← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Gospel in Life. Where do you turn for reassurance in a crisis when life feels out of control? We can quickly discover that the things we turn to for our deepest security don't actually have the power to help us. Today, Tim Keller looks at the story of Jonah to explore how life's storms reveal what we're really trusting in and how our fears are calmed when we look to Jesus, who faced the ultimate stories on our behalf.
- [00:37]
Beth (Scripture Reader)
The scripture reading can be found on page eight in the bulletin. Reading from Jonah, chapters two and three. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God. He said, in my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me. From the depths of the grave, I called for help. And you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas. And the currents swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed. I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. The word of the Lord.
- [02:16]
Tim Keller
We continue to see sort of the relevance of Jonah's situation and the story of Jonah to our own. Think about this. Jonah was a prophet and he was obviously had a relationship with God. He was a preacher, he had a faith. He had an understanding of who God was and who he was and so on. And he was just fine. I mean, he was moving along in his world just fine. And then his world changed because God came to him and said, now I want you to start now. I call you into a new ministry, a new situation. I want you to go to Nineveh. Now, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was the. You know, it was the emerging world power. And it was a violent and ruthless and imperialistic nation. And it was, as it were, a clear and present danger to the very existence of Jonah's country. And God calls him to go minister in the capital city of Assyria. And to use the technical, theological term, Jonah freaks. He freaks out. What happens is he had a certain amount of confidence, but the new danger was too much for the confidence he had in God. And he had a certain amount of humility. But to be confronted with the people that he despised and he disliked, he didn't want to spare them, he didn't want to warn them. He didn't want to deal with them. He had a certain amount of humility. But when brought in the face of these people, he was filled with disdain and hatred and, well, and bias and bigotry. In other words, Jonah's spirituality, his level of spiritual functioning was fine for his old world, but not for the new world he found himself in. Fine for the old situation, but the new situation, it just collapsed. I suggest you and I'll get back to this at the end to try to show exactly, you know, be more detailed. That's a situation in which a lot of us are finding ourselves. An awful lot of people in the city of New York have been sort of rocked out of the. Out of the glitz and the busyness of New York City. And they're starting to say, wait a minute. I need to move into a new level of spiritual functioning. I need. I need to. I need. I need to get closer to God. I need to. I need to find some new source of spiritual strength beyond what I've got right now. Because the level I've got now, the amount I've got right now, just isn't enough. Well, what's intriguing here is that Jonah does have a breakthrough. He runs away. As we know, we saw this the last couple of weeks. He's thrown overboard. He's in a storm in a boat, and he's thrown overboard, and he sinks into the water and he's swallowed by a great fish. Now, one of the things I always thought was great about this story was, you know, some people, it takes radical things to get you to just finally think. And, you know, in a fish, there's, like, nothing else to do. I mean, you know, nothing. I mean, I don't think you could even move your hands, probably. I mean, finally, Jonah. I mean, a lot of us are just too busy to think. But Jonah learns. Jonah is put in a situation, begins to reflect and think, and he begins to pray. And as the prayer moves along, we see that he has a breakthrough. And he's moved to a new level. Because at the end of the passage that Beth read you at the end of this part, the same word comes to Jonah, the same situation comes back to him. I want you to go to Nineveh. And this time he can do it. He's been moved to a new level. He's had a spiritual breakthrough. He's had a spiritual transformation. And now the new situation is something that he can handle. He can meet it, see? And that's where a lot of us are. How do we move to the next level? What we're learning here through Jonah and looking at his prayer is we're gonna learn something about the key to spiritual transformation, then. The method of spiritual transformation. The marks of spiritual transformation and the continual need for it. Okay, the key to it, the method, how it happens, method of it, the marks of it. How do you know if it's happening to you? And lastly, the continual need for it. First, what is the secret? What is the key to spiritual transformation? Well, if you look at the end of the prayer, see, at the very end of the prayer, he breaks into a kind of exclamation. And it's when he gets to the end, when he gets to saying the things in verse eight and nine, that's when he's released. That's when he's given the new challenge. Or actually, it's the old challenge, frankly. It's. The word comes back to him and says, now will you go to Nineveh? That's when he's released. That's when he suddenly finds himself able to function in the new situation that God sends him. And what is that? What was the key? What does he get to in verse eight and nine? That is the key that. The thing that when he gets that, then God lets him move on. Then he breaks through, then he's changed. It's grace. The climax of verse 8 and 9. He says, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace. I've been forfeiting the grace that could be mine. Salvation is literally. It says, salvation is of the Lord, which is the same thing as talking about grace. That's when he's released and he has the breakthrough. Years ago, I heard somebody, I heard a teacher when I was actually preparing as a student for ministry, and I heard someone lecture on this verse. Actually, the last line of verse 9, salvation is of the Lord. Literally, salvation flows out of us from Salvation is of the Lord. And I heard this lecturer say this. This verse is the key verse in the Bible. He said this is the summary verse of the Bible. This is the theme of the Bible. This is the whole Bible boiled into one verse right there. Not only that, let me tell you what he says. This is what Jesus whole ministry and message was about to show us. This salvation is of the Lord, he says. This, he says is what your life is about. Every single thing that happens to you in your life, this is what God's trying to show you in every one of those things, that salvation is of the Lord. And this is the thing you've got to relearn and relearn and relearn every time you're going to break through any kind of new barrier, anytime you're going to meet any kind of new challenge that salvation is of the Lord. It's the essence of what makes the gospel, what makes the Bible so unique in all the thought forms of the world. Remember I think I said last week that there's three kinds of people in the world. Religious, irreligious and Christian. And the reason I say that, the reason that we say that is because the world thinks of everybody as being along one sort of spectrum with two poles. Irreligious, religious. And they say everybody's along there somewhere. There's the most irreligious and there's the most religious and most people are somewhere in the middle. But that's it. Everybody fits on there somewhere. But that's not what this says. That's not what the Bible says. That's not what the gospel says. There's a whole other way of going. You see, look, salvation is of the Lord. The irreligious person doesn't know they need salvation. They don't need. They say, I'm doing just fine, thank you. I'm savvy, I'm okay. I'm a good person. I don't need salvation. So the irreligious people don't believe they need salvation. But the religious people believe salvation is from them. Religious people say I've gotta be good and I've gotta obey the Bible and I've gotta try to live like Jesus. I gotta pray and I gotta go to church and I gotta take notes when Tim Keller preaches. I gotta do all the things that God wants and then God will bless me and help me. In other words, religious people all the way out here say I don't need salvation. And religious, pardon me, irreligious people say I don't need salvation. Religious people on the other end say, salvation is of me. And the Bible says neither. None of the above. Salvation is of The Lord. It's utterly and solely and surely of the Lord. This is what you need, not only the first time you meet God, but it's also the key to every breakthrough. What I mean by the first time, Paul says in Colossians 1:6, he says, the Gospel has borne fruit in you since the first day you understood the grace of God in all its truth. Now, isn't that an interesting verse? The Gospel has borne fruit in you. Now, that's the language of. That's an organic metaphor. It's the language of spiritual transformation. The gospel began to really change you, really bear fruit, and you win. Not the day you signed up, the day you said, I believe it. The day you understood the grace of God in all its truth. That language means the day it dawned on you, you grasped, began to overwhelm you, began to electrify you what? The grace. So you see, grace of God is not only the way in which, essentially, you have your first encounter with God, but as you can see here, it's the way you break through into every new level of spiritual reality and spiritual functioning. Because obviously Jonah knew something about the grace of God. In fact, when we get to chapter two, chapter four, verse two, we're going to see, in a very ironic way, he said, I knew you were a gracious God. That's the reason I didn't want to come in the first place. And it's a very, very interesting dialogue. But the fact is that Jonah, being a prophet, already knows about the grace of God. So what's this? He says, oh, my gosh, grace. Salvation is of the Lord, didn't he already know that? But he didn't know it like he knows it now. And by the way, if Jonah, a prophet who gets revelation from God, if Jonah did not have grace straight, if Jonah's life was distorted, deeply distorted, because he didn't understand the nature of the grace of God, if he didn't have the grace of God straight, do you think you have? And you know what? Whether you're a pastor on my staff or whether you're somebody here saying, I don't even know if I believe in Christianity at all, the answer is no, you don't have it straight because Jonah didn't. So the key to all spiritual transformation and every spiritual breakthrough is to see salvation is of the Lord, is to grasp it in a new way. Okay, well, see, all right. You say, okay, fine, but what do you mean, grasp? Okay, so let's move on to the method. What do you mean by grasp? How do I actually get hold of it. And I suggest three. You have to learn more about grace with the mind. You have to love more into grace with affections, and you have to live more into grace with. With the life. And by the way, this. This lines up completely with Martin Luther's outline of saving faith, which is noticia, ascensus and viduchia. Noticia meaning mental knowing, ascensus meaning heart consenting, and fiducia meaning life committing. But you know they're all here. You can see Jonah doing them. Because it's not only the way you grasp God's grace to start with, it's the way you grasp God's grace at every new breakthrough. What are these three? Let's go through them. First of all, the mind has to get a clearer. You have to learn more about God's grace. That's whenever you break through, you get a clearer intellectual grasp of it. Notice verse four. You see the two components that get clearer and clearer and clearer in your mind as you learn more and more about grace as your life goes on. Verse 4 says, I have been banished, yet I look toward your temple. You lift, you bring me up. Now, here's what these two components are. Put it to you like this. Grace is an undeserved gift from an unobligated giver. Grace is a completely undeserved gift from a completely unobligated giver. And in my own life, those two components to the doctrine of the biblical teaching about grace have gotten clearer and clearer in my mind over the years. And the clearer they get, the easier it is for me to love and live into grace. Now, what do I mean by those two components? Let me give you three quick case studies, and then I'll show you how that works. First of all, imagine that you're the parent of a disobedient, rebellious, ungrateful, irresponsible teenage child. Now, what do you do with that child? You still help them. You still do everything for them. Why? They are undeserving. Yeah, they're undeserving. But the fact is, you're still obligated. You know why? You're a parent. And to be a parent is both a moral and a legal obligation. You don't get into parenting without that obligation. So in a sense, when you help a disobedient, wayward child, it's not a perfect analogy of what God's talking about in terms of grace. Because though the child might be undeserving, you are still under obligation. Let me give you a second example. You're in a Bible study. And your Bible study leader, she's just great. And at the end of the Bible study, you all decide, let's all chip in and let's buy her a really nice gift. And by the way, a lot of your small group leaders wanted me to use this illustration. No, they didn't, actually. Now, in that situation, you, as the students, are not obligated to do that. That wasn't part of the deal when you signed up. But on the other hand, she is deserving, see? So it's. Again, it's not. Let me give you a nice example of both an undeserving, an undeserved gift from an unobligated giver. And if you live in New York, you understand this. And if you don't live in New York, you just, you know, the whole sermon's, you know, a waste because you won't get this illustration. And here it is. You live. You live in a relatively small apartment building with relatively, you know, thin floors and walls. And you have one absolutely obnoxious, insensitive resident. And when anybody in the apartment walks up and says, would you please turn your music down? He walks over and he turns it up, and then he looks at you and slams the door in your face. And whenever anybody else in the apartment, anybody else in the building even turns the music on at all, he calls the police, right? And then he gets sick, and you run errands for him and you bring meals into him. And what you have is not only somebody who absolutely does not deserve that kind of sacrifice on your part and that kind of inconvenience on your part, but nobody in the whole world thinks that you have any obligation to give it. But if you do, that's grace. And one of the things. One of the reasons I bring up these two components, both undeserving and unobligated, is because I have found, not only in my life, but in life of working with people over the years, that usually one or the other of those components is missing in the brain. For example, there's some people that have a very light view of their need. They don't really see the depth of their need. They don't see themselves as really being all that bad off. They don't see themselves as all that needing of forgiveness and pardon and help. They don't see themselves as that weak. They say, I'm doing fine, so they have too low a grasp of their need. Other people feel very unworthy. Oh, I'm so unworthy after all the bad things I've done. But they have too light a view of God's love. They don't understand the depths of his commitment. They believe they're very unworthy, but they just don't believe. They believe actually they're too bad for him to love and accept. And what's ironic is those two kinds of people, people with too light a view of their own need, or too light a view of his love and commitment to them. As different as those kinds of people are, those are very different personalities. Those are very different kinds of people. Here's how they're the same. When you say to either of those people, jesus gave his life for you, they might even agree. But it doesn't change them. It doesn't transform them. There's no inner transformation. It doesn't reconfigure their self understanding and doesn't reconfigure their identity. It doesn't at all. They might even say, sure, I believe that. But because they don't grasp the depth of their need and the depth of his commitment, the idea of God's grace isn't really. It's just fuzzy for them. But then, like, what's happened recently, something comes into your life that's come into all of our lives really, and you begin to see, I'm weaker than I thought, I'm more cowardly than I thought, I'm more superficial than I thought. And you're humbled by it. I mean, there's a hundred ways in which what's happened in our lives have been humbling us. A woman this morning, a therapist, a professional therapist, told me that she had a man in her she'd been counseling for a quite a while, who was just filled with anger and hate toward all sorts of people and saw nothing wrong with it, felt like people deserved his hate. And when he saw what happened on September 11, he realized where hate can take you. And he has just been absolutely humbled. He says, you know, I'm on that same path. I'm headed for something like that. I am really wrong. I've got to do something. I need God. There are 3 million ways in which the stuff that's been happening here has actually brought people deeper into the sense that I really have. I see the depths of my need. But then what has to happen is you've got to move over. When your understanding of your need and your understanding of God's love were kind of commensurate but shallow, and you suddenly begin to learn in an existential way the depth of your need, the depth of your sin, then you have to move over. And you go back to the things you've heard a hundred times. You go back to the text you've read a hundred times. You go back to the truths you believe, maybe, or you discarded because they weren't transforming. And you go back to them, and you look at them and you reflect on them, and you yearn for them and you seek after them until your existential grasp of the freeness of his love catches up with your existential grasp of your undeservingness and your condition. But that can be a pretty painful process, by the way, when your existential grasp of your need hasn't quite caught up yet to the existential grasp of Jesus love. It can feel a little bit like somebody's doing surgery on you and forgot the anesthesia, really. But that's how you learn, frankly. Your mind gets a clear grasp when something comes in and deepens your understanding of those two components. The depth of my need, the depth of his love, you know, completely undeserving, completely free and unobligated. And the more that increases, the clearer your mind grasps grace. And that's the first thing. You gotta learn grace about grace more clearly. But the second thing is you gotta learn to love grace. Because it's not just a mental thing. It's not just enough to see how free the grace is. You have to see how costly the grace is. You don't just have to have a clear grasp of the freeness of the grace with the mind. You have to find your heart being drawn out in affection because of the costliness of the grace that you sense in your heart. Notice that whenever Jonah talks, he is not talking directly to God. He goes to the temple. Isn't this interesting? Look at verse four. He says, I am banished from thy sight, yet I will look to your holy temple. Look at verse seven. I remembered the Lord, My prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Why isn't that weird? I mean, he's nowhere near the temple. What does it mean? It means he's thinking, he's yearning, he's relying. Look, You don't see Jonah saying, just forgive me. Just, you know, I broke my oath, but could you just let it go? He doesn't do that. We don't have much hope in the world if you just. If God just lets things go, just lets evil go, let's sin go, let's lying go. Let's, you see, let's hypocrisy go. Just let's, you know. But on the other hand, he doesn't say and therefore there's no hope. He looks at the temple. Why? Because the temple's the place of sacrifice.
- [23:07]
Podcast Host
Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him, and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross during the month of May. We'll send you a copy of Rediscovering Jonah as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the transforming love of Christ, Christ with more people. So request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give. That's gospelinlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
- [23:58]
Tim Keller
Now, before somebody says, oh, yeah, I always hated that about the temple. Animal sacrifice, slaughtering of animals, you know, how primitive. I'm glad we're beyond that. Well, let me ask you to consult your own experience on something. When someone really, really wrongs you, really wrongs you, don't you see yourself caught in a kind of conundrum? And here's what I mean. On the one hand, if you don't forgive, if you just vent your hatred, if you just let it all out, I'm just gonna vengeance, hatred, pummel the evildoer, the enemy. The next thing you know, you find you've spread the evil. You know, you might take the evildoer out, but you haven't taken the evil out at all. If you don't forgive, evil wins. It's all over the place. There's all sorts of awful things. It's hurt you, it's hurt the person. And then all his friends, you know, are after you, and all of your friends are after all of them. And on it goes. If you don't forgive, evil wins. But if you just let it go, if you just say, oh, that's all right, don't worry about it, just let it go, evil wins again. I mean, if someone wrongs you badly and you say, oh, I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to do anything about it, so that person's out there free to live his life in the world, is that good for the world? Is that good for all the other people that have ever going to be in his path? That you said nothing, done nothing, huh? Is it good for him. Here's the conundrum. If you just forgive, evil seems to win. But if you just make them pay, evil seems to win too. Now, would you please not take what I'm about to tell you and try to apply it to U.S. foreign Policy at the moment. Actually, maybe we'll talk a little bit about that next week. Believe it or not, in a way, indirectly. But what we're talking about here is the relationship with God. Because what Jonah does is he looks at the temple. Because in the temple, he realizes that on the one hand, in the temple, with all that blood and guts and all the stuff that you hate, here's one thing that the temple taught him, that sin is taken seriously. There. There is shedding of blood. Sin is not just sin. Bye. You know, who cares? Sin is taken seriously. Blood is shed, but it's not the blood of the sinner. And all Jonah knew was somehow God's gonna deal with this mystery, this horrible mystery in the midst of injustice. If I just forgive it, evil wins. But if I just make it pay, make them pay, evil wins. And yet we know what Jonah only sensed. Jonah sensed that somehow God's gonna solve it. Somehow God's gonna be able to be just and the justifier of those who believe. Somehow God's gonna punish sin. And yet at the same time, forgive me. I don't know how he's going to do it, but I know there's some kind of hope. And next thing you know, he senses God returning to him, and he starts to praise the grace of God, but he doesn't know what we know. And that is that Jonah himself was a living analogy of how God really fulfilled what the temple's all about. Just as Jonah was voluntarily thrown into the stormy sea we saw last week to save the sailors, so Jesus Christ, the son of God, was voluntarily thrown in. He voluntarily had himself thrown into an ocean of eternal justice. And he paid our sin so that God can be both just and justifier. So God can forgive us and yet not just say bye, it doesn't matter. Amazing. Jonah kind of realizes it. But you see, Jonah is looking to the temple. He's not just thinking about the temple. He's not saying, ah, yes, the temple. The temple, as in the sacrificial system, depicts the doctrine of propitiation. That's not what he's doing. What he's saying is, I'm looking to it. I'm yearning for it. I see some kind of. Some kind of severe, costly mercy there, but boy, do we see what he could hardly. He could only vaguely. See, when you think of the freeness of God's grace to you, you're learning. But when you sense the costliness of God's grace to him, your heart is beginning to come out toward it. You're beginning to yearn for him. You're not just knowing about grace, you're loving grace. You're starting to appreciate grace. You're starting to have your hearts drawn out toward it. You're starting to be changed. You're starting to be changed. And then lastly, you have to live grace. You see, God comes along. He's learned what grace is. He's beginning to love grace. And then God comes along and says, now will you go to Nineveh? And Jonah says, all right. Because the third thing you have to do is you have to start to live as if I'm a recipient of grace. I have to live it out. I have to live as if I'm that loved. I have to live as if I'm that cherished. I have to live as if I'm that bad and yet that loved. I got to live in a new way. I'm going to practice it. And that's how you make the breakthrough. And that leads us real quickly and briefly to the third, the third point which I want to talk about. What are the marks of this new lived life? And you'll see two things right away as soon as you look at verse 8 and 9. Two things that are a sign that you've had a breakthrough into an understanding of grace. A breakthrough. There's two signs here that he did not just get more religious, but that he grasped grace. And the first sign is his fear is eroded. Something I had. You know, I've looked at the Book of John a lot over the years, but something I didn't ever saw in verse nine until this week. He says, I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I vowed I will make good. Now, I used to think that was talking about two different things. I used to think, well, first of all, he's going to get out and he's going to go make a sacrifice. He's going to go to the temple and he's going to sacrifice bulls and goats and all that, and then he's going to go live an obedient life and pay his vows. But I don't think so. Not only does that not fit, Hebrew parallelism usually means the same thing is said one or two different ways. But also think about this. What are his vows? His vows, of course, as a prophet. Original vows were to do what whatever God called him to do. But what is God going to call him to do? To go to the capital city of his, of the great enemy? I mean, if in 1942 the word of the Lord came to some American minister and said, go to Berlin and preach against its wickedness and its violence, what are that guy's chances? And that's what Jonah's being called to do. And you know what he's saying? He is saying is if I obey, I will be sacrificing, sacrificing myself. But I'm going to do it with thanksgiving. His fear has been eroded. And here's why. Look, listen, you know, some of you have heard me say this before. If not, you need to hear it again anyway, and some of you have not. Here's it in a nutshell. Both religion and irreligion essentially are the same thing because they give you an identity based on performance. The reason I know I'm okay is because I'm living up to standards. Now irreligious people have more secular standards and religious people have moral and religious standards. But basically your identity is based on that. It's based on I can prove that I'm okay. I know I'm special, I know I'm alright, I know I'm valuable because look at, look what I'm doing. And that fills you with fear because you're never sure you're being good enough. And it fills you with pride because you look down your nose at anybody who hasn't done as well as you have. In fact, you need to look down at other people to bolster and make sure that you know that. To sort of bolster the sense that you have that I am achieving, you know, I am living up to my standards. The gospel comes along and says, you are not saved by giving God a perfect record or a good record and then he owes you blessing, but rather you receive through Jesus Christ a perfect record which you accept by faith and then you live for him. Because at the same moment you see religion and irreligion says you can be confident if you're living up to your standards but not humble. But if you're failing your standards, you can be humble but you won't be confident. Right? See in religion and irreligion your identity can either have confidence when you're living up, but not humility, or can have humility if you've been failing a lot but not confidence. It cannot keep those two things together. The psychology, identity based on either religion or irreligion can't keep those two things together. But, but what does it mean to be a Christian? What it means to be a Christian is though you are undeserving, God loves you. God has given himself for you, God has died for you. And though you are no better than anybody else, really, come on, let's face it, you're no better than anybody else. You are now irrevocably loved. You are utterly loved, you are completely loved by the only person who's in the universe whose opinion counts. Which means that you are on the one hand humbled by grace because you're only saved by grace and at the same time incredibly assured by grace that God is absolutely for you and that he loves you no matter what. So you're humble and bold together. What's unique about the gospel based identity is humility and confidence intermingle. In fact, they actually are mutually self supporting. And what does that mean? My assurance makes me less afraid. I'm affirmed. Of course. You know the logic of Romans 8. There's some place where Paul says, if God loved us so much that he spared not his own son, how will he then not together with him freely give us all things? And what he's really saying is if God gave you the diamond ring, is he going to begrudge you the ribbon? And if God did this for you, if he loves you like this, is he going to somehow abandon you and sort of, you know, not take care of you? Grace strengthens me away from fear and you can see it right here. But on the other hand, the second mark of, you know, a grace changed life is not only his fear is eroded, but his bigotry is eroded. Because in verse 8 he says something remarkable. Remarkable, though it's not that easy to tell as you read it, you know, just off in English, literally he says, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the kseth that is theirs, their own. Kay Seth. Now ekeseth is a word that means covenant love. Sometimes it's translated loving kindness. It means permanent love, unconditional love that God gives to the people with whom he has a command covenant. But you see, back then, as far as Jonah knew, the only people with whom God had a covenant were the Hebrews. And therefore it is astounding for him to say, I realize this is what he's saying in verse 8. I realize that those idol worshipers, those pagans that I so despised, those people in the boat that were worshiping to the little statues, those people up in Nineveh that I'd so despised. I realized something that God's covenant love is as much theirs as it is mine. That my self righteousness was keeping grace from me. Just like their idol worship keeps grace from them. But grace is as much theirs as mine. I'm no better than they are. And that's the reason why he's willing to go to the people that he despised. In other words, the second thing you can tell about an experience of grace is not only has it assured you out of your fear, but it humbles you sweetly out of your bigotry. And you know why this is an important thing to say? Because recently it's pretty hard to miss it. Over and over in the newspapers and just talking to people, you know what a lot of people are saying? One of the things that we've learned from all this is that religious fervor is dangerous. I've heard people say, I just read it, you know, today on a webpage even it says, you know, what we've learned from this is all religious fundamentalists, all religious fervor tends to violence. Anybody who thinks they have the truth tends to violence. Nah. Let me give you an example. Think of the Amish. Now let me ask you a question about the Amish. Amish are very conservative. Oh, yes. The Amish are patriarchal. Oh, yes. The Amish will not wear modern clothes. Oh, no. The Amish are unbelievably traditional. The Amish are incredibly religious. The Amish are not by any means secular, moral, relativistic people. They believe they have the truth. Are you really worried about Amish terrorism? It's nice to be able to laugh about that in any way. Way at all, isn't it? No. And let me give you another example. The Khmer Rouge atheists, dialectical materialists, don't believe in truth, don't believe in, you know, the supernatural, don't believe in God. Absolute atheists. Right. Don't believe in moral absolutes. And yet the Khmer Rouge were one of the most, if not the most murderous and genocidal regimes in the history of the world. World. Now here's what. When I, I mentioned this to Kathy, my wife, a couple days ago, and I said, it's interesting, they're saying that religious fundamentalism, all religious fundamentalism is violent. And she said, oh yeah. She says it depends on what you think the fundamental is. It depends on what your fundamental is. And the reason the Amish are so peaceful, though they are obviously fundamentalists is because they know they have the same fundamental that every Christian should have. And that is what is the truth? What is the truth? The truth is a crucified God. A God who dies for you. A God who doesn't come with spears in his hand, but nails in his hands. A God who says, here's how I'm going to win you. I'm going to give myself away. Here's how I'm going to get power and influence over your life and heal you. I'm going to sacrifice. I'm going to become poor. I'm going to lose all my power. I'm going to lose all my strength. And if that's the God that you believe is at the heart of the universe, and if that's the fundamental, if that's the truth that we know we've got, that's not going to make you hostile or violent. It's going to drain it all away. And if you don't believe there is such a thing as truth, why can't you do anything you want? It's pretty stupid to say if you think you have the truth that's going to lead to violence. It all depends on what you think the truth is. And the truth is a crucified God, a God who suffers for you, a God who becomes weak for you. And that takes away fear. Because if he would do that for me, you think he's going to let me go now. And that gets rid of bigotry. It humbles you sweetly enough to handle enemies and it strengthens you enough to handle enemies. Now, the reason. Let me conclude this way. We've seen the key. We've seen the method. We've seen the marks. But last thing I want to point out is the need for continual spiritual breakthroughs. Now, in a way, I've already shown you that this is the way it happens. It's not only the first way through, it's the second way and the third way. Every single time you get to a barrier, every time you get into a situation in which the level of your spiritual functioning, the level of your grasp of grace, the amount of fearlessness that you derive from grace, the amount of humility and love and sweetness you derive from grace, you see, you have a certain level of spiritual functioning, a certain level of grasp of grace, and you have a world around you. And when that world is of a certain kind of level of comfort and so on, you can handle it. But when your world changes and you suddenly realize, I need a deeper grasp of grace, that's when you have to have a breakthrough. Now, let me just be real honest about this like it was last year week, but a little more clear, maybe. I wish my old world was back. Because in that old world, in my pre September 11th world, everything was safe, everything was fine. And the level of spiritual functioning I had, the level of assurance and confidence I got from my. My grace of the grace of God and the level of humility that I could, you know, with which I looked at people who are different, my enemies and so on, I was able to handle it. And guess what? The world changed. And my level of spiritual functioning can't quite meet it anymore. And you see, like everybody else, I'm praying for protection. I'm praying that no more attacks would happen. I'm praying that the economy would recover. I'm praying that, you know, we wouldn't do too much or too little militarily. Aren't you all praying for that? I'm praying that all these things would go well. But I suddenly realized that even though I should continue to keep praying about that, underneath I realized, here's what I was really also praying. I was also saying, lord, I want my old world back. Because in that old world, my little amount of spiritual faith, my little grasp of the grace of God was enough. And now it's not. I want my world back. I'm holding my breath so that eventually things will be like they were and I won't have to grow, I won't have to move up a bracket. You know, there's two ways to pray. If you're coming along in a boat, and there's this, and suddenly you see your boat's about to be dashed on a rock that's sticking four feet out of the water. You can say, oh, Lord, get rid of the rock. Which is fine. But you could also say, or, lord, if it's your will, why don't you raise the level the water five feet? And even though I need to pray, and I want you to pray that the old world comes back, I want you to prepare your heart to handle any world that's on its way. One of the things that amazed me about. Let me tell you about this interesting parallel. You know, the Lord of the Rings, you're going to be awash in allusions to the Lord of the Rings when all these movies comes out. But let me tell you, in the book, there's something pretty, pretty interesting. The narrative engine, one of the main engines of the narrative of Lord of the Rings is you have this group of people called hobbits. They're kind of small people, like they're three and a half to four feet tall. And they live in a very safe place. And they think that that's the way the world is. And in the very beginning of the, of the, of the book, this is what the. This is how they're described. It says they heeded less and less the world, world outside where dark things moved. Until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in the world and the right of all sensible folk. They came to believe that peace and plenty were the rule in the world and the right of all sensible folk. Americans, short Americans. Americans. And then the way that. That's how we've been. But then something. There's four of them. Four of them, four protagonists, four hobbits. Four protagonists are drawn out into the real world and they struggle. They can't just change like that. They're not used to a world of such darkness and such evil and so such so many bad things and so many tall things. And they don't immediately suddenly become courageous. They can't handle it for a long time. But then one of them has a transformation. It's on a battlefield and it's one of my favorite spots in the book. And this one protagonist, he's a hobbit, you know, and he's on a battlefield and suddenly who's looming over him is one of the biggest, baddest guys in the book. Some kind of ancient evil, you know, sorcerer big. And it says such a horror was upon him. That's our protagonist. Such a horror was upon him that he became blind and sick. You know, he's just scared. He's so scared he doesn't even know what to do. He's been living in a safe little world. He thought that peace and plenty was the rule in Middle Earth and the right of all sensible folk. He comes out and sees the world's not like this and he can't really adjust. And now he sees this big thing in front of him and he says, I'm just going to go under. He's blind and sick. And then he sees just off to his left, one person standing, standing up to this great dark sorcerer and ready to die for not only him, but everybody around him. And then this is what the text says. Pity filled his heart and great wonder. And suddenly the slow kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. I want to tell you I've been getting a lot of comfort from that line because I'm like him. I thought peace and plenty was fine. I had this little, little bit of faith, you know, I thought it was a lot. It was enough for my old world, not for the new world. But when he saw someone ready to die for him, pity and wonder filled his heart and the slow kindled. His slow kindled courage awoke. And I realized if I keep, and if you keep looking at the one who is willing to die for, for us, the courage will awake. It really will. Let's not just pray for the old world back though. I think we need to and I think there's a really good chance it's coming back. But let's pray for a heart ready for any world that would come. Let's pray for a new level, let's move up, let's grasp the grace of God so we're fearless enough and humble enough to, to handle the world, whatever it is. Salvation is of the Lord. Let us pray. We thank you Father for the possibility of spiritual transformation and breakthrough at any level, at any time in our lives. Doesn't matter whether you've been a Christian for years and years and years. Doesn't matter whether you're the preacher of Redeemer. Doesn't matter whether you're a brand new person who's not even ensure what he or she believes. Every one of us, we need to learn, we need to love and we need to live into the grace of God until it catches fire in our hearts and changes the very way in which we think about ourselves, the very way in which we relate to the world. And I pray, Father, that we would become the great hearts that can handle absolutely anything that comes to us. Make us the kind of neighbors and citizens and friends that the people of New York need. Make us people like Jonah who are so transformed by a new realization of their, of your grace that they're able to handle the call, able to handle the call to be your people in this great city. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
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Podcast Host
Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel centered content by Tim keller anytime, visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 2004. 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.