Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - God’s Plan (Part 2)

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 9, 1992. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 1:9-12. 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.

Many people say that what matters most is simply living a good and loving life. But the Bible says something very different, that the way we live flows directly from our beliefs about God. This summer and through the end of September, we're going through one of Tim Keller's most extensive sermon series, in which he teaches from the first three chapters of Ephesians, looking at how the Bible's central truths about salvation and grace will shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life. For our teaching time, we're going to look again at Ephesians chapter 1. I'd like to call your attention to the entire section that we've been looking at, Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14.

But tonight we're going to look again in particular at verses 9 to 12. It's all one thought, and yet there's divisions in the thought. And I'm going to read from verse 3 to 14, but tonight, we're in particular going to look at verse 9 to 12. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in Him

before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace

that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in a conformity with the purpose of His will in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ

might be for the praise of His glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the Word of Truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who was a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of His glory. This is God's word. Whenever I read that every week, when I'm all done, I say, I always feel like I just ate too much, and I'm not being able to digest it.

This is Paul's concise yet comprehensive description of what it means to. to be saved, to be saved. And I think I heard Jeff allude to this tonight, and I was very glad to hear him do it. There's a sense in which there's two parts to what the gospel tells us. In Christ, God is both our father and our king. There are two sides. The first part of this passage that we looked at before my vacation in July,

we spent a lot of time looking at adoption. Praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has chosen us to be adopted as His sons. And there's this one side of the gospel is that in Christ, God has become our father. In fact, that's one way to think about what Christianity is. Through Christ, the Creator God, the maker of heaven and earth, becomes your father.

We explored that. and I know that it wasn't enough because I know that if the people in this room were really living as if God was their father, they would be different than they are. If I was living as if God was my father, I would be different. My wife and I, yesterday, deposited all three of our children at a camp in upstate New York. It's a beautiful place. But we came home without our children, without any children at all in the house. It's not a normal occurrence. And when we went to bed last night, we realized that it was difficult.

It wasn't difficult to not have to worry about my youngest one waking us up as he does every night around 1 o'clock for a drink every night. It wasn't that difficult to imagine wrestling them out of bed on Sunday morning, even though they're preachers' sons, saying, oh no. You know, another eight, how many services do we go to? Eight every Sunday? There was all sorts of things that are wonderful about being free from your children, but there's something that is both good and bad in the heart of a parent, and that is, unless you are absolutely sure that your children are safe and happy, it's difficult to go to sleep at night.

How do you know one of them didn't sprain an ankle? How do you know one of them isn't miserable in their cabin. How do you know one of them hasn't, uh, uh, isn't crying himself to sleep? How do you know? How do you know? You see, what happens is in, in the heart of a parent, even a bad parent, you get planted without actually asking for it, this, this passion to want to be in control of your children so that they'll be happy. You, you want to make sure they're happy. Now, when I say that's in good and bad parents, In a bad parent, that means you just cannot ever take your hands off your kids. No matter how old they are, no matter how old you are, you're sure you know what will make them happy. And they continually tell you, don't they, about what should make you happy?

See, that's the pathological side. In a good parent, it means, of course, that you just sacrifice for your children and you worry about your children and you pray for your children. But no matter who you are, even in the bad parent, there's this. unextinguishable passion. You cannot rest unless your children are at rest. You cannot be happy unless your children are happy. It's like being haunted. It's like somebody's put a hook in you and you know you'll never really be happy again because your children will never be perfectly happy. It's a terrible thing sometimes to lay in bed at night and saying, I don't know exactly whether my children are safe, whether they're really happy, I don't know, and it was hard to go to sleep last night.

I realize that that particular thing, as we've said, can really get out of control. I realize it's going to be a hard thing when our children are up and grown for us to deal with that. But I know this. As I was falling asleep last night, I said, man, if I, with all of my flaws and with all of my weaknesses, if I, one of the more imperfect fathers I know, if I cannot rest knowing that my children aren't safe and happy, what must that mean about God, the perfect father's love for me? You see, here I'm a person, I don't, I'm a father, and I have this passion for my children's happiness, but I don't have the power to affect it.

But your father in heaven does. You cannot plumb the depths of his love for you. You cannot imagine his commitment. His omnipotent commitment to seeing you holy and happy all of your life. You say, well, if he's that committed to my happiness, why do I feel the way I do now? Well, children are constantly saying that to their parents. Children are constantly saying, if you really want to make me happy, why are you making me do this, and why won't you let me do this, and why are you sending me here and why are you doing this?

Children are always doing that. To understand that God as a father means understanding that you're a child, so that you will not always understand what he's doing. but understanding that he cannot and will not rest with all of his glory and omnipotence until you are a gloriously happy person. Do you know that? Do you live in that? How in the world can you spend a day in self-pity if you know that?

How can you be so angry with the people around you? How can you really feel so unlovely in light of that? A big, listen, the first part of this, passage, the first part of this long sentence that we spent weeks on is that God is your father and there is no greater disservice that you can do to him. There is no greater insult that the Christian can make to him than to live as if he doesn't love you, to live as if he's not your father. Now, that's only one half. The other half is that God is the king. God is sovereign. in charge. God is master. And that's what you're seeing in verse 9 to 12. And for the life of me,

it seems it's very difficult for me to find people who are both confident of God's love as a father and submitted to him as a king. You see, unless they go together, they eat at each other. Unless you're able to see God as a father and as a king together, those two sides in a sense will, Neither of them can stand, neither of those doctrines, God is Father and God as King, can stand on their own. That's what I'm trying to say. If you see God as just a gooey, loving Sugar Daddy in heaven, forget the fact that he's king and sovereign and you have got to give him your obedience. Then eventually the idea of him as a father will just become a, it'll become sentimentality. It won't transform you. On the other hand, if you only think of God as a king,

only as a sovereign, and you forget that he's your father. His kingship and his demands for obedience will be oppressive, and they will crush you, and they'll make you think, I'll never be good enough. Now, which one are you? Do you have a sense of God's fatherhood? Have you always heard, well, God is loving, and of course they'll accept anything I do, but you don't continually sense the fact that you're a sinner that you owe God far more obedience than you give him? Or are you the kind of person who's always crushed under the idea of his obedience? And you really can't accept his fatherhood. It's not real to you.

Which one are you? Almost nobody has got those together like they should be. I know I don't. And that's the reason why Paul talks about them both in this sentence. In the early part, he's the father. He's adopted you. In the latter part, he's the king. He's got a plan.

He's working all things out according to the counsel of his will. We don't like to hear this part either, but that's the part I'd like to explore with you this week. Just now. Look, this passage, in fact, this whole book of Ephesians, is paralleled by Colossians. In fact, there's many scholars that believe that Colossians and Ephesians were both letters that are so parallel that they might have been form letters that Paul wrote and sent out to various. churches. So it wasn't that only the Ephesians got this letter and only the Colossians got that letter. Or other people think that Ephesians was the form letter and Colossians was a reworked version contextualized and adapted for a particular audience. But there are amazing parallels between

Ephesians and Colossians. I've tried to point them out before. But look, here in verse 10, I just read, and he has made known to us the mystery of his will, to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, Christ. Over in Colossians, listen, it says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body. He is the beginning in the firstborn, that in all things he might have the supremacy, and through him, God is going to reconcile to himself all things, whether in earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. In Colossians, we're told that because Jesus is king,

God has a plan to bring all things back together under the Lordship of Christ. In Ephesians, the great plan is he's going to reunite all things under the Lordship of Christ. What does this mean? It means this. Number one, you need a king. Without a king, your lives fall apart. Now, before I go on to number two, let's explain that a little bit. The legends of all branches of the human family are full of legends of great kings from the past. We've got all kinds of legends of great kings who ruled, and when they ruled there was a golden age. Now, you know, the odd thing about those legends is the actual record of kings is abysmal. The actual record of kings is a record of tyranny and of slavery. And over the years, almost all kingdoms have been toppled in favor of democracies.

You know, Christians have always been along with, one of the reasons that most kingdoms have been toppled in favor of democracies is because Christians agreed with non-Christians, kings had a go. You know why? Back during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, you had a lot of people that moved away from the idea of Christianity and the biblical view of human nature. You had people who said, human beings are so good and so wonderful, and every individual is so beautiful and good that no one should give their government away to someone else that all human beings need to participate in government. Rousseau, for example, said, because human beings are basically good, we have got to give everyone the right to govern themselves. Now, Christians

believed also that we ought to topple tyranny and topple kings and believed in democracy, but for a completely different reason. They believed in it for the exact opposite reason. They believe that because human beings are so wicked and so proud and so sinful, you can't trust one or a small number of people with all the power in a society. You see, Rousseau said, we've got to have democracy because no person is fit to be a slave. And Christians said that's true. But the real reason we should have democracy is no person is fit to be a king. And therefore, all the democracies have come, and basically we don't have any kings left.

And yet, there is this tremendous hunger in the human heart to have a king. In the few countries where kings are still around, people are obsessed with them, obsessed with the royal family, obsessed with the aura and the ethos. And in America, where we don't have kings, we crown people anyway. You know, if a basketball player is great enough, we'll call him Prince Charles. If somebody is great enough, we take millionaires and we take celebrities and we take athletes and we take even gangsters and we treat them with awe. Why?

Because deep in the human heart is a desire to crown a king. Why? The Bible says it's a memory trace. We all know deep down that we were built for a king, but who? in the Christian understanding, democracy is not food, it's medicine. What's the difference between food and medicine? Medicine is simply something that can't really sustain you. Medicine is something you take because you're sick.

Christians have always been for democracy. They've always been down with the tyrants. Why? Not because we think that democracy is so great. We just think because of human sin, The only way to keep it under control is to give the greatest number of people spread out amongst the greatest number of people the power of government. Power corrupts, an absolute power corrupts, absolutely, and all that stuff. That absolutely is a Christian sentiment.

And yet we know that ultimately what we really need, what we were really built for was to be ruled. No human being can rule and satisfy the longing for a king. You've all got it. Every one of us have got it. We want a crown a king. Why? Because there's a memory trace in our hearts. We know we were built for kings. We know we were built. We have a deep down sense that once upon a time there was a king that we were built for. And he did rule with wisdom, and he did rule with strength, and he did rule with compassion. And his strength and his strength and his beauty and his wisdom were like the sun shining in full strength. And when we bowed before him and when we submitted to him, everything was golden. Why do we have legends about that? Why do we

sense that? Because it was true. Because we were put in the Garden of Eden. We were built for a king. And now, what is Jesus? What is the great plan? The plan is to bring us all back under that king. If we don't put ourselves under the king, things fall apart. Your life falls apart. You know how many times the Bible says, what Jesus says, to be a disciple means to become like a seed. You know where Jesus says, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit. Do you see what he's saying? Think about it. A seed, if it stays up, if it stays above ground, If you take a seed and put it on the window sill instead of planting, it eventually it decays. It eventually rots.

It eventually, some very take a long time. Some seeds can keep their vitality for a long time. We know that. But eventually it falls apart. It decays. But if you take the seed and put it down under the ground, lose it. Put it under. Burry it.

All of its hidden potentialities erupt. And Jesus says that's a picture of the kingdom of God. If you are willing to take your life and bury it under my lordship, if you're willing in a sense to die like the seed, die to self-determination, die to being your own boss, dying to be your own master, die to the idea that you can decide what's right and wrong for you. Oh, what a thing to say in a place like New York. It'll look like a death, right?

and it'll look like intellectual suicide. It's not, but it'll look that way. And Jesus says, yes, you have to do it. You have to commit that suicide, though it's not. You have to die in order to find out what you really like. Until you come in under my kingship, you will never know all that I made you to be. You have to come in underneath. The seed was not built to lay on the window shelf. It's built to come in under my lordship. And if it does, you will find all of the disparate parts of your life coming together. Under headship, there's unity. That's why it says in Ephesians, the great plan is to reunite all things in Christ. Do you struggle to find the words to share your faith effectively with others?

Most Christians, pastors included, have moments where we have trouble articulating what we believe and why our faith matters. In his book preaching, communicating faith in an age of skepticism, Tim Keller shows how to communicate the Christian message in a way that's clear, compassionate, and accessible, whether you're speaking to a group or having a casual conversation with a friend. Drawing from his decades of experience connecting the gospel to real-life circumstances, Dr. Keller shows how the gospel message can speak even to the most skeptical or spiritually curious people. During the month of July, we'll send you a copy of preaching, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people.

So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. You come in under the headship of Christ, under the kingship of Christ, and the parts of your life start to pull together. Unity develops. Eventually, the plan is the whole world and all of the disintegration in the world. and all of the disintegration in the world, political and social and economical and even physical and spiritual and psychological, will all be unified under the headship of Jesus Christ.

What does a snowman in Miami, a jogger on Venus, a fish laying on the Sahara Desert, the Queen Mary trying to come up the Harlem River, what do all those things have in common? Hmm? Yeah, they don't belong there, and they're falling apart because of it. If your life is falling apart, it's because you belong under the Lordship of Jesus. Unless you, like a seed, go in underneath his kingship, there will not be a unity to your life and a wholeness to your life either. That's the plan. That's the reason why in the first part of this salvation message, Paul can talk about how great it is to be, have God as a

a father in the second party saying now the great plan is to reunite all things under the headship of Jesus. As it says in Colossians, it's the plan of the father is that through Christ your lives will come together so that in him, in all things, he might have the supremacy. In all things, he might have the supremacy. In all things. Now, what's that mean? It means. It means to be a Christian, you have to see that the plan of God is to bring the kingdom. And that means you've got to have kingdom consciousness. Now this is, if any of you came to the earlier services that we had today, you'll realize that this is essentially the same subject as the parable that I preached on this morning. When the preacher finds himself talking about the same subject in the morning and the evening,

is that a wonderful divine coincidence or is that poor planning on the part of the preacher? Or is it both? Maybe it's both. The point is, as we said this morning, when you become a Christian, you have a tendency to think individualistically. Most of us have a tendency to come to Jesus and we say, I got a problem, I've got guilt, I need forgiveness, I got self-esteem problems, I got problems with my family. In fact, ultimately, a lot of people come to Christ because they have no problems, and they're still empty.

You know, one of the biggest problems that you can have is to have no problems and to realize that you're still not happy. Isn't that awful? You look around, I got no problems. I got to the place in life I wanted to go. I got into the grad school I wanted to get into. I got into the career I wanted to get into.

I reached a certain amount of, status. I've reached the level of success that I wanted. I have the relationships I've wanted. Now, most of you are sitting there saying, there are people like that around. There's not a lot, but there are people around. And let me tell you what happens to them, because I've talked to them. They find the ultimate problem is to not have any problems and to realize you're still not satisfied. Then you say, what is wrong with me? There's nothing wrong with you other than what's wrong with all people. Unless you go under the Lordship of Christ and die like a seed, you're actually having no idea what you were built for. You're not realizing your potential.

You're sitting on the shelf. So most of us, when we first come to the Lord, even approach Christianity, even start to study it. We're constantly asking ourselves, how can you meet my needs? and when you hear about the fatherhood of God and you hear about adoption, that all sounds great. But then you have to remember there's the last part of the passage, and that is that the plan of God is to bring his kingdom into the world. And that means all of the disintegration that you see around you, whether it's social, whether it's physical, whether it's spiritual or economic, is the result of rebellion against God. And if you bring any heart and if you bring any life, you've heard me say this, I want to say until you know it.

If you bring any relationship, any marriage, if you bring any part of your psyche, if you bring a community, if you bring a neighborhood, if you bring a city, if you bring a society, if you bring a culture, if you bring a world under the Lordship of Christ,

there's reuniting going on. It's under the headship that there's uniting going on, you see. When you work with a homeless and you sit down and you say, this is what Jesus means to me, and here is how you can give you, get back into society. And here's how you can get a job, and here's how you can learn to read and write, and here's what Jesus means to me.

You're getting a kingdom consciousness, because you're saying, I am trying to heal all the results of sin that are out there by bringing to bear the power of Jesus. Kingdom consciousness means, number one, that though we came, thinking kind of narrowly about what Christianity means, we now see that the kingdom of God is multidimensional,

I'm going to, God says, unite all things, that in all things Christ might be supreme. After you've been a Christian for a couple of years, you start to swallow hard when you begin to realize that Jesus is saying, I'm king of every area of your life. What about your romance life? What about your sexuality? What about your business life? What about the ethics at work? What about your thought life? What about your intellectual life?

Have you really taken all of those intellectual construct? that you learned in Psych 101 and Social 101 and Education 101 and Philosophy 101 and Education 101 101 and have you taken it and thrown it through the filter of the Word of God, the Word of the King? Have you submitted your intellect and have you submitted your sexuality? Have you submitted your career? Have you submitted every area of your life to my kingship? Most of us don't realize that that's what's being asked. Most of us don't realize that that's what's being entailed.

because we come and we think very narrowly and individualistically, but the kingdom of God is a comprehensive thing. Most of us, when we become Christians, first of all, we think, well, Christianity is a matter of coming to church and worshiping and getting the inspiration to go out and just be more successful people until God until God begins to come and say, listen, I have given you the Word of God, I've given you the spirit, I've given you the gifts, the spirit. These are the powers of the king. If you begin to use your gifts, if you begin to serve people, if you begin to love people, if you begin to talk and share the gospel with people, you will see that I will be able to spread my kingdom life into every area. Being a Christian means we're concerned about the cultural life of the city, the economic life

of the city, the social problems of the city, the intellectual life of the city. We're concerned about every part of life. To be kingdom-minded means to think comprehensively, and it's going to take a while. Christians don't develop it right away. Secondly, kingdom consciousness means that you're no longer pessimistic about change. If you're cynical, if you say, this thing can't change. We mentioned this this morning, if you're around, but I'll say it again, if you say, if you look at your life and you say, well, there's certain things about me that are bad,

but they'll never change. There are certain people who are incorrigible. There are certain communities and neighborhoods that we just have to write off. There are certain things that just can't possibly happen. They'll never happen. They'll never change. You don't have kingdom consciousness either. That in all things he might be supreme, that's the plan.

That he will reunite all things in Jesus Christ. Your pessimism, your narrow-mindedness, your lack of comprehensive vision. All of these things come because, you don't understand that God is not just your father, but he's your king. He's not there just to tuck you in at night. He's there to enlist you in his army and to spread his kingdom until someday, and this is what I love about that verse in Matthew 13, we will all shine like the son in the kingdom of our father. You know, that's Matthew 13, verse 43. We will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the father. There it brings it all together. the king is my father, the father is my king.

One last thing. When people ask, what does it mean then to treat God as a king and not just as a father? I always say at least four things. You might have heard me say this again. I haven't said it in probably a couple of years, but it's a good little way to look it over. What does it mean to treat God as a king? First of all, it means to obey him. First of all, it means to obey him.

It means that it's not good enough simply to come and ask God to help you. You have to, and we've been talking about that, you have to come to him and say, Lord, I will obey you in every area of my life. You're not a Christian. You don't have kingdom consciousness unless you're able to say, whatever your will is, whether I think it's practical or whether I think that it will be pleasant, I will obey you anyway. Until you can say that, you aren't treating him as a king.

So you have to obey him, obviously. But secondly, to treat him as the king means you have to submit to his will. That's a little more subtle, but it's critical, and it's right here. You see, we read in Ephesians 1, verse 10, that he's going to bring all things together in Christ under the headship. And it says, he is going to do this, look, according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. Now, maybe I better just end with this, but in the old Navigators' 27 series, have any of you ever

seen that? Navigators is a Christian organization that developed an old discipleship series that I went through years ago. It was called 27, based on Colossians 2.7. And in one of the books that had a chapter on lordship that really made an impact on me, and what it did was it had you list as best you could areas of your life. It said, think of 20. So I made a list of 20. And then it said, go through every area and ask yourself two questions. Number one, am I willing to obey anything God says to me in this area? But number two, am I willing to thank God for anything he sends to me in this area? Do you see the difference? The first one, one is the sort of thing you immediately think of when you think of lordship. Yeah. If he tells me that

I can do this and I can't do this, I mustn't lie, I must do this. Okay, I'll obey. It's going to be tough not to lie at work. I mean, that's the way I make my money, but I'll start telling the truth and so forth. You know, that's an answer to the first question. Are you willing to do whatever God tells you in this area? But the second question, are you willing to thank God for anything he sends to you? Now, you've got to be careful and not sentimental about this. But this is an absolutely critical question that arises out of this verse. Do you see that his kingship means that he is completely in charge of history? And it makes a categorical statement.

He is working all things out according to the purpose of his will. There is nothing that happens in life that's not part of his plan. Now maybe next week I can talk a little bit more about the ins and outsides. of this. People say, oh, that means we're just puppets. Well, we can talk about it later, but right now, what this means, it means is that everything that happens to you is part of this plan. Everything. If he's a father, he's got to be a king. You know, the reason that I'm not a good father, here's how we can wrap this up. You know, the reason I'm not a good father is because I'm not a king. I don't have the power to affect in my children's lives of things I'd like to.

I don't have the power to persuade them. I don't have the power to show them things. I just have to hope and I have to pray. I don't have the power to arrange their lives so that they'll really finally learn how stupid it is to do that. How destructive it is to do that. If only I could arrange things. I try.

When they're real little, you can sort of arrange things, you know? If you see a kid consistently, consistently, consistently trying to jump out of bed and not take the ladder down from the top of the bunk board, the bunk bed, you say, all right, one of these times instead of running in and grabbing him as he tries to, I'll just let him jump. You know, when you're little, sometimes you can kind of arrange things, and then they break their leg, and then you say, oh, see, I want to teach him how stupid it is not to listen to his father, but sometimes I over-control so they never learn, and other times I're under control so they hurt themselves. If only, I was not only a father, but a king. If I was in charge.

of their lives so that everything that happened to them would show them, would teach them, would strengthen them, would humble them. But I'm not, but your Heavenly Father is. Everything that happens to you, everything is part of his plan. If you belong to him, it says in Romans 828, everything is working together for your good. Like any child, you'll scream and insist that your father does not know what he's doing with this particular thing that he's let come into your life. But go back to that question in that discipleship material. Am I willing to thank him? Am I so submitted to his kingship that I'm willing to say my wisdom sees absolutely no way that this can be of any good to me, but you're my father and you're my king. I can submit to you as a king knowing that you're my

father. I can trust you as father and rejoice in the fact that you're a father who's a king. Do you see that? Can you submit in that way? I don't know how many people have told me. Well, if I really give my life to Jesus, he may ask me to do things or he may send into my life things that I don't want. Of course he's going to do that. I mean, why make him a king? You make him a king so he'll tell you to do things that you wouldn't do. And if you didn't have a king. You know, Moses didn't want to go to Pharaoh. Abraham didn't want to sacrifice Isaac. Jesus didn't even want to go to the cross. But every one of them obeyed, and as a result, they're going to spend the rest of eternity thanking God for sending that into their life.

All I want to say is to treat him as king, means not only to say, will you obey him in every area, but will you thank him and accept what he sends into your life? Will you not only obey him, him but submit to him. When I said, be careful, don't be, don't sentimentalize this. You know, the navigators, when they wrote that question, were really, really walking a fine line. The Bible never says that God enjoys suffering. The Bible says, in all your afflictions, he is afflicted, like any father. The Bible says he doesn't want to see anyone perish. He doesn't want to see anyone hurt. In lamentations, it says, when he allows people to suffer, he hates it, he never likes to see it. Just like a father, sending a child to a room or allowing something bad to happen

to a child, just tears you up to watch them, go into the room crying. And yet, though we say God is not the author of evil, he allows it, he works it into your life, and it's there completely by his plan. Oh, when it says thank him for anything that comes in your life, that doesn't mean, oh, wow, my arm was severed in an accident. Praise the Lord. I'm going to thank him. I'm going to say thank you. I mean, obviously, I didn't need that right arm. I mean, it's going to be kind of hard to learn to write. I mean, that's the sentimental, that's the stupid approach. And there's, there's sincere Christians that for a while think that that's the way. Because you see, if you're like your father, you realize that your father's in tremendous agony over the suffering of this

world, eventually it's going to be gone. Why not today? Why not tomorrow? Why does he tarry? He says, eventually every tear is going to be wiped away. Why does he tarry? Why doesn't he put an end to it now? Why does he allow it? And the answer is, he's a father. He knows better than us. We're just as upset about it as most children. But if we trust him, we know that he is under control. He's controlling and all the evil is under his control. Because he's a father, he's our king. Because he's a king, he's our father. Are you obeying him? Are you thanking him? Are you treating him as king? Do you have that kingdom consciousness? Let's pray. Our Father, it's so much easier to not only preach sermons about your fatherhood, but to listen to them. It's so much easier to think about your love, so much easier to think about your acceptance and to think about your kingship,

to think about what it means to obey when it hurts, what it means to follow your orders even when they don't seem to make sense, what it means to give you allegiance, what it means to do our duty, what it means to follow the discipline of the king. We don't want to hear that, partly because we're sinners, because we're children. To a great degree it's because we're Americans,

and we don't like to ever hear, that we have to turn over the mastery of our lives to anyone else. Father, I pray that everyone in this room might see the places where they are not submitting to you as king. Almost everybody here can think of some. Some areas we're not obeying, some areas where we're not trusting, some areas where we think we know better.

Father, even if right now we're confused because we don't know which way to turn in a decision, help us to celebrate your king's share. by trusting you and just making that decision and knowing that you're going to work in it and you're not going to let us wreck our lives? What security could come from realizing that the one who is the master of every historical circumstance is also our loving father? Father, give us that security, give us that wholeness that comes from knowing

that someday we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our father. We pray this 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 1992.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 will Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.