Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Tale of Two Cities

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

We’re in a series tracing the single storyline of the Bible—the single story that tells us what’s wrong with the human race, what God has done about it, and how history is going to turn out in the end.  We’ve started by looking at the beginning of the biblical story, at what’s wrong with us. We’re at the end of this section of Genesis, at a particular passage that’s not often preached on. We learn three extremely important things in this passage. We learn about 1) the ruin of Cain, 2) the culture of death, and 3) the future city of grace.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 1, 2009. Series: Bible: The Whole Story - Creation and Fall. Scripture: Genesis 4:11-26. 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 and Life. The Bible isn't a series of disconnected stories, each one a little moral for how to live. On the contrary, it's actually primarily a single story, an account of how the world was made and ruined, how it was rescued through Jesus Christ, and how someday it's going to be remade into a new heavens and new earth.

Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller is teaching on this central storyline of the Bible, and what that means for our lives today. The scripture reading this morning is taken from the Book of Genesis, chapter 4, verses 10 through 26. The Lord said, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wonderer on the ground. It will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wonderer on the earth." Kane said to the Lord, "'My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land and I will be hidden from your presence. I will be a restless wonderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the Lord put a mark on

Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod east of Eden. Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born I read. And I read was the father of Mahoochahel. And Mahoochahel was the father of Mahoochahel. And Mahoochahel was the father of Lamek. Lamek married two

women, one name Adah, the other Zilah. Adah gave birth to Jabel. He was the father of those who lived in tents and raised livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all who played the harp in flute. Zilah also had a son, Tupacane, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tupacane's sister was Nehama.

Lesmick said to his wives, Adah and Zilah, listen to me, wise of Lemick, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then lay back 77 times. Adam lay with his wife again and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth saying, God has granted me another child in place of able since King killed him. Seth also had a son and he named him Enoch. At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord. This is the word of God. In this series of sermons we're trying to trace out the single storyline of the Bible.

Each week we've started by saying the Bible is not primarily a disconnected set of little stories, each with a moral, each with a lesson on how to live. Primarily, it's a single story telling us what's wrong with human race, what God has done about it, and how history is going to turn out in the end. And we've started by looking at the beginning of the biblical story, what's wrong with us, the Bible continually tells us what's wrong with us here in Genesis 1 to 4, and we're at the end of the section of Genesis. And this particular part is neglected somewhat. It's not preached on a great deal.

There's a couple of reasons why. One of them is a question that the reader, but devil's the reader, at least the modern Western reader. So here's Adam and Eve, and they have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, so there's this young man, Cain, who's run out into the world. And he says, oh, I'm afraid,

now the people will attack me. Who? And Cain lay with his wife, where'd she come from? And he built a city, populated by who? And if you take the text seriously and historically like I do, and a lot of other people do, there's actually all sorts of possibilities, but here's what I think would be helpful as to help you be good readers of biblical narrative. Biblical narrative is incredibly selective and spare. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together, you're constantly surprised having read Mark,

and maybe an event or an incident in Mark, when you get to Luke, which will tell you about the same event, Luke will very often give you about the same event, Luke will very often give you more details and you'll see there was a lot more going on in that event than Mark told you about. Mark is very spare. And you'll say, well, why didn't Mark tell me there were another, there was another angel there, this person was there, where somebody was coming with that. And the answer is, the reason why biblical narrator, the writer, doesn't tell you all kinds of information that you sit there and want to know about, is because it doesn't help

him get his point across. So the point of Genesis 4 is to teach us some things, and if he doesn't tell us things that we want to know about, it's because it's not necessary in order to understand the point, the teaching, the truth. And so you just have to be a little bit willing to recognize that the point of reading this text is to learn what the Lord, who is the ultimate author of every part of the Bible, wants to tell you. And I don't know where all these other people came from, however, here's what we do learn.

Three very important things. They're rather broad, but they're extremely important. We learn here about the ruin of can, the culture of death, and the future city of grace. Very important. The ruin of can, the culture of death, and the future city of grace. Very important. The ruin of Cain, the culture of death, and the future city of grace. Now, let's start with the ruin of Cain. If you remember last week,

when Cain kills his brother Abel, the first thing God says is, where is your brother Abel? Not that God doesn't know, but he asks Cain. And then Cain gives a very cold answer and says, how do I know am I my brother's keeper? Ooh, you know, I is nurse made, why ask me?

And now God comes back and says, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. That's a strong statement. You would think when God says that, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground, that the next thing you would do would be to smite him to the ground himself, to kill him, to take his blood. But as we see, God doesn't do that. He doesn't do it.

God is doing absolutely everything he possibly can to give an opportunity for Cain to repent. That's the one thing I think we're supposed to get, one of the things we're supposed to get here. God is doing everything so that Cain can repent, giving him every bit of space, every opportunity. Why? Martin Luther has a great definition of sin. His definition of sin in Latin was homo-curvitus in say, which means literally sin is man curved in upon himself.

And what Luther means by that, and it's absolutely right, is the Bible defines sin as always focusing on yourself, always choosing yourself over God or others, always placing yourself in the center, always. And what that means is, yes, of course, you do bad things, but what's brilliant about that and cutting and penetrating about this definition is sin determines that even when you do good things, even when you help the poor, even when you enter into friendships, even when you come to church and study the Bible and try to obey the Ten Commandments,

it's always about you. You always relate to God, sin determines that you relate to God and other people only in such a way and only to the degree that it furthers your agenda, that things are going your way, that these people God or other people that you're relating to are doing things the way you think they should be done, as long as it gives you the self image you want to have or you want to project.

And as soon as it becomes something that's very costly, as soon as a relationship with God or other people is very costly, you are out of it. Why? Because even when it looks like we're serving God and other people, we're actually serving ourselves. That's how insidious sin is. But repentance goes to the root of that. Repentance goes absolutely to the root of it. It means you get out of yourself, you take yourself out of the center and you begin to get the favor of God and you begin to heal the blindness and the hardness

and the pride that sin brings into your life. And therefore, there is nothing more important than repentance, nothing. But look what Cain does. Know what he says? He says, he's crying in a way. He said to the Lord, he cries out. He's upset. He's sorrowful.

Maybe he's weeping. I don't know. but he says, what? My punishment is more than I can bear, and here's the tragedy. There's a kind of sorrow, there's a kind of weeping, oh, I'm so sorry for what I've done that is just as self-absorbed, just as self-centered as they sin that you're crying about. Notice he is not saying, oh, what it cost you, oh Lord, and you're honoring glory, oh, what it cost my brother able,

oh, I can't bear the thought of my brother laying there in his own blood. No, what he's saying is, I'm really upset about what's gonna happen to me. He is sorry for the consequences of the sin, not for the sin. He is obsessed with the cost to himself, not to God or other people. In other words, he's sorry for himself. He's not sorry for his sin. And there's a kind of sorrow, a kind of apparent repentance, a kind of weeping and weeping over

what you've done wrong, which actually makes you more self-centered and self-absorbed than ever. Makes it worse. And therefore, since this is the first point, we got to move because these points are actually so broad and so important, and yet we could talk about them forever, but here's what this means. If repentance is at the bottom of the ruin of the human race, if repentance was something so easy to miss and think you're doing it when you're not, then you should do everything to foster the skill of repentance in your life. When people point a finger at you or come to you and say, you've done this wrong, what is our first instinct? What's our first instinct? What do you, you don't understand. What are you talking about? How dare you? You're the one to talk. Instead, the first thing our heart should be saying is maybe,

maybe, maybe. If repentance is that important, that crucial and that slippery and that difficult, we should be a community of people that help each other repent, that do it very, very quickly, that are quick to say, well, here's what I can say, I did wrong. At the heart of the ruin of the human race is the inability to repent. That's the first point. Second point, seems to go away, but we'll get back actually to that. The second point we learn about is that sin doesn't just ruin the individual life, it ruins the culture. It doesn't just ruin our individual lives. It ruins human society and culture. What we see here in the descendants

of Cain from verses 17 onto the bottom is extremely telling. On the one hand, we see that even though human beings are sinful, they are still in the image of God. You know why they are creating culture. Let me scroll you back to Genesis 2, if you were here. When we were in Genesis 2, we saw that we were made in the image of God. That means we reflect God. Well, who do we reflect? We are reflecting a creator God. And because we've reflect a creator God in whose image we're made, we ourselves are creative. And how does that work itself out? When God put Adam and Eve into the garden and said, be fruitful and multiply and have dominion, gardening is neither leaving the ground as it is nor is it ruining it. Gardening is creatively rearranging the raw material of the ground as it is, nor is it ruining it.

Gardening is creatively rearranging the raw material of the ground, so as to bring about produce, to produce things, to produce food and other kinds of flowers and other kinds of plants that help human beings flourish and grow and live. And we said, that's what culture is. Gardening is the kind of paradigm for what is culture?

Culture making is this. You take the stuff, the raw material of the world, and you produce things for human life and flourishing. So when you take the raw material of sound and human experience and you produce music and narrative, that's the arts. And when you take the raw material of the physical world, you produce technology and the sciences. When you take the raw material of the biological raw material and re-arrange it for human flourishing, it's medicine and other things.

And even though Cain and his descendants are twisted by sin, they're still producing culture. So you'd have down here animal husbandry in verse 20 and you have harp and flute, we have music in verse 21 and we have technology, tools, bronze and iron in 22. So they're producing culture, but this culture is now a culture of death. See, originally, when God put Adam and even the Garden, and he said, be fruitful and multiply and have dominion, what he was actually saying was, I want you to rearrange things. I want you to create a culture that supports life by producing products that serve people.

I want you to life through service. That's the meaning of culture, but look what we have here. First of all, we have a culture of oppression and secondly violence. Here's oppression. Verse 19, Enlamic married two women. Now, Genesis 2, 24, tells us the original plan was for a man to leave his father and mother in cleave to his wife, not wives. That's Genesis 2.24. So polygamy is not the design of marriage at all, but all through the rest of the Bible, pretty much all you have is polygamy. Now Robert Alcher, the great Jewish expert on biblical literature, says, if you know how

to read the book of Genesis, you will know that what are the main subtext of the book of Genesis. If you read all through the stories, from here down through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, et cetera, one of the main subtexts and therefore one of the main points of the book of Genesis is that polygamy is an absolute disaster. If you don't see that from reading the book of Genesis, Robert Alder says, you just don't know how to read a text. It is a disaster for everybody involved, but especially for the women who, by definition,

are disempowered, they're oppressed. And what we have is, we have cultural forms that now lead to oppression here. But that's not all. Down here, and Lemmech said to his wise, listen to me, wise of Lemmech, hear my voice, I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me, if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lemmech, 77 times. Oh my word, look at this. First of all, the word wound and injured is a word for bruise. Just bruise, scratch.

And the word for young man is actually best translated lad. It means a boy or a best and adolescent. And Lamek is boasting that if even a kid scratches or bruises him, he'll take his head off literally. And when he says, if Cane is avenged seven times, Lemmex, 70 times seven, seven, was a symbolic number of perfection. And therefore to say, I will be avenged 77 times,

seven times 70, or 77 times, depending on how you translate it, it's actually hard to translate. What Lemmex is trying to say is, I will never give up revenge. I will never lay aside my anger. I will never, ever, ever forgive anybody, forever wronging me.

And he's boasting about it, and he's proud. Look at the violence, and look at the pride. And what this is not my life to serve you, which is the whole idea behind gardening, I say, but your life, say, to serve me. It's amazing and it's violent. And what you have here is that the human culture is twisted by sin.

You no longer have got a culture based on life through service, upon power and exploitation. Now, the other thing we see, and this is very important to recognize, is that the culture flows out of the city. The very, very first time that the word city is used anywhere in the Bible, and therefore the first time it's actually actually mentioned in history is in verse 17, Cain lay with his wife, he began to produce progeny and then Cain was building a city.

Building a city. Now the word city, this Hebrew word city does not mean a place filled with lots and lots of people and you and I think of city versus town or village, we think of numbers. But the word city meant a fortified settlement. And it's extremely important to understand that culture begins to develop. As the first time the Bible talks about human culture, the first time the human culture begins to develop, and that's the thing that God has told Adam and Eve to do, is build, you know, develop culture, civilization. The first time it develops is after a city is built.

And Henry Blochet, the French scholar, French Christian scholar says this, it is no doubt significant that in Genesis 4, progress in the arts and engineering comes from the city of the canites. Nevertheless, we are not to conclude from this that civilization as such is the fruit of sin. Such a conclusion would lead us to the views of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

The Bible condemns neither the city for it concludes all history with the vision of the city of God, nor art and engineering. Now, what's Blischer saying? What did he bring in Rousseau? Here's what I brought in Rousseau. In the 18thth century, Russo and the Romanticists tried to understand why there's so much violence and oppression in the world, and they decided to blame the city. And what they said is human beings, human nature is basically pristine and beautiful and wonderful and good, but society teaches people to be violent and selfish. And therefore, the idea of Rusousseau and the Romanticists was that savages, actually, natives, people away from cities

would be much more likely to be good and peace loving. Benjamin Franklin, being the very cagey man that he was, he was trying to get during the Revolutionary War, he wouldn't have meant to Paris to do diplomacy, trying to get the French on our side. He was very, very careful to wear coonskin caps and rather hairy breeches. And in other words, he was very hard to look like a savage

or a native to make sure people thought there'd be some more virtue here. And of course, we all know now, everybody knows now that what Rousseau said there was an absolute crock. That cities are not necessarily places of more savagery than native tribes in the bush, or the wilderness, this is not true at all. However, the romantic idea, the romanticist's idea, many scholars have pointed out the romanticist's idea that somehow cities are breeders of sinful behavior, and people who live in the country are more virtuous, is actually something that's passed into the American psyche and actually into the American Christian psyche

so that we have a tendency to have a very negative view of cities, but it's not that Bible does not have a negative view of cities at all. At all. Looking for a new way to deepen your faith and understanding of Christianity this summer? If you are, we'd like you to consider the new city, Catechism devotional. Based on the historic Catechisms of the Christian Church, this devotional offers 52 weeks of thought provoking questions and answers that explore the foundational beliefs of the faith.

Each week includes a scripture passage, a prayer and a brief meditation that will challenge and inspire you. Commentaries are written by contemporary pastors, such as John Piper, Timothy Keller, and Kevin DeYoung, as well as historical figures such as Augustine, John Kelvin, and Martin Luther. The new City Catechism Debotional is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel Unlifes share the hope of Christ's love with people all over the world.

So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. When God sends the people of Israel from Egypt into Canaan, he will not let them be exclusively aggriried. He commands them to build cities in the book of Numbers. When God sends the book of Numbers.

When God sends the people of Israel out into exile in Babylon, that pagan, awful city that actually took them prisoner, and they really were there by it. They were prisoners. What does he say? He says, seek the peace and prosperity of this city. Pray for it. Love it. Care for it.

You know, make it a good place to live. When God sends Jonah his prophet to Nineveh the big bad pig in the city of Nineveh, the capital of the Syrian empire, the greatest city of the world at the time. At the very end he looks at Jonah and says, look at 120,000 people who don't know the right hand from their left. I love the city. How could you not love a city that size with all those needy people? Why don't you love the city?

And of course, the most amazing thing of all is that when you get to the end of the book of Revelation, the end of the history, actually we're gonna go there at the end of this series, when God has the world in the condition he wants it in. When he finally has the world exactly the way he wants it, it looks a lot like New York. Without the graffiti and a few other things.

It's a city. The Bible is amazingly positive about cities. Why? The reason it's a positive about cities is because when God made Adam and Eve creative, when He made them creative, it was inevitable that we build cities. Cities are places of creativity. Cities are places where culture is forged. That's the reason why culture does not begin to happen until there's a city. Now why? Well, I can give you a historical reason, but I can also give you a logical reason. The historical reason is the fact is a city was any

settlement with a wall, and that wall created stability. And it was out there when somebody did something wrong, people just did blood feuds back and forth, and they killed each other back and forth, and they revengeed each other. It was in the city that you had jurisprudence. It was in the city that you could have cases heard by judges and things could be dealt peacefully. You could have rule of law develop. It was out there, a subsistence living. You made your own clothes, you made your own, you could grow your own food, you did everything but in cities, you know, some people are better at making tools and some people are better at making food and some people are better at making tools, and some people are better at making food, and some people are better at making clothes. Now you have an economy. You have specialization.

You have goods and services. And it was inside the wall. It's not the size of this settlement, but the stability of it. It was in cities. The human culture was able to develop at all. Well, you say, that's fine now. We don't need a wall.

We don't have walls around cities, where there are walls. There are great tourist attractions, but we don that's fine now. We don't need a wall. We don't have walls around cities. Whether there are walls, they're great tourist attractions, but we don't do that anymore. We don't need that. So cities aren't important for culture anymore. Oh, yes, they are. They are still where, they're still the places by their nature that culture flows from which culture flows.

So as cities go, so goes the culture. You say, why? Well, I guess cities are places of density and diversity. Cities are places where there's more people like you than anywhere else, you know. And also more people unlike you than anywhere else. So for example, let me show you how it works on culture. First of all, there's more people like you than anywhere else.

So let's just say you're a violinist, and you're the best violinist in the state of pick-a-state. And you won the state competition. You're the best. And you get off the train in Penn Station or Grand Central Station. And to your heart, you walk by some person playing the violin on the platform, people throwing money into a little violin case, and she's better than you.

And you go, oh no. And you start to, you're going to be banned. So you start to practice and you dig down deep, and everybody feels that way. There's cities are places of massive zillions of people like you, more people like you than anywhere else. And that makes you dig down deep, but it's also true that it's at cities are places of more people unlike you than anywhere else. There's a diversity here, you'll never see anywhere else, you'll meet people that you never otherwise would have met unless you went to a city.

And as a result, you have your question. Everything you do is questioned. Everything you do, you have to compare and contrast, and it makes you think creative thoughts that you never would have had otherwise. And also, many of the things that you came here thinking you were going to do, you continue to do, but only after you've done a lot more thinking about them now

because you're in cities. And because of the density and because of the diversity, because of the resilience of people unlike you, and the resilience of people unlike you, this is a crucible, this is a furnace, out of which flow, new and creative and innovative ideas, and this is a result of what comes out of this city goes out in the culture. And as a city goes, so goes the culture.

And yet, cities are affected by sin. The density, the fact that there's so many more people like you here competing with you, should be stimulant, it's simulation and it is stimulant, it's great, but because of sin it's also exhausting as doggy dog and it's at least a burnout. And the diversity, all the people who are very different than you. It should be a stimulation to creativity, but, and it is, but it's also a place of conflict, constant conflict, and fighting and division. But most of all, at the heart of cities is a battle. Will the culture be a culture in which we make products supporting life to serve others or

basically we're doing our work, we're making our products, we're doing, you know, we're working in the city and we're creating culture to make a name for ourselves, to get our own glory, to a crew power and to exploit other people. Is human culture mainly my life to serve yours, or your life to serve me? And that leads us to our final point. It's very hard to live in cities not being sucked into the culture of power,

being sucked into burnout, being sucked into conflict. How are you gonna get the strength to be in the city? And by the way, if you wanna make a difference in society, if you don't want to just have a happy life, just have a happy life, you probably don't want to be here. Because it's because of what? Because of the competition, because of the conflict, because of the density and diversity. But if you want to make a difference in society, if you want to make a difference in how human

life goes, then you want to be in cities. And yet it takes a tremendous power to avoid being sucked in as a whisper. It's been a spiritual power in poise to not be sucked into the poisonous distorted heart of human culture, especially as it's taking effect in cities. So how do you get that power? Lastly, there's a future city of grace that God is developing. How do we know that? Well, at the very very end of the end of this patch after it says, and Adam lay with his wife again and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth saying, God has granted me another child in place of abl. Seth had a son, see, a new line. and at that time men began to call in the name of the Lord.

The word name comes up twice in this text. When Cain built a city, he named it, not after God, like Jerusalem or something like that, the city of God's, the Lord's peace. He didn't name it after God. He named it after his own son. And in Genesis 11, the culmination of the line of the canites, they build the Tower of Babel, which is a skyscraper, which is a city. And the reason why the canites build this great city of Babel

is to make a name for ourselves. Genesis 11 verse 4. We're going to make a name for ourselves. Genesis 11 verse 4. We're going to make a name for ourselves. And that's what's wrong with cities. And that's what's wrong with culture. When you do work to make a name for yourself, when you go to cities to make a name for yourself, and that's, by the way, why almost everybody comes to New York. When work is really about you, not about producing products for human flourishing, when sex is really about you, not to enter into a relationship which you serve and you form a family and you bring about children and human flourishing, when it's about you, when it's to get a

name for yourself, it creates the culture of death. And the city is producing a culture of death. But there's a new line of people that God begins. And they're not there to make a name for themselves, but to call the name of the Lord, to live life for God's sake and to live life for their neighbor's sake. And that produces two kinds of societies. One based on power, one based on service,

one based on making a name for themselves and one saying, all I wanna do is honor the Lord's name. I wanna have his name put on me. I wanna be like him. That's pretty fascinating. Where do these two groups of people live? Well, they actually live in the same place because Jesus says in His famous sermon on the Mount

to His disciples, you are a light of the world. You are a city on the hill. Let your good works show shine that the pagans see them and glorify your Father. And what Jesus Christ is saying there is that the line of Seth, the believers in God, and then eventually, the believers in Christ, are supposed to be an alternate city in every city.

We're supposed to create a human society in which we're calling on the name of the Lord rather than trying to make a name for ourselves, in which case that will transform everything. The way sex is used, way money is used, way power relationships aren't brought about. The way families work, way business practices are conducted, the way we spend our money, everything. And Jesus says, I want you to be a city on a hill, which means I want the city around you to see your good deeds.

And good deeds doesn't just mean rectitude, it means service. In other words, the way you know you're part of the line of Seth, the way you know you're part of the city based on grace. The city of people calling on the name of the Lord, is whereas the city of Cain outside is suspicious of you because you don't have the right beliefs. But you, you inside the city,

you love the people around you, even though they don't believe it all like you do. You go to the mat for them, you sacrifice for them. So that's what God said in Jeremiah 29, when he says, yes, that city oppressed you. Yes, that city persecuted you. Yes, that city will persecute you, but I want you to live in love and service toward them.

How do you get the power to do that? You know what this is actually saying? Because actually, first Peter, in first Peter, the same thing is said that Jesus says on the, he's even more explicit, he says, live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. It doesn't mean that they might accuse you of doing wrong, they will.

Jesus and Peter are saying that if you want to be part of the God's city of grace, the alternate city in every city, the city based on the name of God instead of making your own name, the city based on life through service, not death through power, then you are going to be constantly misunderstood. If we live the life we should in New York City, pouring ourselves out to make this a great place, we expect to be persecuted. That is, we expect certain points to be misunderstood, vilified, maybe even attacked, and we're not going to get upset about it because that we were told that's part of what it means to

not be part of the city of man, to not be part of the city of Cain, to not marginalize and use power over our opponents, but basically serve them the way Christ served us. Oh, what do you get the power to do that? Where do you get this power that we're supposed to have? So we're not sucked into the ways of the world here. When Lammock at the end of his poem, his song, says, can is avenged seven times, and Lammock's seventy-x 77 times or 70 times seven.

Does that remind you of anything? When the disciples asked Jesus, how often do we have to forgive? He said not just seven times but 70 times seven. And they said, Lord, how could we get the grace and the power to forgive people infinitely? You know what Jesus was doing? He was remembering the taunt of Lambic and he was reversing it. You see, Lambic was saying, endless anger, I will never, never let go of my anger. I will never let go of my anger.

I will always hold my anger, endless anger, endless revenge. I know what Jesus is saying. The endless anger of human sin will be met by the endless love of God. And Jesus is saying, Lamek, though he had no right, said he would never let go of his anger. He would be endlessly revinging.

You know what Jesus is saying? I, the Lord, I'm the only one that have the right to say that. I have the right to be endlessly angry at the human race, but I won't be. I'm going to be as merciful to you as to Cain. One of the most interesting things, nobody knows what the mark of Cain is. Okay, there we go. Biblical selectivity again. Cain says, I'm so upset. Okay, there we go, biblical selectivity again. Cain says, I'm so upset, he's not repenting, but I'm upset, somebody's gonna hurt me. So what does God do?

He puts a mark on Cain, and that mark somehow protects him. We have no idea what it is. Was it a tattoo? What was it? Was it a little dog? Mark's sick him, get him, no. Only nobody knows. One commentator actually said that, Maybe it was a dog named Mark.

Can't follow all the commentaries. But all we know is this, that though Cain deserved to be smitten to the ground, he got mercy. How can a just God be merciful to Cain? How can a just God say, I will be endlessly forgiving to you, very much the opposite of what Lamex said. I mean, how can God give us endless love and mercy here? Because the three things that Cain says are going to fall on him actually fell on Jesus.

Do you see what those three things are? It's up here in verse 14. I will be a restless wanderer on the earth. And whoever finds me will kill me, and I will be hidden from your presence. But who was the restless wanderer on the earth? Jesus said, Foxes have holes, birds have nest, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Whoever finds me will kill me, yes, in the garden they found him, and they took him to the cross and killed him. And on the cross, he even lost the presence of God.

My God, my God, why is that for sake of me? And there's the answer. First of all, how I just God can be merciful because God came to earth in Jesus Christ and he took the curse that really should fall on us. See, he curses Cain and then he marks him for mercy because the real curse fell on us so that the blessing on Jesus and on God himself so that the blessing could come to us. And that's how he can do it. And when you know that, when you know he did all that for you, that means you no longer have to prove yourself or make a name

for yourself. When you get baptized, we put the name of the Lord on you. And that means work now is just about work. It's not about getting a name for myself. And sex is not just a way of saying, I love you to the person you're married to. In other words, these things now become ways of serving others instead of ways of making a name for yourself. And now you're part of the city of God By grace. And you know where it all starts? Do you know how you can more and more make yourself a person who's really living like a citizen of the city of God instead of the city of

man? Repent. Repent every time somebody gives you the opportunity. Repent. And you won't be ruined. You'll be restored and made a citizen. Savior, if of Zion's city, I by grace a member him. Let the world derider pity. I will glory in thy name. Fading is the worldling's pleasure. All its boasted pumps and show, lasting joys, and lasting treasures, none but Zion's children know. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have

given us citizenship in your city. We sit down now at your table. We're in your family, members of your city, and we pray that you would show us what it means to live lives in accordance with these great truths of the gospel. It's in your name. Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller. If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a gospel and life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelonlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 2008 and 2009. The sermons and talks you here on the gospel and life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017. Well Dr. Keller

was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.