Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Envy: The Case of Israel

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

There’s a sickness in us. We are cruel to each other in ways we cannot seem to heal. We have an inveterate kind of unhappiness in our hearts we can’t seem to put out.  For the last hundred years, the reigning Western understanding of why we are so cruel and unhappy has been that it comes from outside of us, that it comes from conditions. But in the last few decades, the intelligentsia have increasingly admitted there’s something deeper than that. The Bible says the problem with human beings is not environmental—that there is a poison in us that’s called sin. And we need to understand the symptoms of that poisoning, the symptoms of sin. Let’s look today at 1) the symptom of envy, 2) the root cause, and 3) the antidote. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 26, 1995. Series: The Seven Deadly Sins. Scripture: Numbers 11:4-6. 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. Some people say the fundamental problem of the world is poverty. Others say it's bad systems, poor education, or biology. But what if none of these can fully explain the brokenness we see, both in the headlines and in our own hearts? In today's teaching, Tim Keller looks at how the Bible's teaching on sin gives us a deeply honest and yet incredibly hopeful view of the world. The teaching this morning is based on the text that is printed in the bulletin.

It's a brief text. Just give you a little background when we print such a brief text. It's Numbers, Chapter 11, verses 4, 5, and 6. This happens in the midst of a fairly long narrative that many of you are familiar with the broad contours of. Israel, the Israelites, were the slave labor force of Egypt. They were in Egypt, and they helped build under the lash the great pyramids and many of the great, not the great pyramids necessarily, but the many great works of architecture in ancient Egypt. But they were slaves. They were cruelly oppressed. They were beaten. They were killed. When they got too numerous, many of their

children were slaughtered. It was a terrible situation. But God, through Moses, led them out through miraculous signs, passed through the Red Sea. But on their way to Canaan, on their way to their promised land, they had to go through a wilderness, a desert. And in the desert, there was no food at all. No food at all. God made a provision for them. And it was called manna. And manna was a very odd phenomenon. It came down with the dew, we were told, every morning, six mornings of the week, not the last morning. and it lay on the ground and we're told it looked like coriander seed and it looked like resin, it was light, it could be made into cakes, it was the only thing they had to eat.

But it's what they were able to sustain themselves with. But now we come to a situation in which we're told the children of Israel began to cry out against God, the God who was providing for them in the wilderness, and this is what they said. The rabble with them began to crave other food. And again, the Israelites started wailing and said, if only we had meat to eat, we remember the fish we had in Egypt at no cost. Also the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we've lost our appetite. We never see anything but this manna.

And this is God's word. Never before have people been more willing to admit that. that humankind is sick. There's a sickness in us. We are cruel to each other. We visit each other with cruelty in ways that we cannot seem to heal. We have an inveterate kind of unhappiness in our hearts that we can't seem to put out. And, you know, for the last hundred years, there have been, I would say, the ruling Western understanding of why we are so cruel and why we are so unhappy. understanding has been that it's an environmental thing, that it comes from that which is from outside of us, that it comes from conditions. But now in the last few decades, especially

the last 10 years or so, increasingly, the intelligency of the smart people, you know, the philosophers, the thinkers have been increasingly willing to admit that there's something deeper than that. They're actually beginning to say, It could be that Shakespeare was right when he said, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that there's something in us. And the Bible, of course, for centuries has been saying that the problem with human beings is not environmental, it's essential, that there is a poison in us. It's called sin. And that poison, as Dorothy Sayers, remember we referred to this a few weeks ago, Dorothy Sayers. described, defined it, sin, as a deep interior dislocation of the soul.

And this poison, poisons us so deeply. And there are symptoms of poison. When you take poison, before you actually finally die, symptoms, there's symptoms. And if you want to understand whether you're poisoned or not, you have to understand the symptoms. And you will never understand your own life. you will never understand society, you will never understand human beings, you will never understand life, unless you understand the symptoms of sin. And every week in this series we've been looking at various ways in which the poison of sin

distorts our lives. And it's a very hopeful series, I think, because you see, only if you understand these symptoms, only if you understand the nature of them and the source of them will you understand the antidote for them. So today, let's just take a look at one more major symptom of the poison. of sin. Let's look at the symptom, at the root cause, and the antidote for it. The symptom, the root cause, and the antidote. And the symptom is envy. Now, we see it here in this story about the children of Israel in the wilderness. And right away, I know that the word envy doesn't

mean a lot to you. It doesn't fill you with fear and shaking, because we tend to define envy in a very narrow way. We think of envy as just jealousy, very conscious jealousy of somebody else's money or something like that. But I like to show you that the Bible teaches us that envy is far more pervasive than that, far more destructive than that, far more deep and dangerous than that. The problem that these people had, the rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, if only we had meat to eat, we remember the fish we had in Egypt at no cost, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now, in verse six, if you look at this, I like the new international version of the Bible, that translation

that we usually print in the bulletin, and it's still my favorite version, and I'm happy to recommend it. This is one of those few times, which I have to say, the translation here is most unfortunate. Literally, they say, our souls are dried up. Now, this is a very free rendering and an unfortunate one. Literally, our souls, and the Hebrew word for soul that they use here, Nephesh is the word that means their life force. You know what they're saying? Our souls are are dried up. It says, we are dying because we have nothing but this manna. We are dying. We're feeling faint. We're feeling sick. This isn't enough to sustain us. Our souls are dried up. Now, what are they talking about? It's something fairly simple. Envy is a condition that deeply

poisons us that makes us unable to enjoy what's in front of us ever. Unable to enjoy what's in front of us ever. unable to ever sit down and live in the moment and rejoice in what we have but to find fault with it and to say this isn't enough this isn't good enough envy is that cast of mind sometimes it's stronger sometimes it's weaker it's stronger in some people than others it's stronger it's sometimes in your life than others but it's there because we're all sinners we're all poisoned with us envy is that thing which keeps us from being able to sit down with that which is in front of us and enjoy it we find out what's wrong it's not good enough. In other words, envy is that condition of heart that says, back there, over there, out there, I could be happy. But what I've got right now, it's not good enough. Look at the flaws. Look what's wrong with it. See, over there, if I had that condition, if I had that situation, I could be happy. Back there, you know, I could be happy if it was like it used to be. Out there, if only things could happen in this way. But right now, the way it is right now,

It's not good enough. See, look at the Israelites. I mean, this is funny, I guess. When they were in Egypt, they said, ah, yes, we have lots of food, and it's free, of course. They're slaves, you know. I didn't pay any money for it. And it came, you know, the fish and the leeks and the lemons and the melons and all that.

Well, it was free, but when they were there, they said, but what good is all this free food when you're not free? But now they're free. And what are they saying? What good is our freedom if we're going to starve? See? When they're back there, out there I can be happy, but right now this isn't good enough. When they're out there, back there, I could have been happy, but right now is not good enough.

You laugh. I'll make you laugh some more. There's some people who think that New Yorkers have more of a problem with this than most anybody else. There's a theory. Anybody read the couple weeks ago in New York Times Magazine, an article by John Tierney called Picky, Picky, Picky, Picky, Picky. You see that? He says that New Yorkers in particular have what he calls an internal flawomatic. Now, flawomatic is that which focuses on the flaws, focuses on the false, focuses on what's wrong.

So we say, I hate this. This is not good enough. Now, we use it on restaurants. We use it on art. We use it on our friends. We use it on our career. But he says we go absolutely crazy when we use it on dates. and we use it on people we're thinking about dating

or we're sizing up as a prospective date or a mate or a companion. And he puts it this way. He says, for example, he recounts one New Yorker talking to another New Yorker that he heard this about a blind date that he had. He says, well, he says it started out great. She opened the door and she looked fantastic. Beautiful face, great body, nice smile.

Everything looked great. until she turned around. Chuck, he said, she had dirty elbows. And that was that. The guy went through with the rest of the date, but he knew the relationship possibilities were absolutely doomed.

At first I thought, you know, there's some way maybe to work this out. Some therapy, some soap and water. But then I realized it wouldn't matter he'd find something else wrong. And he said, and this is continuing the quote, it was like what I'd been hearing from my friends in New York for years and about why the latest relationships had gone wrong.

One said to me, well, she really seemed intelligent, but then she mispronounced Gertrta. And I knew she was faking it. Another said, there's no future for us. It's obvious to everybody that she should lose about seven pounds, but she doesn't seem to notice. Another one said, oh, sure, he's a partner. But it's not a very big firm.

And besides that, he wears these little short black socks that make his legs show when he crosses his legs. For years, I knew my own requirements, and a woman were absolutely reasonable. All I wanted was a nice novelist slash astronaut with a background in fashion modeling. But I couldn't see that all my other friends were much, much too picky, picky, picky. Now, you laugh. My friends, a headache might be a symptom of just having. having mowed driven without your sunglasses, you know, or it might be a symptom of a brain tumor. It might be something very light and passing, or it might be something very deep.

And the Bible says that, yeah, maybe in New Yorkers, it's worse. In fact, Tierney actually says something, I think, very, very powerful and right. He says, why are we like this? Why are we worse than other places? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we do this to people? Why this cosmic flammatic? And he says, maybe New York drives inhabitants crazy,

maybe close encounters with wealth and glamour distort our vision. But all he's saying is it's worse here. See, the Bible says this is not a symptom of driving without your sunglasses. This is a symptom of a cancer that's eating away at your insides. It's a cancer that's eating away totally at your insides. This is very powerful. He says, our vision is distorted, says the audience. That's right. Look at this. They say our souls are dried up. Okay? They say our souls are dried up. We had it better in Egypt. Now look, you see the distortion? They are so focused on the flaws. They are so focused on what's wrong. They're so focused on this. That they're completely distorted in their memory. How can they? We had it better in Egypt. It was free. The food was free. Of course the food was free there. You were in chains.

How could you overlook? Remember the slaughter of your children? Ah, but we had it better in Egypt. How could they be so distorted? The writer is right. There is something in us. There's a cosmic flawmatic. It's going crazy here. We hate this stuff. We hate our situation. It's not good enough. We had it better. Let me show you just how powerful it is. The ultimate example of it is the Garden of Eden. Here's Adam and Eve. They're there to show you yourself. Here's Adam and and they're in paradise and it's a perfect place there's no there's there's no death there's no disease there's there's nothing wrong everything is perfect and yet through the serpent the thought comes to them are you able to do anything you want no they say not anything we're not allowed to

eat that tree anything else we can do anything else we can eat anything else but not that tree and here comes the thought back i'll bet it's the best one I'll bet it's better than all the other trees put together. And they were unsatisfied. And they felt I can think of a better situation than the Garden of Eden. What do you think this means? Listen, I don't care on how unhappy you are right now with your circumstances. If you understand what the Bible's telling you,

it is telling you that if you were to pick yourself up and put yourself down in the Garden of Eden with your heart in the same sinful condition it's in. now you'd find something wrong with that that's what sin does it makes you look for the fault it makes you look for the flaw it makes you reject it it makes you nothing is good enough nothing is good enough and so you're miserable and you think about it like that so this is the reason why some of us never get married or when you do get married you're always unhappy with the one you're married to This is the reason some of us are so driven in our career Because we hate the rung on the ladder we're at

This is the reason some of you can't stand the way you look in the mirror This is the reason why very many of us have such critical spirits toward other people This is the reason why some of you can never join a church Picky, picky, picky Of course you're going to find it This is the reason why you're constantly having midlife crises And you're only in your early 20s Ah, because you know, I just need a change

I don't like the way I am out there back there it's poisoning your life you can never sit down and enjoy what's in front of you you can never sit back and just receive what you've got to one degree another we're all suffering from it that's the symptom well you say well what's the root of it i can sort of see why this is kind of making my life a gray thing a gray situation always kind of unhappy always kind of gray and irritated and itchy and irritable and unhappy and critical of everybody and everything around. What's the root of it? Well, the root of it is the particular poison, but here's what the particular poison is. You don't trust God further than you can throw him. You can't throw God

even an inch. At the heart of why we are continually unhappy with everything and why we can never enjoy anything and why we're always miserable to one degree or another and never able to I mean things are great at first but then they wear they don't wear out you say I want something new I want something better I want something the reason for it the Bible says is the ultimate poison is you don't trust God you don't trust him you don't see as trustworthy and if anybody here says that's not true of me you don't know your own heart there's not a lot of things that I'm sure of. I only choose the things that I'm absolutely sure of. I can only get about 30 minutes worth a week together for you. And I try to stick with those things that I'm ready to die for and the

things that I'm absolutely sure of. And here's one I'm absolutely sure of. Your heart, my heart, doesn't trust God at all. And if you don't know that, if you don't see that, and if you don't realize that this is the root of so many of your problems that you don't trust him to be out for your best. I just, you don't know your heart. Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty, and heartache. We feel it in the world around us and in our own lives. How did it get this way? And what can be done about it? In his brand new book that's releasing this month, What is Wrong with the World? Tim Keller offers a clear and compassionate answer. Drawing from a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Dr. Keller

shows how the reality of sin explains the pain we see all around us, and how only the gospel offers lasting freedom and healing. Whether you're overwhelmed by the state of our world, struggling with your own mistakes or choices, or looking for hope and joy, what is wrong with the world will help you see how the gospel speaks to both the heartache of our world and the pain within each of us. This newly released book, What is Wrong with the World, is our thanks for your gift this month to help gospel and life share the good news of Jesus. Request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give.

Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Look at what they say. They say, our souls are dried up. Why? Because we see nothing but this manna. Now, you see what he's saying? This is what they're saying. Because we have nothing but what God has given us, we're drying up.

If we take only what God's given us, we're going to dry up. If we rely only on what God has done, if we rely wholly on him, if we center wholly on him, we are going to die. It won't be enough. Now, by the way, this is an absolute lie. In Deuteronomy 8, when their wilderness wanderings are done, God comes to them, and he actually says, during the time you were in the wilderness, your feet did not swell.

Now, you know, if you don't know this number's 11 passage, and you don't know a little bit about biology and anatomy and physiology, you won't know what in the world's going on. Your feet swell up when you don't have the proper nutrient. Scurvy, for example, made your feet swell. You didn't have enough vitamin C. What God is doing is he's coming back in Deuteronomy 8, and he's saying, in spite of what you have said,

the manna was enough. You didn't think it was enough, but it was. I fed you on manna. It had every nutrient you needed. It had all the vitamins you needed. It had everything you needed. But, well, then what are they saying here? They're saying, but we feel faint.

We feel like we're drawing up. It's not that hard to see. If two or three people get together and say, hey, let's tell old so-and-so that she looks terrible. And if you do that over and over again, you know, call them up, talk to her. After a while, she'll start to feel sick. Of course you will. And that's funny, but this is not funny.

This is exactly what we do with sin. We look at our lives because this is what they did. They decided the manna wasn't enough. and therefore they felt sick. This isn't enough. I'm feeling faint. I'm feeling nauseated. This man isn't enough.

And of course, they talked themselves into it. They really were sick. They really did feel that way. That's exactly what we do in sin. You look around your life and say, there's not enough beauty here. There's not enough success here. There's not enough love here.

And if you tell yourself that, you'll start to feel faint, and you will feel sick, and you will start to pass out. You talk yourself into it. And you know why? Underneath at all, we say, God, if I just trust God, I will dry up. Now, somebody says, I don't believe that. Let me show you how basic this is to all of our problems.

Let me give you a very religious person and a very irreligious person. Just for a second. A very, very irreligious person in New York City, for example, will say, what? Obey the Ten Commandments, go to church, get down on my knees and confess I'm a sinner. pray, give my money away, no sex outside of marriage, hey, religion, I want to enjoy life. What is that? If I obey God wholly and completely without fudging, without cutting any corners, I'll dry up. They believe that. That's an assault. They laugh and they say it, it's an assault on the goodness of God. it is and there's many of you who are saying the same thing i know what the bible says but i got to cut

this corner i know the bible says i shouldn't do this but i have to i know the bible says i shouldn't but i know the bible says i shouldn't do i know what religion says i know what christianity says but i really can't i've got a supplement myself if i only do nothing but what god says i'll dry up nothing but this manna won't be enough you know this on the other hand let me show you a religious person the typical religious person is somebody who's always feeling kind of guilty always feeling kind of anxious you say something you know you say

you can be received by God not on the basis of anything you do not on the base of your good works but surely and strictly and completely because Jesus died for you and loves you and if you trust in him instead of your own good works for your salvation he'll receive you you know what they say you know what really

moralistic religious people say that's too easy they always say that fact some of you are saying that. That's too easy. I don't believe that. You've got to be good. I've got to add something of my own. Nothing but isn't enough. I'll dry up. Don't you realize the person who doesn't believe God really forgives or the person who thinks obedience is just going to make my life, you know, it's going to hold me and I'm not going to be able to enjoy life if I'm totally obedient. Your life is poisoned by this. You don't trust God. And because you, you don't trust God. Do you see how it works? Because you don't trust God, the things that you turn to

cannot fulfill you the way God did, the way God was supposed to. You know, when David put on Saul's armor, it wasn't built for him. Remember that? Little David, before he went off to Goliath, Saul says, put on my armor, that'll protect you. He put on his armor, and the armor didn't fit him. You know, it chafed on him, and it dragged him down, it impeded him. When you turn to things besides God. You don't trust God, nothing but the man. You don't trust God to fulfill you. You say, I'm going to have to do this.

I want this as well. I want this as well. I want this as well. I want this as well. I want this as well. Those things will not fulfill you. They will not satisfy you and you will find fault with them. You have to. They'll never satisfy. They'll never please. And everything around you because you don't trust him you will find fault with.

You'll be picky, picky, picky. Your flawmatic will be going off all the time. Now, what's the antidote? Well, here's the antidote. What was their antidote? What they should have done, if they had not despised the manna, if they had said, look at this great thing that God's given us. Instead of saying, we wish we had fish, we wish we had leeks and onions and melons and garlic,

instead if they said, what a miracle this is. If they had focused, yeah, it's only one thing. thing. You know, there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, Lord, how about two kinds of mana, you know? How about, you know, light meat and dark meat or something? Light and dark mana, you know, how about something else? Yeah, all right, manna, you know, it's one thing. All right. But instead of focusing on that, the fact that it was the same, why didn't they focus on the fact it was there? Why didn't they focus on the fact that it was mercy? Why didn't they focus on the fact It was a miracle.

Why didn't they focus on the mercies and goodness of God? And if they had stopped despising with the Spirit of Thanksgiving, the manna, then they would not have been talking themselves into their misery. Now, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, if you are finding fault with everything, if you're looking out there and everything is bad or wrong, the Bible tells you it's because you have despised the true man of heaven in some way.

The only reason we're unhappy with everything is because we've despised the true manna. Well, what's the true manna? Well, Jesus had a conversation in John chapter 6, and in John 6, they get together and they said to him, you know what, how do we know you're from God? Our forefathers, they knew that God was with them because God sent them manna. How do we know God's with you?

and Jesus says, you know, the manna that Moses gave you, that was good stuff, but it was just a symbol of the bread from heaven I can give you. And he says, do you know why your souls are so empty? Do you know why you can't feel happy about anything? Do you know why nothing satisfies you? It's because you don't have this bread from heaven. It's because you don't have eternal life, a kind of joy and a kind of power and a kind of love that fulfills you. If you eat this bread, from heaven, the bread I give you, you will never hunger again. You know, what did they say? They said, sir, give us this bread. If this is the reason why we can't find happiness anywhere, if this is the reason why nothing's good enough, give it to us. And what did he say? I am the bread

of life. I am the bread that comes down from heaven. And you know what they immediately did? they despised him they despised him you know what they said they said you aren't you the son of Joseph aren't you the carpenter give me a break you can read that in John chapter 641

they despised him just like they despised this manna and that's exactly the way Jesus Christ and the gospel itself has always been treated in New York City if you bring this up if you used to say to the average person and that you work with or that you study with or something. You say, I believe Jesus is the Son of God.

It came down from heaven to save us from our sins, that his blood is atoned for our sins. And now if we receive him, we can be born again. And what do they say? They don't say, well, this is a very interesting theory. Let's talk about it. Oh, no. They despise it.

This manner. They have contempt. You see, they look down at it. You know, when Paul preached at Rome, Paul, the great mind, He preached at the Ariopagus on Athens Hill. What did they say it to him? They say, oh, this is very interesting. They said, what does this babbler have to say?

And you know, when Jesus Christ himself moved through his life, they continually despised him. They treated him like the manna. They said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nothing good comes out of Nazareth, right? And when he was crucified, he was mocked. They said, you say you're a king. we'll treat you as a king. Here's a crown of thorns. And as he stood there bleeding and they said, hail king of the Jews. You say you're a prophet. See? We'll see if you're a prophet. They blindfolded

and they start beating him and they said, if you're a prophet, prophesy, who just hit you? Contempt. They despised him. Isaiah 53 says he was despised and rejected and we esteemed and not. But this is how he saved us. Because as we despised him, he refused to despise us. As a matter of fact, this is the polar opposite to the flawatics in our heart. He didn't just refuse to despise us. He did the opposite. You know what we do?

We look past the good to hate things. He looked past our evil to love us. There's his place in the movie guarding tests. Any of you seen that? Shirley McLean plays

the widow of a president and she's guarded by a Secret Service agent, and she insists on this one secret service agent, Nicholas Cage. And you know why? She knew what most people didn't know. That her husband was unfaithful to her. Her husband, the president, had been really quite a cad. And therefore, when he died in office, people wept, but they didn't know him. They didn't know him. But she knew that Nicholas Cage, this secret service agent, knew what kind of man he was, knew about all his flaws, knew what a coward and anyways he was knew what a cat he was but she saw him cry at the funeral and she said here's somebody

who knew him but still loved him and that's why she insisted that he always stay by her side because she also knew him but still loved him that's the opposite of envy and that's what jesus christ does he knows you says in john chapter two he knew what was in us and he didn't trust us He knows our sinful hearts so much that he doesn't even trust us, but he's the opposite. We go by the good to hate and focus on the flaws. He goes by the evil, and he loves us anyway. He refused to despise us despisers. Now, friends, do you understand that?

I'll just close with two things. First of all, some of you don't really maybe understand even the gospel. Here's the gospel. It's right here. Jesus Christ is the bread of heaven. Bread cannot make you whole unless it's broken. If you have looked at Jesus Christ as a kind of model or an example over the years that you emulate, he's a failure as a model.

Do you know that? You know why he's a failure? If you think to be a Christian is just to emulate him and just to try to be like him, he's a failure as a model. Because all he'll do is make you feel terrible. You'll never live up to it. But if you see him as broken bread, If you break the bread, then you can be whole.

If the bread stays whole, you starve. If the bread is broken, you can be whole. If the bread is whole, you will stay broken. Jesus Christ says, my bread, I'm the bread of life. I give my flesh for the life of the world. Until you see him as having been despised for you, paying for the fact that you're a despiser, paying for your sin.

Until you see him as that, you'll never rediscover. receive this new life. You'll never receive his love. He'll never receive his joy. It'll never come into you and turn you into a whole different kind of person, one that knows how to look by the evil and affirm. But now, Christian friends, all I can say to you is you may say, I know this, why is my flawmatic going crazy still? And I'll tell you why it's going crazy still. Because you're not remembering these things. Friends, look at Jesus. Instead of focusing, on the sins around people you ought to be looking past it you ought to be the easiest people in the world to be a failure in front of are you the kind of person like jesus who says the spirit is willing

but the flesh is weak i know you mean well or remember the woman caught in adultery what did he say neither do i condemn thee but go and sin no more or are you the kind of person that when somebody you find something wrong with someone you you know you're you're saying aha i found you there it is are you an easy person to fail in front of? Are you an affirming person? Are you a person knows how to cover up people's nakedness? I don't mean not deal with it. I mean love them in spite of it.

If you can't, if you're not patient, if you're not able to enjoy with gratitude what God has given you, if you're not able to sit down and enjoy it and live a life of gratitude, unless you're able to discipline yourself to look at all of life in gratitude, you've forgotten what he's done for you.

you. Huh? You don't like the person that you're having to be thrown together with right now? He say, ah, they give me the creeps. You gave Jesus the creeps. And he looked right past the creeps. And he loved you. He refused to despise you. How can you despise them? Are you unhappy with your situation right now? The fault, dear Brutus, is not in your stars. It's in yourselves. You ought to look at your problems right now and say, look, there are things that I should change and I will change, but I'm not going to be miserable today. You know what? Because if I was in the Garden of Eden today, with my heart operating the way my heart is operating, it would not be enough. But Jesus is good enough.

And he died for me to make me good enough even for the Father. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you'd help us to overcome the envy. That he'd help us to overcome it. He'd help us to overcome the fault finding, the misery that is to great. great degree self-imposed, help us not to despise your son and the gospel, but help us to see that he refused to despise those who despised him so that we might become affirming people, people who live lives of affirmation and gratitude. Make us so, we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

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in 2017 will Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.