still live with the illusion that you're in charge of your life. Or if you believe there's other kinds of God. I just believe that God is the force of life and everything. There's all sorts of ways of believing in God that aren't traumatic and that we embrace, but the God of the Bible, or put it like this. Imagine you had this really great scam going. There was a neighborhood in New York City that you go to and you dress up as a police officer, you impersonate a police officer and ah, the waters part when you go there and they, you know, people give you free sandwiches and they top of the morning to you, officer. And you know, everything goes really nicely. Now, while you're impersonating the police officer, you'll probably be a little nervous. You'll be a little afraid that maybe you'll say something that might make, you know, somebody say what? Why would a police officer say this? You're a little nervous, of course, because you're impersonating an officer. But what if in the distance, coming, walking towards you, you see a real police officer? You're not just nervous now, you're scared. Why? Because there's no chance that the real police officer is going to expose you as an impersonator. It will happen. Therefore, all human beings, according to Paul, we want to call the shots. We want to be our own bosses. We want to be in control of our lives. We want to take credit. So that's cosmic plagiarism. We want to take credit for who we are and what we've done. We want to pat ourselves on the back in all those ways. What are we doing? We're impersonating a God. We're impersonating a creator. You know, we're self made people and we're worshiping our Creator. See? But what happens, see when somebody comes along and says, I believe in a God who kind of made the world and now he's off in a, he's remote. Or somebody says, I believe in a nature, a God who is nature. I believe in this. I believe that there's a whole lot of gods that actually don't threaten you. But when you get to the biblical God who creates you and sustains you, who is a glorious God and to whom you owe Everything that is a God who's gonna freak you out, you're gonna melt down. That's like when you're impersonating a police officer and you see a real police officer coming, you're impersonating a God. And when you see the real God coming, the biblical God coming, you go nuts. And Paul says that's the reason why even though we know there's a God, and we actually in some ways live as if there's a God, if we were honest with ourselves, we can't not know that there's a God. It presses his reality, presses on us all the time. At the same time, we desperately do not want to believe in God. Everybody in this room, including the guy behind the microphone right now, this says suppresses the truth to some degree. None of us can bear the full reality of who God is. It's too threatening, it's too traumatic. We all try to whittle God down somehow, flatten him. But the biblical God, very traumatic. And so though we can know God, and we do know God, we don't know God. Well, what do we do about it? What can we do about it? Well, there actually is clues here as to what we can do about it and how we can truly know the God who's really there, how we can heal ourselves of our fears so that we can know him truly. And what is that? Well, let me put it like this. This in some ways gets into the rest of the book of Romans, and we're not looking at the whole book of Romans, but let me show you. Let's go back to verse 19 and 20 for a minute and say, if you look at nature, he says, if you look at creation, if you look at the things that have been made, what can you learn about God? He's invisible, he's eternal, He's. He's powerful, he's divine. Okay, what's missing from the list? Is there anything there that it says you can't know about God just by looking at nature, Just by using your reason, just by using all your rational powers, by trying to be objective, no matter how hard you try looking at the things that are made, there's one thing you're not going to know anything about. What is it? Doesn't say anything about his love or his grace. And by the way, that's true. Let's look at nature, class. Let's look at it geologically. Oh, look at the volcanoes, look at the earthquakes. Do you just look at that and just say, I just see that God is a God of love? No. Okay, let's look at the nature meteorologically. Hurricanes, see, you know, tsunamis. Do you just look at nature and say, you just. I just know God is a God of love. Let's look at it astronomically. You know, we're in a galaxy. Our galaxy is just, you know, zillions and zillions of miles wide. And we. And there are a hundred billion galaxies we even know of, and we only probably know of a tiny amount of how many there really are. And do you look at that and the idea that there's a God who made all that? Do you just look at that and say, oh, I just really want to know a God like that? No, you're scared to death. If there is a God that made all that, what am I? Let's look at it biologically. You know, Annie Dillard wrote a great book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and went out to live, you know, in the mountains of Virginia years ago. She won a Pulitzer Prize for the book. And she said, I wanted to observe nature. So she watched at the creek, she watched nature. She thought it would make her close to nature. And she saw how violent nature was. She saw a giant water bug sting and paralyze a frog and then put its thing down into its brain and suck its brains out until it just sort of collapsed like a piece of clothing with nobody in it. And she said, ah, nature. Do you look at nature red in tooth and claw and say, oh, I just know God is a God of love. No, you will not find that God is a God of love. In fact, now this is a little more controversial. I'm going to take 20 seconds on it. I promise I could back it up, but I'll just tell you. Do you look at other religions and say, well, other religions all say God is a God of love. No, you go to Buddhism, they talk about being compassionate. If you're a Buddhist, of course, but it's because this world is unreal and you shouldn't grab hold of anything. And the idea is that God is an impersonal all soul and we're going to become impersonal all souls. No, they don't believe God is a God of love. In fact, if you talk to Islam, you say, do you believe your God is a God of love? They'll talk about being merciful. But I know with many, many Muslims I've talked to, is God a God of love? They'd say, no, we wouldn't say that. So where do you get this idea that God is a God of love? It's so pervasive in the world. I'll tell you where you get the idea. It comes from the Bible. That's the only source in human thought. But if you really don't just pull what you want out of the Bible and really find the biblical God, here's what you see. Verse 18. Wrath. A wrathful God, a God who gets angry at sin. A God gets incredibly angry at sin. And a little later on in Romans 3, it'll say, and the wages of sin is death. Wrath, demanding death because we disobey him. And then. Yet look, verse 16, 17. But I am not ashamed of the Gospel. For it's the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. See, first the Jew, the good person, then the Gentile, the pagan person. It doesn't matter. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. A righteousness that is not earned, not something that you develop, but is given as a gift. It's by faith, from first to last, and you will live by it. Now, here's the point. When you give yourself to someone in love, when you get into a love relationship and you give yourself to someone in love, do you lose control? Yeah, you lose control. You can't just live any way you want. When you get into a love relationship, you lose control. And it's great. It's great. Why? Because the other person loses control, too. You're not. If it's a true love relationship, you don't exploit each other. And if you just simply look up at the sky and say, I want to believe in a God of love. Listen, that just flattens. God, A God of love. Yeah. You know what? You are afraid of losing control. You and I are afraid of losing control. And if we just say, I just believe in a God of love who doesn't judge anybody and accepts everybody just the way they are, that's a flat God that won't threaten you, that won't show up, the fact that you're impersonating. But the biblical God, the God of the gospel is this. He is an angry God because he's angry at sin. And yet Jesus Christ, Son of God, comes in this world and goes to the cross and loses control. Total control. Everyone has his way with him. He's beaten, he's speared, he's nailed. He loses complete control. Why? He takes what we deserve. He takes that wrath. He takes that death. In other words, the Son of God, God incarnate, loves us so much he was willing to lose control so that he could take our punishment, so that he could Then forgive us and love us. And now what is that? That's a love that does not exploit. You see, you can give yourself to this God because he went to the cross for you. And see, that's that there's no other religion has anything like that. No other philosophy is anything like that. And now finally I've got a God that I can give myself to. The Gospel and the Gospel of a loving God and a holy God. A God who is so holy he has to punish sin, and a God who is so loving that he would take the punishment himself. There you've got now a glorious God. You've got a multidimensional God, a complex God, a real personal God, someone I can know, and also a God I can give myself to and not be afraid. And so the fear that keeps me from really knowing God is healed by the gospel. It's unique. My favorite part, in fact, the only part in that novel, the Life of PI, that I like is this one spot where I got to read it to you. Just too. It's just too great. Every. Every couple years I got to get out and read to you. It's a place where, you know, the boy who's is exploring all the different religions and he was leaning toward Hinduism, but then he talks to a Catholic priest and the priest starts to tell him about Jesus and his death on the cross. And here's what the boy, he freaks out. And this is what he says that a God would put up with adversity. I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but an account of one long bad day for the Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation? Death? I couldn't imagine Lord Ka consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets, and to top it off, crucified. And at the hands of mere humans to boot. I'd never heard of a Hindu God dying. But divinity should not be blighted by death. That's wrong. It was wrong of this Christian God to let his avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of himself die. For if the Son is to die, it can't be fake. If God on the cross is God shamming, a human tragedy. It turns the passion of Christ into the farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God. Even resurrected, this son must have the taste of death forever. In his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it. There must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful? Why spoil what is perfect love? That was Father Martin's answer. Let's pray. Our Father, we see that the thing we will never ever learn by scanning the heavens and using our reason and our rational arguments is the sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ. Lord, we'll never know that except in the Gospel. But that's what we need to heal our heart. So the the primordial and and deep innate knowledge we have of God is of you is finally free to be released. We're afraid of you, Lord. We're afraid of losing control. Your reality, your glorious reality is just too traumatic for us. But only in the Gospel can we be healed, can we embrace you and finally be reunited with our Creator or our Maker, with our Redeemer, with the one that we were born built to worship and love and know. Oh Lord, teach us how to be public about our faith. Those of us who understand the Gospel and have experienced that healing, teach us to use the Gospel in our hearts so that we can constantly get a better and more glorious view of your reality. Because even now, Lord, so many of us, we're believers and yet we still don't completely grasp the greatness of who you are. We still sometimes distort that. And Father, teach us how to be public with our faith so others can know the healing of the heart that comes through seeing the Gospel of the love of your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
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Tim Keller
Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in 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 transformative power of Christ's love and forgiveness. To learn more about how you can become a Gospel and Life Monthly partner, just visit gospelandlife.com partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2013. 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.