Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Abraham and the Torch

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

We’re looking in the Bible at people who have had direct encounters with the raw presence of God. But this situation in which Abraham has a meeting with God is one of the weirdest stories in the Bible. It’s also the most significant passage for me in all of the Old Testament. In this passage, Abraham asks how he can know that God will do what God’s promised. When God responds, Abraham knows what’s going on: a covenant ratification ceremony. This was the making of a contract. Abraham knew right away, but he didn’t figure what would actually happen. No one on the face of the earth would figure what would actually happen. We’ll look at what happened. And then to apply this, we’ll see 1) the problem is we need an anchor for our souls, and 2) how we can get it. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 3, 1996. Series: Daring to Draw Near. Scripture: Genesis 15:1-21. 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 teaches us that while God is infinite, He is also intimate. In other words, it's possible for us to draw near to Him. But what does it actually look like to draw near to God? Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller is teaching about what it means to experience God in a way that is personal and intimate. The passage on which the teaching is based is printed in your bulletin. It's a nice long passage and it should be where you are if you've been singing. You haven't been singing. It's on page 19. Genesis chapter 15 verses 1 to 21. After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. You're very great reward. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? And the one who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus?" And Abram said, you've given me no children, and Abram said, you've given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.

Then the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars. If indeed you can count them. Then he said to them, then he said to him, so shall your offspring be, Abram believe the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the earth of the Caldees to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abram said, Oh, sovereign Lord,

how can I know that I will gain possession of it? So the Lord said to him, bring me a heifer, a goat, a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these to him, cut them into and arranged haves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses,

but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, no for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

You, however, will go to your fathers and peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here for the sin of the Amorites is not yet reached its full measure. And when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, to your descendants, I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river the Euphrates, the land of the Kennites, Kennesites, Cadmenites, Hittites, Parasites, and Reffeyites, Amorites, Kennenites, Girishites, and the Jebiusites. And this is God's Word.

Now we go back to the series we've been doing, and we're looking in the Bible at persons, people, who have had unusual encounters with God, direct encounters with the raw presence of God. And almost in every case, extremely strange and sort of awe-inducing narratives. Most of them are pretty famous. There's two places where Moses has a face-to-face encounter with the holy, with the presence of God. And one of them is the Burning Bush, very famous. Another one is where he's up on the mountain, and God puts him in the cleft of the rock, and the glory of God passes by.

Another one, of course, we've already looked at is Jacob, wrestling with God, wrestling in the dark. Another one, which we haven't looked at yet, but it's coming is Isaiah, who comes into the temple and he sees the Lord high and lifted up and there's smoke and there's earthquake and everything is trembling. These are all, oh, I don't know how to put, I say, they're all sensational. And perhaps as a result of that, they're all very, very famous. But this situation in which Abraham, one of the great figures of history, has a face-to-face meeting with God. It's one of the strangest, it's one of the weirdest, of all the stories in the Bible.

And it's very, very seldom looked at. It's not very well known. It's not very famous. We're trying to remedy that tonight in a little way. One of the things that I'll just say just by way of beginning is that to my surprise, I have never had this as a subject of any sermon or teaching I've ever done. I look through all my files and it doesn't show up.

I've never done. I've never had. And yet, as some of you know, if you have been around, this is my favorite. This is the most significant passage for me in all of the Old Testament. I referred to it actually fairly often. I've just never had a chance to read the whole thing and look at it as a whole. It's an astounding thing. And I'm not going to say much more. Let's just get right into it and you'll see the relevance of it pretty quickly. In verse 1, it says, after this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Do not be afraid, Abram. Now, right away, that raises the question, why is Abram afraid? What's going on? And so we have to step back for just a moment and we have to to ask ourselves, who is Abraham, and what is his relationship with God, and why is he afraid, and why is he struggling, and so on. Now, if you stand back and look at Abraham, you see that the history of Abraham and God starts back in Genesis chapter 12, and when you read all these chapters in this book of the Old Testament, you will see that there's four great crises or thresholds, four great incidents in which God comes in some

way or another to Abraham. In the very first one, it's in Genesis chapter 12, in the very beginning, and God refers to it here in verse 7. And he says, I came to you in the first time when Abraham was living in earth the Caldys. And God comes to Abraham and this is what he says. He says, Abraham, get out. Get out of your country. It's amazing the way God just, you know, he just rattles them off. Get out of your country, get out of your people and get out of your family. He says, leave your country, leave your people, leave your father's house. He says, I want you to leave everything

that's familiar to you. And I want you to go. He says, get out to a land, a place that I will tell you of. And the book of Hebrews says, so Abraham got out, not knowing whether he went. And that was the first. Then later on, and here we're into one of them right now, when he made this promise to Abraham, he says, Abraham, I want you to get out because I will make a great nation of you. And out of your descendants, out of this great nation, will come one through whom all the peoples of the world will be blessed.

Now that means since Abram got this promise that he would be a great nation, his descendants would be a great nation. That meant he understood this, that meant two things. The first of all, God would give him a child. God would have to give him a son if he was going to be a great nation and his descendants were going to be this great people and out of whom all the nations of the world will be blessed. And secondly, he also, not only would need a child, he'd need a land. He would have to have a place. And so here in Genesis 15, he comes and says,

Will I have a child? Will I get this land? And God says yes. But if you look rather carefully, he says, I'll give it to your descendants. If you read all the stuff, he says. He says, I'll give it to your descendants. If you read all the stuff, he says, he says, I'll give it to your descendants. And the fact of the matter is, Abraham never got any land. Abraham never owned any land in his entire life,

except a little piece of land in which he and his wife were buried. So you see, God says, come out, I will give you a land, but then he says, and well, not exactly you. You're descendants, about 400 years from now. Then in Genesis 17, Abram comes to God and he says, Lord God, you say you're going to give me a child. We've been waiting for 25 years.

I'm 99, my wife is 90. And the Lord says, and, just wait. And then finally a child is born, Isaac. And when we get to Genesis 22, God says to Abram, Abram, take thy son, thy own only son, whom thou lovest, and offer him up as a sacrifice to me. Kill him. Now, you see, the best way I've ever heard this schematized, and I can't remember who, all my great ideas come from anonymous people that I can't remember anymore, but I

remember once hearing a minister say, he says, let me schematize Abram's life. It went like this. God says, I'm going to send you out. And Abram says, where? And God says, I'll tell you later, right now, just go. And then he says, I will give you a land. And Abram says, where? And God says, I'll tell you later, just wander.

And then he says, I'll give you a child. And Abraham says, how? And God says, I'll tell you later, just wait. And then finally, God sends a child. And he says Abraham Killed your child And Abraham says why and God says I'll tell you later walk up the mountain Take the knife take the fire and in every situation Abraham passed that threshold And he triumphed a

And he triumphed. A very normal guy, a very ordinary person, with lots of weaknesses, as you can see, if you read the entire biography, the entire account. But at those critical places, he faced those unbelievable circumstances, and he triumphed. Abraham led a big life. That's the best way I can put it. Abraham led a life of mastery.

Circumstances did not master him. He mastered them. Life did not push him around. He mastered life. You know, one of my favorite frightening lines is the place in Macbeth where Shakespeare says, each new mourn, new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrow strike heaven on the face. That's life. Each mourning, there's new widows, there's new orphans, there's new mourners, new pain, new, every day, every morning, circumstances come at you.

It comes at you. Now what are you gonna do? The circumstances come at you? What's gonna you. Now, what are you going to do? The circumstances come at you. What's going to happen? Either they're going to knock you over. Either they're going to master you, or you're going to master them. How can you master them? How can you be like?

How can you be like Abraham? Because see, that's what Abraham did. Every one of these things that came in, all kinds of circumstances, disappointments, disillusionments, contradictions, he had a life like real life. At every point, he was able to live a big life, a life of mastery, or another way to put it is a life of faith, because you see, what did he do? Here's the secret. In verse 6, it says, Abraham believed the Lord.

And this was the secret. You see, it's one thing to believe in the Lord, and that's very good. But what Abraham did was he believed the Lord. You see that? Of course, in order to believe the Lord, you have to believe in the Lord, but you can believe in the Lord and not believe the Lord. What Abraham did was he trusted the promises. He trusted the things God said. No matter what the circumstances, he took hold of them and he trusted them and he based his life on them. And as a result, he lived his big life.

And so can you. You see, there's this very interesting passage in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 17, that refers to Genesis 15, as we're going to see in a minute. It refers back to the fact that God came to Abram and made a promise. In Hebrews 6, 17, we read, it says, God wants to make the unchanging nature of His purpose clear to the heirs of what was promised, so He confirmed it with an oath that we who

have fled to take hold of this hope may be encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. We have this hope. Now, that's a wonderful passage. We have this hope like an anchor for the soul. Now that's what Abram had. Abram took God's promise,

didn't just believe in God, he believed God, and he used it as an anchor. Now here's the only thing I know about anchors. The only time I've virtually ever, ever navigated in a boat, was for many, many years when my children were small, not real small, sort of in the middle. We used to go spend a week each summer at Lake Erie with my wife's family.

And my oldest son is a fisherman. And because my oldest son was a fisherman, my middle son always had to fish, too. And at least once, I used to put it off and try to do it as seldom as possible. Once every year, they wanted me to rent a boat and take them out into the lake so they could fish. And I found it a frightening experience.

And here's why. You either had to fish just as the sun was coming up, which seemed pretty awful to me, or at least on vacation, or as the sun was going down. And so that's, of course, when I said, yes, let's do it. And what would happen is you'd get in the boat and be a little motorboat, some little motorboat. And what you had to do is you had to get as far out in Lake areas you possibly could. Now Lake area is kind of like a sea,

if you know the Great Lakes. Well, you get out there, you get out as far as you possibly can, and you can hardly see the land. And for a land lover like me, that's where I was frightening in this. I would look and I said, I think that's where we came from. You'd go out a couple of miles. And then of course, you'd have to fish until

it's just to start to get dark. And then you had to run back in before it became dark, because you'd be totally lost. You wouldn't even know what country you were coming back to. I mean, because there's more than one country out there on the Lake Erie. And so I would get out there as far as we could, I would look, and the thing that would frighten me

is because of the currents, because the water would take us everywhere. I was just very frightened that as we would fish or something like that, the currents would take me away from the land, or take me even away from the part of the currents, because the water would take us everywhere, I was just very frightened that as we would fish or something like that, the currents would take me away from the land or take me even away from the part of the land I was on, you know, it was a pretty big lake. And so my only hope was our anchor. Why? Well, what's the anchor do?

The anchor does not hang down into the water because you see the water moves around. You have to get it beneath the water into the rocks, which don't move around. And if you get it down into the rocks, then the visitudes of the water don't matter. Now, the reason that the anchor is used here as a metaphor in Hebrews 6, it says, if you, what is your hope?

What is your hope? What is the anchor of your soul? What is it that really makes you feel like, boy, I've got confidence to live life? If it is whatever, if it is your job, if it is your looks, if it is your talents, if it is a friend, give a friend who's an anchor, the one thing that makes you feel like,

that will always be there. No, no friend will always be there. No family will always be there. No talent will always be there. Your looks certainly will not always be there. Whatever it is that you put your anchor down into, if it's a circumstance, it's like putting it in the water. All this stuff is water. Everything but the promise of God is water. It's ebbing and flowing. If it looks like it's flowing now, it'll eb water. It's ebbing and flowing. If it looks like it's flowing now, it'll eb later. That's the way water is.

You have got no hope, unless you can put it beneath the water into something that's not water. If you anchor your life in the circumstances, nothing, you'll be tossed all around. This says, the only way that you've got hope is if you anchor it into something that's not a circumstance. Something that doesn't change.

Something that's heavier than heaven and earth. Something that will outlast heaven and earth. Not only will it outlast your friends, not only will it outlast your looks, your abilities, your job. It will even outlast the rocks at the bottom of Lake Erie. It's the promise of God. And Abram was able to get the anchor of his heart down that far. How did he do it? Well, it happened one day like this.

See, in verse 8, he says, and this just goes to show you that he's a human being like all of us. God had given in these promises, and he says, I will give you this land. I will make you a great nation. I will bless all promises and he says, I will give you this land, I will make you a great nation, I will bless all the earth through you, I will give you a child, and I want you to live as if those things are gonna happen.

No matter what it looks like, no matter what the circumstances, put your anchor down into that. And what does Abram say? He says, okay, he says in verse eight, but how can I know? He says, okay, he says, in verse 8, but how can I know? How can I know? Boy, there's a guy like us. See, he's not made of something else.

But how can I know? And God says, let me help you get the anchor down. And this is what he does, verse 12. As the sun was setting, pardon me, not verse 12. Let's start up all the way up here at the top. The first thing is God says, so the Lord said to him, bring me a heifer, bring me a goat, bring me a ram, each three years old, along with a dove, and a young pigeon. Now what in the world is he doing?

And what's interesting here is that Abram, it says, Abram brought all these to him, cut them into and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. What is going on? Now, the reason this sounds so difficult to understand

is because we don't live in that day and time. Abraham wasn't even really given instructions, God says, bring me these animals and Abraham immediately knew what to do with them. He came and he cut them in pieces except the small birds and he laid them out. What's going on? He was doing something that everybody in those days in times would have known, but you and I don't, and so we have to understand. You see, how did they sign a contract? How do we sign a contract? Yesterday I did a wedding, and at the end of any wedding in New York City, at the end of the wedding,

you get out a piece of paper that's called a license, and the bride and the groom sign it, and then there's two witnesses that sign it. And then I, the minister, sign it. See, in a sense, at the wedding, you get up and you make these promises. You say, I take you in plenty and in want, and enjoy it in sorrow, and sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. But you see, what if one of the partners says, how do I know you will deliver these things? How will I know Osovren Grum? How do I know Osovren Bride that you will give these things to me? And you know what the bride and the groom do?

They say, I'll sign. I'll sign. I won't just say this. You know, I won't just say this. I'll sign because in our culture, when you sign, there's consequences if you break your word. Frankly, if you haven't signed, there's no consequences, except maybe the black guy

of that one person, but there's no real consequences until you sign. So how do I know that you are gonna give us this? You say I'll sign, but not back then, because you see, Abram lived not in a written culture but in an oral storytelling culture and the way they made contracts was actually, I mean, occasionally you've heard me joke about this maybe, a lot more effective in the way we do. There have never been stronger calls for justice than those we have heard in recent years.

What does the Bible have to say about it and how does God's Word help bring about justice? In Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice, you'll discover that the Bible gives us a rich and complex understanding of what justice is and what it means to live it out. The book provides a biblical framework for justice, one that calls every Christian to a life of generous justice, one that calls every Christian to a life of generous justice fueled by grace. Generous justice is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the hope of the Gospel 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. Because what they would do is whenever they made a contract and someone says, okay, you promised me this, how do I know you will do it? The way they would put themselves in a position where there were consequences for the brokenness of their work is that they would act out the consequence of unfaithfulness right before everyone.

So for example, let me read you something that's pretty interesting. This is in Jeremiah 34. In Jeremiah 34 verse 18, we read this, this is what the Lord says, you have not obeyed me. The men who violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms they made, I will treat them like the calf they cut, I will treat them like the calf they cut into and walk between the pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem who walk between the pieces, I will hand them over

to their enemies and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth. Now, do you realize what he's saying? In those days, the way you took an oath was not by signing. How wimpy. What would that mean? Here's what you would do. As you would take an animal, you would slay it.

You would cut it, put it down on the ground, and you would walk between the pieces, and this is what you were saying. You're saying, if I do not do, everything that I am promising now, may I be cut off, may I be destroyed, may my flesh lay on the ground to feed the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. That's what you're doing. That's a fairly effective way, don't you think?

What better than signing, huh? You see, vivid, but when you did it, you were bound. You acted out the curse. Now, when Abraham was told, bring me all these pieces. He immediately knew what was going on. This was a covenant ratification ceremony. This was the making of a contract. He knew right away, and he figured, what did he figure? Well, he didn't figure what actually happened. No one in the face of the earth figured what actually happened. Here's what happened. Verse 12. And then the Lord said to him, oh, pardon me, verse 12. I didn't write, I did verse 13. Verse 12, as the sun was setting,

Abram fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Now this is actually a little hard to understand because it mainly actually went into a sleep and he dreamed about it. On the other hand down here in verse 17 it says, then when the sun had set and darkness had fallen a smoking fire pot in the blazing torch.

Evidently it's almost like a darkness came over him. A darkness of heart, a darkness of mind. It was overwhelming. It crushed him into the ground. If you've ever been in smoke, thick, thick smoke, where you cannot breathe, you're about to die, you have to get down to the ground, you have to stick your nose right on the ground, hoping that there might be a half an inch of clear air. Well, it's like that spiritually. There was this unbelievable darkness,

this unbelievable horror, this unbelievable terror, which was a dreadful darkness, and it came over him and it put him almost into a kind of trance. And out of that dark cloud, God spoke about dark things. And he says, no for a certain that your descendants will be strangers. And he explains the history of his descendants, that they are going to be slaves. They are going to be exiles. They are going to be away from this land and they won't come back for 400 years. But then finally, in verse 17, and when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking pot and a blazing torch appeared. Now this smoking pot and blazing torch, nobody quite knows exactly how to translate this. It's very hard to know, but here's what we know.

Something appeared, and these are the same words, the words for smoke and the words for blaze. And the same words used to describe the top of Mount Sinai when God came down on it years later. And the same words that were also used to describe the pillar of God's presence, the fiery cloud. You see, the pillar of God's presence, his rosh of kind of glory, sometimes look like smoke. It was called a cloudy pillar, sometimes a little like fire. But here's what it was. It was severe. It was the presence of God. And it was a pain to even look at it.

And the best one I've ever heard to describe this was one minister who put it this way. He says at that minute, suddenly in the midst of the darkness a searing streak of lightning appeared and held its shape. It spewed fire and smoke and sparks. It was the presence of God, but it wasn't just the presence of God that astonished Abram, but what it did, look, verse 17, it passed between the pieces. It went down the aisle, made by the pieces. And here's the reason this was so strange. This is so incredible. This is the gospel.

This is the whole gospel. There is no place in the New Testament that gets as thorough going as this. Here's what's going on. You see, there's always two problems, excuse me, with trusting God, with living confidently. There's always two problems with living a confident, big life. Why is it that you and I aren't living the same kind of life that Abraham had? There's always two problems.

The first problem is, Lord, how can I know about you? See, when Abraham says, Lord, how can I know? How can I know all these great things are gonna happen? How can I trust your promise? How can I know about you? How can I know all these great things are going to happen? How can I trust your promise? How can I know about you? How can I know you'll come through? And it's absolutely astonishing that what God does is he appears and he passes between these pieces.

Do you now know what he's saying? You know what he's saying to Abraham? You know what he's saying to you? He is saying, I have promised to bless you Abraham. I have promised to be your God and to bring salvation to the world. I have promised to bless you. And if I don't do what I say, may my immutability experience May my immortality suffer mortality. May my infinity suffer limitation and finitude. May my power suffer powerlessness.

May the impossible become possible. May I be cut off. May I be destroyed. May my body be ripped to pieces. God's saying this. Now if you think that's amazing, it is, but that's not all. Because Abraham looks at God at this point in a sense and says what most of us say, wow, all right, but that's not only that's not the only problem I've got with living a big life. Lord, how do I know about you? Fine. You've made this promise.

How amazing. How wonderful that you've passed between the pieces, that you would make a promise like this. But you know, I guess when it comes right down to it, Lord, I guess I never really thought you would break your promise. Not really. The real problem is, how do I know, Lord, about me? Here, you've given me this wonderful promise

and you say you're going to do all this, but I don't think I can come through. You said, you will be my people, I will be your God. I believe you'll be my God, but how am I ever going to be your person? I will let me down. I will let you down. You will finally get tired of me. You will finally say, how many times will he break? Will she break the promise? That's it. This is the 50th time. That's it. Finally, you will give up on me.

How can I know about you? Well, now I know because you passed between the pieces. But how do I know about me? And here's the thing that Abraham knew and that we all know in a minute once we realize this. God walked through the pieces alone. He did not say Abraham, now you do it. And let me tell you, this is absolutely, absolutely unique

and stunning because we know this from history and archaeology, that whenever a king would enter into a covenant relationship with a vessel, a lesser king or a conquered king or a servant, whenever a king would enter into a covenant relationship with a servant, either both the king and the servant would go through the pieces, both would say, if I don't do my part, that I, may I be as eaten by the birds of the air in the beast of the field, or just the servant would go through. But when the king goes through by himself, this is what God is saying. God is saying,

Abraham, I'm going to go through for both of us. This is the gospel. The gospel, salvation in the Christian faith is not a cooperative effort. It is not God helps those who help themselves. It is not a partnership. God comes through and says, I will take upon myself the curse of the covenant for both of us. Abraham may I be cut off if I don't do my part of the bargain, but Abraham may I be cut off if you don't do yours. Abram, I will bless you even if it means and it did that I would have to die. Don't you realize that centuries later darkness came down again? You read about it in Mark chapter 15 verse 33 where it says, and at the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land, and the ninth hour, Jesus cried, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken

me? And Isaiah 58 says, Isaiah 53 verse 8 says something that Abraham didn't know, Abraham had no idea what it was going to cost God to make the promise he did. But Isaiah says about the Messiah, he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people, he was stricken. His immortality did become mortality. His immutability did suffer mutation. The impossible became possible.

God, guide. God was cut off. God was trampled into the dust. The darkness came down on him. Now, what is God doing? Here's how we apply this. First of all, will you see that all of your problems, and I mean all of your problems,

and I mean all of your problems? Come because you don't trust the promises of God. Your anchor is not all the way down. Do you know why you're worried? You don't trust his wisdom. You really way down. Do you know why you're worried? You don't trust his wisdom. You really don't. Do you know why you're angry and maybe bitter? You don't trust his justice.

Do you know why some of you hate yourselves? Because you don't trust his love and his grace. In fact, do you know why you disobey any time ever? Why you ever do the wrong thing? Because you don't trust that God, God Himself, God's presence, is better than anything you could possibly get by disobeying. In other words, you believe I better do what will make me happy because if I trust God, if I trust God, if I trust God all the way to the bottom, I will miss out. You're lack of self control, you're lack of self-esteem, you're anxiety, you're bitterness, whatever it is, your anchors in the water. You've got to come all the way down. This is the problem.

You need an anchor for your soul. Well, how do you get it? Well, first of all, very simple, very, very simple. Two or three ways to put it. Number one, go to God and say, how do I know? Isn't it wonderful? Abraham came and said, Lord, I need to trust you more.

I don't see how. And what did God say? Did he say, how dare you? How dare you question me? No, isn't it wonderful? God says, I'll show you. You know when the man came to Jesus and said, would you please heal my son?

And Jesus says, well, of course I can if you believe. And what does he say? I think I believe helped my unbelief. And Jesus healed him because here's the gospel. Here's the gospel. The people who think they see are blind. And the people who say, I'm blind are finally beginning to see.

And the people who think they have lots of faith, you see, have not gotten any. And the person who says they have lots of faith, you see, have not gotten any. And the person who says, I wish I could believe, I don't believe, I want to believe, that's the beginning of belief because you're going to them. Because you see saving faith, or I should put it this way, faith that turns great, turns masterful, starts by saying, I don't have it. In the minute you finally say that, God comes, he'll do something. You have to go and say, how do I know?

You have to go to him. You just tell him you don't have it. He doesn't clobber you. John the Baptist sends a messenger. Remember, those of you who came in the morning service earlier in the fall? John the Baptist sends a messenger. He says, are you the one who is to come?

Or should we look for another? And Jesus doesn't say, how dare you question me? He sends a message back. If you go to God and you say, I know what my problem is, I don't trust you. I don't trust me. I don't have this mastery. Help me. God will, and he will respond. Then secondly, and here's the most important thing, the way you get the anchor for your soul is to major in the major, not major in the miners. What are the issues? Forget about whether or not God invented the world in 724 hour days or whether he used evolution.

Don't worry about it, sure it made the front page of the New York Times, big deal. Let's not talk about abortion, let's not talk about homosexuality. Let's not talk about tongues. Let's not talk about denominations. Let's not talk even about, you know, whether all the miracles in the Bible happen. Don't you understand? If Jesus is who He says He is. If Jesus is the one of whom the darkness came down. If Jesus is the one who was cut off from the land of the living. If Jesus is the one, everything else falls into place,

you're not going to get an anchor for your soul. You're not going to get faith by studying archeology or by looking at the peripherals. You've got to do exactly what God did for Abraham. He showed him the gospel. You've got to go to Jesus. You've got to see him doing what he did. And you know what he did? Jesus Christ loves you so much. doing what he did. And you know what he did? Jesus Christ loves you so much. There's an anchor for you because it wasn't just water that wouldn't dislodge Jesus Christ from us. Even hell, God poured hell itself down on him. He was ripped to pieces and he stayed. There's your anchor. Look at that. If you do, you'll trust. In some ways, it's intellectual, because if you go to Jesus Christ first, everything else

in the Christian life falls into place. How do you know there's a God? Look at the evidence for Jesus. How do you know, how do you believe in miracles? Well, Jesus is who He says He is. Miracles no sweat. Why do you believe this or why do you believe that? You know, I don't think Christians are right about this.

If Jesus is who He says He is and He says it, you see everything falls into place intellectually, but personally, what you need is to see Him. You need a sight of Him, you need a vision of Him. Have you gotten any of it tonight? Have you been moved? Have you cried outside or inside a little bit? That's the way the anchor goes down.

And eventually nothing will move you. Nothing will move you. And you will say, Lord God, you are my shield, not circumstances. And you are my exceedingly great reward, don't you see? He doesn't say, my dear friends, he doesn't say, I've come to bring you your reward. He says, I've come to be your reward. I've come to bring you your reward. He says, I've come to be your reward.

I've come to give you Jesus. Let's pray. Help us, Father, to get our anchor way down. And the only way to do that is to, like Abram, admit our problems, admit our difficulties, admit our doubts, and talk to you as if you're there. But secondly, help us to see the center of it all. Is Jesus who He said He is? Is He God, who became changeable, vulnerable, breakable, killable? is he the one who was cut off? Is he the one who

passed through the pieces and said, I will pay the penalty. If I break my word, I will even pay the penalty if you break your word. Father, thank you for a salvation like this. How will we escape if we neglect the greatest salvation? We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you'll continue to join us throughout this month as we look at what it means to have an authentic experience with God. If you were encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover the hope of the gospel.

Thank you again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 1996 and 2009. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Dr. Keller with Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.