Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Home From Exile

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Home is where you fit. Home is where you can be yourself. But Genesis 3 tells us what’s wrong with the human race: we’re homeless. To see the great goods the gospel brings to us, we need to first see what’s fundamentally wrong with the human race. What we’re told here is that the condition of the human race is homelessness and exile, writ large. In this passage we see 1) that all human beings are exiles, 2) why we’re all exiles, and 3) how we can be brought home. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 10, 2016. Series: Bible: What We Are Receiving: The Gospel Goods. Scripture: Genesis 3:7-24. 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. Many people view the Bible as a series of disconnected stories or morality lessons, but in reality, the Bible tells one single beautiful story. What's wrong with the world? What God has done to put it right in Jesus Christ? And how history will turn out at the end? Today, we invite you to listen as Tim Keller teaches on the central story of the Bible, our redemption and restoration. After you listen, please take a few seconds to rate and review our podcast.

Your review can help others to discover our podcast and experience the hope of the gospel. Now, here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. The scripture reading this morning is from Genesis 3, 7 to 24. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden of the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, where are you?" He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done?

The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel." To the woman, he said, I will make your pains and child bearing very severe. I will make your pains in child-bearing, very severe, with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." To Adam, he said, because you listen to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it. Curse is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and fizzles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return. Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them, and the Lord God said, The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden, Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life, the word of the Lord. Now, in the first few months of this year, we're going to be spending a lot of time in various congregations, various venues, talking about Redeemer's future,

what we hope to be doing in the next decade with regard to ministry in this great city. But no church should be thinking about the future without making sure that its feet are firmly grounded in the gospel, the historic gospel, the gospel that the Bible describes, its character, its power. And so, wait, for the first few weeks of this year, we're going to be looking at a series of passages in the Bible and we're going to call this series, the gospel goods, the unimaginable benefits and goods that the gospel brings us.

This passage is seminal. It's from the very beginning of the Bible. It tells us what's wrong with the human race. It's an account of the fall of the human race, it's called. And we looked at the first part of it, actually, at the end of last year. Here what we're going to do is see what it says about what is fundamentally wrong with the human race, so that we can see the first of the great goods that the gospel brings to us, at least in this series. So when we look at this passage, let's learn, here's what we're going to be taught.

Let's learn that all human beings are homeless exiles. All human beings are exiles. And secondly, why were all exiles? And number three, how we can be brought home. Let's learn those things. That we are all exiles, why we're all exiles, and how we can be brought home. That we are all exiles.

We see this in verse 23 and 24. Be ready to read that, but let me just get you ready for these two verses like this. Kathy's right now reading a book called The Shepherd's Life and it's about a, is written by a man whose family has done sheep farming in one particular remote valley in England for at least six generations might be longer, at least six generations.

So anybody, you know, for a couple hundred years, every member of the family has always lived in that one place. And so if you forcibly took somebody from that family and took them to a big city like London or something like that, they might feel like exiles, they might feel, I don't fit here, I don't belong here, I feel like an alien here. But that sense of dislocation is nothing like, probably,

what right now all the refugees in the Middle East that are being brought into Europe. It's all in the news right now, of course, and elsewhere. Their sense of social dislocation, of not fitting, of not belonging, of being aliens, would be a lot stronger. But actually perhaps the ultimate example, this is to literally be homeless, to be literally be homeless, to be living on the street, even in terrible weather. We all know of common sense tells us, and studies tell us us that that is the most brutalizing and dehumanizing

possible situation to be in. Why? You know, what is home? Home is where you fit. Home is where you can be yourself. Home is actually where your needs are being met. See, if you're homeless, you're just being drained. You're out there.

Home is a haven. At home, you are restored so you can grow and thrive. Outside of home, you're drained. Outside your drain, at home, you're restored and you're given what you need in order to grow and thrive. Okay. Now, read verse 23 and 24 with me. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden

to work the ground from which he had been taken. He was banished. The human race is banished from the ground, from which he'd been taken. The ground that he, Adam, was not only, he was not only made for it, he was made from it. Then it says after that, he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword, flashing back and forth to guard the way to tree of

life. What we're being told here is that the human race, the human condition, the condition of the whole human race is homelessness and exile writ large. What we're being told here is that the world that we live in right now, we actually don't belong in, we're not made for it and we know we're not made for it and it does not give us the resources we need to thrive. It does not meet our deepest longings. That's what the Bible is saying. Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx, two 20th century thinkers who were very different, Heidegger was a fascist sympathizer. Karl Marx was the, he was from the 19th century and he was the father of communism.

And these two guys, both said, you cannot understand human life unless you understand the concept of alienation. That human beings are actually a strange from the sources, the resources in which they thrive. Eva Hoffman, a Polish Jewish intellectual whose parents and her family was dislocated because of the Holocaust. They had to leave Poland.

She has a fascinating essay on a sense of exile. And of course she was part of a group of people who were expelled from their homeland, the land that they felt, this is where I'm from, this is where I belong, this is where I fit, this is what suits me. And, and of course, how to become homeless, how to be exiles, but here, her reflection, though,

is quite profound on this. She says in an essay, since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, is there anyone who does not in some way feel like an exile? But she goes on in the essay to say that those of us who have been estranged from our literal physical home very often get this deep nostalgia for it and say if I could just get back there, if I get into that landscape, into that place, with those people, then the emptiness I'm feeling,

the dissatisfaction I'm feeling, then it would be healed. And Eva Hoffman goes on to say that that deep nostalgia we have for these physical places, if we actually get back to them, we discover, that we're not completely satisfied by it. She actually says that the physical homelessness actually signifies something deeper. And she says, we are ejected from our authentic self. That's the human condition. We've been ejected from our authentic self.

And then she says, an ideal sense of belonging attuninguning with others, and ourselves, eludes us. I don't know if any of you saw the movie, 1985 movie, the trip to Bountiful, starring Geraldine Page. I just want to warn, it's not an action film. Geraldine Page did win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and it's a story of an older woman who's living in a city

in a little tiny apartment with her son and daughter-in-law who doesn't really like her and children. And she's feeling empty. And she's feeling an nostalgic for Bountiful, Bountiful Texas, which is the name of the town near the coast where she grew up. And she begins to dream that if I could just get back to Bountiful, everything would be okay.

I would feel right again. My longings would be of my heart, the emptiness, they would be fulfilled. And the whole story is about her going AWOL basically and running out there and getting there and finding, it was in a ruin, it was a lot of the people were gone and that exactly what Evil Hoffman said, that physical homelessness is actually just a sign of something deeper.

An ideal sense of belonging attuning with others in ourselves eludes us. This world is not our home. It's just the world we are in right now is not what we were made for, and that's what the Bible says. So how does that really, what does that look like? What does it mean that we're exiles and homeless? You know, Karl Marx said, the fundamental alienation that human beings experience

is economic. If we could solve that, then the others would be fine. Of course, Sigmund Freud said said the fundamental alienation was psychological. Emil Durkheim said the fundamental of, he's another 20th century sociologist, said the fundamental alienationally experiences social. Martin Heidegger says, our alienation is existential. And you know what the Bible says to all that? Right. Yes. In fact, it's all in this text.

What's fascinating about the central part of this text is how all those different aspects of alienation of being estranged from, in a sense, what we were made for. They're all here. Though, the Bible goes deeper than any of those thinkers and says, no, the fundamental alienation from which all the other alienations come is not economic, it's not psychological, it's not social, it's theological, it's spiritual. Let's take a look, let's walk backward in a sense through the text. First of all, take a look here at verses, say, 16 to 19.

And here we're going to learn that we're not physically at home. Because we're alienated from nature. We're not physically at home. So for example, in verse 16 it says, now childbearing. In this life, childbearing is both painful and dangerous. Verse 17, it says that works, 17, especially 18, says that work now drains you. Its labor is laborious. It's not easy, it's difficult. It wears you down. But of course, most vividly, the second half of verse 19 is where God says, until you

return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust, you are and to dust, you will return. Now there are books, lots of books, and lots of educational resources that try to say to modern people. Don't be afraid of death. Death is just a natural part of life. But Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is a lot closer to the biblical view when he says we should rage against the dying of the light. Albert Camus, the French novelist and philosopher, was far closer to what the Bible says. When he says death makes life absurd, the fact that we're going to die makes everything in our life

meaningless, empty, and absurd. Why? Well, let's just think of one thing. Love. I mean, what really makes your life meaningful? What really makes your life bearable? It's love relationships. That's what does it. And what does death do? Death strips you of that. First of all, death takes away, eventually, at first death takes away every important person in your life, and then eventually takes you away. So let's not be afraid of death. All it can do is strip you of everything that makes life meaningful and bearable.

No, we should rage against the dying of the light. Albert Camus says, what he says is absolutely right. And what the Bible is saying is, as long as there's death in this world, this world is not what we're built for. We're not built for a place. Where there's disease and aging and suffering and death, we're not built for it. We know that.

And the Bible tells you, directly, what all human beings know intuitively, that we're really not meant for a world in which there's disease and suffering and death. We are not adapted for that world. We are not. Secondly, however, the Bible doesn't just say here that our life is, that we're marked by homelessness and exile because we're physically alienated from nature.

We're not physically home. Secondly, like Durkheim said, we are not socially at home. We're not really at home with other people. We're alienated from other people to a great degree in spite of the love relationships, to a great degree we're alienated from other people. That is always breaking in on ourselves.

We're really not socially at home, how so. Well, of course, when you get up here, to verse seven, in the very beginning, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, it says, then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized they were naked. Now we'll get back to that. That's a very significant, I won't mention that right here, but it says, and so, they sowed fig leaves together and made coverings for them. What is that?

The answer is, the human beings right now are alienated from each other. We cannot really just let people see who we are. We got to control what they see. In other words, our relationships are no longer about love and service. Our relationships are fundamentally about power. We need to control what people see so we can control what people do, so we can control what people say, so we can control people. We're not there to love and serve them, we're there to control them. But because we're hiding who we really are from other people, because we have to control

what they see, we're also lonely. So human relationships are marked by power, rather than service, and superficiality and loneliness. Now you actually see all sorts of signs of it. Of course, it's almost humorous, but in verses 11, 12, and 13, you have the blaming. The man blames the woman. Anything new about that, but here,

but this is where it first happens. So you know, you can say I was there The woman blames nature, blames the serpent, blames the devil and of course there's more to it than that because see down in Verse 16 and again This is one of those things that we're not going to talk about it even though this is a this a if I really wanted to Completely unpack this passage for you. I'd be doing it every three verses for the number of weeks. So I can't do that with this large piece of text, but down here it says, to the woman, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

He say, oh, what does that mean? Well, I'm not going to go there right now, but I'm going to tell you this. This means that there's alienation between the genders. but I'm going to tell you this. This means that there's alienation between the genders. And we know because of the, because relationships are now matters of power and control, not of love and service, and that is the default mode of human relationships. That's what Durkheim would say.

What Amal Durkheim would say is, okay, here's the community, here's the individual, right? If you say the community's more important in the individual, which many cultures, that's the community, here's the individual, right? If you say the community's more important in the individual, which in many cultures, that's the way it is, then there's exploitation. But if you say like in our culture, the individual's more important in the community, then you have the complete erosion of solidarity and social institutions. And what this means is the classes are alienated from each other. The races are alienated from each other. The nations are alienated from each other. So war and crime and poverty and justice, as well as family breakdown. And the fact that all relationships

just need so much maintenance, just to keep them okay. Why? Because we're not home. There's something about this world where alienated physically, we're alienated socially, second and thirdly, we're alienated psychologically. Now let's go back up to verse 10. When God comes and says, what are you hiding for me? What does Adam say? I was afraid, so I hid. When he says they were naked, I knew they were, I was naked and therefore I was ashamed and I hid. In the Bible, the Hebrew idiom, idiomatically nakedness did not just mean to be nude,

it meant to be ashamed, it meant to be, to be ashamed of who you were. And what we're being told here is this, psychological alienation means, we are alienated from our true selves. We feel shame, we feel fear, because we feel like you're something wrong with us. Yet we get angry if people tell us there is. We can't stand criticism. We look into our hearts and we can tell there's something that's wrong with us.

That's the reason why we work so hard. Why are you working so hard in your career? Why do you worry so much about how you look so you can attract a partner or some kind? What's going on there? Because you know there's something, you're not at ease with yourself. You know there's something wrong with you and you're covering their fig leaves, or caulaxles or fig leaves. There's something psychologically wrong with us. We're alienated from who we really are. We're not at ease with who we are.

Most Christians even pastors struggle to talk about their faith in a way that applies the power of the gospel to change lives, especially in our skeptical culture. Tim Keller's book of preaching, communicating faith in an age of skepticism is a guide for anyone who wants to become more effective in communicating about their faith. Pastors and lay people alike. like. Drawing on his years of experience, Dr. Keller will help you share your faith in more engaging, passionate and compassionate way from the pulpit or in the coffee shop. Preaching is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the hope of Christ's love with people all over the world. So request your copy today at GospelUnlife.com slash give. That's GospelUnlife.com and live with our God. The essence of sin is a human being who is made by God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God

and who is made for God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God and who is made for God who is made for God of sin is a human being who is made by God, who is made for God, who is made to know and love and serve God, thinking, well, I maybe, every so often, I might need God for a boost or something,

but I don't need to rely on him every moment by moment. The heart of sin is saying, I can live my life on my own, I don't need God. And at the top level of our heart, a more conscious level, that's what we believe. But at the bottom level, we know it's not true. And as a result, the conflict, the depth of conflict, the every psychological system says

that you've got to come to grips with who you are, that you've got to understand who you are. You need to not be alienated from your true self. The Bible says, that without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, nobody will ever do that. Because the alienation is deeper than anybody thinks. And that leads us to our last alienation.

The alienation, which is the source of all the others. Yes, we're physically alienated. Yes, we're socially alienated. Yes, we're psychologically alienated. We're cut off from nature. We're cut off're psychologically alienated. We're cut off from nature. We're cut off from other human beings. We're cut off even from our true self. But why?

Go ahead. Make yourself a great physical home. That'll help. We need that. Go ahead. Build community. Go ahead. Go to counseling.

Come to greater grips with who you are. But ultimately, that's not going to satisfy what Eva Hoffman said. All those things signify something deeper. And what is the deeper thing? It's that we're cut off from God. We're alienated from God. Verse 8. What a picture.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord among the trees of the garden. In the Bible, when it talks about walking with somebody, it doesn't just talk about literally walking. Even in English, if we say, I need someone to walk with me through this, you're not just saying literally walking. You mean you want a friend. And when the Bible, actually all through the, especially the Old Testament, when it's

about walking with somebody, it's talking about friendship. And for God to become walking toward human beings and for human beings to run away, well, there it is. This is the human condition. We're running from the God who wants to walk with us. We're running from the God who wants to walk with us. We're running from the God who wants to have a relationship with us. And it was only walking with God that we were,

only there where we home. And as long as we're running from God, we will never be home. You know how Psalm 90 says God is our eternal home. We sing about it. You know, a God our help in ages past, and our eternal home. We sing about it. You know, a God are helping ages pass. And our eternal home, God's home, walking with God, the face of God, the presence of God,

the garden of God, that was home. Let me show you. What is home? Home is a place where you're fed, where you're nurtured, where the deepest desires of your heart and soul, where you're fed up out there, out way from home you're drained. At home, that, where you're fed up out there, out way from home, you're drained. At home, that's where you're nurtured.

Only, only walking with God was home. There was the splendor and glory of God in the garden, walking with God. There was the splendor and glory of God. And one of your greatest deepest needs is for beauty. There are, oh, you're looking for beauty. In so many ways, only in the face of God, when you get for beauty. They're all you're looking for beauty in so many ways. Only in the face of God, when you get the beauty that your soul was made for. Or secondly, the Word of God, you know, when you walk with people, you talk with them. Can you imagine the conversations you have with God?

That's the Word of God right from his lips. See, human beings also have a desire for knowledge. We want to know. We want to explore. We have incredible desire to know. Well, only walking with God, think of what God could tell us about the universe. Only walking with God and hearing His word from His lips will satisfy the deepest lungs of your soul to know. Only His glory will satisfy the deepest lungs of your heart for beauty. Even His work, God put us, it said, into a garden to cultivate it, but if you read and work, little works closely and carefully, what He was saying is, in my presence work

is nothing but satisfying. In my presence, you will be doing what you were built to do, which is to draw out the hidden potentialities of creation that I've put into creation. And see, we have this deep capacity for creativity, we have this deep capacity for accomplishment, and only in the presence of God will you have that satisfied. But I guess most of all, there was the beauty of God and his glory there was the work of God, there was the word of God,

but also there was the face and the arms of God. We have a need for love. Haven't you ever seen when someone, you say, if somebody would say that to me, if they would affirm me, if I can get that award, if somebody would say that to me, then I wouldn't want anything else, and then you get it, and you need something else. It's like you've got an infinite shaped hole there. It's like a bottomless pit. And no matter how much love you put into it,

it's never enough. It just isn't enough. You know why? Because God's love has to be there. And God's love is infinite only. If someone you adore infinitely, loves you endlessly, will you ever be completely satisfied? ever be completely satisfied. One place in Ciet's Lewis is wonderful sermon, a weight of glory. He says this, he says, almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent inner voice

and convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. Thus giving a sob to your sense of exile in earth as it is. So all of our education says, well, if you have the therapy, if we make the world a better place, if we do this, if we do that, then the world will be our home, offering us a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is. And then he says, words worth expedience was to identify it with certain moments in his own past, just like Geraldine Page did in Trip to Bountiful.

But Louis says, this is a cheat, by the way, that's me, that wasn't Louis saying anything about Geraldine Page in Trip to Bountiful. Let me just read you the text and stop doing that. Wordsworth's expedience was to identify it with certain moments in his own past, but all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth, if Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it.

For the beauty that we remember are just good images of what we really desire. If they're mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself, they are only the scent of a flower we have not yet found. The echo of a tune we have not yet heard. News from a country we have not yet visited or found.

Now, how can we be brought home? Number one and number two. There's just two things I'm going to tell you from this text. Number one, do you believe what I just said? Do you believe the biblical analysis of why you have all these problems that you've got that I've been listing? Nobody's doubting about the alienation. Everybody says it's there. Do you believe what the Bible says is the source? And what is that? The source is this.

We've broken our relationship with God. Because we've decided not to treat him the way we ought to treat him. Look, God made Adam and Eve. He made the human race. And so we owe him everything. And yet we decide we're going to be our own masters, we're going to be our own authors. We live as if we're our own authors and we're not. Now, if you've ever been in a relationship, you know that if someone wrongs you, it breaks the relationship and how can the relationship, the alienation be healed? If you're in a relationship and someone wrongs you, how can the alienation, the broken relationship

be healed? The answer is repentance and for forgiveness. The person who's done wrong has to repent. Ah, but the person who's been wrong has to forgive. And so it's not enough just to say, oh, okay, well, I'm sorry, and I'm going to try to live for God. No, no, God has to forgive. And forgiveness is always, always expensive. Always expensive. Look, if someone wrongs you by costing you a lot of money, then

the only way to forgive that person, to really forgive them and not make them pay back, is you absorb the cost. You pay it. Or let's just say someone wronged you and destroyed your reputation. If you're going to forgive them, you just absorb, you don't try to get your reputation back by vilifying them. If you're going to really forgive them, you don't try to get your reputation back by vilifying them. If you're going to really forgive them, you pay it. Forgiveness is always expensive, and if this ultimate relationship between God and the

human race that's created this ultimate alienation, and all the alienations we experience, if that happened and it did, then the payment for that debt, the cost of that forgiveness would be astonishing. And it is. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the healing of all your alienations will be the heal your alienation with God, you can only come at infinite cost to God himself. If you believe that, then you can take the second point. The two ways to heal it, to be brought home as one, is accept this analysis, and number two, accept God's provision. And God's provision is

hinted at here. It takes the rest of the Bible to see it, but it's so wonderful. Take a look at verse 21 and 24, and the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and close them. That is really weird. The Lord God took animal skins and closed Adam and Eve. Now, at one level, those would have been way better than fig leaves. And what it did mean was something lost its life so that they could be closed. And to some degree, help from their physical alienation. Obviously, by the way, you can't walk around without clothes in a world in which nature is no longer your friend.

You dive exposure. So what God is doing at one level is He's working on the physical alienation, and someone had to die in order for that to happen. What is it going to take for not our bodies just to be helped a little bit with the physical alienation, but for our souls to be healed of our spiritual alienation, what will it take to be closed in the righteousness that we need to stand in the presence of a holy God? When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he paid the price. It took for God to forgive us. He was stripped.

You know, the only garment, the only thing he owned is his garment. He was stripped. He was naked. He was put up there. He was shamed. He was naked. And he was mocked. And he was, why? He was stripped naked so that we could be clothed or put it this way. When he cried out, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? He was being cut off from the Father so that we could be brought in. You know, Jesus said, foxes of holes, birds of nests, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus was a wanderer.

Jesus was sort of an exiled. And on the cross, when he experienced that cut it being cut off from God, that was the ultimate exile. He took the exile that we deserve so that we can be brought in. And not only that, you know that sword, that flashing sword, there's cherubim, which is always a sign of the presence of God, flashing sword, keeping us from getting back to the tree of life. What is that all about?

It's the penalty for sin, is death. The only way back into home is through under the sword and Jesus Christ went through that. It says so, Isaiah 53, where it says about the suffering servant, he was cut off from the land of the living. He was cut off. If you accept that provision, let's just be real realistic. If you say, Jesus Christ died for me, Father accept me, bring me in and my exile because your Son experienced

my exile. Clothe me because your Son experienced my nakedness. Accept me because of what Jesus did, not because of anything I have done. The moment you do that, you're guaranteed that you will be brought home. Now, the reality is, Camus Wright, let me tell you a story to end here. Camus is absolutely right. As long as death is in this world, this world is still not home. But here's what you can say. You realize, long as death is in this world, this world is still not home. But here's what you can say, you realize, once you've believed in Jesus Christ, first of all, you can visit home. You can't stay there.

Home is when you have a new heavens, a new earth, and everything is put right. And you finally fit. And evil and suffering is gone. And death is gone. So we're not there yet. but you can visit that home. You just can't stay there. What do you mean? Well, we're actually going to sing about it. For example, it says, guide me, O thou great Jehovah,

pilgrim through this barren land, but then he says, feed me, bread of heaven. When you come to a worship service, sometimes you break the bread, you know, the Lord's Supper. When you hear a good sermon, when the Lord works through your heart as you're listening to the sermon, when you pray, when you sense His presence, when you're with the people of God, you know what that is.

You know why it restores? Do you know why you feel healed? Do you know why you can sort of handle the drain of life out there? Because you have visited home. Have a great per life. Don't miss worship. Be with the people of God.

Listen to the Word of God. Visit home. The other thing you need to know is that when you get home, you will be accepted. I don't know if any of you saw the TV series Fargo that was played at the end of last year. It's a pretty wild story in many ways. It's about a lot of darkness and it's all got Camus themes. Albert Camus, one of the episodes is called The Mythosysophists, which is one of Albert Camus' books.

And what's funny about this is with all the nastiness and all the brutality and all the darkness, there's this one family, they're called the Solversons, who are really decent people. And they don't have rose colored glasses on, they know how things are. And yet they're doing the right thing and they're doing the right thing.

Now, in this series, there's this sullen teenage girl named Norene. And she's a smart girl, and she's in a little town, and you how smart teenage girls and little towns can feel. And she's always reading Camus, and telling people what Camus says. And at one point, she turns to a young mother, Betsy Solverson, who's dying of cancer. And she's sitting there alongside of her little girl. And she knows she's not going to live to see her grow up. But she's brave and she's good, and she's just what you ought to be.

And Nareen looks at her and he says, Camus says, no one we're going to die makes life absurd. It's an unbelievably insensitive thing to say to a young mother dying of cancer, but you know, she's a young, so-and-tea-nage girl. And she says, Camus says, no one we're going to die makes life absurd. And Bethcy looks at her and says, nobody with any sense would say something that foolish. We're put on this earth to do a job and each of us gets the time we get to do it. And when this life is over and you stand in front of the Lord, will you try telling him it was all some Frenchman's joke? You know, she's sure, and I don't know all the reasons why, she's a fictional character

after all, but she's sure that when she stands before the Lord, everything's gonna be made right. And that means you can look at this life, which is not your home and say, well, I'm on my way and handle it. Because someday we are gonna get there, we're gonna say, I'm home at last. This is the land I was looking for on my life. This is the land I was always looking for and didn't really know until now.

I belong here. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the fact that the... maybe the most basic thing that the gospel does is it promises that we're going to get home, because we are not home. And we ask that you would help us, oh Lord, to revel in that and rejoice in that. But also, since we are not going to experience anything, short of continued exile while we're here, please Lord, every so often with your Holy Spirit,

help us visit that future home. Help us to remember that you are that home, and then when we're close to you, we are home. So bring us close to you and give us the assurance that in the gospel and Jesus Christ, we know there's no condemnation for us and we'll stand on that day and life will not be a joke. Life will mean a lot.

It'll mean everything. Father, help us till we get home through Jesus and His name we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover the hope of the gospel. Thank you again for listening. Thank you again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 2009 and 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. you