Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Christian’s Weeping

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Psalm 126 has always helped me. It has never filled my soul with glory. It has always made me quiet and reflective. Because it’s a perfect overview of the emotional life that the life of faith brings. You’re going to weep. In this world, you will weep. But how are you weeping? What are you doing with your sorrows? They need to be sown. They need to be invested. They need to be planted, in a sense, or they need to water. Psalm 126 tells us 3 things about how we’re supposed to address our sorrows: 1) it tells us to expect weeping, 2) it tells us to expect new kinds of tears, and 3) it tells us to sow our tears.  But let me say there are three principles: 1) the life of faith is a life of both rejoicing and weeping, 2) the life of faith is a life of greater rejoicing and greater weeping, and 3) the life of faith is a life of interdependent rejoicing and weeping. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on July 13, 1997. Series: Happiness and Weeping. Scripture: Psalm 126. 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.

Thanks for joining us on the Gospel in Life podcast. Do you long for unshakable joy in every circumstance? The Bible says that in this world you will weep, but there is a joy that even the deepest grief can't put out. Listen now as Tim Keller teaches on happiness and weeping. After you listen, we invite you to go online to Gospelinlife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. I have a very short but complete psalm that we're going to be looking at tonight. The

teaching is going to be based on it. It's Psalm 126, that's the whole thing. Doesn't look like much, but it is. Psalm 126. When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping,

carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying the sheaves with him. This is God's word. Now, by the way, this little psalm has never, it's always helped me. It's never filled my soul with glory. It's always made me quiet and reflective and peaceful. And I think that probably the sermon that this produces will not be a high and glorious sermon, but a quiet and reflective and peaceful one. And I hope the same thing will happen in you. What this is so good at, what this has helped me with so much is I think in some ways, Psalm 126 is a perfect emotional map for a person who believes in God. It's a picture, it's an overview of the emotions, the emotional life that the life of faith brings. The

setting doesn't matter. You read this and you say, when did this happen? What is going on? We really don't know. Plenty of people have said, ah, verse one, when the Lord brought back the captain's Zion, we were like ones who dreamed, our mouths were filled with laughter. And they say, ah, that must be in the Old Testament. That's the time in which the exiles, the Jews who had been exiled in Babylon came back. Well, it doesn't say that. We don't really know. There were a number of places where God gave some kind of great military victory to the Jews when they were overwhelmed and it looked like everything was lost. There could be a

number of places. The important thing, therefore, is really not the setting. In some ways, we're glad. We don't know when it was. It doesn't say when it was. And it really doesn't matter. The point is, here's a group of people that are remembering a time of deliverance, see in verses 1, 2, and 3, they're remembering a time of incredible joy, but they're experiencing a time of weeping and sorrow. And the question for us then is not when did this happen and so on. The issue is, do we handle our times of weeping? Do we understand our times of weeping? Do we understand our times

of weeping and sorrow the way they did? Because especially of this great verse, the one who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. In verse 6, those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. Here's the question that this psalm raises and that we're going to try to address. Here's the question. It's a lot like a book that Kath and I have always loved. We've never really read it, but we love the title. And I've got it, and I got it out to look at it and say,

I really ought to read this thing. But the title is, Don't Waste Your Sorrows. Don't Waste Your Sorrows. And you see, it's based very much on a theme in the Bible that we're going to bring out, which is so perfectly put in verse 5. What are you doing with your tears? What are you doing with your sorrows? They need to be sewn. They need to be invested. They need to be planted, in a sense. Or they need to water. See, the beautiful, the beauty of this is tears are water. Now, water brings life. And water can be channeled and used and deployed in such a way that it brings up fruit and

grass and beautiful things. Are you wasting your tears? Are you investing them, you say? Tears are water. Are you using them? How are you crying? You're going to weep. In this world, you will weep.

You will weep, but how are you weeping? And that's the question, or that's several versions of the question, but that's the essential question. Now, as we look at the passage and we look at the psalm and we ask ourselves, what does this tell us about weeping? What does this tell us about how we're supposed to address our griefs and our sorrows and so on? I would say it tells us three things. Now, I could put these three things in action step form. And if I was to do that, I would say it tells us to expect weeping, expect tears, but expect secondly, new kinds of tears. And then finally, it'll say, sow your tears. Expect tears, expect new kinds of tears, and sow your tears. But you know, I'm going to put it in terms of three principles.

And if I have the presence of mind, I may come back and put it back in the form of action steps. But let me say there's three principles. First of all, let's look at the first principle. First thing it teaches us, in some ways it's the most obvious and the simplest, but we better not rush by it. We'll take a minute or two on it. First thing we're told here is that the life of faith is a life of both rejoicing and weeping.

I mean, this is maybe obvious, but let's stay here for a second. The life of faith is a life of both of rejoicing and weeping. What does the psalm tell us? The psalm tells us that these people had experienced a tremendous act of deliverance of God. The nations had heard about it. That's why we're a little curious. We wish we knew what it was. But God had so shown up. God had so come down. God had so, you know, the way the Bible says, he had bared his holy arm, he had shown forth his power and his love for his people, that all the nations, everyone said, boy, their God is God.

Remember what Yul Brynner said? Yul Brynner, Pharaoh, Ten Commandments, you know? Remember that? His God is God. And then fade out. Mount Sinai, you remember that? Surely you remember that. But you know, that's what the nations were doing. That's what the nations were

saying. They were saying, this God is God. So whatever it was that they experienced must have been great. And yet, as great as it is, they're in trouble again. See, verses 1 to 3 is remembering something and verse 4, 5, and 6 is experiencing the present. Verse 1, 2, and 3 is something in the past, but now verse 4, it's right away says, restore our fortunes. Now, what's the obvious? No matter how much God does for you in this life, it won't get rid of sorrow. No matter how much He has done for you, He doesn't give you unbroken joy. No matter how much you have done for you, he doesn't give you unbroken joy. No matter how much you have laughed in the Lord, you will weep.

You will weep. In some ways, as a matter of fact, remember I mentioned in the very beginning, this is almost like a perfect map of the emotional life of a Christian, the emotional life of a believer. Because look, verses 1, 2, 3 is all about joy, verses 4, 5, and 6 is all about sorrow. And in a certain sense, it's telling you that if you are a believer, you're going to have, like everybody else, joy and sorrow. You're not going to have lots and lots and lots of joy and just a little teeny bit of sorrow anymore. No, that's not the way it works.

You're going to have joy and sorrow. You're going to be a very even-handed life. But what I really love about it is joy reigns in verse 1, 2, and 3, right? And in verse 4, 5, and 6, it's all about tears and about weeping and about the fact that we need our fortunes restored. And yet, in the end, joy has the final word. In other words, if you want to see the emotional map, quantitatively, quantitatively, the believer has equal weeping and rejoicing. But qualitatively, even through the weeping, in the end,

joy has the final word in your life. That is, if you're a new Christian, I want you to know your future. Quantitatively, you'll have as much joy as weeping, as much weeping as joy. Qualitatively, there will be a note of joy that can never be put out, a kind of pilot flame, you know? Even when the burner's off, look down in there. It's still burning. It's still burning so that when the gas does show up,

there's a flame again. Look down in your heart. You're a Christian, even in times of weeping, there's a pilot light of joy. And so, in the end, the joy is always the final note. But it doesn't mean that now you're a Christian, now that you're a believer, you know, now it's joy all the time. No. First principle is the life of faith is the life of both rejoicing and reaping. Why? Because we follow one who is both a rejoicer and a weeper. We follow one who is both a mourner and a singer. We follow one who, when he decided to begin his ministry, his first miraculous sign to tell us who he

was was to create a pile of great wine to make a good party better. Now when you open a campaign, you're showing people who you really are. Hmm? You know, recently I did use one of the mayoral candidates. When she opened her campaign, she made sure, instead of being in a lecture hall or something, she was out on a street in the Lower East Side. Why?

This is perfectly right and very good. She was trying to, she knew that in her first speech, where she was and what she said, she wanted to make sure people saw the essence of what she was about. Great, fine, excellent. Jesus is no different. He first comes out and he's going to in his very first sign show us who he's about and who is he, what is he, what does he do? He doesn't

raise the dead, he doesn't walk on water, he doesn't heal the sick, he throws a party. John chapter 2, the wedding feast at Cana, turning water into wine, he throws a party. What does that mean? He is saying I come to bring festival joy, and yet. Get out of concordance sometime, a concordance, and look up words like weeping, groaning, sighing, moved with pity. And there's so much in the New Testament that describes Jesus' emotional life like that. Here's the one who is the great exalter.

He's the great singer, the sweet singer. He's the one who starts, throws a party to show you what he's really about. Yet you read through his life, and he's a man of sorrows. He's acquainted with grief. And his own life is a mixture of this great joy and this tremendous sorrow. And it tells us in Hebrews chapter 12, it says, why did he go through the sorrow for the sake of the joy that was set before him?

He went to the cross. There's the same mixture. So that's the first thing. First principle, life of faith is a life of both rejoicing and weeping. Now the next principle, second principle, is not as obvious, a little more surprising. And that is the life of faith is a life of greater rejoicing and greater weeping

than before. This passage indicates and the Bible teaches that the life of faith is a life of higher joy and deeper sorrow than you had before. Let me put it in a nutshell. When you become a Christian, you do not become a happier person than you were before. You are that, but more than that. You become both happier and sadder than you were before. The life of faith is a life of greater rejoicing and weeping. Now, for example, look here right in the passage. Right here in the passage, you can see that one of the reasons why they're weeping so badly in verses four, five, and six is because of what he's done before. I mean, in this one instance,

you can see it. What if they were cynical? What if they really didn't know there was a God? What if they thought life is hard, you know? What if they just believed that basically life stinks, and now things have happened? What would you do? You wouldn't be weeping.

You'd say, suck it up. This is life. Don't cry over spilled milk. But they know it's the experience of salvation that makes their weeping a lot greater. And if you read the scripture, you will see over and over the Bible says that when you become a Christian, you don't only become happier but also sadder and pretty much at the same time.

That's how you know the difference between your emotional life before and after belief, before and after conversion. Now the joy part, let me leave behind. We should know that. That's obvious. If you are a Christian, when you become a Christian, you now know something you didn't know before, that God is your God, and that God is in your life,

that God loves you, and that God accepts you, and all that. See, that's obvious, but you're saying, now wait a minute, what do you mean by saying that the gospel, that faith actually also makes you sadder? Well, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, there's an extremely interesting theme. It comes up several times. Let me just quote you one place where it shows up, but it shows up several times. In Ezekiel chapter 11 verse 19, God says,

I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh. He says that also in Ezekiel 36, Paul talks about it. He talks about the fact that when the spirit comes in, it writes the law of God, not on the stone, but on the tablets of your heart. It takes away your heart of stone and turns it into a heart of flesh now what does that mean it means a lot but here's one of the things it means it means that salvation does not just make your heart a happier heart it does but it's not all salvation will make your heart more of a heart it'll not just make it feel happy, it'll make it feel. It'll make it feel more deeply.

It'll make you feel and able to feel. It melts your heart. It melts your heart from the ice. It melts your heart from the stone. It makes you sensitive. It makes your heart more of a heart. It's not a heart of stone. The heart before, you experience the love of of God compared to the heart after, that's

the idea, compared to the heart after, your heart before was stony. It was less feeling. It was more callous. It was filled with defense mechanisms. It was filled with all sorts of ways in which you kept out things that should make and did make the only perfect human heart in the history of the world weep. Why was Jesus always weeping?

Why do you think he was always crying? Because he was perfect. Because he was more loving than us. Because he was more compassionate than us. Because he was more sensitive to God's heart than us. Because he had higher aspirations for people than we do. And the more perfect you get, the more you're going to weep. It's only natural. You see that? See, for example, look, before you were Christian,

you had moral standards. Of course you did. It may be almost the same moral standards. And many people, when they become Christians, they don't change their moral standards one bit. In fact, in many cases, and here I'm not making a joke, many Christians, have you become a Christian? You may not be any better at those moral standards than you were before at all. You might not even be as good.

There's sort of a lack of franticness in some ways. You may not be quite as good, all right? But here's the difference. Before, when you blow it, when you broke a law, when you told a lie, when you did something like that, you would kick yourself. You'd be mad at yourself, you see, because you broke a rule. After you become a Christian, if you understand the gospel, if you understand now that your relationship with God is not that I'm the subject,

he's the king only, or I'm this employee, he's the boss, but I'm the child and he's the father. And through my great brother, Jesus Christ, at infinite cost, he has brought me into his family and he loves me with an everlasting love. And he sent his son and he went at incredible cost to make me holy. Now when you lie, you haven't just broken a rule, you've broken a heart. You've broken the heart. You're going to weep. You're not just going to kick yourself.

Your heart's melted now. Or when you look at people around you, before you were a Christian, you had no idea really what people could be. You had no idea what joy they could experience. You had no idea because now you've experienced it. You'll never look at people again the same way. You know what they could be. You know when you see hurting people what they could be experiencing. And so like Jesus, you'll be weeping over them in ways you weren't before. You see, you know, Cornelius Planting wrote a really good book on sin.

And the name of the book is Sin, and the name of the subtitle of the book is Not the Way Things Ought to Be. And maybe you think that's pretty obvious, but you know, when you become a Christian, instead of looking around and saying, that's life, that's life, you know, that's people, that's the way things are, you know what that is. That's a way of hardening your heart so you don't care. But now you know what God sees and what God wants and you know what people could be and you know what the world should be and you're going to weep. Now you see that. So the second principle, and it's a very,

very important principle, is that not only is the life of faith a life of both rejoicing and of sorrow, of tears, it's a life of greater rejoicing and it's a life of greater tears. Okay? Do you have a heart like that? Think about that. Is that happening to you? Do you weep more? By the way, guys in particular, you know, we're taught not to weep. How long have you been a Christian? Do you weep more? That's one good sign that you're really a Christian. Have you gotten over the defense mechanisms?

Have you gotten over the hardness of heart? Now, I'm not trying to leave women out here, but I'm just saying, guys in particular, it's very noticeable. In some ways, I would say women, when you become a Christian, you weep new kinds of tears. It's not self-pity tears. It's tears of repentance, tears of aspiration for people, tears of service, all the tears of Jesus.

But for us guys, in some cases, we're going to start weeping for the first time, period. It's a good sign. From everyone here at Gospel in Life, we want to thank you for the ways you've partnered with us in 2024. We're so grateful for your faithful prayers, for your generous gifts, and for how you've shared our resources to live out the gospel missionally. And we rejoice in the stories we've heard this year from people who have been renewed by the gospel teaching they've received through our podcast, YouTube videos, radio broadcasts, and other

resources, God is using your gifts to bring the transformative story of the gospel to people around the world. Looking ahead to 2025, we believe God is opening up new opportunities for us to spread the message of Christ's love. As we approach the end of December, we invite you to prayerfully consider making a year-end gift to Gospel in Life. Your support helps us to move into the new year with the resources we need to share the story of the Gospel all over the world, making it possible for more people to discover the

life-changing reality of Christ's redeeming love. To make a year-end gift today, go to gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's message. Are you weeping? Is there more sorrow? OK, now, that's the second principle. But the third principle is the weirdest of all, and it's here.

And in fact, in some ways, it may be the only place in the Old Testament that it is here. It points to the new. The first principle we said was that the life of faith is a life of both rejoicing and weeping. And secondly, we said the life of faith is a life of greater rejoicing and greater weeping. But the third principle is the life of faith is a life of interdependent rejoicing and weeping. In other words, the joy produces the tears and the tears produce the joy. Now, the reason this is so important, Derek Kidner wrote a commentary on Psalms that I have used in my personal life for 20 years. I bought it 20 years ago. It's two little commentaries,

two volumes, the Tyndale Commentaries. And I, whatever else I'm studying, I'm always reading the Psalms as part of my personal Bible reading and devotional life. And I always read what Kidner says, and I've been doing it for 20 years. He's a tremendous scholar and a godly man. And one of the things that always impressed me was his understanding of 1.26 verse 5. He says this. I first came up with this insight when I was studying Psalm 30. And in Psalm 30 verse 5, you have this very famous phrase, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And Kidner says that, you'll see that many times in the Old Testament,

many times in the Bible. He says, if you're a believer, what this is saying is that sorrow gives way to joy. You may have sorrow, but if you believe in him, in the end you'll have joy. Sorrow is temporary, joy is permanent. Sorrow gives way to joy. And he says, boy, you're gonna find that many places. Weeping may carry for the night,

but joy comes with the morning. You'll find that many, many places. But he says, the New Testament gives us something more amazing, more profound, more shocking. And he says, the New Testament goes beyond the Old Testament. Because the New Testament does not just say for a believer that sorrow gives way to joy. The New Testament goes so far as to say the most odd and radical thing, and that is that sorrow produces joy for the Christian. In the gospel, through the gospel, through Jesus Christ, sorrow produces joy. Now, the classic place where that's mentioned,

though it's many places, is 2 Corinthians 4, 17, where Paul says, for our slight momentary affliction is achieving an eternal weight of glory which far outweighs them all. These slight momentary afflictions are achieving an eternal weight of glory which outweighs them all. That's the new international version, the old authorized version that said produces. It doesn't, you know, it's the same thing. It doesn't just say sorrows will give way to joy. The sorrows are producing the joy. They're creating the joy. They're achieving the joy.

This is amazing. How could it be? And of course, Kidner says, there'd be no way that anybody in any philosophy, in any religion, in the Old Testament, nobody would know that until you see Jesus because when you look at Jesus Christ, he was the man of incredible sorrows. He was in pain. He was rejected. He was tortured. He was killed. He sorrowed like no one has ever sorrowed, but his sorrows didn't just give way to joy. His sorrows produced the joy. His sorrows produced the glory.

His sorrows were the redeeming way that opened the door for the joy and the glory, you see. His, not slight momentary, but his eternal afflictions produced an eternal weight of glory for us. And if that's true, then there must be some way in which the pattern remains with us that if you know and understand these things. And if you're careful with your sorrow, your sorrow isn't just give way to joy, it will produce joy. It will achieve it. Now, Kiddner says the only place in the Old Testament he knows where this is brought out

is here. The only place in the Old Testament that points to the New Testament is here. Because it doesn't just say, don't worry, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. What does it say? It says, those who sow in tears will reap with joy. The tears are watering something. The tears are producing something. You see, the tears are not just giving way to joy, the tears are producing joy. And what's so incredible is the two little words, will. Now, for a second, I'm

going to get into how this works, but for a second, there's almost no way for me to address all the ways in which it works. What I really want you to understand is that it does. Twice he says, those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, caring, see to sow, will return. There is no doubt. Even though the psalmist grants that there are variations in how God works this out. Because you see in verse four it says, restore our fortunes, oh Lord, like streams in the Negev. Now, you know what streams in the Negev are? The Negev was a terrible, terrible desert. And there are all sorts of riverbeds. If you're a newcomer to the Negev desert, you go through

and you say, what a terrible place, how barren, how fruitless this place is. And you see all these riverbeds and you think that these must be ancient riverbeds once they were great rivers. No, no. Once in a very, very, very long while, there will be storms in the mountains. Now, this actually happened to me once when I was in New Mexico years ago on a camping trip. Many years ago. I was in the Boy Scouts. I was probably 15 or 16 years old, something like that. One of the most amazing experiences I ever had was, you know, it was all sun and we were down in a desert area, but I heard thunder and lightning far in the distance up over the mountains. And the guide that was with us says, wait till you see what

happens. Well, there was this river bed and it was very, very dry. And next thing you know, we heard thunder. And the thunder, I thought, meant it was going to rain. But actually, for about 10 minutes, the thunder. Next thing you know, I saw what looked like a hill coming. There was trees, there was dirt, there was trunks of trees and all that, but what it was, was a flood of water about seven feet high, coming down from the mountains, just whooshing right down that riverbed. And next thing you know, there was a seven or eight foot deep river. And it continued on over the night.

And when you read the commentaries, what the commentaries will tell you is that's how the Negev can be. The Negev is a terrible desert but once in a very rare... But it does happen. There can be a sudden flash flood, an incredible water come down and next thing you know the desert is turned into a garden. There's greenery and flowers can spring up overnight. And the psalmist is saying, this is how we want you to work. With all due respect, we ask that our grief will go away, that our problems will go away, that our difficulties will go away. We pray that you will come down in some great way the way you did once, and everybody will see the salvation of God. We ask you to wipe everything away, but in verse 5 and 6 it says, however, this is what

we do know, that if you keep us in times of weeping, there will be joy. It may be the fast kind, it may be the slow kind. It may be a sudden, you know, water course in the desert, or it may be that all we're going to do is painstakingly and slowly we're going to be irrigating, you see, the land with our tears, but we will have sheaves. There will be a harvest. This is a remarkable thing. See, I know some of you have had very hard lives for a very long time and you say, what's going on? I've seen other people who've been real messed up and they've come to God and there's been water courses in the Negev for them.

I mean things have just happened and they found this and they found that and just their lives have turned around. What's going on with me? Well, you see the psalm, the Bible is so realistic. The Bible says you will rejoice. There will be sheaves. It may be fast. It may be slow. sheaves. It may be fast, it may be slow. Don't waste your sorrows. If you sow your tears, you will reap. It will happen. Joy will be the final note in your life. It will be the final word in your life. Well, the question is how? How could that be? How is it possible? How is it possible that joy, as I try to say, these joy and sorrow are interdependent? Gospel joy produces deeper sorrow, but gospel sorrow produces deeper joy.

Let me just give you a few ideas. First of all, how does gospel joy produce sorrow? Now, I already said that before. I said the gospel produces sorrow. Let me show you what I mean, but pretty briefly. First of all, gospel joy means that you will be repenting more often. There'll be more tears of repentance. And here's why. Before you're a Christian, you must believe, you will believe that basically the reason that my friends love me, the reason that my family

loves me, and the reason that God will love me is that I'm a good person. And therefore, there's a limit. You have a psychological limit to what you can admit about your own flaws. There is a very, very, very quickly you screen out, you deny, you completely become unconscious, you completely screen out, you just cannot admit just how selfish you are, how cowardly you are, how angry you are. you can't admit it. It's psychological death to admit it because you just don't have the framework for it. You don't have the ability for it. You couldn't possibly admit that.

You would just as soon throw yourself off a bridge if you were really as bad as that. But if you're a Christian, if you understand the gospel, and the gospel is not that Jesus Christ came to show us how to live and die for God, though he did, but that's not the primary thing. He came to live the life we should have lived and die the death we should have died as our substitute, as our mediator, as our head, as our savior, see? So that when we believe in him, all that is transferred to us and we are completely loved and therefore, Christians are people after you become a Christian no discovery of your flaws now can undermine your self-worth you have got

such assurance of love in the gospel that you can admit many things that before you never could have admitted and as a result gospel joy enables you to repent in ways you didn't repent and if you the gospel, you will be repenting much more quickly than you were before, and it won't be bitter. It won't be horrible. It won't be... Before, repentance is like failing to breathe, and after Christianity comes and the gospel comes, repentance is like breathing deeply.

If you have enough joy, you'll be repenting all the time. When you get into a fight, the first thing you'll do is say, what's wrong with me? Where is my self-centeredness? Where is my selfishness? Where is my flaws? What am I doing here? When there's a problem, instead of blaming other people

and pushing out everywhere else, if you have that deep assurance, you will be weeping in repentance much, much more than you were before. Joy produces sorrow. But then, think about this. It's the sorrow of repentance that produces a joy you've never had before. Every time you repent, you get free. The gospel... If you come to Redeemer, one thing you're hearing all the

time is this, you're hearing that Christianity frees you from idols, isn't that right? If you've been coming to Redeemer, you've heard me say that in various forms. The gospel is that before you really rest in Christ as Savior, you look to other things to save you. You look to relationships or or you look to achievement, or you look to independence in relationships, or you look to dependence in relationships, or you look to status, or you look to approval, or you look to power, or you look to control, or you look to comfort, or you look to something. Ah, but when you make Christ your salvation, you're free from those things. His approval frees you from needing other approval. His

wealth frees you from needing to work too much and make money. What he is frees you. Yeah, theoretically. I mean, we can walk around Redeemer saying, I understand myself and I understand you too. I understand this stuff. I understand the idols of the heart. I understand why you're driven. I understand why I'm driven. But I have freedom in Christ. It's pretty much theoretical till you weep. When you're weeping, and only when you're weeping, because something's gone wrong in your life, and you can say, why am I weeping? And you say, you know, one of the reasons I'm weeping

is because I value Jesus so little. Jesus' love is not that much of a consolation to me. Jesus' honor is not that much of a consolation to me. Jesus' honor is not that much of a consolation to me. And when you start to repent for loving Jesus too little, what happens is his love comes in and there's a new joy, a new joy of freedom. The more dependent you are on him, the more independent you will be of everything else

in the world. You'll be independent of what other people think, you'll be independent of what other people think. You'll be independent of what other people say. You'll be independent of circumstances. The more completely dependent you are on Him, the more independent and free you will be. And the only way that comes is through the tears of repentance. And the tears of when you suffer, turning and repenting of lack of love for Him. Every time you're disappointed, every time you're upset, every time.

It's the joy that produces, the sorrow that produces the joy. It's your sowing and up will come fruit, you see? Or one more. One more. When you get out, if you have in the gospel, you have this tremendous assurance of God's love, you're going to stick your neck out and you're going to talk to people about things they don't want to hear. This is another reason why joy produces the sorrow, but then the sorrow produces the joy. Joy produces sorrow in that the gospel assurance will for the first time make you willing to stick your neck out and get involved in people's lives even though it's messy. Do you know how many times Paul says, I admonish you with

tears, I warn you with tears, I speak to you with tears? Why is Paul crying? I'll tell you why he's crying. Because it's very hard to go to people you love and tell them things that they're not going to like. And it's extremely hard to see them growl at you. It's extremely hard to have them argue with you. And it's extremely hard to see them growl at you. It's extremely hard to have them argue with you. And it's extremely hard to see that they're not happy with what you're saying. So, of course, that's the reason he's crying. But the question is, why is he doing it? And the answer is because he no longer is a slave to what they think.

The gospel pushes him out so that he's always crying because he's in the ministry. Look, the joy of the gospel produces repentance that you didn't have before, yet the repentance produces greater joy. See? The joy of the gospel produces ministry involvement, which produces all sorts of tears, but the tears will bring incredible joy. There is nothing better than seeing God work in somebody else's life through you. Don't you see? The one who sows in tears will reap with songs of joy. These people are weeping more than they would have. They're weeping because of the joy verses 1 to 3, but there's going to be incredible joy because of the weeping. Therefore, the

third principle is the life of faith is a life not just both of rejoicing and weeping and of greater rejoicing and weeping but interdependent rejoicing and weeping. The joy, you see, it's gospel joy that produces gospel tears and then gospel tears produces deeper gospel joy and that's what it means to live a Christian life. Because of the Lord. When you suffer and when you're in trouble, we tend to say, why me? Why me, Lord? Now, after you've become a Christian, you spent some time looking at Jesus on the cross and you realize that when Jesus was on the cross, he asked, why me? But you know, when you ask, why me?

Why did I break my leg? Why did I lose that job? Why did this bad thing happen to me? Why have I lost my friend? Why did my dear love person die? You ask why me and there's no answer. But Jesus Christ one day called out into the heaven, why me? And there's no answer. But Jesus Christ one day called out into the heaven, why me? Why have you forsaken me? We know the answer for you. He

suffered an unjust death so that you could be redeemed. And when you've seen the answer to Jesus, why me? You'll never ask why me quite the same way. Because you'll say, I have no idea why I'm going through this. But if the person who runs the universe is willing to die for me, then I know there's some way in which my tears, if I weep them looking at him, repenting, if I weep looking at him on the cross, knowing what

he did for me, then my tears will be sowing their seed, in a sense. In my tears, you know like in the little acorns there's whole trees, in my tears, if I do them faithfully, and if I keep looking at him and repenting and loving him and grabbing hold of him, greatness, joy will come. I will come back with those sheaves. Come on. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus has fled. This is a warning. This is comforting. This is it. You notice, I never hardly raised my voice. This isn't the kind of psalm that makes you raise your voice.

It's the kind of psalm that makes you think, makes you reflect, makes you say, teach me to weep like you have wept so that I can rejoice like you've rejoiced. Let's pray. We ask now, Father, that you would help me, help, that you would, I ask Lord tonight that you would help me convey these truths. Now I ask that every one of us might know how to use these truths in our own lives. Some of us have been weeping a lot. In fact, it's a very, very good possibility that scores of people in this room have wept today, literally wept today. Show them that you love them more than they love themselves. Show them that you entered into the suffering and the tears of this world. Show them that their tears

cannot just, will not just give way to joy if they trust you, but will work and produce and the tears of this world, show them that their tears will not just give way to joy if they trust you, but will work and produce and achieve an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Teach us how to sow our tears. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life's

resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting gospelinlife.com slash stories. That's gospelinlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was preached in 1997. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.