Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Brother, Captain, King

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

The book of Hebrews is written to a group of urban, first-century Christians who were struggling with fear and discouragement because their lives were so filled with troubles.  The question this book asks is if God loves us so much, why are our lives so hard? In almost every passage, the answer it gives is that fear and discouragement can be dealt with by looking at Jesus.  Hebrews 2 says if you really want to deal with fear and discouragement in your life, you need to see that Jesus is 1) the king who gets involved with us, 2) the captain who faces death for us, and 3) the brother who is proud of us. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 13, 2005. Series: Christ: Our Treasury (The Book of Hebrews). Scripture: Hebrews 2:5-18. 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 Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were weary of troubles, struggling with fear and discouragement. Sound familiar? Today Tim Keller is preaching from the book of Hebrews, showing us how fixing our eyes on Jesus is the only way to truly deal with the challenges we face in our lives. The reading for today is taken from the book of Hebrews chapter 2 verses 5 through 18. It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking,

but there is a place where someone has testified, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him.

Yet at present, we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of

the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, I will declare your name to my brothers in the presence of the congregation. I will sing your praises. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, he says, here am I and the children God has given me. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason, he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. This is the word of the Lord. The book of Hebrews is written to a group of Christians, urban first century Christians, who are struggling with fear and discouragement because their lives are so

filled with troubles. And the question that this book addresses is, if God loves us so much, why is our life so hard? And the answer each week is fear and discouragement can be dealt with by looking at Jesus. Almost every week there is some reference to seeing Jesus or fixing your eyes on Jesus or looking at Jesus in some way. And this week he says you need, if you really want to deal with fear and discouragement in your life, and who doesn't, you need to see that Jesus is King, Captain, Brother. He's the King who gets involved with us. He's the Captain who faces death for us.

And he's the Brother who is proud of us. Okay, first of all, he's the King who gets involved with us. Now, let's for a minute just look at the theme of the entire passage. Chapter 1, which we looked at last week, was all about Jesus Christ and how high he is, how lofty a being and personage he is. Christ is the creator of the universe we saw in chapter one. Christ is the, holds the universe together with the word of his power.

This chapter goes in the exact opposite direction and says yes Jesus Christ is high, but he's not like one of those gods on Mount Olympus. He's not a Greek or Roman god who's high on Mount Olympus and up there drinking wine and surrounded by festal maidens and occasionally looks down when he's bored. Now, this is different. You know, in 1964, a murder that, and there's a lot of murders in New York City, but one that shook everybody up, in fact the whole society, was in 1964, there was a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, was coming home very late after a night shift that she worked, and she was on the block right in front of

her apartment and an assailant came up and began to attack her. And he stabbed her. And she cried, my God, he stabbed me, please help me. Now, there are apartments all around and all of a sudden a lot of lights went on above. and windows opened above, and people looked down. And when the assailant saw that, he withdrew. But it's documented that there were 38 people who looked down, 38 people who saw and who heard and who didn't come down, didn't get involved, didn't make themselves vulnerable. In fact, those 38 people, nobody even called the police. They didn't want to get that involved.

And when the assailant who was holding back for about five minutes realized nobody was getting involved, nobody was coming down, nobody was making themselves vulnerable, nobody was coming, he went back, found where the woman had crawled around to the back alley, found her again, robbed her of $49, and killed her. Jesus, according to the book of Hebrews, has heard our screams. But he doesn't just look down, he comes down. He makes himself vulnerable. And not just at the risk of his life, which would have been the case in 1964, but at the cost of his life.

And yet he comes. He is not a high god who doesn't get involved and doesn't come down. He's not a king who just sort of sends people out and booms, missives and decrees down. Oh no. That's the theme of this. Over and over and over again. So in verse 11, Jesus, this high lord, is of the same family with us. He becomes of the same family, verse 11. Verse 14, he takes on the same flesh and blood. He becomes one with us in our humanity. Verse 17, he becomes like us in every way. In verse 18, we're tempted so he's tempted. This is not a king. High up, who doesn't get involved? He gets involved with us. But that's not all. That's not all. He's not just a king. He's a captain.

Now secondly, what I want to do is not look just at the theme, but let's look at the argument of this passage. There's three stages to the argument. The argument goes like this. Here's what we were made to be. Here's what's happened to us and the pickle we're in. And here's what God is doing about it. Now, first of all, look at the first part of the passage, what we were made to be. Verse five to eight, the Hebrew's author quotes Psalm 8, and Psalm 8 is looking back to creation. It's looking back to Genesis 1 and 2. And it's saying, what did you make us to be?

What did you make man, humanity, to be? And he quotes Psalm 8, and he says, What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man you care for him? You made us a little lower than the angels. You crowned us with glory and honor, and you put everything under our feet. God left nothing that is not subject to us. What is that? What does it mean, God put everything under our feet? Well, here's what it means. When God created this great world, he gave it to us to

care for, to cultivate, and to nurture. And that means it is our responsibility to see justice, to see peace, to see universal prosperity, to see unity. Those things in the world are our responsibility. There's an interesting place in Luke 12 where somebody calls out in the crowd and says to Jesus, Lord, make my brother divide the inheritance with me. Evidently his father or his mother had just died and left an inheritance and they were squabbling and he says, make my brother divide the inheritance with me

equitably. And Jesus says, don't make me arbiter over you. And you know what Jesus is doing? You managers know there's no greater sin than the sin of upward delegation. What Jesus is saying is, that is your job. That's why I crowned you with glory and honor. That's why I made human beings capable of so much. That's why I made human beings aspire to so much. The justice in this world, peace in this world,

sharing the resources in this world, prosperity in this world, peace in this world, sharing the resources in this world, prosperity in this world, this is your responsibility. That's what he made us for. That's why he crowned us with glory and honor. But secondly, what happened? Well, kind of the understatement of the year, look at the last part of verse eight.

Yet at present, we do not see everything under our feet. God made the world to be under us, but it's not happening. God made the world to be, in other words, when you look out in the world, we don't see the justice, we don't see the peace, we don't see the harmony, we don't see the cultivation of resources, we don't see these things. And now this verse is looking back to Genesis 3, not Genesis 1 and 2, and this verse is looking back to Genesis 3 where we learn the great irony of history.

And the great irony is when human beings decided to be their own lords and masters, the irony is when we decided not to serve God but to serve ourselves, when we decided to be our own lords and masters, ironically, we now can't even master ourselves. We can't even master our own emotions, our own soul, let alone the world. And the world is not, it's not under our feet, it's not under control. Psychologically, sociologically, physically, it's breaking down natural disasters, war, poverty.

Nothing is the way it's supposed to be. But most of all, the biggest problem with the world as it is, and our biggest problem, according to verse 14 and 15, is death and the fear of death. We are in bondage to the fear of death. Now what does that mean? Well, you know, somebody pointed out to me, or maybe I just pointed out to myself,

that I never ever seem to quote Sigmund Freud without criticizing him. So I'm going to try to rectify that today and to say when it comes to death and our understanding of death, actually Sigmund Freud can tell us quite a lot. A lot. Freud points out that we are deeply disturbed Freud points out that we are deeply disturbed and deeply distorted and deeply affected by ambivalent to say the least feelings about death. Freud believed on the one hand we have a death wish that is because of our guilt and because of our shame and because of the feeling that we're not living up to what we ought to be there's this death wish but on the other hand there's this enormous terrible fear of death. And Freud believed that we actually repress the whole conflict.

We repress it, we just do not want to admit to ourselves how afraid of death we are. Now when that comes conscious, it really, it's incredibly traumatic. One of the most famous examples of this is Tolstoy, who of course was a great writer. And when Leo Tolstoy around the age of 50 suddenly realized what death meant and how he felt about death, it changed everything. He says in his confession, he says, something strange began to happen to me at age 50. I had a wife who loved me and

whom I loved. I had a large estate which without much effort on my part increased. My name was respected. I enjoyed physical strength and yet I could not live because of death. The question which brought me to the verge of suicide sought an answer without which one cannot live. Here it is. Is there any meaning in life that my inevitable death does not destroy? Today or tomorrow, death will come to those I love

and then to me. Soon, not only I will not exist, but eventually no one will exist who will remember anything I have written or done. Why then go on with the effort? What is it all for? What does it all lead to? What difference will it make whether I do this thing

rather than that thing or nothing at all? So I could give no rational meaning to any single action or even to my whole life. But what was so surprising was how we can fail to see this. For a time it's possible to live intoxicated with life, but as soon as one is sober, it is impossible not to see that life in the face of death is a fraud and a stupid fraud. How often I have been told, oh you cannot understand the meaning of life, so don't think about it, just live.

But I no longer can do that. Now you see, Tolstoy, Camus, and a lot of these other greats in the last 100 years, 150 years, have said this, the human race will not admit the meaning of death. If death is it, if death is the end, everything you're doing is radically insignificant. Everything, nothing makes any difference.

But we repress that fear of death, we repress the horror of death, and yet though we repress it, says Tolstoy, Camus, and others, we still know it down deep. And you know what that does to us? It drives us. Why do we need wealth? Why do we need love?

Why do we need accomplishment? Why are we stepping on each other? Why are we trampling on each other? Why are we exploiting each other? Why isn't there justice and prosperity and peace in the world? Because we're desperately trying to convince ourselves we count, we matter. Things we do make a difference, but they don't.

Not if death is the end. We are in bondage, politically and socially and culturally and psychologically and spiritually to the fear of death. And we don't know it, and that's the greatest bondage of all, we don't even realize how handcuffed we are, how distorted we are, how affected we are. And so it shouldn't surprise us, even though the modern ear finds it kind of odd, to see it say down here in verse 14, where it talks about the devil using the power of death. Now we go, the devil, how primitive, but consider this can God exist if it's possible for

God to exist who is a personal supernatural good why couldn't there be a devil who's a personal supernatural evil surely if anything is more evidence for his existence and if such a being existed, of being absolutely committed to the misery of the world and everyone in it, this would be his number one weapon, and it is. So what's going to happen now? That's our situation. What is God doing about it? You see, verse 8, verse 5 through 8, Psalm 8, it's amazing that the Hebrew's writer brings it out because it just doesn't seem to be true.

God made us to have the world at our feet, to have the world under our feet. God made us this great, what a promise. He put us in this world and put everything under our feet, but it doesn't seem to be true. The Bible doesn't seem to be true at all. Instead, what we see is The world down on top of us. We're not on top of the world The odd book of Genesis says you're made to be on top of the world, but the world's on top of us So what now what and the answer is we see Jesus and verse 9 is remarkable

He says we don't see the things that Psalm 8 talks about, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. What the Hebrew's author does is he goes back to Psalm 8 and reads it through Jesus and suddenly light dawns. Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. That's the incarnation but more than that Jesus suffered and he doesn't now have glory and honor despite his suffering. He has glory and honor because of his suffering. His suffering enhanced his glory, didn't obviate his glory and through his suffering he redeems the world. In other words Psalm 8, this is

what the Hebrew writer is saying, that you don't sell, Psalm 8 is not true of us, but it's true of Jesus and through Jesus it will be true of us. We all long for a home, for a place where we can truly flourish and belong. In One with My Lord, a new book by Sam Albury, he shows how the Bible promises that there is a place like that for all of us, but it doesn't have a zip code. Instead, the key to home and the very heartbeat of the Christian faith itself is that we find ourselves in Christ. For the New Testament writers, this phrase was so important that instead of using the term Christian, they referred to followers of Jesus as those who are in Christ. Jesus is not only our Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend.

He is also our home and our location. Each chapter of One with My Lord is short enough to be read as a devotional, and in it, Aubrey examines what being in Christ means, giving us a fresh lens to view the gospel and all that it means for our hope, purpose, and identity. We believe this new book will help you grow in your relationship with Christ. To request your copy of One with My Lord, visit GospelAndLife.com slash give. That's GospelAndLife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

Well, somebody says, how? And the answer is in this wonderful and more pregnant than it looks verse in verse 10. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting, what a word, that God for whom and through whom everything exists should make the archegos of their salvation perfect through suffering. Now, the word that is translated author and sometimes it's translated pioneer, it's the word archegos. And it's a Greek word that literally means the archleader. But William Lane has written a great commentary on the book of Hebrews says it really ought to be translated our Champion that Jesus Christ is our champion

He's our captain. What was a champion a champion was somebody who engaged in Representative combat, huh? Representative combat. Well, what does that mean? Well a champion is somebody who in the midst of a battle looks out on the battle and Let's just say this champion himself is in control of his part of the battle, but he looks over and he sees you. And you are running for your life from somebody who is way faster, way stronger, way bigger, and at certain death. And you're running for your life. What does a champion do?

Champion doesn't stay in control. The champion runs over there and puts himself between you and the foe. And he faces your foe for you. He faces death for you. And the Bible says here that Jesus Christ is our captain. He's our champion. Why? How? In verse 9 it says, he suffered death. But in verse 14 it says, he destroyed the power of death because he died but he rose. He died but he rose.

Jesus Christ, our great captain, has blown a hole through the back of death. He went into it and blew a hole through. As C.S. Lewis says, our great captain has opened a cleft in the pitiless walls of the world and bids us come through. Now do you know what? See, all kinds of religions talk about death and afterlife. They say, oh yeah, there's an afterlife, but this isn't a general depiction of afterlife or some kind of general assurance of some kind of afterlife.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the empty tomb, the fact of the resurrection, that is the thing. When I look at that suddenly and I embrace that, I'm released from the power of death. See, Hamlet was wrong. Where am I going next with that? Because Hamlet said, death, the undiscovered country,

from whose born no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear the ills that we have than fly to others we know not of. Thus death through our conscience doth make cowards of us all. But he's wrong. Someone has come back from death. And when I see Jesus Christ raised, when I see Jesus Christ having destroyed the power of death, when I see Jesus Christ having destroyed the power of death, when I see Jesus Christ having opened a cleft

in the pitiless walls of the world, blown a hole through the back of death, and bids me come through, said, believe in me, follow me, and I'll take you through it, I'm not a coward anymore. I'm not a coward anymore. And you know, you don't realize the degree to which you are enslaved to the fear of death

until the faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ comes into your life and begins to release you from it. To drive this home, you know these last couple of verses that talk about the priesthood, he is our great high priest. We're gonna get to that, we're gonna get to the meaning of his death, because we're going through the book of Hebrews, we'll get to it, but just, I want you for a minute

to consider a conversation between a Christian, an early Christian, and his neighbor. And the neighbor comes and says, oh, Christianity, a new religion. I love religion, the pageantry, the sacrifices, the priests, the temples, and the great comfort of knowing that the deity is pleased with you. Now tell me, Christian, where is your temple? Answer, we don't have a temple. Christ is our temple. Well, where do your priests operate?

Answer, we don't have any priests. Christ is our priest. Well, how do you make all the sacrifices and the oblations and do the offerings and the payments that curry favor with the deity? Answer, we don't have to. Jesus is our sacrifice. In fact, he is the deity. Come to us. Well, what kind of religion is this, says your neighbor? And the answer is, it's not any kind of religion. We didn't get a religion, we got a person. We do not have a God high up in Mount Olympus that we

need a cultist or we need religion or we need ethics in order to reach. We have, we, he came, he tasted death, he blew a hole through the back of death and he's our captain, he's come into our lives, that's why salvation is by grace. You see, religion always says, live right and God will take you up. But the gospel is God at infinite cost to himself has come down and received us, and lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died, and now you can live right. Completely the opposite. We got not a religion but a person, don't you dare ever turn Christianity back into a religion. Think, well, if I live a good life and if I read my Bible and if I emulate him,

maybe God will listen to me. You need to continue to listen to what the book of Hebrews is saying. He is our captain. He has faced death for us. But that's not all. He's not just the king who has gotten involved with us, and he's not just a captain who faces death for us. He is our brother who is proud of us. Verse 11 and 12, both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the

same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. And he says, I will declare your name to my brothers in the presence of the congregation, I will sing your praises. Now, you know what? Those of you who are from other cultures than Western culture or have a background or have family from other cultures will understand this maybe a little better than us dead white males, Americans, because we live in a society which is probably the least – that values family less than any society in history. Almost every other society, every other culture has valued family more than we do. And therefore, if you come from a culture like that, you'll understand a little better the magnitude of what this is saying.

We live in an individualistic culture in which when we want to recommend ourselves, we want to promote ourselves, you know, we come up with a resume. That's our accomplishments. We say, I went here and I did this and I did this and I did this. We don't put our ancestors on there. We don't put our uncles and aunts. We put the things that we have done. That's our resume. But you see, other cultures are more realistic about how you became to be the person you are.

Other cultures realize that you are not as so much as we'd like to believe in our culture. We are not so much the product of our choices and decisions. We are to a great degree the product of our family. And listen, a lot of you look pretty young, so you don't believe me, so let me just tell you, the older you get, the more you're going to realize that you are the product of your parentage,

and you are the product of your family, and for good and ill, huge massive parts of who you are are not something that you have received, I mean you have not created your own choices, but you have received from your family. And that's one of the reasons why in the ancient times, when you wanted to recommend yourself, you didn't give people a resume.

When you wanted to recommend yourself, you gave them a genealogy. The emperor's always put, the Roman emperor's always put together great genealogies, but when you put your genealogy together, just like a resume, you left off the family members you were ashamed of. And you prominently put on the top the family members you were proud of.

I mean, it's really, in some ways, just like the resume, I guess, in the end. And so you never, ever put on that genealogy the people that you weren't proud of. How stunning it is then that in Matthew chapter one, a book written to the people of that time to recommend Jesus to the world. And on the first chapter you have the genealogy of Jesus, the resume of Jesus. And look who's there. First of all, you've got women. You've got four or five women in that genealogy. And you know, in the Roman genealogies, in those genealogies, you never put women in there because women had a low status

and you were trying to recommend yourself. Women weren't in there, but women were in Jesus' genealogy. But not only that, look at the women. Tamar, incest survivor. Bathsheba, adulteress. Rahab, prostitute. Mary, single mother, unwed single mother.

By moral standards, these are people we should be ashamed of. But Jesus proudly gives them a place of honor in the genealogy of the King of the universe. Now, do you know what this means? This double negative is the cosmic positive, not ashamed. Do you know what this means? It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter whether you've been a hit man

for the mob, it doesn't matter whether you've lived within the gates of hell, it doesn't matter what you have ever done. Through the death of Jesus Christ, through the sacrifice of Christ, through union with Christ, you can be part of his family, you can be someone he sings over,

he's singing over for joy, somebody you can be proud of. He's not ashamed to call you sister, he's not ashamed to call you brother. It doesn't matter what anyone ever has said about you, it doesn't matter what your parents say, it doesn't matter what their verdict is, it doesn't matter what your siblings say, it doesn't matter what the world says, you're not ruled by what they say anymore.

It matters what he says. We have a brother who is proud of us. Now, I would like you to take these three things. He's a king who gets involved. He's a captain who faces death, and he's a brother who's proud for us. And now, remember what we said in the beginning? People have fear and discouragement

because of the things that are happening in their lives. Okay, let's use this. Friends, let's apply this as we close. Number one, what are you afraid of? If this is true. Now, maybe you don't believe it, but wouldn't you want to believe it? Maybe you don't really believe it fervently,

but don't you want to believe it fervently? Because look at this. You can get rid of all fear of the future. Are you afraid of the future? Are you afraid of what's going to happen next year or the next year? Jesus Christ has gone into the future for you. Your captain has gone into the future

and he has secured the future. You know what that means? What is this future? It's a world under our feet. It's the world the way it's supposed to be. It's a world in which everything sad has come untrue. He has gone there, he has secured it, and he's supposed to be. It's a world in which everything sad has come untrue. He has gone there, he has secured it, and he's waiting for you. It's waiting for you. What are you

afraid of the future for? Secondly, don't be afraid of the past. Are you afraid of something coming out? Are you afraid that you've done something you're never going to live down in Jesus Christ? It is over. So don't be afraid. Secondly, discouragement about your troubles. When I became a minister, when I was 25 years old, I was a minister in Hopewell, Virginia. There was another minister in town who was 50 years old, interesting. And I remember one time I'm talking to him about some great sermon I was putting together on suffering and troubles, and I was really going to help my people with suffering and troubles. He didn't quite put it this caustically, but basically what he said to me was, he says,

well, that's great. Use that Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic. Study that text. Put together this wonderful piece of rhetoric. Let pearls of erudite wisdom drip for your mouth. With the help you try to give your people for their troubles won't amount to a hill of beans, he said, unless you're there with them,

not just booming from the pulpit, you've got to be there at the funeral home. You've got to be there in the hospital. You've got to be there at the bedside. And by the way, it's true. And all of the people I ministered to back in those days, when they remember, the things they remember that I said weren't things I said to them from the pulpit,

they were things I said to them in the hospital room. But we have the only religion that says God does not boom answers to our suffering from heaven. You see, other religions say, oh, God couldn't become human. God, too glorious for that, he couldn't become human. He booms. Answers to suffering. I am God. I am inscrutable. You know, I have, it's mysterious, but I'm working out my will. But we don't have a God like that. We have a God who came down. We have a God who was rejected. We have a God who's experienced imprisonment, who's experienced torture. In fact, we have a God who was rejected. We have a God who has experienced imprisonment, who has experienced torture. In fact, we have a God who has experienced being cut

off from God. Why, why hath thou forsaken me? He's even experienced that. He's there with us. And all of his help is not going to amount to a hill of beans unless he was there and he was. He is. He's a faithful and merciful high priest. He knows what it's like. Now, and when you say how in the world can, if God's really committed to my glory, how can he let me suffer? Well, think about, look, Jesus' glory was enhanced by his suffering. You know why?

There is nothing more beautiful. The truest and ultimate beauty is the one who gave up his beauty so that we could be lovely to God. The truest and ultimate strength is one who is strong enough to be weak and vulnerable so that we could come to God. The greatest glory would be the person who gave up his glory so that we could have God. And therefore, just as Jesus Christ's glory and beauty

and strength is enhanced by having lost it, so when you suffer and you look at him, you're walking down the same path, and beauty and strength is enhanced by having lost it. So when you suffer and you look at him, you're walking down the same path, a path into maturity, a path into greatness, a path into wisdom, a path into sympathy for other people, a path into communion with God, into royalty. You know, at the, you know, in the first Lord of the Rings movie, there's an interesting character that actually is a pretty interesting allegory

of the average Christian. His name is Boromir. And Boromir's got a problem. Boromir was going to be the head of this great city, and then he runs into a guy named Aragorn, who's actually heir to the throne of that city. So if Aragorn wasn't there, he would rule, but now since Aragorn's there, he's not going to. And he struggles with that. And that's how all of us feel about Jesus. When you get near Jesus, you realize he's the heir to the throne of your life, and if he's there, I'm not going to be able to call the shots of my life. And so we struggle. But at the end of that first movie, Boromir repents. And as he's dying, he looks up at Aragorn and he says, I would have followed you, my brother, my captain,

and my king. And then he dies. You know, there was a Roman emperor, I think it was Trajan, but I'm not sure, about whom it was said he wasn't just a king but a captain, not just a captain but a brother. He wasn't just a king who sent his soldiers out, but he was a captain who led them out. But not only was he a king and a captain, on the battlefield, the emperor took and tore his royal robes

to dress the wounds of his men. So he wasn't just a king and he wasn't just a captain, he was a brother. But that's nothing like Jesus, because Jesus Christ tore his soul, and he tore his body apart to heal our wounds. So you know what you should do? You should look to Jesus in spite of all your struggles, and you should say, I am going to follow you. I will follow you, my brother, my captain, and my king.

And when you say that, the result will not be death, but eternal life. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you would help us to deal with our fears and to deal with our discouragements the way the author of the book of Hebrews says we should. Look at Jesus, our brother, our captain, our king, and give our lives to him and serve him and he'll bring us into eternal life. And he'll bring us into a freedom from fear of the past, a freedom from fear of the future, a freedom from fear in the present of our suffering. He'll give us a big life right now because we know

what's waiting for us. So we pray, Lord, that you will help us to take out these treasures, take out these medicines that are in the gospel and put them into our hearts so we can begin to live the lives that we are capable of living should we, when we, embrace Jesus Christ by faith. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Amen. all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelonlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelonlife.com slash partner. And thank you. Today's sermon was recorded in 2005. 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.