Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - East of Eden

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

The Western romantic idea of human nature was that we’re inherently good. But the problem is over the last century, we’ve discovered that oppression and evil have not gone away but rather have erupted with ferocity over and over again regardless of social and political arrangements. This has created a crisis for the modern secular person. But the book of Genesis not only accounts for what we see, but also gives us enormous hope that there’s something that can be done about it.  Let’s look at what Genesis teaches us about the human condition and the hope for healing through three vivid images: 1) the reaching, 2) the covering, and 3) the sword. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 19, 2000. Series: Genesis – The Gospel According to God. Scripture: Genesis 3:20-4:2. 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.

Thanks for listening to Gospel in Life. Today, Tim Keller is preaching through the Book of Genesis, an ancient book that answers many of the foundational questions we all have. Why did God make the world? What is the world for? And how are we supposed to live in it? After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Let's take a look at our, for the third time we're looking at this third chapter of Genesis, and I'm going to read from verses 20 to the end and actually into chapter 4. Genesis chapter 3 verse 20 to 4 chapter 4 verse 2. Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments

of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Adam lay with his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, with the help of the

Lord I have brought forth a man. Later she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. We're looking at that next week, but this week let us look now at this last part of Genesis 3. We're looking at the book of Genesis. Why? Now we say this every week, but I say it a little differently every week, and not all of you are here every week, so let me say it again. There's a whole lot of interest in the book of Genesis. Have you not noticed that in the last ten years? You have TV specials and you have lots and lots of books and commentaries and translations being reviewed in the New York Review of Books and things like that. Why this interest in Genesis? There's probably many reasons, but here's at least one. The old romantic idea of human nature that has dominated the Western world for about 150 years is beginning to break up.

The old romantic notion was that we're inherently good and that talking about sin and evil and Satan is primitive and pejorative and negative. The problem is, over the last century, we have discovered that oppression and evil has not gone away as we've gotten better education and so forth, but rather it has erupted with enormous ferocity over and over again across the spectrum, regardless of social and political arrangements, and it's created a huge dilemma for the modern mind, you might say, for the modern secular person.

And there's no better way to distill that dilemma than to look at the novel, which of course became a movie, The Silence of the Lambs. There's no more vivid spot in The Silence of the Lambs. You have Officer Starling, remember her? She's a young police officer and she's interviewing Hannibal Lecter, great serial killer. And at one point she's talking with him and she sees what he's done and she sees his attitude and she says, what happened to you that you become like this? Now you notice something? She is the quintessential modern person. What has happened to you? You're

doing bad things, therefore something must has happened to you? You're doing bad things. Therefore, something must have happened to you. Something must have come from outside. Couldn't be something inside. What an enormous philosophical leap of faith. And yet everybody does it. And Hannibal Lecter slam dunks the modern worldview. Now this is out of the book, though it's hard when I read it not to hear Anthony Hopkins. This is what he says. You know, what has happened to you? She says, he says,

nothing has happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in dignity pants. Nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil? Now you see,

this is the nightmare of the modern secular worldview because there is no answer, no categories, no answer to the monster. In other words, what are you going to say? In my worldview, you can say, you do bad things, here's three possibilities. There are only three possibilities. One is you do it because of psychology, complexes. You know, you were raised improperly. Or you can say you did it because of sociology. This is antisocial behavior because of various forms of deprivation. Or you could say it's because of evolution.

You're aggressive because of millennia of natural selection. And all of those explanations trivialize the suffering of the lives he's destroyed. And you can just see him leering, not at Officer Starling, not at the viewer, but at the modern world. And he's looking at us and he's saying, you have no categories for me in your modern worldview, but here I am. And he leers at us and there's no answer, but he can't say that about the book of Genesis. Oh no, he can't because the book of Genesis has certainly got categories for him, has no problem explaining

him, and as a result we're going back to the book. In fact, you see there's a breakdown in the old faith, and here's the old faith. The old faith is this world is all there is and you can explain everything in terms of natural causes. There is a crisis in that secular faith today. It's breaking up. Nobody knows what's going to take its place. And it's because of questions like this. And that's one of the reasons why people are going back to things like the book of Genesis. Because the book of Genesis, especially this chapter 3, the traditional and the classic and ancient account of the fall of humanity into evil and sin,

it very, very, very nicely accounts for what we see. And not only that, it gives us enormous hope. Enormous hope that there's something that can be done about it. Now let's look and see what it teaches us about the human condition and what that hope is under three vivid figures. The beautiful thing about the Hebrew Scriptures is that you don't have, you know, long sections so much of teaching. You've got these terrific narratives and there's three vivid images.

Each one of them is going to tell us something about what the human condition, you know, where it came from, what the nature of our human condition is, what account for our human condition, and give us some hope for how to intervene and how to heal it. And those three things are, look at the reach, the cover, and the sword. You see them? The reaching, the covering or the clothing, and the sword. Look, I see what they teach us. Number one, the reaching. And the Lord God said, the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life."

Now, verse 22 is a sadly ironic statement. It's a sadly ironic statement in that what it really is, it's a restatement of the serpent's temptation. Back up in chapter, in this chapter in verse 5, the serpent, you might remember, originally said to Adam and Eve, said, if you disobey God, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You'll be like him, knowing good and evil. And what was diabolically deceptive about it is that there's two ways to get to know good and evil. Just like there's two ways to get to know about bubonic plague. The one way is to get to know it so you know how to treat it and how to avoid it. You know, the other way is to catch

it and you see, and to get delirious and to die. They're both forms of knowing about bubonic plague. Which would you rather have? And you see, therefore, God is actually being sadly ironic. And what he's actually saying in verse 22 is that they wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil. Well, what they wanted, they've gotten. But it's not a dream. It's not the dream. It's a nightmare. But then as in verse 23 he says, Therefore they must not be allowed to reach out the take from the tree of life. Now what's the tree of life? It's eternal life. But in the Bible, eternal life, and this is a mistake. It's easy enough to make a mistake when you look at the word eternal life. In the Bible the word eternity is not just got to do with quantity. Eternal life does not just mean life that goes on. I mean, don't we

all know that there's plenty of people whose life is just going on and don't want it to keep on going? I mean, duration all by itself, what's that? Eternal life is not talking so much about quantity of life but quality of life, not so much about duration but fullness of life. We are made in the image of God. And that means many, many things, but at least means that we have a rational aspect and therefore there's an enormous hunger to know. We have a personal aspect and therefore there's an enormous hunger to love and be loved. We have a creative aspect, you see, therefore there's an enormous hunger to make. We have an eternal aspect and therefore there's an enormous hunger to last. And there's many, many others. What's the tree of life?

The tree of life is to have that in its fullness, to have all the glory and greatness. Because look at the scale on which the Bible says you are made. Look at the scale on which you're made. Look at the grandeur. Look at how huge, you might say, your tanks are. Look at what enormous stuff it's going to take to fulfill it, and that's what the tree of life is. But what is God saying when he says they must not be allowed to reach out? Here's what it means. They've lost God. If you're going to be your own God, you're going to lose God. But they still want to reach out, here's what it means. They've lost God. If you're going to be your own God, you're going to lose God. But they still want to reach out, which means is they know they've lost God, but they still want the things that only God can give them. And what this is telling

us is something very, very, very vivid, incredibly vivid. It's saying that though we know we've lost God, though we have lost God, though we're pushed out, we still can't forget what we were built for. We still can't forget it. We're still reaching out for it. We haven't forgotten it. We haven't gotten over it. Now listen, if that sounds very esoteric and theological, well it is theological, but it's not esoteric. I can't tell you how practical it is. Let me give you a personal example and a visceral example. The best personal example of this is over and over again, if you read The Problem of Pain, if you read Mere Christianity,

especially that little chapter on hope, if you read the C.S. Lewis books, over and over again he says something like this. This is a kind of paraphrase. I actually did this out of my head. If you try to find this anyplace, you're not gonna find it, but he says it in so many different ways. This is what he

says. He says, if you really understood your own heart, you will eventually come to know that you want something most acutely that cannot be had in this world, this life. The longings that arise when you first fall in love, when you first get married, when you first get into a new job, when you first get to a terrific travel spot, are actually aspects of a longing that no marriage, no travel, no job, no romance will ever satisfy. Not even the best possible ones, not even the very, very best possible marriages and jobs will do that. And what he's saying is this, and what this text is telling us is this, whenever you reach out for love, whenever you reach out for success, whenever you reach out for work, whenever

you reach out in this life, you're not just reaching for love, you're not just reaching for family, you're not just reaching for a spouse, you're not just reaching for love. You're not just reaching for family. You're not just reaching for a spouse. You're not just reaching for a job. Oh no. There's a deeper kind of reaching going on. You're reaching for something. And as you close your fingers around it, it's gone. It always eludes you.

In other words, the things that you look to, if I get into this, if I get into that, if I'm able to get that done, then I will have made it. And when you actually get there, it never, there's always a disillusionment, there's always a disappointment. But it's not psychological, it's not sociological, it's cosmic. And until you understand it, until you understand what's going on, you're always going to be angry and frustrated constantly in life.

There is, another way to put this, there is a cosmic disillusionment and a cosmic disappointment about everything you do in life. And until you see it for what it is, you're going to be an incredibly frustrated and bitter person. Now let me say this real carefully, very, very carefully. If you're a minority in any particular culture, you can blame it on the culture. If you've had bad parents, if you've had bad luck, if things just haven't gone your way, you'll blame it on those things. Now I'm not saying there is such a thing as racism, I'm not saying there's not such a thing as, you know, parent neglect and abuse, I'm not saying

there's any of these things are not trivial, but what the Bible is telling us is there's something deeper going on, always something deeper going on, until you understand it. And so you see it for what it is. You are going to live an incredibly angry and frustrated life, and it's going to get worse every year you get older. You know, you can put this off in the beginning, but you can't after a while. If anybody's here saying, I don't believe this, if you want to live your life without what I'm telling you, without what this text is telling you, all I can say is good luck. I know it sounds harsh, but I'm just trying to get your attention. I'm going to give you

a visceral example. I mean, I can multiply examples. There's a reaching going on. We don't have God, yet we cannot forget what we're built for. We cannot forget the greatness and the glory. We can't. Let me give you a visceral example. In the modern secular worldview, if this life is all there is, there is absolutely nothing more natural than death. Everybody dies. Everything dies, everything ends, everything falls apart eventually. Even if it's made out of stone, it eventually falls apart, it eventually wears down. Everything ends, everything dies, nothing more natural. And all the books, and all the TV shows, everything on death for decades now has been trying to push that on us. It's

natural, it's just a journey, it's normal, it's just the next stage in the journey. I'll never forget, and surely some of you have had this experience, you know, it's one thing to be, you know, in a funeral parlor, it's one thing to see somebody, even somebody you know, even somebody you care a lot for when they're all sort of fixed up in the casket. I'll never forget one time in which I was standing right next to the body of a very, very good friend of mine, actually one of my standing right next to the body, a very, very good friend of mine, actually one of my very closest friends at the time who had just minutes before died in a freak accident.

And I realized something then, and I'm going to say this because I really don't have much fear of being contradicted if somebody else has been in the same thing, same situation. At that point you know, and you know it so deeply that if you're told you can't know this, you assume that you can't know anything, that this is not normal, this is not natural, this is not right. Why would we feel that way? How would we know that? This is not right. We say that Dylan Thomas was right when he said, do not go gentle into that night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. But how could we know that? Why would we know that? Here's why.

Because your mind, your little intellect holds on to philosophy 101, but your heart knows there's a tree. Your heart knows there's a garden. Your heart knows there's a God. Your heart knows that's where you're meant to be. Your heart knows that we were supposed to last. We're the most unhappy creatures in all of nature. Because what we see around ourselves, you know, Voltaire at one point called us tormented atoms in a bed of mud. And what did he mean by that?

He said he was a man ahead of his time. He says, you know, from what we can tell, this life is all there is. That means we're atoms. We're just atoms. We're no different than the rocks, the trees, we're just atoms. But you know what? Here's how we're different. We're tormented atoms because we hate the idea that we're only atoms. We can't stand the idea that we're only atoms. Why would we not be able to? Where did that come from?

We know there's a tree. We know there's a garden. We know we've lost. We're always reaching. And so intellectually, unless you understand that, you're going to be screwed up philosophically. And personally, if you don't understand that, you're going to be looking constantly to things to give you what they can't give you all of your life. So the first thing we learn about… Don't you see? Genesis helps account for that by telling us about reaching. That's not all it tells us. Secondly, it tells us about covering. Verse 21, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Now, this is the end of a theme that if you've been coming, we've been seeing

all the way through Genesis chapter 2 and chapter 3 as we've been going through it. See, at the end of chapter 2, when Adam and Eve were first created, we're told, verse 25, chapter 2, they were naked and unashamed. Then last week, or in Genesis chapter 7 and 8, we read this. I'm sorry, chapter. In Genesis 3 verse 7 and 8, we read this, and they ate, and then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they threw fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. But the Lord said, Where are you? And the man said, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. Now there is no more vivid modern exposition of what's going on here. What is going on here? Sartre, John Paul Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness has a chapter called The Look and it's a fascinating

chapter and very vivid. And it tells us about him he he envisions a situation which he is in a room and he's looking through a keyhole at somebody and he sees them he sees everything they're doing and they don't see him they don't even know he's looking and it's kind of heady he likes likes it. It's kind of a heady experience. Sense of power. And then suddenly, he hears a noise in the hallway through another door. And he suddenly realizes somebody's looking at him

through the keyhole. And he is traumatized. And he is outraged. And he cannot bear it. Why? Because the unviewed viewing, his unviewed viewing, is being viewed by an unviewed viewer. He loved being the unviewed viewer. It was the greatest thing possible, but he cannot bear to be

the object of an unviewed viewer. And here what he's telling us in a very vivid way is this is the first thing that we're learning about. What is nakedness? What is this nakedness that has to be dealt with? The first thing is the human condition is such that we cannot bear to be out of control of what people know about us. We cannot bear to be in a situation where we can't filter it, where we can't explain it, where we can't control it. We cannot bear it. It is unbearable, and that's what Sartre is saying. Most people think Christianity is either incredibly inclusive

or unbelievably exclusive. But the fact is, Christianity is both radically inclusive and radically exclusive. How can this be? In his short book, The Gospel on the Move, How the Cross Transcends Cultural Differences, Tim Keller shows us how we can make sense of this apparent paradox. Through the New Testament story of Philip and the Ethiopian, we learn how the gospel

allows us to humbly critique our own cultural biases while becoming a united people of God. This month we have an exclusive resource only available through Gospel in Life that we want you to share. When you give to Gospel in Life in October, we'll send you three copies of Dr. Keller's short book The Gospel on the Move as our thanks for your gift. This short book is a great way to present the Gospel to a friend or loved one.

We hope you'll prayerfully consider who you could give each copy to and that it helps you live more missionally. To receive your three copies of this short book, friend or loved one. We hope you'll prayerfully consider who you could give each copy to and that it helps you live more missionally. To receive your three copies of this short book, just visit gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with the gospel. But Sartre then goes on, and he goes on in this chapter and later in the book, and he makes this very famous argument against the existence of God. It's an ingenious argument.

And what he says is this. He says there's nothing more dehumanizing than being the object of an unviewed viewer. It's like being naked. Imagine going into a room and everybody else has got clothes on and you are utterly naked. How do you feel? You feel naked? That's the point. I'm out of control. I can't see what they look like. I can't see all their flab. I can't see all their rolls. I can't see, you know, all their flaws. I mean, they've got clothes on that are hiding all of that, and I am being seen. See? And he says, there's nothing more dehumanizing than that, and therefore, there's no God,

if I am a true, authentic human being, or if there is a God, I have to defy Him. Because there's nothing more dehumanizing than a God who I can't view, but who can view me. Huh? Sounds good, doesn't it? There's a big flaw in the problem. Big flaw. In fact, you can see it in his own illustration. He is not simply dehumanized and traumatized because somebody is looking through the keyhole

at him. He's traumatized because somebody is looking through the keyhole, seeing him looking through the keyhole. He's traumatized because he's doing to somebody else the very thing he absolutely refuses to let anybody, including God, do. In other words, nakedness is a sense that there's something wrong with me and I can't keep the eyes of anyone else out. Nakedness is a sense, a deep sense, there's something wrong with me.

There's something wrong about me. There's something inadequate. I'm not what I ought to be. It's very deep. It's very terrible. And that's the reason why we cannot bear to let somebody else see. We have to be completely in charge. Now what's fascinating about this, as I mentioned before, if you are a minority in a culture, you tend to think that my sense of inadequacy comes from the society. And like I said, social oppression is bad. If you come from a broken or bad or, you know, family in some bad way,

that is bad. I'm not saying, I'm not minimizing, but you have a tendency to blame it on that. But do you see how radically egalitarian this doctrine of original sin is? Radically egalitarian. It's saying here that every single person has this deep sense of inadequacy. Every single person is born with a deep sense of condemnation, a deep sense that I am not what I ought to be. And as a result, we are doing everything we can. In fact, you can understand all of your life doing two things.

If you don't come to understand this, you are going to be trapped into these two things. You can do just what Sartre is doing. You're going to spend all of your life trying to uncover other people to get power over them because you know, the reason you look through keyholes is because you know, if I can catch people being themselves, I'll get power with them because I know that they're not what they ought to be. I know that they're not what they purport to be. But meanwhile, I've got to cover myself. I've got to find some way to keep out what other people and even myself have to cover up because if anybody

actually saw me for who I was, if you... Come on, you know what I'm talking about. If people just saw the thoughts you had the last 48 hours, if people saw how foolish they are, how petty they are, how scared they are, how obsessed they are, you couldn't bear it. And so you're going to spend all of your life finding ways to cover up that deep radical sense of inadequacy. Deep. He was so stupid, Adam says, I'm ashamed because I'm naked. Remember he said I was afraid because I'm naked. Well he was naked before and he was okay. It's not transparency per se that is our problem. It's we don't want people to see us because we have this deep sense of condemnation.

And until you understand that, you're not going to understand your life. Listen. Let me be personal, and it's a little bit of a list. Why are some of you working … why are some of you moved to New York when you know you're just going to just work and work and work and work and work and work? Why do you overwork? Why do you work and say, well, I'm working these number of hours until I get here, and then you get there and you just keep working. Number one. Number two. Why is it some of you cannot say no to anybody?

Why is it some of you can't even bear the look of disappointment on somebody's face and therefore you do anything? You knock yourself out, you abuse yourself just to make sure that nobody's unhappy. Number three, why is it that none of you will ever date somebody two notches down from you in coolness and looks? Never. You feel like I've worked very hard to get to the spot I am, and I am not going lower.

I may go higher, but I am not going lower. Why is it that some of you need so desperately to be attractive? Now that's the comical version of this. This is the uncomical. Why is some of you just desperately to be attractive that if you can't be attractive, then you have to imagine yourself being attracted to beautiful people and so you get into pornography. Why is it that some of you desperately, desperately fear ever opening up and making a commitment,

even though you're lonely and you still can't do it? Why is it that some of you need to blame somebody for your life? There's a person you've got or a couple people and you say they're the reason, they're the reason. You cannot forgive them, you can't stop blaming them. They're the reasons. Why is it that some people are incredibly irreligious? I am a free thinker, I can be whoever I want to be. And why are some people so incredibly religious? Needing to condemn everybody? Or maybe just anxiously running around through just this round of religious

religious practices like Lady Macbeth running around saying out, out damn spot. All the perfumes in Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand. Why? These are fig leaves. Your perfectionism is a fig leaf. Your work is a fig leaf. Your makeup is a fig leaf. Your holding on to your youth is a fig leaf. Your need for approvals of, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're trying to cover, I mean 999,000 out of a million won't put it this way, but they're doing it. You're trying to patch up a righteousness of your own.

You're trying to cover over that sense of inadequacy. You're trying to get control, desperately trying to get control. Meanwhile, you're trying to uncover everybody else, and that's the reason why there's classes of people and there's types of people that you have to dislike, you really can't bear to be around. If there's anybody like that, there's that whole class of people I just can't bear them. The rich, the poor, that other culture, those kinds of, I just can't bear to be around them. You want to uncover them to make yourself covered. So that you can just desperately patch up this righteousness. Do you understand the most fundamental thing in human condition,

according to what the Bible is telling us, is that we're all born with this sense of inadequacy that we're trying to pin on somebody, but you can't. And as a result, because we won't see where it really is coming from, we all our lives are trapped into trying to uncover other people and to cover ourselves. Patch up a righteousness. Patch up our fig leaves. Find some way to not let anybody know, including ourselves, how weak we really are. Now, what are we going to do about that? In fact, let me appeal to you just for a second. I'm going to do this lovingly and respectfully. I'm

sure this is New York City, so some of you, even though Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism is completely outmoded now, but still. Some of you are still doing the Sartre thing, right? Some of you are really saying, I am my own person, I'm creating my own reality, I don't believe in sin, I don't believe in hell, I don't believe in all that stuff. And yet, will you be honest, there is a voice of condemnation in you, there's a voice that calls you a coward, there's a voice that calls you a fool, you're embarrassed about it, you don't want anybody to know on the outside how strong it is and why. You know, you call it complexes, you call it whatever, and you can't stop it.

It's because you're alienated from God and you're never going to get to the bottom of it otherwise. Now, how do you get through it then? Our fig leaves don't work. They don't really work, you see. Have you ever tried? then? Our fig leaves don't work. They don't really work, you see. Have you ever tried? Go ahead. Fig leaves don't work.

They're always falling apart. Okay? They're always, you know, they're never quite enough and you're always drafty and it just doesn't work. So, what are we going to do? What does God do? Well, here's what we have. The third thing.

Is there any hope? You know, what will work? The sword. Now, verse 24. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Well, you see two things. One is obvious, one is not, maybe. First of all, sin always isolates you. Sin always excludes you. I mean, this is common sense. Go into a family. Go into a marriage. Go into any community, any community at all, any community. And always put yourself first. And that's the essence of sin, is self-centeredness. Okay? Always put yourself first and it won't be long before you'll be alone. In most cases

you don't get cast out, the garden just picks up and leaves you. Everybody around you picks up and leaves. Sin excludes, but what keeps Adam and Eve out of the garden, of the glory, of the joy, of what we're built for, is not a door but a sword. Not a wall but a sword. what we're built for, is not a door but a sword, not a wall but a sword. The way to get back is not to scale a wall but to go under a sword. And the sword always represents the justice of God in the Bible, always. It means there's a debt to be paid. You know one of the most astounding things about the tabernacle and temple? If you read carefully the biblical descriptions of the tabernacle, the temple where the children of Israel worshipped, and you'll know this, in the heart of the tabernacle was the Holy of Holies. It was the place where God dwelt, His Shekinah glory dwelt. But if you started moving toward it,

you had to pass three things. You had to pass an altar, because you see only the high priest could go in there once a year, Yom Kippur, and he had to go in with a blood sacrifice. You pass the veil, and on the veil there's palm trees on the veil. Palm trees. And then when you get all the way into the center, there's cherubim. And this was God's way to tell us this is the way of salvation. The only way you'll ever get back to the garden is if justice is satisfied. I'm a just God. There's a debt that has to be paid. You're going to have to go under the knife. Well, then what's the hope? Here's the hope. On a dark and stormy night, many centuries later, there was somebody who was cast out.

He said, my God, what hast thou forsaken me? There was somebody who was stripped naked in the dark. They cast lots for his clothes. And there was somebody who quite literally went under the nails, under the spear, under the thorns, under the knife, who shed his blood. As the book of Isaiah says, he was cut off from the land of the living. But what does that mean? The book of Hebrews puts it like this. It's an astounding statement. The book of Hebrews says, therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter

the holy place, we have confidence. What? We? Not just the high priest? Once a year? No, we, all of us, we have confidence in the holy place. We have confidence to get back into the arms of God. We have confidence. How? By the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way opened for us through the curtain. So let us draw near with full assurance of faith. In other words, why, when Jesus died, was the veil ripped from top to bottom in the holy of holies? because Jesus went through under the sword. He took the sword. The sword fell on him. And if you know that, look carefully.

Verse 21, God covers them with skins, with the results of a sacrifice. And this is how it works. It's very, very, very simple, but very important. If you try to clothe yourself, not only by doing bad things, but by doing good things, I've tried to show you here today that the essence, the essence of what cuts us off from God is trying to clothe ourselves, trying to cover ourselves. Maybe some of you said, well, I thought the essence of what cuts us off from God is disobeying

the Ten Commandments. Yeah, that's maybe 10% of it. See, most of us, 10% of the things we do are bad. 90% of the things we do are okay or at least legal. But why are you doing what you're doing? Why are you going to law school? Why are you falling in love? Why do you want to get married? Why? Why? There is something deep underneath us that we're trying to cover up until we are absolutely sure that God loves us. We are driven by this. And therefore what God is saying is, I want to clothe you. I want to cover your sins with the love, the loving sacrifice of my son. I want you to know that he died for you and therefore that you can relate to me on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done and therefore you can stop trying

to cover yourself. Let me cover you. And when that happens and if that happens, do you understand how that happens, by the way? It doesn't happen by saying, I've been bad, now I'm going to be good. When people say, I'm being bad, I need God somehow in my life, I'm going to be really good, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to go to Redeemer, I'm going to listen, I'm going to take notes, I'm going to go to a small group. And that can very, very, very, very easily be more fig leaves so easily. What it takes to connect with God and to get this covering is to say, Lord God, I realize that in order to keep control of my life, I've been doing bad things and I've been

doing good things. To try to put spin on everything. To try to keep from admitting my weakness. I will uncover to you. I will uncover my need to you. See, God says, if you uncover to me, I will cover you. But if you refuse to uncover to me, then life will spend all, you will go through all of life,

having life blow your fig leaves off. But once you do that, what will happen? Let me just give you quickly a couple things that will happen. How do you know if you're not just religious and good, but you've actually begun to let, through an act of faith in what Jesus Christ did on the cross, God cover you with His love, with the sacrifice of His Son? To accept you because of what Jesus did,

to receive you because He paid your penalty, for you to rest and live on that. Really, four things. First of all, here's how you know this is going to happen. Number one, you will not have as much trouble letting people see who you are. I'm not saying, by the way, that that means we should in this world be completely transparent. Don't forget, people are out there trying to hurt us by getting the goods on us because they're desperately trying to cover themselves. It's never good to let people sin against you. It's not good for them. Therefore, I'm not talking about being utterly transparent once you become a Christian,

besides that you grow into this. But I'll tell you this, if you're not just religious, but you've actually become a Christian, you're actually resting and you've received God's covering love in Christ, you will find it easier and easier to admit when you're wrong. You'll find it easier and easier to not spin things. You'll find it easier and easier to repent. It won't be like eating sand anymore. It'll be like drinking something cool and refreshing.

It'll be good. Number one, you won't need to be covering yourself all the time. Number two, you will not be the kind of person that needs to put people in their place. You will not be the kind of person that needs to put people down. You will not be the kind of person that complains and just needs to score points and needs to win the argument.

You won't need that, because that's a way of covering. It's one thing to get somebody to change their mind. It's another thing to put them down, to put them in their place, to let them know, you know, the vermin that they really are. You don't do that if you know the covering love of Christ. There's plenty of people in the church that act like that, which means they don't know what we're talking about here. They're a profession notwithstanding. But number three, okay, number one, you don't mind showing people your own faults. Number two, you no longer need to show other people their faults.

But number three, you're not scared to death to tell people about their faults. If you're the kind of person like me who hates confronting people, it's because you're trying to clothe yourself with their approval. And one of the ways in which you find out that you really have begun to rely on the covering love of Jesus Christ is you don't like conflict, but you don't avoid it. And number four, the way you grow always, when you feel like you're just sinking, you feel like I'm just going down, I don't know what I'm going to do, you feel like you're sinking, always ask yourself, is there something in my life, is there something in my life that's a good thing that I'm trying to hide myself in, I'm trying to cover myself in? You need

to look at that and say, I don't need you, he's my hiding place. You know, Sartre was an existentialist and he loved Kierkegaard who was considered the Danish Lutheran minister who was considered the father of modern existentialism. Well, Kierkegaard kept his Christianity intact, and here's what Kierkegaard said. It's an amazing statement. He says, Oh Jesus Christ, hiding place for sinners, hast thou learned, oh reader, how to hide in him when weary unto despair? It's not some inspiring thoughts that he gives thee, it's not some doctrine he communicates to thee, no, he gives thee himself as a shelter. As the night spreads concealment over everything, so did he give up his life and become a covering for a sinful

world. Through this covering, justice cannot break, and does not break as the sun's rays breaks through colored glass merely softened by refraction. Oh no! Just as impotently breaks against this covering and does not pass through it, he gave himself as a covering for thee and for me. Love, Sauron Kierkegaard." Do you understand that? Don't stop until you do.

Let's pray. We thank you Father that we can understand through the reaching, through the covering, and through the sword who we are and what we need to do. And we pray not so much right now that the world will see that Genesis is true. We pray that the people who are hearing this, who are reading this right now, will take the hope and take the provision that God has given so that we are so different, so different, as people see the joy of those who know that their sins are covered, as we live lives of people who know that they're beautiful to the only view, the only eyes that count, as we live lives of that kind of po who know that they're beautiful to the only view, the only eyes that count.

As we live lives of that kind of poise and that kind of compassion, that kind of depth, then the world will say, what is in the book of Genesis? We ask for that now. We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you a deeper appreciation for God's grace and helps you apply His word to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at GospelInLife.com. When you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000.

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. Music