Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

Jonathan Everett in his book on heaven says, and what you've always been after. You know, most of you realize that this is a thread that comes through a lot of my preaching.

It's from the sermon, The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis.

And George Herbert, the great poet, puts it perfectly, sums up the whole Bible in one stanza in that great poem, The Sacrifice, in which he depicts Jesus speaking from the cross.

In CSLU's famous chapter on pride in his book, Mayor Christianity, he writes this.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something.

Pride only has pleasure in having more of it than the next person.

Most of us could still sleep decently if accused of anger or pride or lust or even greed. But to be accused of Envy would be by far the worst. So clearly does such an accusation go directly to character. The other sins, though all have the disapproval of religion, do not so thoroughly, deeply demean, diminish and disqualify a person.

Only Envy is absolutely no fun at all. Draining all joy from you from its very first moment, we have all felt Envy's desperate, deep, soul-destroying, lacerating stabs.

Envy might be the greatest Rorschach test of all. Learn what you Envy and you will know who you are.

If you understand what you Envy, you'll understand your own heart.

Most of us could still sleep decently if accused of anger or pride or lust or even greed. But to be accused of Envy would be by far the worst.

The other sins, though all have the disapproval of religion, do not so thoroughly, deeply demean, diminish and disqualify a person.

But you see the stigma of Envy is its enormous pettiness.

Nobody wants to be found guilty or be accused of having lost their temper or greed or lust or pride. But Envy, to be accused of Envy, is to be accused of being so small, so shriveled, so ungenerous.

Giving into sloth and laziness, giving into sloth is rather pleasant. He says, giving into the loss of temper, losing one's temper, he says, entails a release that is not without its small delights.

And lust, greed, pride bring quite a bit of pleasure for quite a long time.

Only Envy is absolutely no fun at all.

Draining all joy from you from its very first moment, we have all felt Envy's desperate, deep, soul-destroying, lacerating stabs.

Envy might be the greatest Rorschach test of all. Learn what you Envy and you will know who you are.

Gerhard von Raad who wrote Wisdom in Israel, don't you love that word, that name?

the greatest I think of all the scholarly books about the wisdom literature and Wisdom in Israel.

He wrote it quite a few years ago, but it's, I don't think surpassed.

There's a lot of other wisdom literature besides the stuff you have in the Bible, by the way. A lot of other wisdom literature in ancient Israel.

And one of those pieces of literature is called The Wisdom of the Son of Sirach.

'Turn unto me, you who are untaught.

'Why do you say you are lacking in these things

'and why are your souls so thirsty?

'I say to you, find wisdom.

'Put your necks under its yoke and bear its burden.

'If you are intent, you can find wisdom.

'See with your eyes that I have labored for it

and I have found for my soul much rest.

He's broken through, he's open to cleft, C.S. Lewis says. He's broken through.

you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are all in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

your thoughts and your feelings like you say love matters, people matter, human beings matter. Those are thoughts, those are feelings but actually he says they're chemical responses. They're chemical things happening in your brain.

Well why are you having those chemical responses? He says well science will tell you because your ancestors had those particular chemical responses in their brain which led to behavior that enabled them to survive.

And all the people who didn't have those particular chemical responses in their brain, who didn't think those thoughts, because they didn't think those thoughts, they did not survive.

And he asked one night, it was May 17th, 1738, he asked Charles Wesley to read it, read part of the preface, the introduction to him.

And this is what we mentioned last week, but in William Holland's journal for that night or the next day, he said, when Mr. Charles Wesley got to these words of Luther, what? Have we nothing to do?

No, nothing but accept of Him who God has made for us our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

And he says, at those words I broke through, and suddenly power came on me and I knew who he was, and he became a Christian.

There's a good book by - it's a very influential book by John Howard Yoder called The Politics of Jesus.

It came out in 1972, and he says that Jesus was threatening to the political powers because He was putting forth a community of social equality and nonviolence, and a community of social equality and nonviolence is very, very threatening to the political powers that be, and they had to squelch Him.

Remember the... he was the great protagonist or whatever he was, the central figure of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and he said, you know, morality is all in the mind, and he kills a woman who is bitter, who is hateful, who is hated, abused power, rich old woman, and then he feels defiled, and he can't get rid of it until he confesses.

There's a Graham Greene novel about war in Indochina. Two men, Fowler and Pyle, I think, are working in the underground, and at one point Fowler has to kill Pyle even though he's his best friend, and he does, and he's racked up with guilt, and he says, if there was just somebody to whom I could go and say, I'm sorry, there is.

Thomas Chalmers wrote this wonderful, wonderful sermon that I'm going to bring back to you and give you some quotes out of it. It's called 'The Expulsive Power of a New Affection'.

And in it, he says, the only way anybody's heart has changed is this. At the heart of every heart, there is an object of the greatest beauty and a heart cannot live without it. You can replace the object of the greatest beauty in your heart, but you can never remove it. You can replace it with a more beautiful object, but you can never remove it.

There's this great place in Lewis's Screwtape Letters. In the very beginning, he explains how he thinks, well, it's pretty interesting if I can find it. Yeah.

He says, on earth, this desire is often called love, this attraction to people. But in hell, I believe they recognize it for what it is, it's hunger.

There though, the hunger is more ravenous, and a fuller satisfaction is possible.

There, I suggest the stronger evil spirits can really suck the weaker evil spirits into themselves and permanently gorge their own being on the weaker's outraged individuality.

It is for this that Satan desires.

So we're going through the book of Ephesians which is about the church and we come to chapter 3 and honestly most teachers and preachers who go into the book of Ephesians tend to overlook or go past this particular passage.

Tim Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, is meant to help congregants, lay leaders, and pastors understand how to make the gospel the center of all ministry.

In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how gospel-centered ministry is more theologically driven than program driven.

Tim Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, is meant to help congregants lay leaders and pastors understand how to make the Gospel the center of all ministry.

In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how Gospel centered ministry is more theologically driven than program driven.

Tim Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, is meant to help congregants lay leaders and pastors understand how to make the gospel the center of all ministry.

In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how gospel-centered ministry is more theologically driven than program driven.

As you read, you'll discover how reflecting on the essence, the truths and the patterns of the gospel lead to renewal in your churches and ministries.

This month, when you give to gospel and life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, as our thanks for your gift.