Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - House of God (Part 3)

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

In the Book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul calls Christians stones of a holy temple “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets…” But what does it really mean that these figures of the early church are our foundation, and why is it important? By studying the apostles and prophets’ teachings in the Word of God, we make sure the church is built on a solid basis for a unity that cannot be found anywhere else. Join us as we explore 1) what this foundation is, 2) why it is the foundation, 3) how we can make sure we are laid on the foundation. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 2, 1993. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 2:19-22. 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. Behind every worldview is an attempt to answer life's biggest questions. Who are we? What gives our lives meaning? And is there hope for the future? Today, we continue Tim Keller's extended series of teachings from the book of Ephesians as he takes a deeper look at how the Christian faith offers the only identity, purpose, and hope that can sustain us through every season of life.

Turn to Ephesians chapter 2. and the passage that we're looking at tonight as we've been moving through the second chapter of Ephesians is printed in your bulletin at the bottom of the page where you are if you've been singing along with the rest of the congregation. Ephesians 2 verses 19 to 22. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God, people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to

become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. We've said that there's actually three metaphors in this particular paragraph that describes the church. And the first one is, we are citizens in a kingdom, and then secondly, we are members of God's household, members of his family. But thirdly, and the one we've been looking at for a couple of weeks in which we are going to continue to look at tonight, is we are building blocks in a house.

It says here, we are actually built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ being the cornerstone. We are building blocks in a building joined together, rising to become a holy temple, a dwelling place of God, where he lives by his spirit. Now, a couple weeks ago we said that Paul's trying to get a number of things across to us. He's trying to show us if we're building blocks in a temple of God's spirit, it means that we need each other. We're building blocks. We're not, we're building blocks. We're not, we're not, here to stand on our own. We've got a function and we fit in there, but it's only together that we form a whole. In ourselves, we're nothing. We need each other. We talked about that. Secondly, we took a look at the last week, the fact that one of the great themes of the scripture is that we were built to live with God. We were built to live before his face. And last week, we spent the whole time showing how from the very beginning of the Bible to the very end of the Bible, the great theme of the scripture is, how can we, who were built to live with God, live with him again?

How can we actually be in his presence? And we talked about that. And the great thing, of course, is that because Jesus Christ went under the sword, went under the knife, the sword that bars people from the Garden of Eden, from the face of God that we see way back in the book of Genesis, we were cast out of God's bosom, we were cast out of our true home. In a sense, we all experience a cosmic homelessness. But Jesus Christ advanced against the sword. The sword struck him and shattered him, but in the process shattered itself. And so the sting of death is gone. The penalty of death has been paid for. We enter back in

behind the veil. We looked at all that last week. Again, the great temptation of my life is to repeat myself and I won't do it. Let's move on now to the third thing that this tells us about us, this third thing that Paul is telling us about ourselves, about Christians, what it means to be Christians and what it means to be the church in this metaphor. Because we're a building, we are built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. Now this is going to, I don't know how inspirational this subject is going to be tonight. I hope it's sort of inspirational, but we have to lay out here something very no nonsense. There's nothing more no nonsense than a foundation. Nothing. It's not exciting. It's not pretty.

It's just if you don't have the foundation, you don't have anything else. The foundation for the church is the apostles and the prophets. What does Paul mean? If you don't have the apostles and the prophets as your foundation, you're not in the church. If we don't have the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, as individually, you're not a Christian. You're not in the church. But corporately, we can't hang together. Without the foundation, the stones can't hold together. We had a, my family lived in a manse.

That means a home owned by the church that was, we served in Virginia. and the front steps went up high to a very high front porch because the house was built into the side of a hill, and you had to go pretty high. But unfortunately, the whole time we were there, we were there almost 10 years. We were constantly having to patch things up because the foundation underneath that part of the house was shifting. And so what was going on was the staircase, which is made of bricks and cement, was constantly separating from the rest of the house. Water would get in there and you know how it goes. The fact is that the stones can't hold together.

There is no basis for our unity unless we all have the same foundation. Christians cannot experience all these great things we've been talking about. We can't experience the kind of the unity. We said that the Bible here, especially this chapter, tells us that in the church there is the possibility of a supernatural unity that you can't find anywhere else. people that could not get along anywhere else can get along inside the church people of races that kill each other people of social classes that kill each other people of personalities and temperaments that kill each other

people of genders that kill each other they get along because there's a supernatural unity we've talked about that actually for months almost so we've been looking at that but it won't happen unless we have this foundation it's critical well what is it that's we have to look at. Let's look. First, what is the foundation? Why is it the foundation? And then how can you make sure that you are laid on the foundation? That's the three questions. That's the

three issues. What is the foundation? Why is it the foundation? And how can you make sure that you've been laid on? You stones, how can you be sure that you've been laid on the foundation? That's the important thing. That's what happened to our poor stairway. Don't be like our stairway. I I don't want you to be like that. Always separating, always about to fall down. Now, what is the foundation? The apostles and the prophets. Who are the prophets and the apostles? If you go, you're looking at the Old Testament and the New Testament, I think. If you look back at the prophets, they were men and women. You've got women in the Old Testament like Deborah and Hilda and Miriam. You've got prophets. You've got men like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Moses and so on.

if you look and see who the prophets were, they were paradoxes. Paradoxes. Why? Because on the one hand, they were unbelievably humble, anxious people, artists, I think, full of self-doubts, creative, and on the other hand, tremendously bold. You look at, say, Jeremiah, you see in the first chapter, When he was first coming to grips with the fact that he was being called as a prophet, he says to God, I am but a child. I do not know how to speak. Now here's a man who is almost manic-depressive, if you read the book of Jeremiah. Here's a man who had very little self-confidence.

I'm but a child. I do not know how to speak. And God says, do not say, I am only a child. For you will go where I send you and you will speak to whom I send you. And, you know, later on in the book, you have Jeremiah talking about, God's word is a fire in my bones. These men and women, they were humble people. They were almost anxious people.

But when they heard the word of the Lord, they turned and they said, Thus saith the Lord. There was a power about them. They knew they had something that was not from them. That's who they were. That's why they were paradoxes. They were not arrogant people.

They were not people who, they were not cult leaders. They were not Jim Joneses. They were not David Koresh. They're not even close to it. Don't read about them. They didn't say, You must listen to me because I am the great one.

I am from heaven. You don't hear any of that kind of thing. Extremely humble, very deeply aware of their mortality, but they knew they had something that wasn't their idea. Thus saith the Lord, see. These words are not my idea, they would say. These words are not my idea. You can't reject them.

Same thing with the apostles in the New Testament. Now, the apostle that you understand the most about, of course, is the Apostle Paul. Here's a man again, who's nothing like the cult leaders, a very humble man. I am the least of the apostles. And yet, when he speaks God's word, like in 1st Corinthians 14 and 1st Thessalonians, it's astonishing. He says, if anyone is spiritual, you will acknowledge that what I'm telling you is the word of God. Therefore, if you do not accept my words, you may be. put out of the church. Humble. A man who's not domineering. He doesn't try to keep control of the churches

that he plants. When he plants a church, he appoints elders and the deacconate, and he moves on. And yet, he says, Thus saith the Lord. You know, if any of you've been around for any of the First Corinthians 15 studies we've done in the other services, you read First Corinthians 15, and Paul says, I want to remind you, brothers of the gospel that I preached to you and on which you took your stand. He says, by this gospel you are saved, I passed along to you the gospel that I received. And then he goes on and explains it. This is very different. Here's Paul. He's not saying, I arrived at this gospel through a process of reflection and study. He doesn't say, I achieve this gospel or I have this tremendous insight. No, he says, I got it, and I passed it on. It's a body of material. It's an

objective body of information. Jude, the writer Jude, who wrote the little book of Jude near the back of the New Testament, Jude says, he talks about the gospel as the faith once delivered to the saints. The faith once delivered to the saints. And this is the attitude all the prophets and the apostles had. The prophets in the Old Testament, the apostles in the Testament. They understood that what they were giving was not their opinions. It was not their insights. They had gotten information from God. It was a fire in their bones, says Jeremiah. Thus saith the Lord, this is not my idea. This is not my information. This is not the result of my study and my reflection. This is not the result of my wisdom. You cannot deny it. You cannot reject it. It's not

my word. It's gods. Hmm. Now, therefore, the prophets and the apostles when they wrote down their words and they come down to us in the scripture they urge us to have the same attitude toward their written word as toward the spoken word what is the foundation of the apostles and prophets it's the words of the apostles and prophets that they got from god that which i received i brought to you it's a fire in my bones here it is so what is the foundation of the church what's the foundation of the christian What is the thing that we've got to have or we cannot cohere? It's the scripture.

It's the written revelation of the apostles and the prophets. That's what it is. Now, why? Why is the Word of God a foundation? Why does Paul call it the foundation? Why doesn't he call it the capstone? Why doesn't he call it the roof that shelters us? And, of course, there would probably be a lot of places if you're drawing the metaphor

that you could put it. But why does Paul call it a foundation? And here's why. A foundation is changeless. A foundation is unshifting. Now, the fact of the matter is that no foundation is that way in reality, but don't forget this is a metaphor. There is no such thing as a changeless, shiftless foundation. But when you're laying a foundation, you try to make sure that it's as changeless and unchanging as possible. Paul is saying that's what this is. The reason the Word of God is laid here as a foundation is because it's got to be something absolutely consistent, totally reliable, checks throughout, never lets you down, follows its own laws consistently, totally coherent and consistent. Paul is making a tremendous claim for it,

but it's not surprising because the apostles and prophets made this tremendous claim for it all the time. That's the reason why Paul says it's the foundation. Now, Let's reflect on this. This is an amazing claim, and I want you to know that it's a tremendously controversial claim. Many of you may think that this is an extreme position. What is Paul saying? The Bible has got to be the foundation. That means it's unchanging and it's not shifting.

Many people teach, maybe I should even say most Protestants, I don't know if that's fair, probably not in terms of sheer numbers, but certainly when it comes to a place like New York, certainly when it comes to the powers that be in American Protestantism, most people would say the Word of God, the Bible, is basically a human book about God. These men and these women had experiences of God, and they wrote them down, and they're full of wisdom. And so they would say the Bible is the chief source of truth we have about God. But the fact is, if These are words about God and not words from God. They can't be a foundation.

If they're only words about God and not words from God, if we say, for example, these are experiences of people about God, but we can have the same experiences ourselves. They have lots and lots of great insights, but of course they were men and women of their time, and so we can't accept everything, because we're all in the same boat, but we're all having experiences of God.

that's theirs, and they're very great, we're having ours. In that case, the Bible can't be shiftless. It can't be unchanging. It can't be a bedrock. I think most of you realize you can't add to a foundation. In other words, the foundation's got to be laid, and then you build the house on it. You can't build the house on it and then kind of add it or change it around. It's got to be solid. Paul says that's the way it is. The idea that the word of God is unchanging, it's solid, it doesn't move. Another aspect of this idea of it being the foundation means that it's not something you add to or subtract from. It's something that's there. And therefore, it's the supreme basis for everything that happens. If I read something in the scripture

and I say, well, I can't believe that anymore, I'm a modern person. There's many things in the Word of God that are difficult for me to understand and difficult for me to really agree with. There are things there that we just can't accept anymore. There are prejudices that this person had. There's biases. We live in a scientific age and now we know things about the world they didn't know. What you've done is, look, you've certainly got a right to do that, but you are, what you're doing is you're ripping the guts out of Paul's picture. And what you are doing is you're denying the idea that the apostles and prophets are a foundation. foundation, a changeless foundation, something that you can always rely on, something that always, is something that will hold you up. What you're really doing is you're walking around on the verse

and say, well, this verse will hold me up, yes, I agree with that verse. And this passage, I like this very much, but over here, I just, I can't accept that anymore. So you stay away from it. What kind of house is that? You know, you're walking through the kitchen and your wife says, oh, not over there. Don't walk over there. Well, you might go all the way to the base. over there. You might go all the way into the ground over there. That foundation's bad over there. What kind of house is that? You can't, you can't, you can't live that way. It can't be done that way. There's a word of warning. I'll just put it to you this way. If you want to say, I can't believe that the Bible is my foundation. There's things that, I can't believe that it's free from all error. I can't believe it's my supreme authority.

I know Paul saw it that way. I even know. Jesus saw it that way. Jesus said, not a jot or tittle from the law of God will pass away till all of it's fulfilled. Jesus says the scripture cannot be broken. See, it can't be resisted. Jesus makes all sorts of tremendous statements about it, and nobody really denies. There's not a scholar, I think, on earth that denies that Jesus believed that all of the Old Testament, the New Testament hadn't been written yet, that the words of the prophets were infallible. They were authoritative. You could not question any of the things that they said. Everybody understands that.

So it takes a certain amount of guts to say, I'm a Christian, and I follow Christ's teachings, but I don't believe what he believed about the scripture. It takes a lot of guts, but people do it all the time. All the time. And you may be one of them. Let me just suggest to you the consequences of what you're doing. All I want you to know is think this. There's only really two ways to build your life.

You can either say my perception and my experience and my heart is my foundation, or you can say scripture is my foundation. Because if you say, I like 80% of it, 90% of it, but there's some parts that I can't accept. You see, there's only two positions. Either your perceptions and your reason and your experience is the higher standard by which you're judging scripture as to what is right and wrong, or scripture is your highest standard by which you're judging your reason and experience about which is right or wrong. It's one of the other. If you even deny one verse of the scripture as being untrue, you actually have chosen the former.

Either the foundation is how I feel about things, from which I judge what's right and wrong in the scripture, or the foundation is the scripture. from which I judge how I feel about things, one or the other. Woveen into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like, what gives my life meaning? Can I have a happy and fulfilling life? And why is there so much suffering in the world? We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So what are these stories our culture tells us about who we are? And do they actually deliver what they promise? Tim Keller and his son Michael Keller

explore this in a brand new book, The Stories We Live By. Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics, like identity, freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships

and sufferings of life. The stories we live by offers a challenge to skeptics and to Christians alike to examine the underlying narratives that drive our lives and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel and Life during the month of September,

we'll send you this new book, The Stories We Live By, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today. at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything.

Which is it for you? Which is your foundation? Please keep something in mind. It not only takes, I think, a great deal of guts to say, I like to follow Christ, I'm a Christian, but you will not listen to what he said about the scripture. But it also takes a certain amount of guts

for you to decide that I'm in a position where Here's the word of God which has been used. People have been obeying it and have been testing it out in the experience of their lives for centuries in every practically every culture of the world, in every century of the last 20, and have been finding it reliable. And now you're in a position where you're pretty sure you know what parts of Scripture you can accept now and what you can. It's a great example. When I remember when a couple years ago when Kathy and I went to see The Merchant of Venice when it was here, Dustin Hoffman played in it. Some of you might remember that.

It was amazing, amazing how well, I think, they tried to tone down the anti-Semitism of that play. I mean, they did an incredibly good job. There's places where it's very clear what Shakespeare meant to say. And there's all kinds of amazing ways in which they try to tone it down, try to tone it down. try to tone it down, but you couldn't get rid of it. It was a tremendously anti-Semitic play. Well, what's that, what am I saying? I'm saying this. Shakespeare was a greater mind than anybody in this room, I can tell you that. He was a unique kind of genius, a once, you know, once a century sort of genius, but he couldn't rise above the spirit of his age. He was politically

correct. What's politically correct? It means the intelligentsia, the elite, the knowledge classes of the time, all the people in the know all believed what he believed about Jews. They were all anti-Semitic. It was just understood. Of course, all intelligent people understand that. And Shakespeare, as great a mind as he was, could not rise above the spirit of his age. He went along with it. And now we read it and we say, how dastardly it is, how awful it is. If he'd stuck with the scripture, he would have known that that was wrong. but he didn't. I'm not saying he wasn't a Christian. I'm saying it's extremely hard to think biblically. I'm saying it's extremely hard not to be taking the spirit of the age and reading it

into the scripture. It's very difficult to really take the scripture and let it judge everything. If he had, he wouldn't have written that. He wouldn't look as silly and is really as wicked as he does. Now, many of you, very possibly, in the name of a certain kind of political correctness of the 20th century, say parts of the scripture, we can't believe that anymore. Don't you realize that 100 years or now everybody's going to be laughing at the views that you are using to judge what is right and wrong in the Word of God? I mean, it takes a certain amount of guts to say, finally, from our wonderful modern standpoint, It's never been 1993 before. We now know that Paul was prejudiced here or there.

We now know that what the apostles said or the prophet said is wrong. We now know. What do you mean? We now know it's 1993. 1993 is going to be somebody's distant past. Shakespeare thought he was a modern person, and he was for a minute. G.K. Chesterden said, the hardest thing to remember about our time is that it's only a time. and anybody who decides that they are going to sit in judgment on any part of the Word of God has forgotten that it's just a time.

You can either decide my perception is the foundation by which I judge the Scripture, or the Scripture is the foundation by which I judge my perception. Both of those positions are faith assumptions. To assume those positions takes faith. There's no proof for either of them. So you better look at the evidence. There's no proof, but there's a lot of evidence. which is the wiser one. Do you want to go with what Christ said? Do you want to see the people through the

years who thought that they could discard parts of Scripture? Because now in the spirit of our age, we know different, and pretty soon. All that is not eternal, says C.S. Lewis, is eternally out of date. And the Scripture is eternal. Know what you're doing. Nobody can live without a belief in absolute truth. And if you don't go to God, you'll immortalize your own. Know what you're doing. Now, we've looked at what is this foundation? What is it? The apostles and the prophets. Why is it a foundation?

Because it's the revelation of God's Word, and it's something that doesn't change. It's something that's absolute. It's something that we can always appeal to. It's something that will never let us down. That's not true of your perception. It's not true of your reason. It's not true of expert opinion. It's not true of science.

Those things are always changing. They can't be foundations. This can be. Lastly, we saw all. what it is as a foundation. We saw why it is the foundation. Now lastly, how can you, in a practical way, make sure that your life is laid on the foundation? Remember my steps. They weren't on the foundation. And we constantly had constantly had to fill the gap, you know, where all the water was going by sticking cement in there, and then it would separate further and so forth. A lot of you,

may I say, are tilting for the same reason. reason. A lot of you are like my front steps, I'm sorry to say. You're like the leaning tower of peace. A little bit of a problem with a foundation. How can you make sure that you're laid on the foundation? Well, the way you lay yourself on the foundation of the Bible is to make sure you lay yourself on there, mind, will, and heart. Let me just give you some practical pointers in order to conclude. First, you know how to lay your mind on the foundation. Do you know how to lay it on there like a good mason, nice and firm and, you know, all the surface area of your mind? See, to lay a stone on the foundation, you've got to make sure

that every single part of the surface area of that stone is on the foundation. You don't want it over, huh? You don't want it hanging over. That won't be good. You got to make sure that the stone is this big. The whole thing is on the foundation. Is your whole mind on the foundation? The Bible says it means you don't just believe the Bible. It's a horrible thing to realize that 88% or something like that. What is it? A majority of the American people say they believe every word of the Bible. That's not the same thing as laying yourself on there. It's one thing to believe in general. It's another thing to know the Bible and have your mind saturated with it. You know, something like 79% of all the people of the people of the, the country say they believe every word of the Bible, but something like only 30% of the people can name more than six commandments of the 10. Something like 20% can name all of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. See, it's one thing to believe in the Bible. It's another thing to have your mind laid on the foundation. Every bit of it. It means to saturate yourself in it.

You know, the wonderful thing about having the Bible as a foundation is at the same time, it makes you both fiercely independent intellectually and extremely humble. Do you know how that happens? I mean, there's no other condition, I think, that there's no other situation that can create such a condition. On the one hand, I remember because I really became a Christian in college, at least, well, that's a long story, but I became consciously a Christian in college. And what amazed me was I suddenly realized, because I was a Christian and because I believed in the Word of God,

I suddenly was in a completely different position intellectually than anybody else in my classes. Because what would happen is the philosophy professor, the sociology professor, the anthropology professor would come in, and they would give all the reigning ideologies of the time. They would say, well, we used to believe this 50 years ago, but now we all ridicule those people and laugh at them and put their pictures up on the bulletin board and throw darts at them. We ridicule them and laugh at them. But now we know that these positions are the ones that are right. Of course, 30 years from now, those wonderful men will be on the darkboard somewhere, too. And everybody would be laughing at them. But the point was I suddenly began to realize I had a standard by which I could judge everybody and everything.

I didn't know the standard very well. But it began to see why I needed to be saturated in the Word of God. I had to be saturated in what the scripture said. See, one person with the Word of God can stand against the rest of the world and say, you're all wrong. I mean, that's independence. That's what Martin Luther did, essentially. He says, the Word of God says this.

You all say this. I am a majority of one, me and the Bible. That's all it takes. There's nothing that makes you more fiercely independent than to know. You've got the Word of God here, and with it, you can critique it. You can critique anything. It doesn't matter what the reigning ideologies are. It doesn't matter what the main schools of thought are.

You can judge it. But on the other hand, you're not independent for the sake of being independent. Some people are independent thinkers simply because they're arrogant. They're brilliant and they know it and so they're arrogant about it. Some people are independent even though they're not brilliant, which is even worse. But you see, a Christian who stands on the Word of God is somebody who is an independent thinker, but not out of arrogance, out of humility. Because you have to submit to what the Word of God says.

A Christian is somebody who says, here is where I stand. But if you show me where I'm wrong from the scripture, I will instantly change my position. It doesn't matter how many books I've written. You know, one of the great things that I loved about, one of my, a friend of mine who taught Old Testament at Westminster, he's written about eight books. Eight books, at least,

that were based on a particular view of the Old Testament, and after about six months of intense study, he realized he was totally wrong. And he says, I was wrong. I was wrong. This is what the Bible teaches. And it's amazing to go into print and tell you. The last eight books that I wrote were really kind of off the beam. I can't imagine many other kinds of academics doing that.

But you see, when the Bible is the control, it makes you both incredibly independent, but at the same time immensely humble. You search the scriptures. What does it mean? The Bible says, search the scriptures. Jesus says search the scriptures. What does that mean? You don't walk down the scriptures.

You search them. How do you search a path? It's different than walking on a path, isn't it? You get down on your hands and knees and you look at every square inch, you see. I'll never forget the first time somebody said, take that Bible verse and study it for 30 minutes and write me at least 20 things you see in it. And when I was done with that, I'd never done that before. I was only 21 years old.

I'd never done anything like that before. And I was amazed to see what came out of it when I actually put my mind to it. I remember I put down my pen and I looked at the notebook and I said, it's alive. I realized no matter how much I searched, I would be finding new things because it's alive. It's alive. You search it like a gold miner. And if you do that, you'll find it precious. George Herbert put it this way.

He wrote a sonnet to the Bible. He said, oh, book. Infinite sweetness. Let my heart suck every letter and with a honeygain precious for the payment of any grief. This is the wonderful mirror that mends the looker's eyes.

This is the well that washes what it shows. Who can endear its praise too much? Search the scripture. Get your whole mind on the whole, whole mind, saturate your mind with it. Or else on the last day, your bank books and your bank accounts will rise up in judgment and say, you poured over us, you read us, you see, you searched us, you broke your back for us, and now we're nothing but rotting dust when you had the imperishable

treasures of the scriptures right there. They'll rise up and judge you. Any book, any source of information that you saturate yourself more with in the Bible will rise up on that last day and say, What a jerk you were. Search, get your mind on it. Secondly, get your will on it. Now, what I mean by that is you have to obey it. You have to obey it. You don't just search the scripture.

You must let the scripture search you. There's a number of places in the Bible where it says, the scripture exhorts you. In the book of Hebrews, it says, have you forgotten the exhortation that debates with you as children? Here's the way you know there's a difference between. Here's how you know whether your religion is really a vital religion or whether it's completely formal and dry as dust and mechanical.

Whether it's organic and vital or mechanical. The scripture argues with you. It comes at you. Have you forgotten, says the Hebrew writers, the exhortation that debates with you, that argues with you. Have you sense that? You know how the Bible. actually comes after you and says, why are you worrying? Look at what you're doing when you're worrying. Look at how you're questioning the wisdom of God. Look at how you're questioning the love of

God. It argues with you. It comes after you. Have you felt that? It's alive. You've got to let it rearrange your life. You should never walk away from a verse that you're studying without asking yourself, how does this make me different? If I take this seriously, how will it make me different? Unless you know how to let the scripture argue with you and come after you and change you, you haven't laid your will on there. So you have to lay your mind on there, you have to lay your will on there, and you have to lay your heart. Here's the most interesting thing about this. You may decide that the scripture is not God's word written. It's not divine revelation from God to you.

You may believe that it's words about God, not words from God. It's good men and women who wrote about God, but it's not the divine word from God that you have to acknowledge as without error in your supreme authority of your life, whether you like it or not. But I'll tell you something, then you won't have a personal relationship at all. There won't be a heart relationship.

The way to lay your heart on the Word of God is to read it like a love letter, read it like a personal letter. If you want to know somebody, you can't just read their biography. To read information about them helps you get to know about them. But if you want to actually know them personally, you must get information from them. Truth about them is not the same as truth from them. Unless the Bible is truth from God. unless, see, if you don't believe that, if you don't believe in the divine inspiration of Scripture, you can admire God, you can respect God, but you can't know Him.

You've gutted Christianity at its heart, which is a personal relationship. Do you read the Word of God? Do you go to it in the morning, if you go to it in morning or at night and say, the reason I'm reading this passage is because God wants me to see it. This is for me. It's not an accident. I'm reading Psalm 3 because there's something in here that God wants for me to know right now about him and about my heart. Do you take it that personally? That's how you've got to do it. On the road to Emmaus, after Jesus was resurrected, he met two disciples who didn't recognize him. And he was saying, why are you so sad? He says, ah, our Lord had died and we thought that he was the Messiah and that he would save Israel. And Jesus, even though they didn't recognize him, looked at them and said,

oh, slow to believe, oh, foolish of heart and slow to believe all the scriptures have taught. And he said to them, then he opened their eyes and he showed them that Moses had written about him, that the prophets had written about him, that the temple was about him because he's the temple, that the priesthood is about him because he's the priest, because the rock in the wilderness was about him because he's the rock, that Jacob's ladder was about him because he says, you will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. I'm the way to heaven. That it's all about Jesus.

And therefore it's personal. It's a personal book from him to you. And he talked to them about this. And he talked to the disciples about this. And then, of course, as he broke the bread, they recognized him. And he disappeared. And they turned and they said, did not our hearts burn within us as he opened the scriptures to us?

brothers and sisters friends and relatives and neighbors i say this i hope that you know what that experience is do you know what it's like to have your heart burn within you because he's opening the scriptures to you you sense that he's speaking directly to you you sit down and you say god wants to something to me this is his word not words about him it's from him to me i'm going to saturate my mind in it i'm going to saturate my will in it and if you say that he will speak from his heart to yours. Have you experienced that? Have you laid yourself mind, will, and heart on the foundation of the word of God? There's no alternative. None. Did our hearts not burn within us as he opened to us the scripture? Let's pray. Father, we ask now that everybody in this room might be re-energized, reinvigorated,

or maybe for the first time challenged to see that the only way to have stability in the life is to have the foundation. The only way to have unity in the church is to have this foundation. The only way to really be a temple of the Holy Spirit and to sense his presence in our lives is to have this foundation.

Father, it's not enough just to believe in the foundation. We have to be laid on the foundation. And we ask that you would enable everybody in this room to do so, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you are encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelandlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.