A (19:51)

The Psalms can profoundly shape the way you approach God. Even Jesus relied on the Psalms to face every situation, including death. In Tim and Kathy Keller's 365 Day devotional, the Songs of Jesus, you'll find daily readings through the Psalms with fresh biblical insight. If you don't have a regular devotional practice, this book is a wonderful way to start. And if you already spend time in study and prayer, then reading and praying through the Psalms can help you bring your deepest emotions and questions before God and discover a new level of intimacy with Him. We'll send you Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the love of Jesus through with more people. Request your copy today@gospelinlife.com give. That's gospelinlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

C (20:43)

So first of all, Christian joy is unique because it's not based on circumstances. It's not grounded in circumstances. But secondly, Christian joy is unique because it's already, but not yet. It's already, but not yet. Look, on the one hand, verse 2B says, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now what's that mean? It means when you become a Christian, because your salvation is not based in your good works and your efforts, there's a certainty you've got about your future. See, remember what we said about all other religions. All other religions say if you live as you ought, then God will bless you. Which means in every other if you believe. The reason God blesses me, the reason I believe I have a relationship with God, is because I've lived a good life and I'm living a good life and I'm praying and I'm, you know, I'm doing all these things. That means you have no certainty about your future, spiritually speaking, because what if you give up or what if you don't keep it up? You can't be sure because you haven't gotten to the end of your life yet and you might fail or you might do something. So religion, in which your salvation essentially is earned by you, creates an uncertainty about your future. But Christianity says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And it's absolutely certain that someday you will share in the hope of the glory of God, that you'll live in the world before him and this world is going to be completely renewed. And when you get there, the moment you get there, you're going to stamp your foot and you're going to say, I've come home at last. This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life and I never knew it till now. And the knowledge of that, the knowledge of that, it's not yet, but it's there. It's coming. The word hope in the Bible does not mean hope. So it's not an uncertainty. Hope in the Bible is life shaping certainty of something that you're going to have, but you don't have it yet. But even the stories about it and the thoughts about it and the biblical texts about it and our understanding of that future is glad grounding. See, it's poise creating when other circumstances are going away, becoming unfavorable, we know about the hope of the glory of God. That's the not yet. But is that all we have? We just know it's going to happen. We just think about it. So when we're suffering, we just say, I know in the future it's going to be better. Is that it? No, that's not all we have, because look carefully, verse four and five. It says, suffering produces perseverance. And perseverance, character. And character. Hope. And our hope does not disappoint us. Why? Because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who He has given us. What does that word, pour out mean? Does that mean the Holy Spirit just tells us that God loves us? Does that mean that we know that God loves us? We already know God loves us. What is this talking about? So the pour out metaphor is a way of expressing experience. And this is saying that sometimes, that feast that we know we're going to have in the future, we get an hors d'. Oeuvre. Now, sometimes, that glory that we're going to have in the future, sometimes you experience it now. And this is at the very heart of the Christian joy that's available to you through Christ, through the faith in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. It's a foretaste of that glory. Some of the old people. I mean, some of the old British pastors, like Richard Sibbes and William Guthrie, write about it like this. Listen, this is 17th century English, but so work with it here, he says. Richard Sibbes says, sometimes our spirits cannot stand in trials, so the immediate testimony of the spirit comes to us, saying, I am thy salvation. And our hearts are stirred up and comforted with joy, inexpressible. This joy has degrees. Sometimes it's so clear and strong that we question nothing, and other times, doubts come in soon. William Guthrie says it's not an audible voice. We don't hear an audible voice. Rather, what we're talking about here is a ray of glory filling the soul. It's like the word of Jesus to Mary. The Lord only said her name in the garden. Mary. And it filled her soul, so she no longer doubted she was his. How glorious is this manifestation of the spirit. You will not have the Christian joy that roots and grounds you, no matter what the circumstances. You will tend to simply rely on worldly happiness, which is based on favorable circumstances, which, of course, is so fragile. You will not have the Christian joy unless sometimes you have experiences of the love of God direct to your Heart through prayer. It's the foretaste of that. It's the already foretaste of the not yet. And you heard what Richard Sibbes says. It doesn't happen a lot. It doesn't happen constantly. Sometimes it's very high, sometimes it's kind of low, and it goes away fast. But you know it. When you have those experiences. I know it's weird to have a Presbyterian minister saying this. When you have those experiences, that goes along with your knowledge. See, because I know I'm saved by grace. I know that the glory of God is my destiny. And yet at the same time, I've got a subjective as well as an objective nature. Not only have my mind, I've got my heart. And the Bible says Christian joy gives you what you need, both head and heart. And do you not see now how this, in a sense, answers the dilemma we talked about in the first point? Because the first point dilemma is things in this world are great, and yet if we give our heart to them, then we get disappointed. So then we detach, and then we don't rejoice in things. C.S. lewis autobiography is called Surprised by Joy. And it's all about the fact that before he was a Christian, he was always trying to find joy in other things. And whenever he found something that he thought would give him joy, he binged on it. So, for example, the first time he read an Icelandic saga, he loved it. And he started to say, oh, I want to get that feeling back I had when I read it. It was so exciting. So what did he do? He reads every Icelandic saga, and then he goes and learns old Norse so he can read it in the original. And yet as he works through it, he comes to realize, well, somehow the joy I thought was going to give me never comes through. And then suddenly he gets a friend and, you know, sometimes there's nothing more wonderful than a great evening talking with a friend, and you come back feeling so good. And when he. When he first made. He would get a friend, and he would binge on the friend every night. Let's get together, let's talk. After a while, the friend's saying, whoa, maybe not tonight, you know, I mean, or maybe not for a while, you know, he would binge. And at one point, he becomes. He starts to realize that there's a God behind the joy. And as he was getting converted, as he was sort of moving toward becoming a Christian, he says this. At one point, he says, the book. I came to realize that the books are the music in which I thought the beauty and the joy was located, betrayed me. If I trusted in them. The joy was not in them, it only came through them. These things, these things, the joy, the beauty of. If they're mistaken for the thing itself, the things that give it, through which it comes, if they're mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the joy itself, these things that bring it. They are only the scent of a flower we haven't found yet, the echo of a tune we have not heard yet, the news from a country we haven't visited yet. And at the very end, the last chapter, the last page of his autobiography, he's become a Christian. And here's what he says. It's very, very interesting. He says for many years he thought, the joy's here, the joy is here. And he would go to that landscape or that set of friends or that book or that writing or whatever, and then he came to realize it was from God and the joy was coming through the things. And then he ends with this fascinating illustration. I want to tell what I would give you because I think it actually answers the problem. He says, if you are lost in the woods and you first come upon a signpost, it's a big deal. The one who first sees the signpost in the woods says, look. And the whole party gathers around and stares and says, ah, finally, that's the direction. But if you found the road and if you're passing signposts every few miles, you don't stop and stare at the signposts. They encourage you, and you will be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we will not stop and stare at the signposts, or at least not too much, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering is of gold. Why? Because we would rather be in Jerusalem. See his point? He says, if you really are lost, when you find a signpost, you get pretty excited about it. But when you know your way, when you know the thing to which the signposts point, that's where you're on your way. And you don't stop and look at the signposts. And what he realizes is food, friends, success, acclaim, popularity, money. All the things that we think, if I have that, that's going to give me the joy, are signposts. So enjoy them. Some of them are great, some of them are made of silver with letters of gold. But don't mistake the signpost for what they're signing, the thing they're pointing to, which is the City of God, which is God himself. And that gets you out of either being afraid of enjoying things in this life or at the same time resting your heart too much in them. And let's final question. How do you really get this joy? Because I've been all along saying Christian joy is like this and Christian joy is like that. Well, how do you get Christian joy? You say, oh, I guess become a Christian. Well, let's be a little more specific because I know an awful lot of Christians that don't have much of the joy. And here's what I'd like you to see. The last part of the passage, the last part is, you know, worth five or six sermons. And by the way, there's plenty of people who preach five or six sermons on these, you know, verses. However, the essence of them is the gospel. And in verses 8 and 9, there's a beautiful little summary of what the gospel is. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us that we might be saved from God's wrath. Now God's wrath is. It's not just crankiness. God's wrath is his judicial opposition to evil, his settled judicial opposition to injustice and evil. And the human race deserves punishment because we have participated in evil and injustice. But Jesus Christ, while we were still sinners, that's the grace. Not because we cleaned up our life. While we're still sinners. Jesus Christ took the wrath, he took the condemnation, he took the punishment. And that's the gospel. How does that bring joy? Two ways, and these are very important in their practical. Number one, the gospel shows you the magnitude of, of your danger. Now you act. This, this is counterintuitive because from the outside, the gospel, the first part of the gospel, which is, you're a sinner, you're lost, you deserve punishment, you deserve wrath. That sounds negative. Gee, why would you consider that negative? Well, of course it sounds negative, but you know what that means on the inside. On the inside, we realize the, the size of the debt and the magnitude of the danger we were in, which we weren't aware of before. One preacher put it like this. He says, imagine that you went away and a friend of yours was staying in your home. And when you came back, your friend said, you know what? A bill came for you. And I opened it, I hope you don't mind. And I saw what the bill was and I paid it for you. I paid it out of my own money. And the preacher says, okay, now how should you respond? And the answer is, you have no idea how to respond. You know why? You don't know how to respond because you don't know the size of the debt. You don't know how big the bill was. Was it postage due on this package? Then you would have said, oh, thank you, that was very kind of you. Well, what if the IRS finally found where you lived and that was the, that was the bill for back taxes that, you know, you have no resources of your own to, to fulfill that, that bill, and that was paid for. In other words, the preacher says, until you know the size of the bill and the size of the debt, you don't know whether you just say, hi, thank you very much, or to fall at his feet as dead saying, you saved me. You don't know how grateful to be, you don't know how joyful to be until you know how bad you bad off it was, right? And J.C. ryle, the old Bishop of Liverpool, says one of the reasons why you get so upset over the debts, your financial debts, your financial problems, is you don't realize that the great debt, the only debt, the debt of sin, the only debt that could really sink you has been paid. And when you see that, then all other debts, no matter how great they seem to be to you, are little do you follow that. See from the outside, the idea that you're more wicked than you ever did believe in, you deserve wrath, you deserve to be punished. That sounds like bad news. But from the inside, once you believe in the gospel and you see that all those years the sword of Damocles was over your head and you never knew it was about to fall, when you see the magnitude of the death, the magnitude of your danger, and you realize what you were delivered from, it inflicts a joy on you that never goes away. That is, if that sounds odd to you, it's because you're not deeply on the inside. You really haven't come on the inside. You haven't really accepted that. If you accept the bad news of the gospel that you're a sinner needing salvation from the inside, it creates a joy that says, you know what? Okay, I've got debts, I've got diseases, but the only debt that can really sink me has been paid. And the only disease that can really kill me eternally has been healed. And even cancer can't do that. It can't really sink me, because if I belong to him, I've got the hope of the glory of God. The real disease has been healed, the real debt has been canceled. And so the first thing that the gospel does is it shows you the magnitude of your danger. But the second thing it shows you is the magnitude of Jesus pain. There's a weird place, and I do consider it weird, in John chapter 16, where Jesus is trying to comfort his disciples the night before he's about to die. And he's trying to say, look, look, you know this is going to be hard on you. But then he says, a woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when the baby is born, joy, for a child is born into a world, and so it is with you. What is he saying? And I looked it up, because every. Every time I look at that passage, I always look at the commentators to make sure I'm not imagining. All the commentators agree Jesus Christ is identifying with a woman. And here's what you have to remember. Nowadays, most women that have babies have some pain. But there are these things called epidurals and things like that. But in those days, not only did women never give birth except through excruciating pain, but women constantly died in childbirth all the time. And what that meant was the only way for a woman to give birth to a new baby and the joy of a new life was for her to go into a tunnel of anguish and pain and danger. And Jesus Christ says, that's what's happening to me as I'm going to the cross. I'm like the woman who's giving birth to joy and a new life by going through all this anguish. And here's how you develop. You look and say, lord Jesus, you lost all joy that I could have eternal joy. You experienced enormous anguish so I could have new life. And that's how the love comes. Here's verse five. It says, this is the key to joy, that sometimes the Holy Spirit pours the love of God out on your heart. And you know how that happens. Here's how it happens. Don't say, oh, okay, Lord, make me feel loved. That's abstract. That's not what happens. How does it happen? You look at what Jesus has done, you look at him saying, I'm like the woman who lost her life to bring new life. I'm like the one who lost all joy to bring you joy. You look at what he has done for you, and that's what sometimes by the power of the Holy Spirit inflicts a joy on you and a sense of how loved you are that makes you able to handle anything in life, no matter what the circumstances are. That's it. So the two things, the two ways the gospel gives you joy is it shows you the magnitude of your danger was so great that all your other problems seem small by comparison to the one problem which has been solved already. And number two, you see what Jesus has done for you. You see what he's given up. You see how he lost all joy to give you joy. And as you meditate on that and as you pray on that day in and day out, sometimes the Holy Spirit gives you a sense of God's love on your heart, that it gives you the power to handle anything. And that's how it works. Go get it. It's available. Let's pray. Thank you Father, for giving us joy and giving us the capacity for far greater joy than we have. Lord, I pray that anyone here who has not really come onto the inside of belief in the Gospel, has not really received it, has not really accepted it, has not really come to know you by faith, not really experience justification. I pray that they would and that they would therefore begin to understand this joy. Joy in the face of the future, joy in the face of suffering. Joy before you. But I also pray, Lord, for all the rest of us who already believe, but to great degree are relying on worldly circumstances for our happiness. Give us this joy. Root us and ground us in joy. Give us an experience of your love so that we can have the joy that Jesus had. For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. And for the joy that you have given us, we can endure anything because he endured that for us. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

A (40:31)

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life Monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com partner that website again is gospelandlife.com partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2010. 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.