Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Gluttony: The Case of Achan

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

In the Middle Ages, theologians said there are different forms of gluttony—that you can eat and drink excessively, sumptuously, daintily, or impulsively. Technically, gluttony means to eat and drink immoderately. But gluttony also tells us something about each of us. Gluttony is taking something good and then cramming it in until we’re sick of it. Our desires are disordered so that good and necessary things become cravings. Sin, in other words, makes us all addicted to something. We all crave something, and we do it in such a way that it is very, very bad for us. Let’s look at three things this Scripture teaches us about craving: 1) the depth of our craving, 2) the structure of our craving, and 3) the healing. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 5, 1995. Series: The Seven Deadly Sins. Scripture: Joshua 7:19-26, Hosea 2:13-15. 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. Why is the world so broken? And why are we capable of inflicting such harm even toward those we love? People point to politics, poverty, or psychology, but none of these fully explain what we see in ourselves and in history. This month on the podcast, Tim Keller is teaching from a series exploring the question, What's wrong with us? Showing us how the Bible's teaching on sin offers the only explanation deep enough to face the truth in all its complexity, and the only hope powerful enough to transform us.

Then Joshua said to Aiken, my son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me what you have done. Do not hide it from me. Aiken replied, it's true. I've sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done. When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent with the silver underneath. So Joshua sent messengers and they ran to the tent,

and there it was hidden in his tent with the silver underneath. They took the things from the tent, brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites, and spread them out before the Lord. Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Aiken, of Zira, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, kodonkeys and sheep, his tent, and all that he had, to the valley of Acour. And Joshua said, why have you brought this trouble on us? The Lord will bring trouble on you

today. And they all Israel stoned him, and after they stoned the rest, they burned them. And this is the Lord speaking, talking about Israel. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the bales. She decked herself with rings and jewelry and went after her lovers, but me she forgot, declares the Lord. Therefore, I am now going to allure her. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and I will make the valley of acore a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth. As in the days, Egypt. And this is God's word. You know, the seven deadly sins were catalogued by, especially Thomas Aquinas, who was a medieval

theologian. And one of the seven deadly sins that he cataloged was the sin of gluttony. Now, gluttony in its technical sense, the technical meaning of the word gluttony is to eat and drink immoderately. When eat food and drink becomes too important to you, and you use it immoderately. And the moral theologians of the Middle Ages discerned several forms of gluttony. They said that you can eat and drink excessively, you can eat and drink sumptuously, daintily, or impulsively. And those are different kinds of gluttony. So first of all, you have excessively. That means demanding too much food. And you can also eat sumptuously, which is demanding only the richest food.

And you can eat daintily, which meant to demand only the most perfectly prepared food, just so. And you can eat impulsively, which is to demand food now, right now. And, you know, it's hard in New York City to avoid the sin of gluttony. There's no other place where you don't just have food at every corner. You have food at your, and you can smell it, of course. right at your elbow, everywhere you move. And, of course, especially the category of daintiness, the gluttony of the dainty category, very hard, because if you've lived in New York for a while and you go visit from friends

somewhere else in the country, you know, it starts to dawn on you that the best restaurant in Cleveland is only as good as your corner deli here. And you start to say, oh, yeah, it's all right, you know, and you start to become dainty. Now, we laugh. in fact we might laugh very patronizingly at the entire category of gluttony but we stop laughing when we reflect on two things when we think of two things number one the medieval moral theologians were on to alcoholism and eating disorders well before modern psychology they understood there's something wrong here

but let me go a little further you know every week you go over one of the seven deadly sins and there's a sense in which each sin on the surface behaviorally is different. And so you can go through the seven deadly sins in a series of sermons like we're doing or in a series of chapters, and you will feel that some of them nail you more than others because some of them are more your problem than others, and that of course makes sense. And yet, in another sense, if you look beneath, if you look at the hard attitudes, the seven deadly sins are really like holding up a black diamond. And as you turn the black diamond, you know, you see a different facet, but every facet is just another way of looking down

into the same heart of darkness. And so every single sin shows us something about how sin infects and affects all of us. And this is what gluttony says to us. Gluttony tells us something about all of us. Gluttony is taking something good, something necessary, and cramming it in until we're sick of it until we're ready to explode. Gluttony is a way for us to see that sin has affected our heart so that our desires are disordered. Our desires are disordered in such a way that good and necessary things become cravings, become yearnings.

St. Augustine gave it a word. He said we're all characterized. Sin has done this to us. We're all characterized by what he called concupiscence. What's a great word. You know, from the Latin Cupera, which means desire. In fact, we have the word Cupid,

the God Cupid, which had to do with the God of one particular kind of desire, but concupiscence meant there's an infection, there's a disorder. Our desires have been disordered in such a way that good and necessary things now drive us and we crave them. Put it another way. The opposite of gluttony is self-control.

And since all of us have self-control somewhere, since all of us is self-control problems somewhere we all have a place in which our desires are disordered sin in other words makes us all addicted to something the spectacular addictions like alcoholism and I call them spectacular they're obvious they're concrete

they are just a template for understanding how all of our hearts work in some way And that is what this teaches is about. We are all in the grip of craving. We all crave something. And we do it in such a way as I'm going to show you that it is very, very bad for us. Now let's just take a look and see what this teaches us

about three kinds of craving. You know, our hearts are filled with such demandingness and craving at some point. That's sin that does it. And the three things we see, let's learn these three things. the depth of our craving, the structure of our craving, and the healing. We learn the depth of our craving, the structure of our craving, and the healing of our craving. First of all, let's look at the depth of the craving.

When Joshua comes to Aiken and says, my son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give him the praise, tell me what you have done, do not hide it from me. And Aiken says, it's true. There's a remarkable thing going on here. And I know when I first read it, and you see Aiken and all of his cattle and all of his family being stoned and burned, and there was a kind of, this is Manhattan, you know. Hush. Uh-oh, this is one of those places in the Bible where things happen that we all know now were wrong and terrible.

Well, listen, Aiken knew exactly what he'd done. You don't see Aiken saying, oh, my gosh, you mean this is a capital offense? You mean you're going to do this? You're going to do what? Oh, no. He says, you got me. Listen, when God took the children of Israel out of Egypt and moved them to Canaan, to their promised land, as they took that land through conquest, he laid down a rule. And that rule went like this.

He says, you are not just any old bloodthirsty pirate nation. This is the way other nations are. You will not be this way. You are not coming into Canaan to satisfy the desire for the increase of national power. And secondly, you're not coming into Canaan to satisfy your own personal desire to increase your private wealth. Oh, no. You're not pirates. You're not here to plunder.

You are coming to the land that I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's yours, and there I'm going to dwell with you. So whenever you come and you take a city, all of the money, all of the wealth of that city, you must never take it as booty. You must never see it as plunder. that goes to building a tabernacle and later on a temple which will be a house of worship for all of the people

and in which I will dwell in your midst and therefore you are not no one has ever conquered like that there's never been a country like that and there's never been a nation that conquered like that he says you're not doing it out of an imperialistic desire for expansion you're not doing it out of a desire to just materially

increase yourself oh no And as a result, he laid down this. You never take the possessions of the conquered people. Never. And you see, that was critical to the very identity as a people. That was critical to the legitimacy of the whole campaign. And it was absolutely critical to the honor of God. And the rule was laid down.

And everybody knew it was a capital offense. God says, I'll be with you as long as you don't do that. And as long as they didn't do that, he was with them. And they had success in their campaign. Everybody knew about that rule. Everybody knew why it was so serious. Everybody knew that it was at the heart of the honor of God. God did not just say, oh, look it, you're my people,

so I just want you to go and plunder and slaughter everybody else. This was absolutely critical to their self-understanding, critical to the morality and the legitimacy of the campaign, critical to the glory of God. But when Aiken saw what he saw, we're going to see in a minute, his heart so coveted those things. They took him anyway. He knew what he was doing. He knew how bad it was. He knew how serious the consequences were going to be one way or the other. And when he was caught, he said, yeah, yeah, I did it. He didn't say, what? You're going to what? Oh, no. He knew. And what is the point? I'll tell you what the point is. Our craving, our heart's desire for things, is so strong that it overcomes our conscience, that it overcomes our understanding, our reason,

and eventually it will overcome your fear of consequences and even your own sense of self-preservation. Sin so affects you that there are some things that you must have and that you will crave, and you will crave them so much that you will take them even to the degree that to get them is to lose everything. Aiken did. That's what craving is.

The heart makes you one, some things so much, it's suicidal to get them. To even get them always ends up, meaning you lose everything, but you have to get it anyway. That's how bad it is. Craving, the sin affects our hearts in such a way that the most basic part of our heart is not our reason, it's not our conscience. It's not even our instinct for self-preservation. We'll get what things we want, whether or not it means we lose everything in the end. You know, in C.S. Lewis's first fairy tale of The Chronicles of Narnia, in that story, The Witch gives Edmund some Turkish delight,

and it's enchanted, and this is what he says about it. Anyone who had ever once tasted this Turkish delight would want more and more, and would even, if allowed, go on eating it until they killed themselves. That's a picture of the way the human heart latches on, to things. We all latch on to something like that. Remember, some of you were here last week, I'm sure, in Numbers chapter 11, we're told that the children of Israel had been going through the wilderness and God had been given the manna to eat of bread stuff, but they wanted meat. Well, it's okay to want meat, but they felt, the old King James says, they fell a lusting for meat.

And God says, I'll give you meat, but because you're craving it, and if you go back to the chapter we looked at last week, and you go down to verse 20 and 21, there's an amazing statement where God says, I'll give you meat, and you will eat it and you will eat it until it comes out of your nostrils, and you come to loathe it. The nature of this craving that our hearts have, sin makes us desire some things to the place where we want it beyond what's good for us. We want it beyond reason, beyond conscience. We do it no matter what.

A hypochondriac, let me give you an easy example, and I'll show you some other ones. A hypochondriac is somebody who wants health so much and so afraid of losing it that they lose it. They don't go outside. They're afraid of being infected as a result. What's the best way to stay healthy? Sunshine, fresh air. But in he stays, and he's so afraid of losing it that he loses it. when I was in high school and college I really wanted to be good at playing the trumpet

I was fairly good at playing the trumpet but I wanted so desperately to be good that whenever I went to an audition in high school and college I finally gave up on music partly because of this whenever I would go to an audition I would be absolutely petrified I could not hardly keep the mouthpiece on my lips I'd be trembling sometimes I'd be crying during the audition because I was that scared. I was so afraid of losing it that I always lost it. Over the years, I don't know how many times I've counseled spouses who were so afraid of losing their spouse that they lost their spouse. They were so jealous or they were so

dependent. You go on and on. Who are the kids? I mean, see, I'm going from the very serious to the sublime, but you see, this is the way craving works. Who were the kids who never had any friends in school. Remember who they were? They were the kids that wanted the friends so badly. They'd come after you like a puppy. If you even showed them some interest, they would say, oh good, you want to be my friend. Get away from me, you would think. It's the people who most wanted friends, who never had friends. They were so afraid. They wanted them so bad. They never got it. They were so afraid of losing it. They were always losing them. There are things that we crave, and because we crave them,

We crave them out of proportion. It hurts us. Now, one of the things that's a little hard to talk about here is to point out that it's easier when you're kind of craving or addicted to very concrete things. And there's people here, for example, this is New York, so I'm sure there's people here who are addicted to nice concrete things. There's various sorts of sexual addictions. Liaisons or pornography or something like that. There's gambling. There's drink.

there's eating disorders. And in some ways, you know, hypochondria, I mentioned that. In some ways, those are a little easier to at least deal with. You know they're there. They're concrete. They're visible.

They're physical in many cases. But what about the rest of us? Will you, listen, most of the time when you're the most depressed, most of the time when you're the most discouraged, most of the time when you're the most in the fit of rage, look at yourself. And here's what you're going to find.

the reason you're so discouraged, the reason you're in such despair, the reason you're so petrified, the reason that you're in such a grip, is because there's something in your life, and very often it's not all that physical, not all that tangible, there's something in your life that you want immoderately. If you could be moderate about it, if you could say, gee, I'd like to have that, gee, that would be a great thing, but, you know, it's not that critical. If you could say that about it, you wouldn't be in despair, you might be disappointed. You wouldn't be in bitterness, you might just be irritated, you know. You wouldn't be petrified, you'd be worried. But it's because it's not immoderate, because you've got to have, because there's the craving.

At the bottom of almost all of our discouragements, at the bottom of almost all of our deepest difficulties, is this. Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty, and heartache. 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 in 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. And see, what's hard is what happens when you're really addicted to is certainty.

And that's the reason why you can never make a decision, and that's the reason why your life is stuck. Because you've got to have certainty, and you won't make a move unless you have it, and therefore you never make a move, because you can't ever find it. You're addicted to it. Or achievement.

That's the reason why some of you work yourselves into oblivion. Or independence. It's the reason why many of you are afraid of a commitment. or, you know, I'm afraid of dependence. That's the reason why you can never get it, because you so desperately want somebody the minute you begin dating them, they can just feel the vacuum cleaner of your heart.

These things are, yeah, I know that. You know, that didn't mean it to be funny. I'm, you know, the sermon's moving on, it's getting near the end. It's serious. And it's hard to see. and yet Aiken committed suicide

he knew what the things were he knew what was going on he did it anyway he had to have it so much he lost everything and that's because that is what sin does to the heart it takes good andness

good desires and it disorders them concupiscence now what are the principles for getting out first you have to understand the structure you can take a look

and see how Aiken fell into it and then secondly you have to see the basic principles for the healing. And I must tell you that there's basically the same, even though I don't want anybody to think that in every situation your craving doesn't have particular issues that have to be addressed as well as the general ones that I'm going to mention now. Don't think that the general ones I'm going to mention would ever be enough to deal with any particular craving because every craving has both particular and general aspects to it. But I'm going to

lay out that which we all have got to deal with if we're going to not be overwhelmed by the temptations that come because of our cravings. First of all, look at the structure. There are four steps. Agan does not immediately get in the grip of this thing. There's four steps. You see what he does? It says, you know, he says, I have sinned.

And he says, I saw in the plunder, a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels. I coveted them and took them. Now look. First he says, I saw. this is how temptation works the word saw is not is not a Hebrew word that would mean notice

it's the word that's usually translated behold you know whenever in the Old Testament you have the word behold what does it mean to behold something doesn't mean just to notice something it means look look look behold means to hold it put it in the center of your attention

consider it gaze at it and you notice the first step in temptation is not coveting. In fact, I'm going to show you that's the third step. The first step of temptation is to move beyond noticing to gazing. The first step in temptation is when you put yourself open to a forbidden thing. Not even planning to get it, not even wanting it yet, but just opening yourself to stay there, to be in a place where it can happen. You can't help but notice things because all the good things, you know,

that become concupiscence for you are good things. You can't help but notice them, but the gaze. So that's the first step. Just being open. Just being able to look at a forbidden thing to you without recoiling is the first step.

You already entered in. Then the second step, I saw, but then I beheld, but in the second, step, I weighed. Now, he said, where does it say that? Well, that's a paraphrase. That's a summary. But look what he says. What did he see? A beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold. How did he know how many shekels were in that bag? Well, I noticed there were 200 shekels. How do you notice there's 200 shekels? You know, it's one thing to

notice five. You can see you can notice five, but you can't notice. But you can't notice. is 200, you've got to gaze and you've got to count and you've got to weigh it. How does he know how much the gold weighs? Now here's what he's doing. The theological term for what he's doing is he was giving them glory. In Hebrew, the word glory had both a physical and a spiritual connotation. In Hebrew, the word glory means literally and physically weight. But spiritually it meant importance. And the reason those two things have the same. same, the word can be used in those two ways. It's the same thing as the word matter. The English word matter can mean something that's weighty, but it can also mean something of

importance. I remember, I went to school, to college in central Pennsylvania, and the summer after I graduated from college, the Susquehanna River overflowed its banks during Hurricane Agnes and just wiped out all kinds of little towns. I went back to the town I went to school in, and I noticed that an awful lot of things were swept away, but the things that weren't swept away were the things that were anchored, the things that were rooted, the things that were weighty, the monuments, you know, the stone houses, but an awful lot of other houses were swept away. Now here is the second stage of temptation. The thing that wait something in your life so that it is not swept away, so it becomes central, so it sticks, so it has impact, is

your imagination. It's your imagination. Sin is is always an inflammation of the imagination. Your imagination is that which gives glory to something. It's your imagination which looks at the beauty of it and thinks about it and as it fondles it on the palate of your soul. The imagination is the tongue of your soul, the palate. He knew about the honor of God. He knew about the honor of his people.

And he also knew how wonderful these things were. But what he did was he set his imagination not on God and not on his people, but he set his imagination on these things, these beautiful things. In other words, one of the ways, some of you maybe heard me say it, he knew about the honor of God and the honor of his people,

but he put that on audio, but he put these material possessions on video. He let his senses be captivated by them. He gave them glory, and whatever you give glory to you serve, whatever you ascribe the most glory to, and this is a discipline of the mind, and he did it, and as a result, the third step is, I coveted them. Well, okay, I gazed at them.

I weighed them. Of course, by now, I coveted them. What is coveting? Coveting is to worship something. Coveting is to adore something, because whatever you glorify, you will worship. You'll feel drawn to it. His heart was inflamed now, and there's really virtually no stopping it, because in the fourth step is, I took them. in other words

what craving does to you we might think that I can't stop it but you see this is slow motion this is great this is what's great about this verse it shows us in slow motion that what craving does craving knows that there is a glorifying apparatus in the center of your being and it takes it over

and therefore drives your life now how do we heal ourselves from it that's the question then. Okay, if that's how it works, if that's how the craving works, in fact, you can see there's even stages there. How are we healed from it? For some of you, this is very, very practical.

Some of you right now have a real problem with self-control in certain areas. Sometimes it's very, very, very physical. Is it not? A particular sexual problem, a particular physical problem, a particular substance abuse. For others of us, it's, you know, this desire, this desperate desire just to be loved. And as a result, our lives are being run by it.

We want it so much that you see our lives are being run by it. How do we get healed? Well, I said, in a sense, there's three steps before you take it. I gazed, I weighed, I coveted, and I took. At any one of those three places, you can break the shame. You can get off the road. There's an exit ramp just before every one of these toll booths. And here's the way they work.

And after the service, if there's anybody who wants to go into more detail on them, I have a question-answer time downstairs, but I'll just outline them now. The first one is, number one, be aware of what you're gazing at. So just notice these things, don't gaze at them. Now, you know, people who beware what you're gazing at, nip it in the bud. Don't let your mind, don't be in a situation where these things can happen. that's maybe too easy, so I'll move right along. People in 12-step programs have already gotten on to that, right? They get together, and they hold each other accountable. Don't go to those

places. Don't think about those things. Don't pay through those books. You know, cut up your credit cards, whatever they do, depending on your craving. But, you know, those of us who don't have that kind of nice physical concupiscence, we've also got to say, realize what you're looking at during the day. Realize where your gaze is. Archbishop William Temple said Use the solitude test He says your religion is what you do with your solitude Whatever when you don't have to think of anything else

Do you think about What is it that you comfort yourself with Where do your thoughts go to most effortlessly? He says that's your God That's worship proportion craving I have another test I call it the unanswered prayer test what would you say to God about

what would you say to God Lord if you do this to me or if you refuse to give this to me we're through and if you've got anything like that and most of us do whatever that is is more important than God and that is a worship-sized thing that is craving

so realize that you are gazing at things notice them but don't gaze at them don't be in a place where it can happen okay but then the second the only see the first is negative stay away stop it turn your mind away don't think about it have accountability call your friend call your buddy up but the negative will not be enough in the hebrews chapter 12 it doesn't just say let us run the race before us casting off every sin and every weight that entangles it doesn't just stop there it says and let's

fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. Thomas Chalmers in the early 19th century was a Scotsman. He was a pastor and he was also a statesman. And he lived in Edinburgh and he was very upset with the poverty that he saw in certain parts of the city. And he worked with these people and he found many of them had these life-dominating habits. And as a result of that work, he wrote a fascinating, chapter, which was originally a sermon, and he called it the expulsive power of a new affection. And he said there, this. He said, the only way you can ever release the soul from the power of a

beautiful object is to give it a more beautiful object. He says, there's no way you can simply say, turn your mind away from the beautiful object on which you're fixed. The only way to break the power of a beautiful object on your heart is to give it a more beautiful object and that's the reason why John Dunn put it this way he spoke to the Lord and he says take me to you imprison me for I except you enthrall me

never shall be free nor ever chased except you ravish me what what a you know what a risque thing to say I, he says, enthrall me, take me to you, imprison me, because if you don't imprison me, I'll be imprisoned by something else.

And if you don't ravish me, I'll be ravished by something else. What is it the heart? Look at, look it, look it. Jesus is the beautiful thing that you've got to learn in the disciplines of worship, in the disciplines of your soul, in the disciplines of your heart, not just to believe in in some general way, but to be ravished by. He is the beautiful thing. He is the new affection which has an expulsive power.

Are you addicted to certainty? Well, the only certainty you really have is that Jesus loves you if you belong to him. And it's the only one you need. And all other certainties won't have that power over you. Are you addicted to achievement? Well, the only verdict and honor you really have if you're a Christian is that Jesus says, you are my beloved child in whom I'm well pleased. And that's the only one you need.

If you think about it, and you know, most of the counselors will tell you, addictions are ways for people to numb themselves and anesthetize themselves who don't think they matter. You don't think you matter. Here's the ultimate cure for that. Why would Jesus Christ die for you? Do you remember some years ago, an airplane crashed into the water? in wintertime at Washington, D.C.

And one man kept diving back into safe people. Remember that? And he dove into safe people. And finally, last time he dove into save one more person and he didn't make it. And finally they found his body. And I remember on the TV watching as they hoisted it up and lifted it out of the water. And as he was lifted up, the people whose lives had been saved just looked at him. What did they think?

One lady on camera said, why did he do that for me? Jesus Christ says when I am lifted up I will draw all men to myself that's in John 12 and John says he adds in parenthesis thereby he showed what kind of death he would die when he was lifted up

why would he do that for you why would he do that for you the answer is you matter And don't you see the irony of the Christian gospel? The gospel is you come to Jesus and you say, Lord Jesus, I give you all the glory. I can't possibly be good enough for the Father to accept me. But because you died for me, because you live for me,

I ascribe all glory to you, and I ask that God would save me for your sake. I receive you as my savioury. When you say that and you give him all the glory, paradoxically, you get more glory than you can bear because you come to see that you matter enough that he died for you and that you matter to the only one in the universe

whose opinion matters. And so Lewis himself says to please God to be a real ingredient in his joy, to be loved by God, not just pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in a work or as a parent in a child is a weight of glory our thoughts can hardly sustain, but so it is.

Now, there's a third thing you have to do. If you actually get to the coveting stage and you actually take it, you repent. And if your life has fallen apart because it's gone too far, God says, I can make the valley of acorn, acore, the door of hope. You may have already been stoned and burned, you know, because you may have gone on to the place where your craving has destroyed your life. You think, no, says God, no. I tell you, if you repent and come back and learn to be ravished with my son

and learn to watch where you gaze, I tell you, I can rebuild you from the ground up. I can make the valley of acore a door of hope. Listen, God calls us gluttons to a real feast, the marriage supper of the lamb. And let me tell you something, when you know there's an incredible dessert coming, you don't eat too much, do you? You eat moderately. What do you say? You say, no, thank you.

I don't want any more. That was really good. But I don't want any more. I'm saving some room for dessert. Come and see what that is. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you would make us moderate. That you would show us how important it is to have this kind of stability.

But the only way we can possibly break the power of beautiful things on our hearts is to see a more beautiful thing. Your son is the fairest among 10,000, but especially as he dies on the cross and he's lifted up and he draws us by his beauty, even though he's so broken. It's a beautiful brokenness because it's for us. Let us be so ravished by the thoughts of those things. Let us be so good at repentance. Let us be so good at watching how we look at things that we find ourselves no longer in the grip of these cravings, but rather waiting for the marriage supper of the lamb, eating moderately, and enjoying all good things here.

For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. There, you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1995. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you.