Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Abounding in Love

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Do artists get exceedingly angry when their art is chosen for display at the Met? No! So why would Jonah get exceedingly angry when, in response to his preaching, the Ninevites actually turn away from violence and turn to the living God?  The answer has to do with the love of God. The incredible collapse of Jonah is because he misunderstands God’s love. And the collapses in our lives may very well have the same roots. So let’s look now at how God’s love is a patient love.  Let’s ask two questions: 1) why is God’s patient love not more operative and powerful in our lives? and 2) how can God’s patient love be more operative and powerful in our lives? This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 2, 1990. Series: Jonah. Scripture: Jonah 4:1-10. 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. The book of Jonah tells the story of a man running away from God and about God pursuing Jonah despite his rebellion. This highlights what Tim Keller will be teaching this month, that Jonah is one of the best places to go in the Bible if you want to understand the depth of our sin and the extravagance of God's grace. Jonah 4, 1-10 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why

I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. But the Lord replied, Have you any right to be angry? Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered.

And when the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and he said, It would be better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry about the vine? I do, he said. I am angry enough to die. But the Lord said, you have been concerned about this vine,

though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight, but Nineveh has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" This is God's Word. We've been looking at the story of Jonah and we now get into the last chapter of Jonah, and the last chapter is a surprise chapter. It's the most surprising ending of any of the books of the Bible. If you had

to give it a title, if you gave this whole chapter a title, you might call it, The Incredible Collapse of Jonah. And the reason it's so incredible is this. It's not hard to understand the magnitude of what's happened. We've seen in chapter 1, 2, and 3 that Jonah was originally called to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and preach and call the people to turn from their wickedness and their violence. At first he flees, but then God reclaims him and he goes, and we saw in chapter 3 that he preaches and there's a massive turning of the population toward his message.

They heed Jonah's warning. They turn from their wickedness. Now, if you want to get an idea about what really has happened, it's fairly simple, fortunately, because of current events. You know, Assyria is the old name for what today is called Iraq. And you must realize what God has done. He's called a Jew to go to the capital of Iraq, get up on the streets, to call the population and society to repentance from its violence and its militarism, and to ask them all to turn to the God of Israel. That's a great assignment, isn't it? And the only

difference between then and now is that today, Iraq is a second-rate power. And in that day, it was the ascendant power of the world without equal. That's the only difference. That is what God called Jonah to do. And when he did, and when the people actually began to listen and say, you're right, our militarism, our violence, our oppression, these are all wrong, we turn from them, what do you expect Jonah's response to be? Nobody expects a Jonah chapter 4. Anybody who's following this story along would expect

there to have just been a Jonah chapter 3 verse 11. And that should have said, and Jonah returned to his own land rejoicing. But instead we have a Jonah chapter 4 verse 1 that says, and Jonah was exceedingly displeased. And he says, I'm angry, angry enough to die. Come on! Wait a minute here. And he says, I'm angry, angry enough to die. Come on, wait a minute here. When artists, do artists get exceedingly angry when their art is chosen for display at the Met? Do musicians get exceedingly angry when they are asked to do recitals at Carnegie Hall?

Do ball players get exceedingly angry when they're promoted to the majors? Well, why would a preacher get exceedingly angry when as a response to his preaching, he's actually turned a culture away from violence, oppression, and wickedness to the living God? And the answer is something that we're going to have to dig out for about two or three weeks. We're just going to start today. Because the answer has to do with the love of God. The whole chapter is about God's love. As a matter of fact, you see, that's what Jonah says he's so angry about.

He says, Oh Lord, this is why I fled to start with. I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. What's he doing? He says, God, I do not understand how your love operates. I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me. And God sets out in this chapter to teach Jonah how his love operates. So the whole chapter is about love, and the major, the incredible collapse of Jonah is because of a misunderstanding of God's love. What about you and me? The little collapses and the big collapses in our lives may very well have the same roots.

Do you hear that? And therefore, we need to look this week and next week and maybe the next week about what God's love is like. Now, we're going to start today, and we're only going to talk about one of the lessons we learn in this chapter about God's love. There's several. We're just going to do one, all right?

Just one now. And that is that God's love is a patient love. You learn in this chapter about the patience of God. See, Jonah is struggling with the promiscuity of God's love. Now, we're not going to deal with that this week. The promiscuity. Jonah is struggling with the fact that God would be so promiscuous as to just forgive and bless and throw his love on people of all sorts, regardless of their past and regardless of their pedigree and regardless of what they've done. He's struggling with that. And because he's struggling with the promiscuity of God's love, he misses

the patience of God's love. Jonah, his life depends on the patience of God's love. Jonah has fallen back into the very same sin that God spent the whole rest of the book trying to deliver him from, and he admits it. He says, yep, that's really what I was doing to start with. I'm mad at you, God. And he falls right back into it. And the only thing keeping Jonah from oblivion at this point is the patience of God. The question that I want to use to set up our time at the table is simply this. Why is God's patient love not more operative and powerful in our life? And how can God's patient love be more powerful and operative in our life? Hear that?

Why is it not something that we have more powerfully, that we're not more powerfully aware of? And how can it be more operative in our lives? Those two questions. What do we learn about the patience of God? Simply this. The key teaching of the book of Jonah, at least in this chapter, is that fruitful Christians, prominent Christians, can fall back into old patterns of sin and self-deception

so that only the patient love of God stands between us and oblivion. And the God's patient love is such that He will always bring us back. We're taught about the patient love of God here because Jonah is a perfect example and this is the teaching. Hear this teaching? Here's the point. Prominent and fruitful Christians can fall back into old patterns of sin and self-deception. Now, Jonah's a perfect example of it. You have to remember, not only has he gone through a tremendous spiritual accomplishment in Nineveh, but he also had a narrow experience. Just a couple of verses ago, he was saying, I almost died because I denied my God and almost destroyed

everything. My racism, how I hated Nineveh, my foolishness, my self-righteousness, all of these things almost destroyed everything. What an out-of-escape! I repent, oh Lord, I'll never do that again. I'll never do that again. And here he is back. What does this teach us? It teaches us what we just said. Christians, many Christians, share with many non-Christians a similar misunderstanding about the nature of what a Christian is. A lot of Christians

believe that now that they have the life of God in them, now that they're born again, they're growing, they really can't fall far. And a lot of non-Christians also believe, listen, they say, if a Christian, you born again types, you believe that you're sure you're going to heaven, you ought to be much better than the average person. And so, what an awful lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians believe, is that the essence of a Christian is someone who's a lot better than anybody else. Now listen to me. It's true that in time Christians are better than others, but it's not true that by definition a Christian is a better person than others. No. You have to understand what

the Bible actually teaches is the difference between a Christian and somebody who is not. The moment you become a Christian, the moment you give yourself to Christ, the moment you pass over the line into faith, the moment you are converted, what is there about you that's different than somebody who has not done that? What is it? Here's what it is. Let's just mention two things. First, Christians at first are no stronger than other people except in one thing. They are strong enough to admit their weakness.

They're strong enough to admit their weakness. Let me show you. They're strong enough to admit that they are too wicked to actually come to God without a Savior. They are strong enough to admit that they are too incompetent to run their own lives and therefore must give their lives over to a Master. Now I'll put it this way, and this I think is a great way to show you right now where you stand. A Christian is somebody who says, I am wicked, I am sinful, I am self-centered, I have lived for myself in my own glory, I am proud, I am rebellious,

and in myself I am incapable of real love and real godliness or holiness. What do you think of that statement? Do you believe I just went overboard? Do you believe that's bad for self-esteem? Do you really believe that I just went too far? Do you believe I just went overboard? Do you believe that's bad for self-esteem? Do you really believe that I just went too far? Do you believe, well, you say, I know I've got my faults, but I'd never say that sort of thing about myself. You lack the strength to admit the truth about your weakness. You lack the very thing that Christians have from God.

You lack the one strength that Christians have got over anybody else. They're strong enough to admit they're weak. You see that? That is not something you're capable of without God giving it to you. That's not a strength anybody's got. We don't have the strength to look at ourselves and admit the worst. We don't have the strength without shifting the blame to our family, or shifting the blame to our past, or shifting the blame to our situation. A Christian takes full responsibility and says, No, I'm too bad to run my own life.

I'm too incompetent. I need a king. I'm too wicked to be accepted by God. I need a Savior. Do you hear that? And then secondly, that's the first thing. Christians are not less sinful than non-Christians, but they have one strength, and that is they admit the level and degree and magnitude of their sin. If you think what I just said is too much, you lack the strength to say it. Secondly, secondly, the other thing that makes a Christian different is when you admit your

weakness and you finally turn to Christ and say, oh Lord, because I am nothing, you must be my everything. I trust in you as my King and I trust in you as my Savior. The moment you receive pardon, the moment you say that, at the very same moment, the Spirit of God is implanted in your heart. This is what the Scripture calls being born again. It's also called an imperishable seed. It's the divine nature, the Holy Spirit, the stuff that God's made of.

It's the best way I can put it. It comes into your heart like a seed. And when it comes into your heart like a seed, it's planted there so that it will bear fruit, so it will change the heart. It's like a little yeast, the Bible says, that goes on into the dough, and eventually when the yeast grows up, it'll bring the bread with it. It's like a little seed that goes into the ground and eventually up will come a tree. But now listen, when a seed is planted that does not mean that everything has changed yet.

There's a sense legally, there's a sense even virtually that you are completely new, but it is not true that you are actually completely new. I'm going to repeat this a couple of times because I'm making some fine distinctions. You're legally new, you're virtually new, but you're not actually new. Hey, I know this is a hard thing for some of you to remember. You remember back when you used to have around you a lawn? Do you remember that? Do you remember lawns? And if you had, when I was in Virginia, one of the things that I learned was that if you had a lot of crab grass and you wanted to get rid of it, you could spend all your time pulling the weeds up and that kind of thing.

But what a lot of people would do is they bought something called Zoya grass. Do you know what Zoya grass is? I know these sorts of skills are fading into my background in my life because I don't need them anymore. But Zoya grass were little tiny plugs, just tiny little plugs that you would plant out there in the grass and over three or four years, three or four growing seasons, those plugs would spread out and they were much stronger than the crabgrass or the weed and they killed everything else off and eventually you had

a beautiful lawn and all the blades of grass were uniform and so on. The day that you planted the plugs, the crabgrass did not go. The crabgrass, as a matter of fact, looked pretty much the same, but the crabgrass's days were numbered. Oh, you loved it when you planted. You said, you do not know, but you guys are finished. And in a certain sense, the crabgrass lives under the death sentence. It will be executed. It's only a matter of time. On the day in which

the Spirit of God is planted in your heart, it's like planting those plugs of zoiagrass. On that day, sin no longer can condemn you. The condemning power of sin is gone because you are forgiven. Your sins can no longer create a barrier between you and God. On the day that you say, oh Lord, when you're finally strong enough to admit your weakness and to say, Lord, you must be my Savior on that day, God takes away the barrier between Himself and you. You're adopted into the family.

Your sins are forgiven. And sin no longer has condemning power, but it still has actual power. Do you think that those old patterns of anger and of fear and of dishonesty and denial, do you think those things are all gone away? All those bad habit patterns? No. They're under a death sentence, but they're still there. The condemning power of sin is gone away, all those bad habit patterns? No. They're under a death sentence, but they're

still there. The condemning power of sin is gone forever, but the actual power of sin, though under a death sentence, is still present. And therefore, it can erupt. Therefore, in fact, I don't know if you realize this, this is another thing that a lot of us don't do much anymore, but an animal is not terribly dangerous unless you mortally wound it. Sometimes it gets very nasty under those conditions. Sometimes it realizes it's dying and gets considerably more hostile than before. And on the day that you plant those little plugs, on the day that the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you have mortally wounded your anger, your fear, your self-centeredness, your pride, all those things that have made your life a misery that you haven't been able to overcome.

And very often, instead of it immediately abating, sometimes it seems to erupt worse. Why? It's morally wounded. It's under a death sentence, but it is still there. Do you think that prominent Christians, fruitful Christians, loving Christians, can fall into some pretty bad old sins and self-deception? Yes. Don't get me wrong. Usually when you first come to Christ, the joy of having the condemning power of sin gone overwhelms you. It's great. The Bible begins to get clear to you. Prayer begins to be real. Your burdens come off in prayer. The guilt begins to go way out of your life. You sense a new purpose in life. You have a joy because the condemning power of sin is gone. But the actual power of sin is still present under a death sentence.

Now the reason, I've got to move on because we have a short time this morning. The reason that we do not know how patient God is, is because we do not know how persistent our sin is. We don't know how persistent God's love is, because we don't know how persistent our sin is. I'll show you this in a moment. Sin is subtle, my dear friends. On a day like this, I want to ask you, are you like Jonah? Jonah rationalized his sin. Jonah probably believed, hey, I'm a preacher, I'm a professional guy here, I'm a professional Christian worker. These sorts of things aren't going to happen to me. I'm not going to fall down. Nobody ever

admits sin when it's bewitching you. Chances are you've heard some version of the story of Jonah, the rebellious prophet who defied God and was swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller reveals hidden depths within the story, making the case that Jonah's rebellion also provides one of the most insightful explorations into the secret of God's mercy. As you learn what the book of Jonah teaches about prejudice, justice, mercy, self-righteousness, and much more, you'll gain fresh insight into how to become a bridge builder in today's culture, how to foster reconciliation across lines of division, and with God's help bring

peace where there is conflict. This month when you give to Gospel in Life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book, Rediscovering Jonah, as our thanks for your gift. Just visit GospelInLife.com slash give. That's GospelInLife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. When you decide to disobey God, you don't say, oh, I'm rebelling against my sustainer and my creator and I'm descending to a subhuman degraded mode of existence. You don't do that.

Instead, what do you do? You say, I'm being self-authenticating. I'm being modern. I'm being unrepressed. I'm being practical. How else can you function in my field? Jonah did the same thing. When Jonah originally fled, what do you think he was saying?

Do you say, I'm going to spit in my maker's face? No. What Jonah said is, hey, if Assyria, if Assyria is forgiven by God, Israel is doomed. So I'm going to flee. I'm not going to go and take the message to Assyria. And even though I may die in the process, I will be giving my life for my country." You see, isn't it amazing? His racism, his belief that he was a superior kind of person and his country was a superior kind of country to Assyria, his self-righteousness and pride that would enable him to condemn the greatest city of the world to complete death, he was able to rationalize it as patriotism and self-denial. What are you right now excusing in your own life? What are you rationalizing in your own life?

Think about it. It's still there under sentence of death, but it's there and it will find a way to erupt. It'll still find a way to express itself and put forth its power. In Genesis chapter 4, God comes to Cain, who is angry and depressed. And God comes to Cain like a wonderful counselor and says, Cain, why is your face fallen? Sin is crouching at your door. It's hungry to devour you, but you must master it. Cain, why is your face fallen? Sin is crouching at your door. It wants to devour you, but you must master it. What God was saying to Cain is, Cain, my dear friend, you think your problem is your brother

Abel. You think your problem is due to how other people are treating you. But don't you see, actually, there's a sin in your life. Your pride, your self-centeredness is crouching at your door. It's there in the shadows. It wants to have you. Give it no quarter. Admit it for what it is.

Don't blame your problems on everybody else around you. If you don't see sin as sin, if you're not willing to admit what it is, it will completely dominate you. And it did. In the same way, I beg you, take a look at your life. Stop blaming your situation. Stop rationalizing what's going on. Stop giving it psychological or sociological names. Call it the pride. Call it the self-centeredness. Call it the dishonesty.

Call it the lack of integrity. Call it the impurity. Call it what it is. Don't say, I'm not rebellious, I'm just sad. Don't say, I'm not denying the goodness and wisdom of God, I'm just worried. Don't say, I'm not being immoral, I'm just lonely. Second, first point is, we don't know the patient love of God because we are not willing to admit to a great degree how powerful our selfishness and pride still exists in our

lives. Secondly, what happens if you do find yourself beginning to slide back into old patterns of sin and self-deception? How can you avoid it and what happens if you start doing it? What can you do? Four things, very quickly, then we go to the table. Very quick. Listen, see what happened here. Number one, examine your heart.

God comes to Jonah and what does he say to Jonah? Very interesting. He says, Jonah, look at your motives. He looks in at Jonah and he says, why are you angry? He says, do you do well to be angry? Do you do well to be angry? See that? Now what he's doing at this point is he's saying, Jonah, look at your anger. Why are you angry? What's the root of it? What's the cause? God's a wonderful counselor.

What's the cause of it? Do you have a good motive? Now we're going to look at this in future weeks, but what God is saying is, look for the idols in your life. He's saying, what are you really living for? What are you really resting in? What really are you after? Don't you see when you're angry, it's not so much because of what people have done to

you, but because they're keeping you from reaching a goal that is more important to you than I am. The reason you're worried is not because of your situation but because circumstances out there are endangering a goal that is more important to you than I am. Look at yourself. Sliding back into old patterns of sin begin in the heart. And watch out what happens in that heart because listen if somebody comes to me and says

food doesn't taste good, breathing is hard, what's the problem? It's not the food or the air. The problem is your body is diseased, right? And if you're finding Christianity to be a drag, if you find studying his truth, praying to him, Christian duties and disciplines, if they're a drag, if they're boring. The problem is not with the Christianity.

The problem is that your heart is beginning to go bad. You're beginning to let those old things start to creep on back. Examine yourself first. Secondly, confess sin. Now, you know what I mean by confessing sin? Jonah confessed his sin, and the reason we know Jonah confessed his sin is he must have told somebody or we wouldn't have the book. How do we know about Jonah chapter 4? Jonah must have told somebody, and who in the world would have told anybody

about a story like this that made him look so bad? You know, a lot of people say Jonah is a myth. Find me a myth that makes the hero look as stupid as this one does. Go ahead. You know, C.S. Lewis, who was a wonderful critic, a world-class literary critic, he says, you know, he says, I've read myths and I've read myths and I've read myths. This isn't like a myth. This isn't like these heroic epics. This isn't high and lofty. Why in the world does this thing make Jonah out to again and again and again look like a total jerk? The answer is, it must have happened, and the only way we could possibly know is if he was willing to tell somebody about it.

Confession means unmask the sin, call it by its own name, and be accountable to somebody else. Tell somebody about it. Now look, when God came to Cain, you know what he was saying to Cain? He was saying, name the beast. Sin is crouching at the door. What Cain was saying to God was, God, I'll tell you what the problem is. It's my uppity, goody-two-shoes brother Abel, who everybody prefers over me, and the reason I'm depressed is because of the unfairness of it. But actually, at the door was crouching envy and self-pity.

And what Cain should have said is, Oh Lord, you're right, my brother is uppity and he's a very hard person to endure, but the reason that I'm miserable, the reason I'm in the state I'm in, is because of my infernal need to be the center of attention. It's because of my jealousy. It's because you're not enough for me, and oh Lord, I'm going to realize that whatever I really

need you'll give to me, I repent of that jealousy, I called it by its name, and if he had named the beast, it could not have devoured him. But he refused to name it. Maybe he psychologized it. Maybe he rationalized it. Maybe he set the blame off. But the beast in the shadows pounced. Because two verses later we read what? And Cain said to his brother Abel, let us go out into the field. And when they were out in the field, Cain attacked his brother and killed him. He was devoured. Jonah unmasked the sin, called it by name, publicly, so millions of people throughout all the rest

of the history of the world would know what a fool he was. We're not asking anything like that of you. Talk to one other person. Unmask your sin. Confess your sin to God and to somebody else and be accountable for it. Thirdly, make sure you realize that God's patient love is the thing that will keep you out of despair. When you first become a Christian, you say, I know I'm saved simply because of God's love, but you don't believe it. Because it takes, after a number of years, when you see how often you've broken His promises,

how often you've fallen down, and you begin to hear this voice in your heart that goes like this, and you call yourself a Christian. Why should he ever talk to you again? Why should he listen to you again? Why should he hear your prayers? Why should he ever accept you? And you know the reason why those thoughts haunt you? They haunt you because you don't really believe that you're a sinner saved by grace.

You really thought, hey, by being a good person, God will accept me. And then when you see that you're not so good, when you see the persistence of your stubbornness, the persistence of your actual sin, you begin to wonder why God will accept you. Because you haven't yet grasped experientially that which you knew intellectually, and that is that God's love is unmerited, undeserved and free, and therefore unending and infinitely persistent. It's patient love. And when you realize that, you begin to develop a comfort and you develop a certainty and you develop a foundation. You look at His patient love and you say, that's my hope.

Lastly, seek reality. The grace in your life, the strength in your life, is like a muscle. It's not like a light. You know, the electricity stays in these circuits. Anytime I turn the light on, it's there. Do you think the strength and grace of God in your life is like that? No, it's more like the strength of a muscle. If you're not constantly using a muscle, first it stiffens and then it atrophies.

If you're not praying, if you're not repenting, if you're not spending time with other Christians, if you're not seeking to live an upright life, the grace in your life atrophies. Like a candle, it flickers and it goes down and down and down. Seek Him. Draw near to Him. He will come. Examine yourself. Confess your sin and be accountable to somebody. Do not fall into despair when you repent or else you really forget the patient love of God, the gospel of His patient love, and always seek for reality. And maybe there's somebody here right now that says, now wait, you're telling me that it's possible to slide out, to backslide out of a great life of reality with God, the strength to admit my weaknesses, the knowledge that

I'm completely welcome at his table as his child. And you're out there saying, you know, I've never lost a faith like that because I've never had it. I've never slid out of a faith like that because I never really possessed it. Therefore, today, instead of picking up the bread and picking up the cup when it comes around, pick up Christ. In that case, don't come to the table. You're not ready for that. When it comes around, say, oh Lord God, my job is to give you my heart. Here's my heart. I offer it to you promptly, sincerely. Forgive my sins and enable me to live henceforth to you." As we come to the table, keep these things in mind. Please turn to the confession of

sin. As we've been doing for months, I'm going to read slowly the Ten Commandments, and there'll be a time of silent confession. The words in italics are simply ways of helping you to work these commandments into your life. Listen. God spoke these words and said, I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me. You shall not make to yourself a graven image nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Honor your father and your mother. You shall do no murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, all your mind and strength. This is the great and foremost commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and prophets together. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We pray you of your mercy, forgive what we have been, amend what we are, direct what

we shall be, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Take a moment, confess your sins before Him. I'm going to try to get a little bit of a better view of the water. Amen. Friends, listen to these words of comfort. You remember in the beginning we read, He who is seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. And then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral,

those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." Did you hear? Those are words of comfort. You know why? You saw who was thrown into the lake of fire? Oh my, the cowardly, the immoral. All right, well, then who is it that's received into the blessedness of the Father? Is it the courageous? Is that what it says? Is it the perfectly moral? Is that what it says? Oh no, it's the thirsty. It's the ones who are strong enough to admit they've got nothing with which to buy this water of life and they must throw themselves completely on the mercy of God. Are you there this morning?

The Lord's Supper is for people, one, who are strong enough to be weak and who have made a profession of faith and have received Christ as Savior. Two, you are members of a church. It doesn't have to be this church. It's members of some church, some place where you've publicly identified with Jesus Christ. And number three, you are willing today to forsake the sins that you know that are part of your life. You're willing not just to feel sorry for them, but to be cleansed of them. If so, welcome to the table.

Let's begin with a prayer of thanksgiving. Pardon me, let's begin. Let me read to you the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper. The apostle Paul said, I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the Lord's death

until he come." Let's pray. All glory and all thanksgiving belong to you, Almighty God, Heavenly Father, because in your great mercy you gave your only Son, Jesus Christ, this duty to take upon Himself our nature, to suffer death on the cross, so that we could take upon ourselves His nature. And therefore, here we offer to you, ourselves, our souls and our bodies, to be a reasonable holy and living sacrifice. And we ask that you would accept the sacrifice of praise and that you would descend with your blessing and grace into our lives even as we partake of these elements, which we partake of now in obedience to His ordinance and command.

In Jesus' name we pray, 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 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 recorded in 1990. 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.