Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - God at Work

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

At first glance, Psalm 111 seems to be a generic recitation of the great things God has done for his people. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. If you read consecutively, Psalm 111 and 112 look a lot alike—and there are remarkable links between the two.  Psalm 111 describes the great God, and Psalm 112 describes a great, flourishing, happy life. The links between the two are unmistakable. If you want the life of Psalm 112, you need to know the God of Psalm 111.  This psalm teaches us about 1) a powerful, involved God, 2) a supernaturally changed life, and 3) the way to connect the power of God to your life. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 25, 2013. Series: Open My Lips: Studies in the Psalms. Scripture: Psalm 111. 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 and Life. The Psalms can be extremely helpful in showing us how we can practically and authentically experience God in our lives. Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller explains how the Psalms can help us grow in our desire for God and deepen our experience of God. This scripture this morning is from Psalm 111. Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the counsel of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds

and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered, the Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just. All his precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever

enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people. He ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, all who follow his precepts have good understanding, to him belongs eternal praise. This is the word of the Lord. So during the summer we've been looking at various Psalms, and this one, at first glance, seems to be a traditional generic recitation of the great things God has done for His people

Israel. But there's more to it that meets the eye. If you're reading through the book of Psalms and you should, consecutively, you'll quickly notice that Psalm 111, M112, which we haven't read, look a lot alike. Not only are they both 10 verses each, but there are remarkable links between the two. Psalm 111 describes God, the great God, Psalm 112 describes a great life, a great human beings, a great flourishing, happy life. And the links between the two are unmistakable.

Verse 3 says, as you can read right here, his righteousness and dearest forever. Verseakable. Verse three says, as you can read right here, his righteousness endures forever. Verse three, if Psalm 112 says, they are talking about godly people, their righteousness endures forever. Verse 11, pardon me, eight and nine talks about God's precepts, being established forever is a word that means unshakable. If you go over to verse 8 and 9 in Psalm 112,

we'll read part of it in a minute. It says that the righteous are unshakable. Godly people are unshakable. So what is very clearly being laid out, if you read them together is this, if you want the life of Psalm 112, if you want the flourishing, if you want the thriving, if you want the character, and we'll look at this in a bit, of that life, if you want the life of Psalm 112, you need to know the God of Psalm 111. They are linked. They can't

be separated. To truly know the God of 111, at least the life of 111, to really have a life of 111, you need to know the God of 111. And therefore, even though we can't read 112 and treat that too, we don't have the time in our space, yet verse 10 is we're going to see is a key link between knowing God and the flourishing life. And so let's notice three things that this Psalm teaches. It talks to us about a powerful involved God, a supernaturally changed life, and the way to connect the power of God to your life. It talks about a powerful involved God, a supernaturally changed life, and then how to connect

the power of God to your life. Okay, first. This describes what I call the powerful, involved God. There's much here. First of all, it talks to us about God's ability to create. Verse 2 says, greater the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them. The Hebrew word therefor works is a word

that usually refers to the stars and the heavens and the earth and the sky, the things he's created. The Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge, you know, the science building, at Cambridge, has over the door, evidently, it's an inscription there, Psalm 111.2. Here's the charter, at least in the olden days. This is the charter that Cambridge University

gave its scientists. Greater the works of the Lord, they are pondered by those who delighted them. In other words, originally, and today, if you're a Christian and you're a scientist, you're in research, what are you doing? You're not just figuring out mechanics. You're pondering a word that means to intellectually, you know, to intensely think about.

You're pondering the work of an artist. You're studying the work of God. All science is studying the work of God, whether people know it or not. So God is a creator, He's created everything. But also, it says in verse 4, He's the Redeemer. He has caused His wonders to be remembered. The word wonders there is a different Hebrew word that actually means His saving actions, His actions to save people. And one thing which I can, the translators are okay to do this. I understand why they do it.

Verse four and five and six, it says, he provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant. He gives them the lands of other nations. Actually, those are past tenses. These are past tenses. And the psalmist is talking about past events. And when you read them, it's past tenses and the psalmist is talking about past events. And when you read them, it's past tenses.

It's obvious what he's talking about. The Lord provided food to those who feared him. That's the man in the wilderness. He gave them the lands of other nations, even though they were freed slaves and didn't have technologically advanced weaponry, which of course at that time was chariots. They didn't have chariots. God still enabled them to fight their enemies, face their enemies, turn them away, and have a land to a homeland.

And then it says, in verse 9, he provided redemption for his people. We'll come back to that, but the word redemption means to be freed from slavery. It's very specific. He freed them from slavery with the plagues in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. In all these miraculous ways, feeding, parting the Red Sea, God saved the children of Israel. By the way, the reason why I think the translators put into

present tense is to say he still does that. Nevertheless, the point is this is a creating God, a God of creation, it's a God of redemption, but he's also a sovereign God. Because it says he caused his wonders to be remembered, he has shown his people the power of his works. He provided redemption. Now what this means is, here's a God who is not a God who's far off in space and we have to try to get his attention.

Hello, hello, I need to be saved. And if you do enough sacrifices and enough obedience and if you show enough deference then you might attract his attention, and he might help you with your plan. No, no, no, he provides redemption. He causes people to even see what he can do. In other words, he's sovereign, he's involved, he's planning, he's executing. Think of the Exodus, which is being referred to here. God saved Moses' life when he was a baby

and then preserved him his life and then prepared him for leadership and then called him to leadership and told him exactly what to do at every step of the way and sent the plagues and hardened Pharaoh's heart. In other words, God, it was God's idea. It was God's provision. God is involved. He's revealing. He's speaking. He's controlling.

He's a sovereign God who's here and controlling all things. Creation, redemption, sovereignty. Okay, what are we saying? Well, I hinted at it in the heading. Let's use some theological terms. We have here a transcendent and an imminent God. On the one hand, we're being told that He is completely, absolutely, all powerful.

That's what theologians call He's transcendent. He's created everything, he sustains everything, he is absolutely all-powerful, he's transcendent. But we're also being told here that he is involved, he's not remote, he's transcendent, but he's not remote, he's here, he's upholding everything, He's involved in everything. He's speaking. So that's what the theologians call. He's not just transcendent, but he's imminent. He's not just infinitely up there. He's also radically right here.

infinitely up there, radically right here, transcendent, imminent, powerful, involved. What's is that what you know What's the difference that make? Well, here, let's apply this culturally. In ancient times, it was the transcendence of God that was something completely different than what the other cultures of antiquity believed. Sure, everybody believed in God. It was the river God, there was the local God,

but the biblical idea of one God who wasn't just a kind of life force, you know, Eastern religions have always believed that there's God in the sense of this world has a life force around it. The God of the Bible is not just an extension of the world. The God of the Bible is not a local deity with limits. I mean, even Zeus made mistakes could be fooled.

Only the biblical God is radically transcendent, completely all-powerful. And therefore, the God of the Bible, the God of Psalm 111, was unknown to any other culture and antiquity. However, I would say that today, the God of the Bible challenges our culture in a different place. Some years ago, not too many years ago, a Charles Taylor great Catholic philosopher wrote a book called A Secular Age.

It's a major, major work of scholarship in which he tries to understand and analyze what it means that we're a secular age, how that happened, what it means to say that. And one of the things that's most interesting to me about the book is he says, to be a secular age doesn't mean we don't believe in God at all. To be secular is not just that. He points out that in America, 80% to 90% of the people say they believe in God, in Europe even majority, even in France, more than half the people say they believe in God. But he says, to be secular means, though we may believe in God, we don't believe in God the way we used to. And here's what he suggests.

Back in the 17th, 18th century, what arose was a philosophy called deism. You may have heard of it. Deism was very popular amongst European intellectuals, the cultural elites. And what it said is, of course, there's a God who created the world. But and here's the famous illustration, he created the world the way a clockmaker creates a clock. See if you create a good clock, you build a good clock, then the clockmaker doesn't have to sit there and turn the hand.

If it's a good clock, it runs on its own. And D is believe, oh, we believe in a God, but we were trying to create more room for human agencies. They say, look, we don't believe in miracles and God being right there in the sense of, you know, always revealing Himself on us, having to obey Him every minute. No, no, God creates the world. And then it's really up to us to use our reason

and our moral intuitions to understand it and to make it a good place to live. And what Charles Taylor says is that means you had a transcendent God who wasn't imminent. You had a God who created the world but he's not there, he's not somebody you have to deal with every moment, and he created the world for our benefit. And now it's up to us to do something with it. Now what's the difference? Enormous difference. What's happened is, though, many people believe in God, maybe most people believe in God,

in a secular age, they have a thinner view of God. And that is, as a God who's more remote, not someone you have to obey and depend on every moment. And as Taylor put it, the traditional view of God is, we exist for him. We exist for him to serve him every minute. The modern view of God is God actually exists for our benefit. He creates the world for our benefit.

And now we have to just use it and do what we can with it. And therefore, nobody believes in Psalm 111 God in either an antiquity or modernity in a broad-based way. In other words, belief in God, the God of Psalm 111 is not the normal way people believe in modernity. It was not the normal way people believed in antiquity. The biblical God was really unique then and he's unique now. So what, somebody's saying? Okay, don't worry, the first point's over now.

Because you're saying, okay, that's interesting. Actually, I didn't know some of that, that's nice. But so what? And of course, the answer of the Bible, and here's where it gets radical, what you think about God, what you believe about God, is the term of how you live. It absolutely affects how you live. It can't not affect how you live, and that brings us to the bottom, the bottom of the verse, which is actually the link into Psalm 112 when you're reading it. It's a very famous verse. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

By the way, I'm in a little bit of a bind here because we are going to get back to that verse in Proverbs chapter 1 when we do a brief series after Labor Day on what wisdom is. There's infinite depths in this verse. This verse appears as other places in the Bible, but here I think its main point can be brought out without getting in the way or stealing the thunder, our own thunder from later on. Look what this says. First of all, he's saying this.

The fear of the Lord calls for the fear of the Lord. What is that? Well, at the very least it means seeing the Lord as he is. This Lord, not the smaller God of antiquity, not the thinner and remotor God of modernity, but apprehending God as he's revealed in the Bible, Psalm 111. This God who's transcendent and imminent, infinitely up there, radically right here. So first of all, the fear God means to actually apprehend God as he is. But secondly, the fear God obviously means more than just to believe, right?

It has to. It means awe and wonder. It means to grasp this God, to be amazed at this God, to actually existentially grasp God. Or another way to put it is we're being called here to not just know about God but to know God, not just to believe the right things about God, but to fear Him, which means to know Him it's the same thing. I would like to say that if you've never read the book by J.I. Packer, knowing God is should. I don't usually, I'm not usually as blunt about things. Of the six books that

probably had the biggest influence on my whole way of life and understanding Christianity and therefore ministry, it's one of the six. And in there, he simply brings out what the Bible brings out. And that is knowing about God is not enough. You have to know him. You know him personally. You have to connect who he is to every part of your life. Now, what is he saying? Fear the Lord, know the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And this is something. What this is saying, wisdom is practical living. By the way, wisdom here is not mainly knowledge, it's practical living. And what this is saying is what you believe about God has total influence on how you actually live or put another way.

The Bible is very nuanced, oh wait, let me say this, the Bible is very nuanced. Plenty of places the Bible says that God gives wisdom to all kinds of people. People who don't believe in Him, people who believe in Him wrongly, He gives artistic wisdom, He gives intellectual wisdom. There's lots of places where the Bible says

every good and perfect gift comes down from above. He spreads wisdom out in many ways to everybody so this world is not nearly as bad a place as it would be otherwise. But what this is trying to say, what this is saying, is simply this, that if you don't grasp who God is, you won't live right. If to the degree you understand who God really is, to that degree, you will understand how life works. And distortions in your understanding of who God is, inject distortions in how you live. If you've got a God who is too harsh and not loving, if you've got a God who is all loving

and not holy, if you've got a God who's transcendent and not holy, if you've got a God who's transcendent on imminent, imminent, not transcendent, it's going to affect the way which you live. It's the fear of the Lord, which affects your wisdom, which affects the degree to which you live effectively. And, of course, what this is saying is only if you existentially grasp this God. Will you live a life of wisdom,

which is actually then laid out in Psalm 111? The Psalms can profoundly shape the way you approach God. Even Jesus relied on the Psalms to face every situation, including death. In Tim and Cathy Keller's devotional book, The Psalms of Jesus, you'll find daily readings through the Psalms with fresh biblical insight. If you have no devotional life yet, this book is a wonderful way to start. And if you already spend time in study and prayer, reading and praying through every verse of the Psalms can help you discover a new level of intimacy with God. We'll send you to Mn. Cathy Keller's devotional as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the

love of Jesus with more people. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. I told you we can't go out the time to go into all that, but let me just read you, snatches from someone in 12 and show you the kind of life that we mean by a wise life. This is Psalm 112, parts of it. Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find delight in His commands. Their children will be mighty in the land, even in darkness light dawns for the upright,

for those who are gracious and compassionate and just. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely who conduct their affairs with justice. Surely the righteous will never be shaken. They will have no fear of bad news. Their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor and their righteousness and doers forever.

Now, there's even in those snatches, you can see four things about the life of the human life that's outlined in Psalm 112. First of all, relationally strong. They have thriving family life. Their relationships are strong. Secondly, they are super generous to the poor. And they are people of high integrity.

They are known as people of their word. They are known for high integrity. They're known as people of their word. They're known for the integrity. In other words, they're people who care about justice, both positive and negative, negative meaning, dealing with injustice and positively living just lives. And then lastly, even in darkness like dawns, they fear no bad news. They can handle suffering.

No matter how dark things get, they can handle it with poise. You want a life like that? Has everything to do the Bible says with what you believe about God. Let me give you a quick example. Real quick. I found it very interesting the Charles Taylor, what Charles Taylor says about, you know, the fact that most people are practical deists today. And that is they don't believe that they exist for God's benefit. They actually believe God made the world for our benefit.

They don't believe they have to rely on Obey God every minute. They believe God kind of gave us the life and he's there. And if I live a pretty good life, my life should go pretty well. Christian Smith, a sociologist who's really studied in detail the religious beliefs of younger American adults, says in particular younger adults are practical deists, though they would

never use the word because they most of them haven't heard the word. But he actually says, listen, he says, this is what the average younger adult believes. Most do believe there's a God that he made this world. And now they don't not believe they have to obey him every minute and rely on him every second for every detail of the life. No, but they do believe if they live a generally good life, it's up to God to give them a good life. And he calls them, he calls that, this is Christian Smith,

calls the normal worldview of younger American adults, moralistic, therapeutic, deism. There is a God, and he exists basically for my benefit. And if I live a pretty decent life, I don't live a villainous life, he deserves a good life. And both Charles Taylor and Christian Smith said, here's what's happened with the thinner of you of God. People can't handle suffering.

See if you believe that God, that you exist for God, God's benefit. In other words, if you believe you live for God, you exist for God. Suffering comes, we can be pretty upset about it. We can cry out and pain like Job. We can say, God, why are you treating me like this? But in the end, what you say is, well, the meaning of life is for me to serve God. And if I can serve Him through suffering, I will. But what if you believe the meaning of life

is to be happy? The meaning of life is to be free to live life as you want. What if you believe that God exists for my benefit? Then when suffering comes, it destroys your meaning in life. It's not a way for you to achieve your... It destroys it. And both the sociologist Smith and philosopher Taylor says that the thinner view of God, the view of a God

who's remote and not imminent, which says God made the world for our benefit, means that when suffering comes, it just decimates us. The sense of entitlement comes up against the reality that life is nasty, brutish, and short. And it leads to radical dissolutionment. In other words, verse 8 here says, God's precepts are established forever, and it's a word in verse 111, verse 8, that means the precepts of God are unshakable.

If you go over it in verse 112, you get to verse 8, it says they will have no fear of bad news. Their hearts are steadfast. It's the same Hebrew word, they're unshakable. If you want to be unshakable, if you want to be able to handle suffering, it all depends on what you believe about God.

Do you have the thin view, the small view, or do you have the big view? Do you have the fear of the Lord? See? What you believe about God, how well you know God, has everything to do about whether you can live a wise life, understand how life works, handle life as it is. The thin view of God cannot handle real life, which means it's stupid. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The non-fear of the Lord, you're not afraid of the Lord, you're not, I don't mean fear of the Lord doesn't mean it means all in wonder about the greatness of God. But a person who's the Lord, I believe in God, there's no fear of the Lord, then you're foolish. You're not ready for real life. Got it? Point 1.2, point 3.

Well, how do we connect the power of God and the fear of God and the knowledge of God to our life in such a way that the God of Psalm 111 produces in our life of Psalm 112? And the answer is there's three things in the passage that tells us something about I think. Three things in the passage that tell us something about what we can do to connect God's power into our lives. Here's the first thing. And I'm sorry to have to, well, here's the first thing. We have to obey His precepts.

First 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow His precepts have good understanding, which is the same thing as wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow His precepts, which means, obey, if you want the wisdom, you obey his precepts. What are his precepts? His laws, his revelations, his words, what the prophets say, what Moses said,

the 10 commandments say, what you and I would call the Bible. And look at what it says about the scripture, about the Bible, up in verse 7, B and A, 8. It says, the precepts are established. It's a word that means they are absolutely certain. And then it says, forever and ever. Absolutely certain, forever and ever. Have you heard anybody say, well, the Bible is okay.

It's got a lot of good things in it, but some of the things are out of date. There's some things there that we've, are regressive and we can't believe anymore. There's some things that, you know, I don't, you know, you have to decide what you're going to accept, what you're not. Here it says, it's all absolutely certain for ever and ever.

All his precepts, not part of it, all his precepts, forever and ever, it's a strong statement. And actually, the end of verse seven, it says, all his precepts are trustworthy. In the Older translations, it says, they're true, because that's what it's saying. C.S. Lewis in his little book, Reflections on the Psalms, has an interesting reflection on this verse.

Because in the Old King James Bible and many other translations it says, all his precepts are true and he says, now precept is a command. And he says, you know, at first sight that doesn't seem to work and this is with the way, see how the Lewis's mind works, which is brilliant. He says, if you say the door is shut, that is a statement that may be true or not. Maybe true, maybe false, right? Depends on whether the door is shut or not. So to say, you know, his statements are true, makes sense, but to say his commands are true, he says to say the door is shut could be true or false. But how could you say, shut the door, which is a command? How could you shut could be true or false, but how could you say shut the door? Which is a command? How could you say that's true or false? Doesn't make sense and then he says but probably is what Lewis says probably what the psalmist is saying is this and I'm sure he's right

He's saying that the gods commands are true in a sense that they're based on truth They are based on the very nature of the things and the very nature of God. Do you hear that? God's commandments are based on the very nature of things. And Lewis is saying this, God created the world. He knows how it works. And when he gives you a command, it's not busy work. When you violate his precepts, you are going against the green of the universe

and you're going against the green of your own nature. The Bible says you must forgive. The Bible says you must forgive. The Bible says you must and commit adultery. The Bible says you must and steal. Now, there's two ways to live. There's a stupid way and the wise way. The stupid way is you can hold your grudges, you can live for yourself, you can break your promises,

but as the years go on, you'll see, because you're going against the grain of the universe, you're being beaten down, you're being crushed by life. And on the other hand, if you obey the precepts of, the precepts, the precepts of God are true. You're going with the grain of the universe, the way you were built. And therefore, the first way that you could be sure

that you have connected the power of God to your life and the fear of God is leading to wisdom is you obey what he says, even the parts you don't like. All his precepts, see, are certain for ever and ever. And by the way, do you know what this means? It means there's been a danger all along. As soon as I wrote, start writing the sermon, I realized I was playing a little bit into your,

into your secularism and my secularism too. Because I said that unless you believe in the God of Psalm 111, you won't have this prosperous, wonderful life of Psalm 112. Do you want that life? Then you have to believe in that God. Now what's wrong with that? There's nothing technically wrong with it, but what might be your mode of being? You say, oh, because I want to be happy, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what that means? Happy, blessed, happier

those who seek to be righteous rather than blessed. Happier those who seek righteousness more than happiness. If you aim at happiness first and you only do righteousness if it's going to make you happy, you'll be neither happy in the end or righteous. It'll be self-serving. You'll just be doing it as long as you'll do whatever you have to do in order to get the happiness. But if you put righteousness before happiness, you'll be both. If you put honor, if you put integrity, in other words, you should obey God, whether it makes you happy or not, that's the only way you'll ever be happy.

The only way you'll ever have the life of Psalm 112 is if you say, I don't care if I had this Psalm of life of 112, I just want to obey the God of Psalm 111. So the first thing you have to do is you have to obey his precepts. The second thing you have to do is you have to grasp the grace of the covenant. Now, all this talk about covenant is interesting, and it connects to the rest of the Bible. Look, it says, he has caused, pardon me,

he says he provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. Now, what's interesting there, he also says he remembers his covenant forever, down to verse nine. A covenant is a very solemn and binding yet intimate and personal relationship. Two parties make a covenant, they take vows and they solemnly bind themselves to be loyal to each other, to be loyal. Closest thing we have to a covenant anymore is the marriage.

Two parties say they're going to be loyal to each other and it's binding in solemn. Now, notice what's interesting. It says here in verse, as we mentioned already, he provided food for those who fear him. Now, that means, fearing is a way of fulfilling the covenant. God took the children of Israel out of Egypt. He brings them out to Sinai, he gives them the law. He says, you will be my people, I will be your God. And he actually says, and this law. He says, you will be my people. I will be your God.

If you obey the, and he actually says, and this is what he says, by the way, in Exodus 19, when he's doing that, when he's bringing the people into covenant, he says, quote, now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. See that? If you obey, fully obey and follow my covenant, if you're loyal to me, I'll be loyal to you. In that case, it does look like the covenant's conditional. He provided food because they were fearing him,

because they were obeying the covenant. So they're being loyal to me, I'll be loyal to them. They're being obedient to me now, feed them in the wilderness, okay? So there it looks like the covenant is conditional. And yet, conditional on our obedience. And yet, then it says twice, and he remembers this covenant forever. He provided redemption for his people, and he ordained his covenant forever.

See, right along this, along this verse, Exodus 19, now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant then, out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. And yet in Judges 2 verse 1, he says, I will never break my covenant with you. I will keep my covenant forever. And there are many Old Testament scholars who say that one of the, if you read the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament carefully, you can't help but notice these statements that essentially seem to contradict. On the one hand, God keeps saying, well, I've entered into a covenant with you, if you're loyal to me, I'll be loyal to you. If you're not loyal to me, then I'll cut you off. And over here, it says, I will never, ever, ever, ever fail to keep my

covenant with you. I will remember my covenant forever. I will never break my covenant with you. So here's the question, everybody. Is the covenant with God conditional or unconditional? Is it conditional on human obedience? Or is it unconditional based strictly on God's love? And the answer is yes. Obviously, Psalm 111 doesn't give it all to us, but Old Testament scholar, Alec Mateer, looks at verse 9 and says one of the most interesting things about this verse. It says, God provided redemption for his people, and I've told you already that this, the verb here, provided redemption, the word redemption means to release from slavery, but it doesn't just mean release from slavery. So obviously talking

about getting them out of Egypt, they were slaves, but it doesn't just mean release from slavery. So obviously talking about getting them out of Egypt, they were slaves, but it doesn't just mean that. The verb means to pay the ransom to get them out of slavery. See, slaves ordinarily was an economic condition and they were slave because they were in debt. And therefore, this word means that if you want to release a slave, you have to pay the cost that the slave can't pay. And so here's what Alakmeteer says was so fascinating.

He says here it says in Psalm 111 that somehow God took upon himself the whole cost of their deliverance and brought them into covenant with himself. Somehow God took upon himself the cost of their deliverance. That's what it says, somehow, somehow. We'll see in the Old Testament, that's a mystery, somehow. But from the vantage point of the New Testament, we have the know-how. And here's the know-how. Jesus Christ, who was infinitely up there, came and went to the cross. He lived a perfect life, became a human being, lived a perfect life,

and went to the cross and died. And then he was radically right here. I mean, it's one thing to say, God is infinitely up there and radically right here, and we're just talking about the fact that He's near us, so he's around us. Oh, but the God of the Bible was infinitely up there as the Son of God, the transcendence of God, and He came really radically right here on the cross in our mortality, in our fragility, in our suffering, in our death, he was right here with us.

Why did he do it? He paid the cost for our covenant unfaithfulness. You know, I said that the covenant, the closest thing we have to a covenant today is a marriage. As some of you know, the story that pointed toward what Jesus did in the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet, and he had a wife, and his wife, Ghamer, was unfaithful to him. In fact, she was so unfaithful to him. She was serially unfaithful to him,

and she finally fell into prostitution, and finally she fell into slavery, and she was being sold as a slave. And of course, after all that unfaithfulness, Hosea owed her nothing, had no obligation. She had been unfaithfulness, Hosea owed her nothing, had no obligation. She had been unfaithful to the covenant. But we're told this, that God comes to Hosea and speaks to him, and the climax of the story is in the beginning of Hosea 3.

This is what God says. And the Lord said to me, this is Hosea speaking, and the Lord said to me, go show your love to your wife again, though she is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they have turned to other gods. And so, Jose says, I bought her back for 15 shuckles of silver.

I bore the cost of her covenant on faithless. And I told her, you are to live with me and I will live with you. Now you see, class is the covenant conditional based on human obedience or is it unconditional based on the love of God? And the answer is yes because Jesus Christ, they transcend a God who said, because I want to unconditionally love these people and I want to have a covenant with them and I want to keep them with me no matter how much they fail. He can't earth, he became a human being and he satisfied the conditions of the covenant as a human being. Is a conditional or unconditional yes.

And when you grasp that, when you grasp His grace, not just His authority in the precepts, but His grace in the covenant, now, now the greatness of God, the transcendence and immenence of God for your salvation in Jesus Christ, that will begin to change the way you think. That will make him someone to live for. That will make him someone you can obey. That'll begin to change your life. And then lastly, and very lastly, is you need to worship this into your life.

You need to worship this into your heart. What do I mean? Well, look at, praise the Lord. It tells you, not just think about the Lord, you know. Praise the Lord, extoll the Lord with all my heart, that's private. Extoll him in the council of the, the upright in the assembly, that's public.

Greater the works of the Lord, they're pondered, that's mental. By all who delight in him, that's emotional. You have to praise him, you have to pray, you have to have a great prayer, love a great worship life, you have to take this and put this into your life and that is the fear of the Lord that produces wisdom. It's knowing God, it's knowing God.

And on the first chapter of the book, by Jack Packer, I'll close with this, knowing God, he has this a long quote by Charles Spurgeon. I'm gonna read just to you, it's not that long, but Charles Spurgeon. I'm gonna read it just to you, it's not that long, but Charles Spurgeon was preaching, he's age 20, 1855 in London, he was a Baptist preacher in London, 1855. He's age 20 and just keep in mind,

as he's talking about what it means to know God, just remember that this man never had any education past the age of 15. Spurgeon, there is something exceeding, improving to the mind in a contemplation of the deity. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity. It's a subject so deep that our pride is drowned in the infinity. But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the

man who simply plots around the narrow globe. Science, it is said, in nobles and enlarges the mind, I dare say it does, but nothing will so in noble and enlarge the intellect and magnify the whole soul of man as a devout earnest continued investigation of the great subject of the Godhead. Oh, there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound, in musing on the Father, there is a quietest for every grief, and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows, would you drown your cares, then go plunge yourself into the Godhead's deepest sea, be lost in its immensity, and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. It is to that subject, I invite you this

morning in Me too. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for showing us at the fear of the Lord, the apprehension and grasp of your transcendence and immenence, especially in a salvation that you worked for us through Jesus Christ, is the beginning of a wise life and a fruitful life. And we pray simply that you would help us to realize that in our lives. That will glorify you, it will heal us. Make it so by the power of your spirit we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller on The Psalms. We pray that it challenged you and encouraged you.

To find more gospel-centered resources like today's teaching, you can sign up for email updates at gospelunlife.com. That's gospelunlife.com. This month's sermons were recorded in 1997 and 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor of every Deemer Presbyterian Church. you