Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Movement

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

In this unparalleled text in the Bible, we learn not so much what the church does, but what the church is. We’ve been looking at the animating gospel principles that have profoundly shaped our church’s life in the city and service to the city. And that often means we’ve looked at something the church does. But now, let’s look at what the church is. In 1 Peter 1, we can get insight into the church’s 1) glory, 2) gifts, and 3) grace. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 24, 2016. Series: Where We Are Going: The City and the Mission. Scripture: 1 Peter 2:4-12. 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.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. This month on our podcast, we're doing something a little different. We've curated a collection of sermons and talks from across the 28 years that Tim Keller preached at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The messages featured this month explore a range of topics that show us how the gospel affects every aspect of our lives, including vocation, friendship, and the mission of the church. Because as we believe, the gospel can change everything.

The scripture reading comes from 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 4 through 12. As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Now to you who believe this stone is precious but to those who do not believe the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people,

a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners in exiles to abstain from sinful desires which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. During these weeks we've been looking at what's commonly called our Redeemer's core values

and vision. Those are fairly corporate terms to describe it. We're talking about the animating principles that stem from the gospel, that have profoundly shaped Redeemer's life in the city and service to the city from Redeemer's inception and we hope and pray in the future as well. Now every single week we've been looking at, essentially been looking at some aspect of the church. Almost every week we're looking at something that the church does, but this morning,

in this unparalleled text in the Bible, we're gonna learn not so much what the church does, but what the church is. And we're going to get insight into its glory, its gifts, and its grace. Its glory, its gifts, and its grace, okay? First of all, maybe primarily even, its glory. As you come to Him, the living stone rejected by humans,

but chosen by God and precious to Him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a house of the spirit, a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now, in Exodus, when God brought the people together out of Egypt to the Mount Sinai, he says these things to them.

In Exodus 19, he says to Israel, out of all the nations, you will be my special possession. You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. You will be my people, I will be your God. Do those terms sound familiar to you? They ought to, because we just read them. Peter says to the Christians, to the church, you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession.

Now see, when God brought his people out of Egypt by grace and power, he saved them. He brought them to Mount Sinai and he called them to make a covenant. He didn't just want them to be individuals who all believed in him. He wanted them to be a covenant community. So what they did was they bound themselves by oath

to live for God and to live for each other in a community, and when that happened, God came down. He came down in fire, he came in smoke. His glory came down on Mount Sinai so that the mountain itself trembled. And what is glory? It's the brilliant, infinite greatness and power

and beauty and presence of God. And when Moses saw it, he actually said to God, let me look right into your glory. And God said, no, it'll kill you, but I'll let my glory pass by. Now, Peter has the audacity to take those same terms that God used to describe the Sinai assembly and apply them to us. And what does that mean?

It's got to mean this. It has to mean that he's saying, if you're a Christian and you've been saved by God's grace and power out of slavery, the slavery of serving yourself, the slavery of serving sex, money, and power, or even the slavery of trying to earn your own salvation through religiosity. And if you've been saved from that and built together,

built into, in other words, not just an individual who believes, but if you're willing also to covenant, to come into a community, see, to be built together with other people, to by vows commit yourself to God and others in the church. Then Peter says, the same glory that came down on Mount Sinai,

the same glory that was in the burning bush, you have access to in the church. Not just as individuals, but only as we're being built together into a house. You see the image? Here's the bricks, everyone has the bricks, here's the stones, everyone has the stone, and God dwells in the midst of his people.

In the same way he came down on Mount Sinai, that glory is here, That glory is here. Now, this is an astounding promise, and we have to dwell on it a little bit. It's just not gonna sink in. This promise is corporate, and it's unimaginably great. So first of all, this promise is corporate. Maybe you've already heard me.

I'm gonna push this in. You might say, well, doesn't the Bible say that if I believe in God, God comes into my heart, the Holy Spirit comes into my heart, and he knows me individually? Yeah, sure, of course. But that's not what this is talking about. This is saying, it must be saying, that as God inhabits his people, not just his individuals, that as we come together

and are built together, as we take our membership vows, our covenant, and we come together and become a community that serves God and others, that's where you access the glory of God in a way that is otherwise not available. That's gotta be what that means. Now some of this is common sense. For example, let's just say, well I believe that I can meet God through the Bible.

I read the Bible and I learn, God speaks to me through the Bible and I learn about God through the Bible, fine. But now listen, you're going to understand the Bible, you're gonna go deep into that Bible infinitely faster if you do it with other people. And if you do it in a church, for example, in the church, you have the repository of what Christians for centuries

have seen as they read the Bible. Don't you want access to that? See, if you just go off on your own, no help, I'm just gonna read the Bible and me, it's gonna take you forever to even figure out a little part of it. I mean, it's common sense to say you're gonna go deeper if you are reading the

Bible in community. It's also true about worship and prayer as you know. There is a connection that happens in the assembled people of God. Worshiping and praying together doesn't happen elsewhere in other ways. David Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of these guys, the British preacher, I often quote kind of a hero of mine, was a hero of mine. It was a preacher in London. He was a preacher from the 1940s to the 1960s. And of course, as you might imagine, someone there, people started to say, oh, we now have the technology to record your sermons and you're a great preacher, so we want to start

taping your sermons. And for a long time, Lloyd-Jones resisted that. And the reason why, well, in the end he gave in, and I'm really glad because we have recordings of them, and I've listened to many of them myself, so I'm very glad he did. Nevertheless, he had a point why he resisted it. Here was the point.

When you consume the content of a sermon in the privacy of your home or car, it is a radically different experience than when you do sermon in the privacy of your home or car. It is a radically different experience than when you do it in the assembly. So he says, think about this. You think about this. At home, you can read the transcript, you can listen as you're walking along,

or you can listen to your car, and you get the same content as if you're here, but here's what you don't get. When you're here, you're in the assembled people of God. You're in the presence of other people who've worshiped and prayed before the sermon comes. And now, for example, right now, you can see how I'm affected by the truth,

and I can see how you're affected by it. You are responding. There's a communal loop, by the way. I can see you, and you can see me. And if I was on a video, or if you were just listening by the way, I can see you and you can see me. And if I was on a video or if you were just listening to me, that loop is totally broken. There is a power when you are listening to the sermon in the assembled presence of other people

who are assembled in the presence of God. And the experience of it will shape you much more deeply than it will if you just consume it individually. See, according to Lloyd-Jones, he says, the sermon is not a product, it's a participation. It'll have a much more profound influence on you if it's a participation. See, it's, where God inhabits his people as a community, as an assembly.

In a way, he does in any other way. In other words, you have access to God and his glory here in a way you don't otherwise have. Not the only access you have, but it's unique access. Do you understand that? But the other thing about this promise, which is remarkable to me and to us, is to say that the church is the place of his glory, where his glory dwells, is unimaginably great. And I mean, I use that word unimaginably deliberately,

because what I mean is to say, if the glory of God is in the church, then it's always going to be breaking out and breaking through our categories, and we must not, we must not fence it in with our small expectations or ambitions. What do I mean? Well, for example, okay, Isaiah chapter six,

read Isaiah chapter six. He's going up to the temple to do what he usually does, pray, die for sacrifice, and one day he sees God. He sees the glory of God. He has a vision of the glory of God, and he sees them high and lifted up on the throne, and his train filled the temple, and he hears the angels shouting, holy, holy, holy,

and it just decimated Isaiah and he was smitten to the ground. He was never the same again. He was utterly transformed. Well now, surely he went to the temple every day probably. Well why did it happen on that day? I'll tell you the reason why, because on one hand the temple was a place where human beings did sacrifices and all that sort of thing. In one way the temple was a human institution, but in another way it was where God's glory dwelt. And God could, any time, break out. His glory could pass by.

His train could fill the temple. Any time. And now, Peter says, that's the church now. That's the church now. Do you believe it? Or are you going to be hemmed in? Are you going to hem the church in by the smallness of your expectations? In 1857, downtown, at the corner of William Street and Ann Street, there was a church. It's not there anymore, by the way. And there was a layman

named Jeremiah Lanfear who was a member of that church and who decided because all around him there were people working, the Wall Street area was already a business district, he decided to have a noontime prayer meeting for Wall Street workers, for people working in the business district, a noontime prayer meeting, briefly an hour. So the first day, he advertised it the first day, 12 noon, nobody showed up. Around 12.20, a few people showed up. But that meeting caught fire. Two years later, there were 10,000, every noonday, there were 10,000 people praying at

noon prayer meetings all around lower Manhattan and then the churches caught fire and in a two or three year period from 1857 to 1860, estimates are anywhere from 50 to 80,000 people got converted and joined the churches of Manhattan. Back when Manhattan had 800,000 people. So up to 10% of the population of Manhattan were converted and brought into the church

in a three year period. Why? God came down. The glory passed by. See? His train filled the temple. 1856, a woman, Mrs. Conville, an English woman named Mrs. Conville,

went to visit some friends in Northern Ireland and decided to help the local church there by visiting house to house to invite people to come to church and to share the gospel with them. And she went back to England after a while feeling like I didn't really see much fruit, but it turned out there was one young man named James McQuilkin that she talked to that thought about what she said

and at one point became converted and started going to church in his Presbyterian church in Kells in Northern Ireland. And his pastor told him to get together with another young man or two I think there were who had recently been converted and said, look, why don't you get together and pray for your friends and begin to share your faith

with your friends and see whether it has an impact on them. So they started doing that. They met every week. They started inviting people in. And after weeks, one other young man found faith. But after a while, it was happening every week. And after a while, there were dozens of young people who had become Christians. The next thing you know, the fire spread.

And there was a meeting over in a nearby town where the young people who had become converted asked to have a meeting at the local church one evening, a testimony service. And there was such interest that so many people showed up, they couldn't fit into the building. And they went outside and they began doing testimonies and praying and talking about the gospel, and it went on for hours and hours and hours. From 1857 to 1860, historians will tell you, 100,000 people out of a population of 300,000 people in Northern Ireland got converted and joined the church. The train filled the temple, God broke through.

His glory passed by. And you say, well, those are interesting kind of Anglo-European stories. Well, yeah, okay. Many of you do know this story, and that is in 1900, there were less than 1% of the Korean population were Christians. And in the first decade of the 20th century,

there was a major revival that broke out, I believe in Pyongyang. In fact it probably broke out at a Bible conference. And by the end of the 20th century about a third of Koreans were professing Christians. Something like that's happened by the way in Eastern Africa. What's going on here? The glory of God. See if you say, the church is one more human institution, half right, it is a human institution and when you get into it, you'll see the flaws. But here's what's wrong.

It's not one more human institution. It's the only one that Jesus started. It's the only one that the Bible says is in dwell with the glory of God. So give up your small ambitions and raise your sights and pray Isaiah 64 verse one. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. That the mountains would melt at your presence. So the first thing we're told here

is about the glory of God that indwells the church. The second thing we're told here is about the glory of God That's in dwells the church. The second thing we're talked or told is not just about the glory of the church but the gifts of the church now this is Similar but but different and just as important Up in verse 5. We've already read this You are being built into a holy priesthood Offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ and then down in verse 10. It says you are a royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And then down in verse 10, it says, you are a royal priesthood that you may declare

the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Now, that's remarkable. He doesn't say to the church, you have a royal priesthood. He says, you are a royal priesthood. He says, you are a royal priesthood, offering sacrifices. What difference does that make? All the difference in the world. In ancient times, virtually every culture had some sense

of the God, or the gods, or the holy, or the divine, and they also knew that human beings, there was a gap, there was a chasm between human beings and God. And you needed a spiritual elite to mediate that. And that's why virtually every single culture, you had temples, priests, and sacrifices. You had temples where you could go, and you had priests,

and the priests were the spiritual elite. They were the holy ones. They were the ones who were much more divine-minded and they would mediate, they would take your offerings and sacrifices to the gods. And so the people were so happy for this spiritual elite because the spiritual elite, in a sense, could interface with the gods.

So every single culture, including, by the way, Israel, had a spiritual elite that did the ministry. In Israel, they were prophets, priests, and kings. And then along comes Christianity. And do you know how radically different? Christianity was, Christianity wasn't just one more religion when it showed up. The Romans considered it, they considered them atheists.

You ever know why? Why in the world would they considered them atheists. You ever know why? Why in the world would they consider them atheists? Because you see, they even knew with Jews, as weird as the Romans thought the Jews were, they had temple, they had a temple, they had priests, they had sacrifices, like everybody else. But the Christians had no temples,

they had no priests, they had no sacrifices. And if you asked them why, they would say, Jesus is our temple. John chapter two and John chapter four. Tear this temple down, meaning his body, and I'll rebuild it in three days. Jesus is our priest. Jesus has offered the ultimate sacrifice for sin,

so we don't need any more sacrifice, we don't need any more priests, we don't need any more temples. And yet't need any more priests, we don't need any more temples. And yet, at the same time, the New Testament says because Jesus is the last and final and ultimate temple, priest, and sacrifice, we all now are the temple. That's what verse four, five, six, and seven is saying.

We're the temple, we're the priests. God has worked through Tim Keller's teaching to help countless people discover Christ's redemptive love and grow in their faith as they learn how the gospel is the key to every aspect of life. This month, we're featuring a brand new book by author Matt Smethurst titled Tim Keller on the Christian Life. by author Matt Smethurst titled, Tim Keller on the Christian Life. In it, he distills biblical insights from Tim Keller's nearly 50 years of sermons, books, and conference messages,

including each of the sermons we've highlighted on the podcast this month. The book explores foundational theological themes from Tim Keller's work, like grace, idolatry, justice, prayer, suffering, and more. It's a resource that we hope will help you apply the gospel more richly to your everyday life. We'll send you a copy as our thanks for your gift

to help Gospel in Life share the good news of Christ's love with people all over the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give to request your copy. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Not only that, if you look more carefully at verse nine, look carefully.

It says, not only that you have a priesthood, you are a priesthood, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. You're a royal priesthood that you may declare. Declaring is the work of prophets who spoke forth the word of God. Priesthood is the word of priests and royal means kings.

And what he's saying is, every one of you, every single Christian is a prophet, a priest and a king. No more elites. What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who through courage and wisdom tells the gospel out. You have the wisdom, the knowledge, the courage to tell the gospel out.

What is a priest? A priest is someone who through sympathy and service loves the gospel in to people. And thirdly, kings are people who organize to figure out how you're gonna do all this. And we know from Ephesians and from First Corinthians and from Romans that every single, the Bible teaches that every Christian,

not just the elites, not just the professionals, every Christian has gifts, spiritual gifts, some more prophetic gifts, some more priestly gifts, some more kingly gifts, but everybody does. What does that mean? Here's what this means. Bottom line, this is so radical, but here's what it means. Sociologists will tell you that human organizations exist

along a spectrum from institution to movement. Institution at one end of the spectrum, movement. Institutions are structured. Movements are more fluid. Institutions are top down. Movements are bottom up. Institutions are almost impossible to change. Movements are very dynamic.

And institutions are united by common rules, but movements are united by common vision. Now here's the question. Many people hate institutions today, especially. Young people, by the way, studies show that millennials dislike institutions. But sociologists will say it's naive. No organization can get anywhere

without some institutional structure. I mean, what's the job description? Where's the money coming from? And by the way, the Bible requires a certain amount of institutional structure. The Bible requires you have doctrinal boundaries and that you take vows. That's what a covenant's all about. And you have certain practices that you're bound to do, like forgiveness and reconciliation.

You're bound to do that. And we have elders and we have deacons. We have people who are overseeing all this, and that means there's institutional structure and it's required. But what we're looking at today tells us that in spite of all that, the church is not mainly an institution. It's certainly not exclusively an institution.

I would even go so far as to say it's not even mainly an institution. What is it? It's a movement. Why? First of all, it's a bottom up. And uncontrollable. And dynamic.

What do I mean by that? Well, when I went to Hopewell, Virginia, right out of college, I had become a Christian just three or four years earlier. And when I was in college, I was in a university environment and all the Christianity I knew was lots of Bible study and reading books and discussing things

and talking about Christianity and art and doctrine and all that. And I showed up in this blue collar town saying, I know exactly what kind of church this ought to be. And I think two people out of my 200 people had finished, had gone to college and most of them under the age of about 50 had not finished high school.

And I just really got at it. I know exactly how this church needs to go, and it wasn't that way at all. God had given these folks all the spiritual gifts because everyone is a prophet, a priest, and a king. But they were different than the ones I had thought of. I mean, in other words, they had gifts of hospitality, of mercy, and all kinds of gifts.

And when the gifts started to get released, God, in a sense, showed us, and me, what kind of church He was calling that church to be in that place and time. And I realized on the one hand, it was wonderful, it was wonderful, but I actually wasn't in control of it. God determined what kind of church it was gonna be by the way in which he inspired his gifts.

Occasionally we saw little glimpses of glory. See, sociologists will also tell you that institutions are, above all, especially highly institutionalized organizations, above all, care about themselves. In other words, our turf, keeping our jobs, making sure we keep our power. But it says our job is to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light.

Who are we declaring that to? The world. The church exists for its non-members. Institutions exist completely and fully for their members. And therefore the church is a dynamic movement. It's uncontrollable. It's bottom up. It's dynamic. It's fluid. It cannot be, it's not a matter of command and control by some powerful human beings. So there's the glory of the church. There's the gifts of the church which shows organic nature. But here's the last question.

Here's the question we have to ask. It's a very big question. In fact, it's the main question. If all the stuff the Bible says about the church is true, and historically, look, we do know what it can do. We have seen, what I gave you, just those three or four examples, is nothing compared to other historical examples of just how the glory of God can come down, break out, pass by,

train fill a temple. But why is it that so few of us have actually experienced anything like this in churches that we've known? Let's admit it. Most churches are more like a club Let's admit, most churches are more like a club than the indwelling of the glory of God. They're more like institutions than a dynamic movement. So why? And I would, the only thing I can say is, since the Bible says it and because historic history actually proves it, then it just means that we've got something in churches, real churches where people really believe. The Holy Spirit's in their lives, they really do believe that in those churches, even if they look rather moribund, they haven't learned how to activate, detonate, ignite. What's there? Well, we'll do that. Well, again, going back to history, every time there's been

ignition, every time there's been detonation, every time God has come down and broken out, it's because somebody begins to have a deep experience of grace. You know, the famous ones, I'm not even gonna read them to you because those of you who are around probably know these by heart. But you know, Martin Luther and John Wesley and people like that, they were struggling

with their religiosity, trying to figure out what does it mean to honor God and be religious and then the gospel of grace, the gospel of radical sheer grace, grab them whole, turn them inside out, change them and the rest is history. But those are the famous ones. They had kingly gifts frankly, as it were. The average person, my favorite example of an experience of grace is Nathan Cole who was a semi-illiterate farmer in Connecticut in

the 1740s who was converted under the preaching of George Whitefield in a field. He was out there preaching in a field and he came and listened and Nathan Cole wrote an autobiography basically, it was kind of like a diary called Spiritual Travels. And he describes what happened, he says, about Whitefield. He says, my hearing him preach gave me a heart wound. And by God's grace, my old foundation was broken up. And I saw that my righteousness could not save me. Now, here's what was going on. He probably thought he was a Christian before that. He probably went to church, likely. But there was no wonder. We've been called to declare

the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light, into his light of wonder. There was no wonder. There was no astonishment. Grace wasn't amazing. It wasn't amazing grace. And when grace becomes amazing, that's the detonation. Now you can see some of that here. Let me just take a moment. There's three things here that tell you,

even right here in this passage about this grace, and let's see whether we can do a little of igniting right now of our gifts, of the glory that's here. So the three things we see here about grace is how free it is, how loved you are, and how expensive it was. How free it is, how loved you are, how expensive it was. How free it is, verse nine, you are a chosen people. I had a

teacher, Bible teacher once, who was showing me what this text meant, and he says, notice, it doesn't say Christians are choice people, it says they're chosen people. Do you know the difference? See, if we were choice people, that means God is working with us because there's something good in us. But if we're chosen people, that means he's just by grace because something good in him decided to come to us and open our hearts.

That's grace, it's free. It is not that I did choose thee, for Lord that could not be. This heart would still refuse thee, hadst thou not chosen me. My heart owns none before thee, for thy rich grace I thirst. This knowing, if I love thee, thou must have loved me first." It's free. We're chosen. We're not choice. Secondly, do you see how loved we are? Because it also says you're not just a chosen people, but you are God's special possession. Now that term, by the way, every single translation is going to translate it differently. It's a hard word. It means treasure.

And it means most treasured possession. Look, let's just say you had almost no assets to your name and suddenly somebody, let's just say a relative leaves you a diamond necklace that's worth five million dollars. Is that your most prized possession? Yeah, yes it is. It's your most prized possession. It's your special treasure. It's worth more than everything else put together.

Okay, for God to say to any human beings, you are my special possession, you're my prize possession, you're my treasure, is for him to say something like this. The whole universe is mine. All the galaxies, all the oceans, the forest primeval, mountains tipped with eternal snow. And yet, they're nothing compared to you.

You are my most prized possession. Jonathan Edwards says, until you know that you are loved like that and treasured like that, everything you do will be selfish. Even the good deeds you do, you'll be doing to try to prove yourself, to try to assure yourself you're okay, try to make sure other people know you're okay. Only when you know you're that treasured and you're no longer empty but you're completely fulld and you're no longer empty, but you're completely full, will you be serving other people, not selfishly, but selflessly.

But last of all, you got to see how expensive it was. Not just that it's free, the grace is free. Not just that it means that you're absolutely loved and treasured, but thirdly, how expensive it was. To me, this is the thing that usually I believe really changes you. And you see this verse, I don't know why in this translation they don't give it, put it in quotes.

You see this verse 10? You're a chosen people, royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praise of him who called you out of darkness into his light of wonders. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now

you have received mercy. That's a quote from Hosea chapter 2 verse 23. And why in the world does Peter take that quote from that place in Hosea and put it here. It only works, you'll understand it if we go back to Hosea. Hosea is about a prophet named Hosea who marries a woman named Gomer and Gomer is unfaithful to him. She has adulterous affairs while he's married to her. She starts having children and he knows they're not his.

In fact, one of them he names Lo-Ami, not mine, not my people. And finally, she leaves him for someone, but he abuses her and sells her into slavery. And God comes to Hosea and says, go love your wife again. And Hosea very simply says, and so I went and bought her. Bought her out of slavery and brought her home

and said, you will live with me, you will be with me. And then God says, then God says, then God says, that's in the same way, my people who are not my people will become the people of God. My people who had not received mercy will receive mercy. And you know what God is saying is someday, he says, I'm going through the same thing with my bride,

my people that you are. They've turned away from me, but I'm going to buy them back." And for Peter to take that verse and to put it here means only one thing, that in Jesus Christ, God did what he said to Hosea he would do. God made the human race for a love relationship with him and we turned away from him. And if any of you have a child or a spouse or anyone who you love dearly, who has spurned you and turned away from you, you know the agony of it except you don't know God's agony

because he's infinitely loving. The greater the love, the greater the agony when it's broken. And God's love is something we can't even imagine. Imagine his agony, imagine his anger, how wrong this is. And yet what he does is he doesn't wipe us out. Jesus Christ called himself the bridegroom,

the bridegroom, remember? At one point he says, how can the friends of the bridegroom fast when the bridegroom's with them? I'm the bridegroom, and he came to earth, and he went into the marketplace of the world, and he bought us by going to the cross. See, not with money, but with his own blood, paid our penalty so that God could say once you were not my people but now you are the people of God, once you had not received

mercy but now you've received mercy. Does that fill you with wonder? To the degree it does, to that degree, your gifts and the glory of God will be activated in our church. Give up your small ambitions, raise your sights high, pray Isaiah 64 verse 1, Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down. Let's pray for a second. Our Father, we thank you for giving us your son to be our bridegroom, to come even though we had gone away from you and to love us again through him and to buy us back. And we, it's when we see that grace and when we see that we're chosen not choice, and when we see that we are infinitely loved and treasured, and when we see at what expense all this is true, then suddenly our minds and hearts are filled with wonder and we can

sing the praises of him who called us out of darkness, you, into your marvelous light. And that activates our gifts and that sometimes will even bring outbreakings of your glory. We want to see that. We're seeking that now, right now as a people. And we ask that you would all make us what we have to be for that to happen through us. Forgive us for hemming in what can be done through our small ambitions and expectations. With this showing us what the church is and then who we are in you, change all that and make us more your servants and vehicles of your grace and glory in the world. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged you and helped you have a deeper understanding of God's Word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2016. 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.