Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - An Everlasting Name

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

For some, when they hear that salvation is absolutely free, their first response is to say, “If I really believed that, then I wouldn’t have any incentive to live a good life.”  To that, I would say, “If, when you lose all fear of being smacked by God, you lose all incentive to live a good life, then the only incentive you ever had was fear. You need a better incentive.” See, if you realize the implications of the costly love of Jesus, it’s going to change your whole life. Isaiah 56 shows that when we receive salvation 1) it creates a new concern for living justly in the world, 2) it creates a new kind of community of believers who are absolutely equal before God and radically accepting of differences, and 3) we get an everlasting name that will never be cut off.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 14, 2010. Series: The Songs of the Servant (from Isaiah). Scripture: Isaiah 56:1-8. 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. If someone asked you what Jesus' mission on earth was, what would you say? Today, Tim Keller is preaching from the Book of Isaiah to help us understand the mission and purpose of Christ while he was on earth, and how it can transform our lives today. Thank you for joining us. us. Tonight's scripture reading comes from the book of Isaiah chapter 56 verses 1 through 8. This is what the Lord says, maintain justice and do what is right for my salvation

is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, the man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely exclude me from his people. And let not any unit complain, I am only a dry tree, for this is what the Lord says. To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to

my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name, better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship Him. All who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold fast to my covenant.

These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. The sovereign Lord declares, He who gathers the exiles of Israel. I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered. This is God's word. Now in the weeks going up to Easter, we're looking at these last chapters of the book of Isaiah because they talk about a mysterious figure called the servant of the Lord.

And the servant of the Lord is bringing the salvation of God into the world, and the New Testament writers tell us that this figure, this servant of the Lord is Jesus Christ. And these last chapters in Isaiah are as clear about what Jesus came to do as anything in the New Testament. The chapter on the cross, Isaiah 53, is as clear as we have anywhere in the Bible. And last week, Isaiah 55 says that because of the work of Jesus on the cross, salvation is absolutely free, completely free. It's not something you can earn. You can't buy it. You can't merit it. It's free. And when people first hear this message, the first response, and it's natural but wrong, is to say, well, if I really believe that God just freely loved me and just gives me his salvation for free, I wouldn't have any incentive to live a good life. And I usually say, I think the fastest comeback to that is, is that if you, if when you lose all fear of being smacked by God, being pounded by God,

if when you lose all fear of that, you then lose all incentive to live a good life. Well, then the only incentive you ever had to live a good life was fear. That's not a good incentive. You needed better motive. In other words, the freeness of the salvation of Isaiah 55 immediately flows into here, verse chapter 56, where it says up in the beginning, since the salvation is close at hand, and that's looking forward now, it's a prophecy of Jesus, that when the free, grace salvation of Jesus Christ comes to us, it's going to change the way in which we live. It's going to have an enormous impact when you realize the implications of the costly love of Jesus. It's going to change the way in which we live. It's going to have an enormous impact when you realize the implications of the costly love of Jesus. It changes your whole life.

And this passage lays out the kind of life we live after we receive grace. And I'd like you to see three topics. One is when you receive the salvation, verse one. First of all, that creates a new concern for living justly in the world, new concern for justice. Number two, the second thing is it creates a new kind of community so that all the believers who are in the community, regardless of race or class or background, are absolutely equal before God. There's a unity and equality across racial barriers and other kinds of barriers inside the Christian community. So there's an increased, a great new concern for living justly in the world. There's an absolutely new radical acceptance of all differences inside the believing community, and all of this,

thirdly, comes because we get an everlasting name that will never be cut off. Let's go through this passage. First of all, look at verse one. This is what the Lord says, Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand. Now, maintain justice and do what is right. There are two extremely important Hebrew words that are combined here. The first one is maintain justice. The second one is do what is right. They can both be translated live justly. And Chris Wright, who is an Old Testament scholar, says that in the 30 or so places in the Old Testament where these two words are brought together.

I'm going to explain what that means, but he says, bottom line, he says, wherever you have these two words together, the best English expression that conveys what they mean is the term social justice. When you bring these two words together, I'd like to show you over the next couple minutes, the two words together mean social justice. In fact, Chris Wright points out all the other places in the Bible where the two are brought together

and we very often don't translate them that way. Let me give you an example of the right translation of a very famous passage. In Jeremiah 9, we read this. Let not the rich man boast of his riches. Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom. Let not the strong man boast of his strength. But let him who boasts about anything boast about this.

That he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness and social justice on the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord." Now, where does this come from? These two words are, the word, do what is right, is the word, sadaqa, or sadaq, which means usually it's translated, live rightly, live justly. The other word, which is the first word, maintain justice, is the word mishpot. Now what do these two words mean?

Mishpot is the word that means rectify things that are wrong. And there's really two ways to do mishpot. One is very directly, you go after the perpetrators, the people who are doing wrong, and you bring them to justice. You punish them or you bring them to justice. You punish them or you stop them. The more indirect approach to Mishpat is not just deal with the perpetrators, but deal with the victims.

And this word Mishpat, when you see this word it says, maintain justice, over and over and over and over again in the Old Testament, that word is connected to four classes of people that some people have called the quartet of the vulnerable. And these four classes of people are the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor. The widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor. These are people who are defenseless. They're vulnerable. They have no social and economic power. And mish pot means watching out for them, caring for them, loving them. So Mishpat is rectify what is wrong. The word sadek means to keep all your relationships right. Because your relationship with God is right, all other relationships are right.

Now the philosophers talk about two kinds of justice because when you and I hear the English word justice, we almost always think of punishing people. Justice means punishing the wrongdoers. But in the Bible, these two words have a breadth. Essentially, mishpat is rectifying justice, dealing with what's wrong and setting it right. But sadaqa is putting all of your relationships so right that you wouldn't need rectifying justice. So some people call this, the philosophers call this primary justice. Primary justice is living in such a way that if everyone was living in that way there would be no need for rectifying justice because all relationships are right.

So what does Sadiqa mean? What does it mean to have all your relationships right? Bruce Wolffky, who's an Old Testament professor, looks at these two words, righteousness, Sadiqa, and wickedness, which is the opposite. And this is what he says the Bible means by it. He studied these words every single place the Bible uses them. And Wolkie says that Saadik, which is the just, the people who live justly are those who are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community. And the wicked are those who are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves. That's the definition. And the example of that is this. A just man,

Waltke says, sees his money as belonging in many ways to the entire human community, whereas the wicked man or woman throughout the Bible is the person who sees his or her money as strictly your own. And therefore, an unwillingness to share your resources, to share your power, to share your connections, to share your talents with people that have less, is not just uncharitable. See, you and I in our society, we say, well, if you don't pour yourself out for the poor and work real hard for all this people, well, you know, you're not obligated to. If you want to do it, fine, that's charity. And if you don't do it, maybe you're uncharitable. That's not how the Bible sees it. The Bible sees it as a lack of justice.

Well, why would it be? Why would the biblical idea of right living, see, do what is right? What, what does that? Why would it... Why would the definition of that be that you see what you have as belonging to the community around you, your church, your brothers and sisters, your family, and your neighbors in the city? Why would a failure to see that be a lack of justice? It's like this. In America in particular today, if I read that definition, a righteous man

or woman sees all that you have as belonging to the community as well as yourself, and a wicked person sees all that you have as belonging to you. It's yours. Nobody has any rights to it but you. Now when I use that definition, a lot of Americans go, whoa, I don't like that definition at all. I say why, and here's what they say. What I have, I worked hard for and I earned it. Now there is no, this is my favorite illustration on this.

That's only partly right. Biblically, that's only partly right. There's no doubt the Bible wants you to work hard and you must work hard and you must be diligent and if you were successful you worked hard and that but that's only one reason. Here's the other reason. If you had been born on a mountain in Tibet in the 13th century and you worked every bit as hard as you have in This life. I don't think you'd have much to show for it. I Don't think you would have that college degree. I don't think you'd have that master's degree I don't think you'd have that bank account. Why not?

Well the people on the mountain in Tibet in the 13th century worked hard too, right? Yes. But the reason why your work has produced something is because of the gift of God. Because God gave you the life He's given you. He's put you in the place He's put you. He's given you the talents He's given you. And therefore, yes, one small reason why you have what you have is your hard work. but overall it's God's gift. And for you to act as if it's all got to do with your work shows you don't understand God, you don't understand human nature, you don't understand anything the Bible says about reality, and you are actually living unjustly.

You're living as if everything you have, you procured, and you didn't. Now this is the reason why when these two words are brought together, as Chris Wright says, it means a life of social justice. One of the other places where the Bible brings these two words together, and it's very memorable, is in Job 29. And in Job 29, this is one of those places where Job is complaining, by the way, to God, why are you giving me such a bad life? Now, that's a book on the evil and suffering, and why does God allow that to happen? That's another sermon. I'm not going there at all. But in the process of complaining to God, Job says, I'm living the way you want me to live. So what's going on here?

But when he shows you what he understands is the life God wants us all to live, listen to it. Here's what he says, Job 29. He says, I rescued the poor who cried for help. And the fatherless who had none to assist him. The man who was dying blessed me, and I made the widow's heart to sing. I put on righteousness that's a deck, so they call as my clothing and justice that's mish pot as my robe and my turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy. I took up the case of the immigrant. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth." Now every kind of justice that we talked about is in there. You see that? I broke the fangs

of the wicked who were hurting the vulnerable. That's direct mish pot, you know, go after the perpetrators. But listen, he's also saying, I was eyes to the blind. I made the widow's heart to sing. Justice was my robe and my turban. What does that mean? It meant in every day, in every way, he's looking for ways to help the vulnerable. He's pouring himself out for people. See, you and I think if you don't start a home for the blind, if you don't go visit

the orphans, see, if you don't give a lot of your money away to the poor, well that's up to you. You know, maybe you're non-charitable, but that's up to you. But no, Job saw that as a lack of justice. And Job said it's a lack of justice not to be living like this. Now what does it mean? When you and I think of justice, we tend to mean we say every so often you go after some bad guy. Or maybe you think every so often you put your money, you know, into a charitable, you know, to a charity.

But that's not how Job sees it. That's not how the Bible sees it. It means you're always on the lookout for the vulnerable. It means you're always seeing everything about your life as belonging to the people around you and you're plowing it into people. A friend of mine owns a bunch of car dealerships in the south. And as you know, in most car dealerships, the car salesman has a bracket. He's able to negotiate a price. Is that right? When you go in, you don't just say, you know, a sticker says, here's how much the car is worth, but you know, at least in most American car dealerships, that you can negotiate and you can get it lower. And the salesman has the right to do that, to negotiate. But the owner here, who was in charge of all these

cardial issues, was a Christian. And he became very concerned about this issue of justice. He says justice isn't just giving to charity or not disobeying the law. Justice means to put it on as your robe, as your turban, as your... It means to be constantly looking at every aspect of your life and saying, how are we doing for the vulnerable? And he did a study and found out that men were better negotiators than women, and white people were better negotiators than black people,

and that by and large, older African-American women got terrible deals, because they didn't push, they didn't press, they didn't go after the salesman, or maybe they felt intimidated by the salesman, or maybe the salesman looked down at them. We didn't know why, but they began to realize that the very practice of allowing salesmen to negotiate meant the poor were paying more for autos than the well-off, who knew more about what cars cost and we're into that negotiating mode.

And so what they said is, it's unjust to do this. And he put out a fiat, a decree, and said, none of my salesmen can negotiate the price. We're going to set the price. And whoever walks in the door who pays that price, that's the price they get. Because this is, and that's just one tiny example of what it means. We have to look at every single part of our lives and say, am I doing justice? Am I wearing justice as a robe and a turban? And what it comes from it is this idea that everything I have is a gift because I understand

God's grace. Grace and experience of grace leads to justice. See? Maintain justice and do what is right, why? Because my salvation is at hand. The more you get my grace, the more you will care about justice. Point one, point two, something even more amazing happens here

and you can see it down here in verse three. Two groups of people who before the coming of Jesus, before the coming of the servant of the Lord, were actually excluded from temple worship and tabernacle worship under the Old Covenant. It says, and suddenly God says, now that my servant is here, let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely exclude me from his people, and let not any unit complain, I'm only a dry tree. Now this would have been utterly shocking to Isaiah's listeners, and here's why. Let's take a look at this.

What this is saying is, we're not looking outside in the world anymore. We're not looking out here, you know, doing justice in the world. We're looking inside the community of people who believe. Because the whole rest of this passage is taking these two groups of people, foreigners and eunuchs, and saying in the past they were excluded but no longer. And the rest of the passage is about that, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, to the foreigners who keep my Sabbaths.

Now we're going to get back to that in two weeks. What is the big deal about the Sabbath? But the point is, these are groups that in the past were excluded, but if they believe, if they bind themselves to God, if they are co-believers, there should be no racial differences inside the Christian community. There should also be no differences depending on your record, your past, or what you've done. None of that matters anymore. But you see, in the world, all those things matter, and there's always pecking orders.

But in the community of people who believe in the work of the servant, there must not be that pecking order anymore. That's the point. And it's radical. Let's look at the two for a minute. First it says, let no foreigner who's bound himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely exclude me from his people. You have to remember that up until this point, by and large, the believing community, the people of God, were mainly of one race. And that's because God revealed himself to Abraham. And he gives Abraham the truth. And he gives Abraham faith.

And he gives Abraham a relationship. And so, Abraham is the new people of God. You know, God says to Abraham in Genesis 12, the human race has turned away from me. It's a mess out there. Dog eat dog. People exploiting each other. But I want to create a new humanity. I want to create a body of human beings who know me and therefore they have, they create a new kind of human society in which people flourish and which people serve each other. I'm going to form a new humanity, he says to Abraham, I'm starting with you. So Abraham's the beginning of the new humanity, and then he has a few children, and then the new humanity, the people of God, is a family. And then they have a few more children, and by the time you get down to Moses and down to Isaiah

even, you have a nation because the descendants of the family and the descendants of Abraham are a nation. Up to this point though, it means that most people who are believers and in the God of the Bible are of one race. But God says here that was always an ever to be temporary. He says when my servant comes, when my salvation draws near through him, we will see that that was a temporary thing, because I want every tongue, tribe, people, and nation to be represented in my people. And I want every tongue, tribe, people, and nation to be represented in my people." And he says, let not the foreigners say in any way that I'm a second class citizen in

the community of believers. Do you know that Jesus took this so seriously that his first sermon was about race? Jesus Christ in his very first sermon in Luke 4 comes into the synagogue and begins to read from where? Class, the Isaiah scroll, the end of the Isaiah. And he reads from Isaiah 61. We're going to see this in two weeks where he says, the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. And his sermon is going along and everybody likes it. And then suddenly Jesus says, he concludes his sermon with these words. He says, there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, but Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to the widow of Zarepheth in the region of Sidon. And there were many

lepers in Israel in Elijah's time, yet not one of them was cleansed by Naaman except Naaman the Syrian. Who was the widow of Zarephath, a Gentile? Who was Naaman the Syrian, a Gentile? And Jesus gets up, says, I'm the servant of the Lord that's mentioned at the end of Isaiah, and then says, and I want you to know that there were a lot of widows in Israel, but Elijah only went to this Gentile. There were a lot of lepers in Israel, but Elijah only went to this Gentile. There were a lot of lepers in Israel, but Elijah only cleansed them in the Syrian. And what was he saying? He said, I'm here to tell you that God belongs as much to one nation as another, to one people group as another people group.

No one people group owns God's grace or owns God more than any other. And what did they do? Do you remember? They tried to kill Jesus. They rose up and they tried to...they grabbed him and they took him to a cliff to try to throw him off the cliff, but he wormed his way through the crowd and got away. His first...Jesus' first sermon, because he took this stuff seriously, was no longer, no longer does one race have a corner on the grace of God, that inside the believing community, one race is equal to another race, and they try to kill him for it.

Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth, and his story has been told in hundreds of different ways. Can anything more be said about him? In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal, calling each of us to look anew at our relationship with God. Jesus the King is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the

transforming love of Christ 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 Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. And I remember my first sermon here, trying to plant a church. Nobody tried to kill me. A few people didn't come back. But what's always interesting about Jesus' sermons, by the way,

is that like it seems that half the people have their total lives changed, the other half want to throw them off a cliff. And that's probably the mark of a good sermon. Because most of our sermons, nobody's life is changed and nobody wants to kill you either. So, you know, in the middle. But that's what Jesus did, and he was preaching about race. And a church that understands the implications of the gospel that were saved by grace not works. Works very, very hard to exhibit this to the world, that racial barriers should be down in a church in a way they aren't down out there. But that's not all this text says, the other thing it says is let no eunuchs say, I am a dry tree. Now, eunuchs were also not allowed to go into the tabernacle or the temple. What's a eunuch? A castrated male. And why was it that the eunuchs weren't allowed to come in? Well, in ancient times there were a lot of reasons for male castration, and all of them

were bad. One of them was that many cultures believed that the body was bad, and sex was bad. The Greeks believed that the spirit was good and the body was bad. And therefore, some people were castrated themselves or were castrated to become more holy. Or to become priests in the particular religion. Many other people were castrated in order to get up in the world in government service. I know some of you are going to go, what? But you see, back before democracies, when the government were these enormously powerful monarchies and royal families,

the only way for a civilian, I mean a commoner, to get up in the ranks in government service, in many cases they had to be castrated so they could be trusted to work with the royal family. I'm not saying that in any facetious way, that's just the case. And therefore people who really wanted to get up into the government, into power and to be successful had to very often be castrated. And God by excluding eunuchs from worship, it was a good thing to say. Look, he says, I see sex, I see the body, I see family and childbearing is a good thing. And I don't want anybody of my people to think it's not.

And I don't want anyone to take that part of their bodies and voluntarily destroy that function. However, though the exclusion of eunuchs from the tabernacle had in some ways was a positive message about sex in the body, what had actually happened in the ancient times was that family was an idol. Do you all know that, do you not all know that Western society makes an idol out of the individual? It says, what matters in life is that you are happy and you as an individual are fulfilled. And therefore Western society says you should decide what is right or wrong for you.

Western society says what really matters is accomplishment. And therefore, in our society, making money, looking good, being accomplished, that's everything. And when you read the Bible, it's pretty obvious that the Bible is critical of Western society. It's pretty obvious that the Bible comes down on us and says, no, individuals cannot just decide what is right or wrong for them.

They have to come under the moral authority of what the word of God says. So most Western people know that the Bible is critical of modern, individualistic Western society. What you don't often realize, it was just as critical of traditional culture. Because, and some of you know this, because you're only a generation or two removed from traditional cultures. In traditional cultures,

the family is everything. And the honor of the family is everything. And the success of the family is everything. Now, it's partly because, especially in ancient times, the more children you had, the more money you had, the more people you had to work in your field, you know. The more children you had, the more security you had. But most of all, we think of getting a name. We in Western society think of getting a name, really being sure I'm somebody, I'm not nobody, I'm somebody, comes from your accomplishment, from your money or your looks. But in traditional society, getting a name, knowing that you were somebody was to have a family.

So barren women and eunuchs were considered the off-scouring of the world. They were despised. They were rejected. And, you know, by the way, even today in the United States, in more traditional parts of the country, when I first got here, something I didn't notice. There are a lot of long-time singles that lived in New York. And a lot of people said, oh, I'm from that part of the country. When I first got here, something I didn't notice. There are a lot of long time singles that lived in New York.

And a lot of people said, oh, I'm from that part of the country, I'm from that part of the country. I can't go back there, I'm 35 and I'm still single, and they would think of me as a freak. And in traditional societies, it's true. What's the matter with you? Why aren't you married yet? Because the family is everything,

and in Western culture, the individual is everything, and the Bible critiques every culture. The Bible is not just traditional values, book. God comes down and says, every culture makes an idol out of something, because every culture says, here's how you can have a name. Here's how you can know you're somebody, you're not nobody, you're not a nameless nobody.

You're a somebody. And God says all of them are traps. And this is the reason why, out in the world, there's racial division. This is the reason why families despise single people who aren't married yet. This is the reason why moral people look down their nose at people who aren't married yet. This is the reason why moral people look down their nose at people who aren't moral in their estimation. The reason why there's all these divisions,

the reason why there's all this superiority, this trampling on each other is because everybody's trying to get a name for themselves. But God says, if you get a name from me, that should get rid of these divisions, and therefore in the church, it shouldn't matter your background. It shouldn't matter. In fact, you know, the Christian church was one of the very, very first places where if you were not married, if you were probably never going to get married, you were not a second-class citizen. It was a real critique of traditional family. You know, in the New Testament, you know those places in the New Testament where it says that if a woman, she became a widow, her husband died, the church supported her. Do you know how radical

that was in subversive? In those days, a woman was nobody unless she were married. You were nobody. Tiberius Caesar actually passed a law that said Roman citizen women who were widowed had to get married within two years. We can't have these widows walking around. Women are nothing unless they're part of a family. But when the Christian church said, we're going to support widows, what they were saying is widows do not have to get married again unless they want to. They're legitimate. Being long-term single is legitimate.

It was radical. There was no religion. There was no culture that did that. You know why? Stanley Howard West puts it like this. He says, one clear difference between Christianity and all other traditional religions is that singleness was legitimated, not because sex was in any way questionable. Rather, it was a clear expression that one's future is not guaranteed by the family, but by the kingdom of God and the church.

This is your family. The younger people here, they are your children. The older people here, they are your children. The older people here, they are your parents. The people of your age, they are your brothers and sisters. Christians do not place their hope in their children even when they have them, like in traditional culture. Rather, Christians, children, if they have them, are a sign of their hope. And that hope is in God, not in the family. And that means that singles and marriage and families, there's no second-class citizens. It also

means it doesn't matter about your past. It doesn't matter what you were. And that brings us to the final point. The reason why our churches do not really look enough like this picture is I don't think we really understand yet what it means when it says, and this is the great to offer, pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, verse 5, I will give them a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters, and I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off. I actually would like you to consider that, and I'm no different, that on the one hand I know in my head that my some-buddiness, my name, my significance is rooted in God, what God has done for me in Jesus Christ. But in another part of my brain, the other lobe, I'm still living like the world, and that is, I know I'm somebody because I have done this, or I've done this, or I've done this, and because of that we still have a lot of our differences. This all comes together.

If you want to understand how this works, let me just conclude with this story. If you want to understand Isaiah 56, you've got to understand Acts 8. Because in Acts 8, there's a man who's an Ethiopian eunuch, both a foreigner and a eunuch. And he had gone to the top. He was one of the director of the treasury of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia. Here's an African man who had become castrated in order to become highly successful. And we're told in Acts 8 that he was going to Jerusalem to worship God. He was in a chariot reading the Bible, he went to, from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship God. And he was on his way back when Philip the Evangelist meets him. Philip is one of the early evangelists. Now, when it says in Acts 8 that this Ethiopian had gone to Jerusalem, you and I say, oh yeah, that's nice, but you forget what an amazing thing that is. Jerusalem is not around the corner from Ethiopia.

It would be an enormous, amazing journey. I mean, a person who set out from Ethiopia to go to Jerusalem would not have high hopes of surviving. What would have driven a man of that kind of accomplishment to read the Bible, to be so interested in the God of Israel that he would take such an enormous journey to go and try to worship in Jerusalem. And the answer is, he must have experienced some unbelievably deep spiritual disappointment. In some ways, the Ethiopian eunuch shows how both our modern culture and ancient culture fail. Because in terms of the ancient culture, he could have no children. He was a dry tree. He would have no sons and daughters. As far as the ancient culture was concerned,

he had sold his soul for money. And he had given it all up, and he was a nobody. He was a nobody. He had no name. No name that would last. But as far as modern culture is concerned, it's pretty clear that the money hadn't satisfied. I'd like to go to Savars and say there's plenty of people in a place like New York who are like this guy, maybe not physically, but they've given up any possibility of relationships or family because they wanted to be successful. And it didn't work. He was still empty. And he was on his way back from Jerusalem. And you know what? He must have been devastated because as a both an African and a eunuch, he would have been turned away at the doors. Can you imagine risking your life to go see if maybe this God of Israel that he'd read about was his hope and he turned away. And he was coming back and when Philip meets him, he's

reading the Isaiah scroll. He's reading the last chapters of Isaiah. He would have certainly found Isaiah 56 where it says, let no foreigner be turned away and let no eunuch say, I am a dry tree. And he would have read this and realized that there was a salvation coming. There was a person coming who was going to change the exclusionary boundaries around the believing community. And he saw that God was saying, through the work of my servant, foreigners are coming in, through the work of my servant, the eunuchs are coming in. It doesn't matter what your past is.

It doesn't matter what you've been. Everyone who believes and binds himself to me is brought in. But the person who was going to do this was this mysterious servant. And you know when Philip meets this guy, this is the verse he's reading. You see this in Acts 8. This is what he's reading. You see this in Acts 8. This is what he's reading. Isaiah 53 verse 8 where it says, By oppression and injustice he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? Who can speak of his descendants? Let's talk about Jesus. And who can speak of his descendants for he was cut off from the land of the living?

For the transgression of my people he was stricken. And when Philip meets him, he's reading this text, and Philip says, do you understand what you're reading? And the man says, no. Could you please tell me who is this? Is the prophet talking about himself or somebody else? Who is this? And in one little verse, Acts 8, it says, and Philip told him the good news about Jesus. And he believed, and he turned and said, baptize me. And Philip and this Ethiopian eunuch get down in the water, and Philip puts the water on him. And listen, there is what this whole text is talking about.

Because of Jesus Christ, here is a middle class Jewish man embracing a sexually altered African man in the water. What would bring people like that together? They had the same name. Their name was not, I'm a successful treasurer. I'm the director of the treasurer of the queen. See? Philip's name was no longer, I am a very upright Jewish man. They had the same name, and the name was, I've been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. And once you know that that's your name, and that's who you really are, the barrier should come down. Are we a community like that? Yes and no. There's great things and there's a long way to go. And we're not just, I'm not just talking about Redeemer. It's all Christian churches who

understand the gospel. Do we seek justice? Do we seek this kind of unity? Because we know we have this new name. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have given us so much to think about here. The grace of God does not just come in and forgive us our sins. It changes the way in which we live in the world and it changes the way in which we live with each other. Please let us be like your Son who came not to be served but to serve and give us life for us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you were

encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the truth of God's Word and the hope of the Gospel. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 1990, 2003, and 2010. 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.