Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Broken Wall

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

We’re looking at qualities you must have in order to live a wise life. Today, we come to self-control.  A man or woman without self-control is not going to live a wise life, is not going to make wise choices. They’re going to mess up their lives, and they’re going to mess up the lives of people around them.  We learn three things from Proverbs about self-control: we learn 1) the problem of self-control, 2) the principle of self-control, and 3) the practice of self-control. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 28, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 18:10; 23:19-21; 25:28; Titus 2:11-14. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Many of the questions we face in life are complex and aren't directly addressed by the rules. So, do I say something now or do I wait? Should I take that job or stay put? That's why wisdom is so crucial for our lives. So, how do we develop it? Today, join us as Tim Keller explores how we apply God's wisdom to the complexities of our lives. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelunlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel changed lives,

as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelunlife.com. Our scripture reading comes from selected passages www.pastorprosperlomestate.com I just run to it and are safe. Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path. Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkenness and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness close them in rags. Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control. For the grace of God that brings salvation appears to all men, it teaches us

to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own eager to do what is good. We're looking at the book of Proverbs every week we're looking at the book of Proverbs every week. We're looking at the subject of wisdom. We said wisdom is the ability to make the right choice, to know the right thing to do, to know the right action,

to make the right decision. And the vast majority of life situations that the moral rules don't address. And we said one of the things that the moral rules don't address. And we said one of the things that for technique-minded Americans is very frustrating about the book of Proverbs is that the book of Proverbs does not tell you, does not talk nearly so much about how to make right decisions,

as to how to become the kind of person who makes right decisions. And we've been looking each week at a very lately at various qualities you've got to have in order to live a wise life. And today we come to self-control. A man or a woman without self-control is not going to live a wise life, is not going to make wise choices, is going to mess up their lives, and they are going to mess up the lives of people around them. Now what do we learn from these passages and proverbs about self-control? Three things. We learn the problem of self-control. We learn something about the principle of

self-control and then last of all the practice, how we do it. the problem of it, the principle of it, and the practice of it. Now, problem of self-control, we have a nice easy to understand example of this in the middle of the section of Proverbs chapter 23 19 to 21. Listen my son be wise, do not join those who drink too much wine, or gorge themselves on meat for drunkards and glutton become poor and drowsiness close them in rags. Now we're talking about people who have eaten so much and they drank so much that they're drowsy. Now having just come through Thanksgiving, I figured this was a good illustration to start with. We vivid to your mind. And if you eat or drink too much, it squeezes out your ability to do anything else but veg or sleep.

You can't focus. That's what drowsiness is. You know what that's like. You're distracted. You can't focus. You can't do anything else. In fact, if you really have eaten or drank too much and somebody is about to try to kill you, there's not much you can do about it.

So you can't focus on the important things. But here we're not talking about just an individual instance, are we? Because of the reference to rags and to being poor, we're talking about people who ordinarily eat and drink too much, who do binge drinking, do binge eating. And as a result, you might say their whole life is characterized by drowsiness. And as a result, they can't focus on the important things, matters like making money, maintaining family relationships and things like that. And because of that neglect, their life falls apart. Now move on down to the next proverb. And we see we're moving to a broader

canvas. Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control. Okay, now let's look at these phrases. First of all, the word lack self-control literally means a man who cannot manage his spirit. Now, when you read the book of Proverbs, I've tried to point this out a few times. The word heart in the Old Testament, in fact in the whole Bible, but the word heart in the Bible doesn't mean what it means to you and me in our English usage. It doesn't mean emotions. The word heart means your core beliefs, the core commitments.

But when you see the word spirit, when it talks about not being able to restrain your spirit, the word spirit, at least in Hebrew, does mean your energy, your force, your passions. It does have much more to do with your emotions. And here it says, a man who can't control his longings, his desires, they're out of control. He's like a city without walls. Now that again doesn't hit us too much. When we find cities with walls, there's not many left in the world, they're very picturesque. We take pictures of them. Isn't that beautiful? We

come home. But a city without walls was a disaster in ancient times. We're a disaster waiting to happen when Nehemiah in chapter one, in chapter one of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah was a Jew who was exiled to Babylon and he asked, he made inquiries about what were things like for the people who were still back in Jerusalem. So he asked for a report and a man came to him and said, Nehemiah, things are terrible in Jerusalem because the wall of Jerusalem is broken down. Jerusalem doesn't have a wall. And when he heard that Jerusalem had no wall, Nehemiah sat down and wept for days because a city without walls is a disaster waiting to happen or it's already

happened. Why? Well, here's why. First of all, because the city had walls, there could be a market economy. See, if you didn't have walls, then every harvest, brigands and raiders and armies, would come through and take virtually everything. Because the city had walls and created security for its people, you didn't worry about that. That didn't happen to you, and you actually had things to sell as well as to eat for yourself, and then you developed a market economy. In other words, without a wall, civilization falls apart and everybody's just scrambling for survival.

Or you get just another example. There's millions of them. Another thing is, because the city had a wall, you had a justice system. See, without a wall, when there was no security for its inhabitants, if there was a conflict or a dispute or something like that, everything was settled through blood feuds between tribes and clans and families. But in a city, you could take a complaint to the council and they would make decisions

about it so you had a justice system. See, without a wall, civilization fell apart. Everybody was just scrambling for survival. Now, what's being said is this. A glass of wine is a wonderful thing. But if it becomes the main way in which you deal with life, the desire for it has become disproportional. It's gotten out of control, and it squeezes out

the other things, the important things of life, and your life falls apart. But if anything, if any passion, if any desire, if your desire for anything gets out of control, gets disproportionate, it can squeeze out the other things in your life, and your life falls apart. A man, a woman without self-control is like a city without walls. You're defenseless against the chaos that is inevitably going to come into your life. Now, so, okay, what's the definition of self-control? The definition

of self-control is this. Self-control is the ability to recognize and choose the important thing over the urgent thing at any given moment. Because within yourself your desires are properly ordered. The most important things are desired the most and the less important things are desired less. I should say that again, shouldn't I? Self-control is the ability to both recognize and choose the important thing over the urgent thing at any given moment because within yourself your desires, your passions are properly ordered. That is, the most important things are one of the most, the less important things are one of the less. And in other words, if with your appetite, your physical appetite, you fulfill the urge to eat things which are undermining your health, which is much more important to maintain

than to just simply satisfy your appetite, your life will spin out of control. In other words, if you eat the urgent things and rather rather than maintain your health for the important things, your life is going to it's not just your appetite out of control. Your whole life will go out of control until the doctor starts to say, stop or you're gonna die and you can't eat any more of those things. If, for example, let me give you another example, if your tongue's out of control and you lash out and you vent your spleen and you ruin relationships which were much more important to maintain

than just event. Your tongue's out of control, eventually your relationship's out of control, eventually your whole life is out of control. If you satisfy sexual urges at the expense of real relationships, at the expense of your conscience, at the expense, perhaps, of your marriage. You see, whenever you choose the urgent thing over the important thing, because the desires of your life aren't properly ordered, because you're desiring things that aren't as important as too important, your life is like a city without walls, defenseless against the chaos that eventually will come in. That's the problem of self-control.

And before moving on, let me just say that there seems to be an explosion in the last few decades of programs to try to help people whose lives seem out of control. Now you have the classic ones. You know, you've got people who are addicted. They have the classic addictions. There's drinking and there's drugs. And of course, then there's gambling. There's rage and anger.

There's physical abuse and battering. There's all sorts of sexual addictions. There's eating too much or not eating enough. There's all of those classic addictions and they are devastating. And there's sort of a never ending stream of them. There's all of those classic addictions and they are devastating. And there's sort of a never-ending stream of them. There's gambling. But then, on the other hand, there's slightly less, how do you say, they're less focused as addictions. But there's all kinds of people whose tongues are out of control. As a result, you can't maintain relationships. Or your time is

out of control. So you're always over committing and never following through and letting everybody down and it's hurting your career and it's hurting your relationships. There's people whose attention is out of control. You can't hold your attention to things. You can't stick with hard things over a long period of time. There's some of you whose our thoughts are out of control. We can't stop our anxious thoughts. We can't stop our fearful thoughts. We can't stop our jealous thoughts. We can't stop our fearful thoughts. We can't stop our jealous thoughts. There's some of us who just, our spirit is out of control. We make impulsive decisions and afterwards we say,

why did I ever do that? Just about everybody's out of control somewhere. And you know what? You don't have to be a city without any wall, do you? I mean, that's terrible to be a city without any wall. All you need to be is a city without part of a wall. You just need one breach in the wall. The whole army can come in.

So there's the problem of self-control. Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who likes self-control. Right, secondly, what's the principle then of self-control? What is self-control? How do we get it? Well, look at this verse, the very top, 1810. The name of the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous run to it and are safe.

Now if I would be a little smarter, I would have printed out verse 11 because the sage, the writer of Proverbs put verse 10 and 11, chapter 18 together and here's how they read. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city.

They imagine it an unscalable wall. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. Run into it and you're safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. They imagine it an unscalable wall. Now what's going on here? What's being said here? Well, a city wall, we said, represents security. And you notice when it's talking here about, and a tower represents security

as well. If there's an attack, getting behind a wall which is unscalable, getting up in a tower is the way to be security. And the reason that we know that the sage is evoking that setting is because notice it doesn't say the name of the sage is evoking that setting is because, notice, it doesn't say the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man goes to it. We're not talking about going to a tower. We're not talking about, hey, you want to meet at the tower at two o'clock? No.

They're running to the tower. Why? Because there's an attack. Whenever there was an attack, everybody within about a 20-mile radius of a city ran for their lives to get behind the wall. And if, by the way, there was an attack that actually breached the walls, then everybody would run for their lives into the tower

and in the high fortified tower, you were safe. Now, what are we being told? Here's what we're being told. Everybody runs for their ultimate security into something. That's the reason why verse 11, I should have printed it out, is so important to understand verse 10. Verse 11, it says, the wealthy think their wealth is an unscalable wall. They imagine it to be an unscalable wall. Now, what does that mean? It means everybody has a wall, has a tower. Everybody has a place of ultimate security,

something they look to and they say, that's, if I have that, then my life will be okay. Then I'll be safe. Then everything will go all right. The problem comes in when you go into an imaginary high tower. That is something you think will give you that ultimate security, but it really can't. It just can't. Now you might say, okay, the wealthy go into their wealth. Other people go into their romantic relationships. Everybody goes

into something. You say, fine, what's that got to do with addiction and self-control? Everything. And here's the reason why. Of course, most self-control problems don't have a physical addiction. If you have a problem with alcohol, if you've got a problem with drugs, some of you do, some of you have, you know that there's a physiological aspect. There's a physical dependence. There's a problem withdrawal. And you you need and you besides the spiritual aspect There always is one you also need people who understand the physical aspect, but you need to realize that anything besides God

That you look to as your ultimate security creates addiction patterns in your life writ large Do you see what I'm saying? Anything you run into as your high tower, as your wall, as your ultimate thing, whether it's money, whether it's career, whether it's an individual, whether it's your spouse, anything you look to as the ultimate security of your life, rather than God, more than God, creates an addictive pattern in your life writ large. Neil Plantinga wrote an article called the tragedy of addiction and in it he says, let me just illustrate this, he says no matter how they start, addictions operate like this. Addictions begin when we

use something we believe will relieve distress. Then eventually addictions create their own distress. And finally, addicts spiral down when they try to cure the additional pain with the thing that caused it. See that? ABC. You're under pressure, there's distress, and you look to a substance as A. Then B, the use of the substance creates pain on top of the original pain you were using the substance to escape. And C, when you start to use the substance to actually escape from the pain caused by using the substance in addition to everything else, then you are stuck. Well, you say, well, that's interesting,

but that's drugs and that's alcohol. Ah, do you know it's the same with anything? It wasn't a very distinguished movie, but I remember, it was like the late 80s, there was a movie called Dad with Jack Lemon, Ted Danson, and Ethan Hawke, a very young Ethan Hawke. And there's one place where Ethan Hawke is talking to his father, and his father had left the family years ago. His marriage had broken up, and Ethan, the young man, had known the father very well.

And at one point, he confronted him. Why did the marriage break up? Why was our family such a wreck? And after a lot of himming and hauling and defense of this, it's one place where suddenly Ted Danson has this shock of this epiphany. Here's what he said. He said, making money made me feel like a man. Making money made me feel significant. And then because I worked so hard to make money, the family started

falling apart. And I felt like a failure. And the more I felt like a failure in my family, the more I compensated by trying to make more money, and eventually the whole thing fell apart. And even today, he says, I'm still driven, I'm still driven. What is that? What is that? That's addiction. That's addiction. Here's why.

At the heart of addiction is what's called a tolerance effect. You start with a substance, and at first it gives you you a high and that's why you go back to it. But the tolerance effect is your body means your body gets used to, adapts to the substance and you need more and more of the substance to get the same level of high, that good feeling. The problem is you never can get back to it. You need more and more of the substance to get less and less of that good feeling and down and down and down you spiral. That's exactly what's going to happen if you put anything in the place of God in your life. If there's anything that's your high tower, anything that is your unscalable wall,

it'll drive you. You'll need more and more of it, and yet it'll never give you what it should give you, and your life will spiral down just like the guy who needed money to feel good about himself. That's why Neil Plantinger goes on and says this, what moves the addict to the bait? What moves the addict to the bait? At every stage, addiction is driven by one of the most powerful, mysterious, and vital forces of human existence. What drives addiction is longing, longing not just a brain, belly, or loins, but finally of the heart. Because we are human beings, we long for wholeness,

we long for fulfillment, and for the final good that believers call God. Like all idolatries, addiction taps this vital spiritual force and draws off its energies to objects and processes that drain the addict instead of fulfilling them. But we're not just talking now about drugs. We're not just talking about drink. We're talking about absolutely anything.

In the midst of life's uncertainties, where do you turn for wisdom? The Book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom to help guide us in all aspects of life. In Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional book, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, you'll get a fresh, inspiring view of God's wisdom each day of the year from the book of Proverbs. This devotional book will help you unlock the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs

and guide you toward a new understanding of what it means to live the Christian life. This resource is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel and Life share Christ's love with more people. You can request your copy of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life when you give today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now you say, well, what do you do then? What are we supposed to do? Run into the name of the Lord.

Run into the name of the Lord. See, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. Run to it, and then finally, you're safe. Now what does that mean? I don't know exactly. You say what? Guess we can go home early today. No? You need to realize this is an incredibly rich metaphor. The name of the Lord in the Bible means so many things, has so many aspects. This is the only place where the Bible says run into the name of the

Lord. It's a metaphor and it they want you to meditate on it. They want you to think out its implications. And I made a list of 10, but I'm only going to give you two, because I think they're the two most important. Running into the name of the Lord means telling your mind the truth and converting the soul to love. And this is the secret of self-control. Not only the macro secret, but the macro secret.

If you've got a problem with self-control in some particular area today, you can start with these two things. Telling your mind the truth, converting the soul to love. What do I mean? Well, let's go. First of all, telling the mind the truth. The name of the Lord in the Bible means his nature. In the Bible, your name was not just a label. Your name told your attributes. Remember when Abraham changes his character he becomes Abraham. When Simon changes his character he becomes Peter. Your name conveys who you really are in the Bible. And the Lord's name, the name of the Lord, are his attributes, who he really is. And to name, the name of the Lord, are his attributes, who he really is.

And to run into the name of the Lord means to forcefully tell yourself who he is. Forcefully remind yourself about his sovereignty, about his wisdom, about his holiness, about his love, about his mercy. Forcefully remind yourself of the life of the world you really live in, because God is your ultimate context. live in because God is your ultimate context. So for example, in Luke chapter 8, Jesus is asleep on the boat. A storm comes up and the men panic. The disciples panic. When Jesus gets up, what does he say to them? First he calms the storm, then he looks at them, and of course he addresses their lack of self-control. They panicked. They lost control. And you know what he says? Where is your faith? Notice he didn't say you have too little faith. Didn't say that. He said you have faith. It should be here. Get it out. And this is what he's saying. He's saying

you lost self-control because you know who I am. You've seen what I've done. You've heard what my promise is to always take care of you, you've heard what I, you don't think a storm is gonna get rid of me and us, and somehow I'm not gonna get my mission fulfilled, you know enough, you shouldn't have panicked, you should have told yourself who I was. See, he says you should have taken yourself in hand

and told yourself who I was, your lack of self control is you're just not telling yourself the truth now you know Look at the time, but the most forceful in peace in all literature where this happens Is the place where Jane here? Who is in love with mr. Rochester? discovers that he's already married That he has a wife who's at a mental institution, but he's married and therefore he can't marry him.

And he says, I want you to come and live with me. You can't get married. And she says, but you're married and you still have an obligation for, you know, for better, for worse, for richer, and poorer. And he says, no, I want you to come. I still want you to come. And she's in love with him. Now, I've read some of this before, but I've never read the whole dialogue. Here it is. And it's fascinating. So this is, by the way, the narrator's voice is Jane, of course. She says, I was experiencing an ordeal. Terrible moment. Full of struggle, blackness, burning. Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved by him. And him who thus loved me, I absolutely worshiped.

Yet I knew I must renounce my idol." Jane, you understand what I want of you? He said, just this promise, I will be yours, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours. Another long silence. Jane, he said, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief. Jane, do you mean to go on, do you mean to go one way in the world and let me go another? I do. Jane, bending towards and embracing me.

Do you mean it now? I do. And now, he said, softly kissing my forehead and cheek. I do. Oh, Jane, this is bitter. It would not be wicked to love me. No, but it would be wicked to obey you. A wild look crossed his features.

What shall I do, Jane? Where shall I turn for a companion and for some hope? Do as I do, Mr. Rochester. Trust in God and be yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet me there. Then you will not yield? No. Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed? No, I advise you to live sinless and therefore die tranquil. Then you snatch love from me, you fling me back, you fling me back on lust for a passion, vice for an occupation. Mr. Rochester, I know more a sign is fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure, you as well as I do so.

Jane, who will be injured by the breach? For you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me." And then she started talking to herself. This was true, she said. And while he spoke, my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me and charged me with crimes in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as feeling, and that clamored wildly as well. Oh, comply, it said.

Think of his misery. Soothe him, save him, love him, tell him you love him, and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do? Still indomitable was my reply. I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God. I will hold to the principles

received by me when I was sane and not mad as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation. They are for such moments as this. When body and soul rise and mutiny against their rigor, stringent are are they, in violet they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed, and if I cannot believe it now, it's because I'm insane, quite insane, with my veins running fire and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. For gone determinations are all I have this hour to stand by on those I plant my foot. I did. You're not going to find a better place in all of literature to hear

what it means to run into the name of the Lord. To forcefully tell yourself, this is who God is. And this is the ultimate context. Not what my feelings tell me, not what the culture tells me, not what anybody else tells me. Tell yourself the truth. Now having said that, and I believe that is absolutely critical to having that ability. If you want to have self-control,

you've got to know how to do that. You have to understand that self-dialogue. You have to know how to take hold of the various voices inside and tell them the truth. And yet, I must tell you that in the long run, in the short run, that's very often all you can do just to keep yourself from doing the wrong thing. But in the short run, yes, in the long run, you need something deeper. You don't need just to tell your soul, your mind the truth.

You need to convert the soul to love. What do I mean? Well, the name of a Lord, secondly in the Bible, means that we do not have an ineffable, infinite, vague, impersonal God who's just a force, but he's a person. The name of the Lord means he's a person. It means he's got a heart, he's got a force, but he's a person. The name of the Lord means he's a person. It means he's got a heart, he's got a mind, he communicates.

It means you can have a personal love relationship with him. And ultimately, self-control comes from what you love the most. Jonathan Edwards in his Freedom of the will, a major book, takes hundreds of pages to say something that we Americans just don't believe. He says, you never, ever, ever, ever, really ever do anything that you don't really want to do. He actually says there's no such thing as the will as opposed to the emotions. He says, forget that. That idea that you have emotions and you have will and you can exercise the will and you can do things that you don't want to do, but you do them because you know

you should, he says forget that. He says you never do anything other than what you most want to do at that moment. Basically the will is just the exercise of the heart. You say that can't be true. The other day somebody came up to me and put something in my back and said give me your wallet. I didn't want to give him my wallet, but I gave him my wallet and he ran. See, I did something against my will. No, Jonathan ever says, sorry, you didn't want to give me your wallet, but you also wanted to live and you wanted to live more than you wanted to lose your, not wanted to lose your wallet. You did what you wanted to do. You always do what you most want to do. And here's how self-control works.

In Genesis 29, we are told in the story of Jacob and Rachel that Jacob worked seven years for his uncle Laban in order to win Rachel. This is from Genesis 29. So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. And there's the secret of self-control. Seven years is a long time to work.

Surely at some point, he said, I can't believe it, two years, maybe three years maybe. He says it's so tedious and it's so long and the hours are so awful and he is so hard to work for. How was he able to exercise the self-control to stick with it? Well the point is it didn't even feel

like exercising self-control. There wasn't any tedium to it. Because what does it say? Jacob served seven years to get Rachel but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. He loved her. And because he loved her, all the other desires in his heart were mastered.

There was an over-mastering passion. There was a love that was supreme, and that love put everything else straight. If your love for him slowly converts your soul. A Catholic writer, Thelma Hall has a great book on prayer. She calls Too Deep for Words and in it she says this. She says, the purpose of prayer is to go and give yourself in love, not go as a mercenary seeking rewards. This conversion to love is the dynamic central reality of our lives. Living to give, rather than to get, is not the end result ever of our own resolution and effort. Anyone who has made New Year's resolutions recognizes how ineffective and even counterproductive this can be.

Prayer is our yes to God. Our experiencing the partial mystery of Jesus as described by Paul when he writes, in Christ all the promises of God are yes and therefore through him we answer amen and give praise to God. So what's he saying? He says, if you go in prayer to God constantly

to get things, you're probably being driven by your out of control lusts, your desires, the things that are too important to you. But if you go in prayer to say, you have given me the most wonderful thing, and my purpose in prayer is to continually say amen to what you have given me, what you have said to me, that converts the soul to love. And the more you convert the soul to love, the more you get self-control. Well, finally, here's the question.

How do we actually practice this? The New Testament makes explicit what the Old Testament says implicit. And in Titus chapter two, 11 to 14, it says something amazing. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 14, it says something amazing. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled upright, godly lives in this present age. Stop. That's not how I've taught anybody self-control. You know how you teach your children self-control? Not with grace, love. What do you do? You say, if you don't get control of yourself, you're not going to the party,

you're going to spend the rest of the afternoon in your room. And what do the kids say? Okay, okay, okay. I'm scared. In the long run, that doesn't make yourself controlled. That's not the way Jacob got control. That's not the way Jacob got control. That's not the way Jacob got control. In the short run, fear just makes you more anxious, more driven, more upset, right? There's another way.

The grace of God has appeared. Now that word appeared means become visible. How could it become visible? Jesus. Jesus was born. Jesus died. Jesus was raised. And what is the grace of God? As we're told in chapter three of Titus,

the grace of God is that he saved us not because of our righteous deeds, but because of his mercy. Look it. Do you know why we can run into the name of Jesus, into the name of the Lord? Do you know when Moses said, I want to see you, Lord? I want to see your glory.

God says, no, you can't. It'll kill you. I'll put you in the cleft of the rock and I'll declare my name to you. See, the name of God is the presence of God, is the glory of God. And Moses couldn't even get close to the name of God. Why can't we run into it?

People run into the city to get security, but when Jesus Christ was crucified, they threw him out of the city, right? He was crucified outside the city. Why? Because all the criminals were executed outside the city. It represented the loss of the city of God. Jesus Christ lost the father. He was run out of God. He was run out of the city. He was hoisted up and became radically vulnerable so we could run in to the Father's arms so that we could be absolutely safe. Now Jesus Christ dying on the cross, losing the father, becoming radically vulnerable, suffering like he did. That was hard. That was incredibly difficult. That took endurance, don't you think? A huge amount of endurance. Over and over. It must have been incredibly hard. How did he get self-control? Do you realize the greatest act of self-control in history was

Jesus Christ knowing what was coming, having a chance to leave when, you remember the Garden of Gethsemane? Everybody was dark. The guards weren't there yet, and the three disciples were sleeping. He stayed with it. And they beat him, he stayed with it.

He stayed with it. At various times he actually said, I could call a bunch of angels. And he stayed with it. He stayed with it. At various times he actually said, I could call a bunch of angels. And he stayed with it. Where did he get the most incredible self control in the history of the world? Where did he get the self control that enabled him to endure the cross?

The answer, according to Hebrews 12, is he endured the cross, he ran the race, he endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. Now let's think about this. He's the Son of God, reigning in heaven forever, right? Has all glory, what in the world do you give the man who has everything? What prize could have possibly motivated that kind of endurance? What reward, see, could have possibly motivated that kind of endurance. What didn't he already have? There's only one thing that Jesus Christ did not have

before the cross that he had after the cross, us. And you know what that means? The reason Jesus Christ had the self-control he had was that we were his Rachel. And you know what that means? the degree to which you know that to the degree to which in prayer you experience that to the degree to which you tell that truth to your mind it will convert your soul and he will become your Rachel and you'll be able to Do anything? All the stuff that you think you've got to have all the anxiety will be gone all the fear will be gone all the I've got to have that I got to have that all The addictions eventually will be gone after a lot of work

Don't you see Do you see For the grace of God brings salvation and has appeared all men it teaches us the word teach there means it argues with us It teaches us. The word teach there means it argues with us. It pushes us. The gospel says you are loved. You are loved. You are his Rachel. Make him your Rachel. See? And the more that sinks down, the more you will live self-controlled upright and godly lives. While we wait the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

That's the secret of self-control. Go and learn what this means, my friends. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us a high tower to run to. Teach us how to run into it when we feel that we're getting out of control. That we're losing the ability to control ourselves. Teach us how to tell ourselves the truth that converts our soul to love and makes us temperate, self-controlled, on top of things, free, because we are controlled

by your love. To the degree that we, as Paul says, are constrained by your love, to that degree, we'll be free in our relationship to everything else. Help us understand how to apply this to our lives, through Jesus, it's in his name we pray. Just subscribe to the Gospel and Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com.

You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. This month's sermons were recorded in 2004. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.