Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - How Sin Makes Us Vandals

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 7, 1999. Series: What’s Really Wrong with the World. Scripture: Judges 17:1-13. 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. Some people say the fundamental problem of the world is poverty. Others say it's bad systems, poor education, or biology. But what if none of these can fully explain the brokenness we see, both in the headlines and in our own hearts? In today's teaching, Tim Keller looks at how the Bible's teaching on sin gives us a deeply honest and yet incredibly hopeful view of the world. turn to a part of your bulletin where you have the passage on which the scripture is a scripture passage of which the teacher is based

and we're starting this week a new series and it's on sin there's nothing more fundamentally relevant and practical than to understand an answer the answer to the fundamental human question what's wrong with us if you're trying to raise a family or run a corporation or if you have political or community involvement in anything you do in this life you need to have a working theory of an answer to that question what's wrong with us why the selfishness the cruelty the corruption the crime the racism the injustice why where does it come from now the Bible's answer is ancient and it's profound, and that is sin in the human heart. One of the reasons why it's so widely rejected, I believe, is actually because what's not understood is that the biblical understanding and

doctrine of sin is multidimensional. All of us understand or remember or think they understand what the Bible says about sin. We say, yes, we know what the Bible says about sin. Sin is breaking God's law, and therefore we're guilty and condemned. Yes, I know what the Bible says, but that's only one. In fact, that's the last of the aspects of sin that we're going to look at in this series. I think one of the reasons why sin as an answer to the reasons to the problems of our life tends to be widely overlooked by people is because we don't understand the multidimensionality than how nuanced, how rich, see, how multi-perspectival the biblical teaching on sin is. We're going to look at the first of those dimensions today, and we're going to

read a passage of scripture that I can almost proudly say, it's very possible, very likely, that even if you've gone to church all of your life, you've never heard anybody so stupid as to try to preach a sermon on this text. This text is almost never preached on, I've never preached on, it's almost never studied. It's the end of the book of judges. And one of the reasons why nobody knows what to do with it, why it's there, and so nobody ever tries to speak about it is because it is so inexplicably boring. judges 17 verses 1 to 13 this is just the beginning of a story and i'll tell you how it ends

you don't need to know now a man named micah from the hill country of ephraim said to his mother you know the 1,100 shekels of silver that were taken from you and about which i heard you order a curse i have that silver with me i took it and then his mother said the lord bless you my son And when he returned the 1,100 sheckels of silver to his mother, she said, I solemnly consecrate my silver to the Lord for my son to make a carved image and a cast idol. I will give it back to you, O Lord. So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took 200 shekels of silver, and gave them to a silversmith who made them into the image and the idol.

And they were put in Micah's house. Now this man, Micah had a shrine, and he made an effid, and some idols, and installed one of his sons as his priest. In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as he saw fit. A young Levite from Bethlehem and Judah, who had been living with in the clan of Judah, left that town in search of some other place to stay. And on his way, he came to Micah's house in the hill country of Ephraim. And Micah asked him, where are you from? Oh, I'm a Levite from Bethlehem and Judah, he asked, he said, and I'm looking for a place to stay. Then Micah said to him,

Live with me, and be my father and priest, and I'll give you ten shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food. So the Levite agreed to live with him, and the young man was to him like one of his sons. And then Micah installed a Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in his house. And Micah said,

Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest. Now, let me tell you, What we have here, one of the reasons why people ignore this section or really find it kind of confusing is this. Up to now, everything in the book of judges has been extremely interesting. Book of Judges is a history of Israel after they came into Canaan. They'd been led there by Moses and Joshua out of Egypt. And they came into Canaan. And what we have in the book of judges, the first 16 chapters, is a series of fascinating stories because

over and over the people would slide into sin and when they slid into sin they soon became enslaved by some foreign power and then over and over again 12 times actually in the book God sends a judge which is really a deliverer

you mustn't think in terms of a magistrate or someone sitting at a bench a judge was a deliverer essentially a savior and the judge would come and turn the people away from sin back to God and liberate them from the military oppressors. And it was always fascinating.

Very dramatic and some of the most famous people. We have Gideon here. We have Deborah here. We have Samson in this book. And it's always thrilling and exciting to see the salvation come. They're saved, you see. But then when you get to chapter 17 to verse to chapter 21, there's these last five chapters. And they're very, very hard to understand because they don't seem to be about anything.

There's no judges in here. There's no salvation that comes. God hardly shows up in some ways. And what's so intriguing is that there's two incidents. In chapter 17 and 18, we have one, and you've read half of it. And in chapter 19 to 21, you have the other. And the first one, we've already read, and what do we see here? Well, first of all, we see three.

If you're going to give this story a title, and it couldn't be a very interesting title, because it's not a very interesting story. It's a bunch of trivial people doing kind of dumb, weird, things. I could call it Micah, Mom, and the Levite. And what you have is you have these three people. First all, you have Micah cheating his mother. And then giving her the money back when she hears him uttering a curse against the robber, whoever it is. And he says, well, you know, I did it. I robbed. And I was kind of scared when you's, you know, he's not very good or very bad. I mean, how good can you be to rob your own mother? But then how bad could you be to get, you know, give it back?

You know, kind of, gee, I'm scared. You cursed, I wonder. And then, So you see Micah cheating his mother. Then you see his mother cheating God. Because if you notice, when she's really excited, she says, I will give it all back to the Lord. I'm so happy about this. I'm so happy my son came back and did all. He says, I solemnly consecrate my silver. I give it back.

But when she actually came to it, she only used 200 shekels. And she makes two images, two idols out of silver, and puts them in, in a sense, her son's chapel where he worshiped the Lord. in complete contradiction to everything God says anywhere, writing the Ten Commandments all through the law of Moses, where he says you mustn't make images, you mustn't make idols. So first we have Micah cheating mom, then we have mom cheating God. And then along comes the Levite. And what's his point?

Well, Micah and his mother decided they were going to have their own shrine. See, in those days, there was a tabernacle, a sanctuary, a place where God said, worship me here. And it was at Shiloh. and in that tabernacle there was an effid that was the breastplate of a priest that the priest wore and had stones on there through which God spoke to people. There was an effid and there were priests and the priests had to be Levites. They had to be the tribe of Levi.

And there was a sanctuary where people could come and pray and worship. But Mike and Mom, they wanted to have their own sanctuary. They wanted to have their own effort. They wanted to have their own place of worship. And so they made one of their sons, you know, mom's grandson, Micah's son, a priest, until along comes a Levite. And Micah says, wow, I can have a genuine Levite here, just like in the law of Moses. So he says, how much would you know be willing to work for this amount? And Levi says, sure, fine. And so now he says, boy, now I've really got

I've got a Levite, I've got an effid, I've got everything I want. Except in chapter 18, and this is how the story ends, a group of men come along, Danites. They're trying to find a new place to live. and they say to the Levite, you come with me, come with us, we'll pay you more and bring those images along, which of course were worth quite a bit of money. And so Michael comes running out saying, you stole my Levite, you stole my images, what are you doing? And the Danite said, go home or we might hurt you. And so he did. And that's how the story ends. And then in chapter 19 to 21, suddenly, at the very end of the book of judges,

we're completely unprepared after all these boring people doing all these trivial things, We're completely unprepared for what happens. There's a gang rape of a woman that leads to not just civil war between the tribes of Israel, but genocidal destruction of whole towns and villages down to the infants. And what's so strange about this? Again, no judges, no salvation, no nothing. Now what's going on here? Now, on the one hand, this is terrible storytelling.

Now, when I say terrible storytelling, I don't mean I think this was just made up. But you see, this incident was chosen out of this whole period of history. Why? Why was it chosen? When I say it's a bad story, first of all, in a good story, you have to have somebody, some character, who you get engaged with that you care about. You have to have some character that you're concerned about. Otherwise, it's just a terrible narrative. And nobody here you care about. See, they're all, none of them are very good or very bad. They're very shallow. They're very uninteresting. They're very boring. They're very unprincipled. They don't stand for anything. And not only that, there you should be. some kind of crisis, right, that's resolved. But the crisis that there is only crises that come about because they're so shallow and uninteresting and boring and unprincipled. Why is this here? And why would this be in front of this horrible story that comes right after? Well, it began to dawn on me, and it's dawned on to other people. I'm not the only one that knows this or understands this, please. There's no judges here. Isn't this interesting? Every other part of the book is about,

God's salvation and what the author is showing us and therefore what God's showing us is what we look like without his salvation, what we look like without him, what we are in our natural state. In other words, this is showing us the nature of sin. And this right away actually shows us some things that are very, very surprising to us. If you live in this society, you've got some how do I say stereotypes about what you think the Bible teaches about sin and about evil. And this goes right against it. Look, real briefly, because we're going to the Lord's table today, and we're going to have a series. Real briefly, let me show you. This tells us what sin does to us, what sin does to God, and how we can be cured of it. What sin does to us, what sin does to God, and how we can be cured

of it. And every one of them is surprising. The first one, what sin does sin does to us? What do you think sin really does to you in its advanced stages? What does sin really do to the human heart? what does it do to the character? Most of us believe that most of us are kind of, you know, regular people. Of course, we sin. Of course, you know, to err is sin and, you know, to air as human and so on. But when we think of people who are really diabolical, really, really advanced in their evil, we think of evil geniuses. We think of the people in all of the action films, those terrible, those charming, those witty, but those diabolical, those cruel. That's not at all what the Bible says. When Hannah Arendt went to the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi butcher,

she was shocked by what she found. And she wrote an essay that really got a lot of flack. She wrote an essay on what she called the banality of evil. Now, banal is a word that basically means common. It means run of the mill. And she looked at this guy and she says, anybody could have done this must to be a monster. But when she saw him, she realizes this isn't a monster.

First of all, she found he was a boring little man. He spoke in cliches, no insights, really very little sense of humor. And he had the absolute run of the middle, like all the rest of us, desire to be important, desire to be liked, ability to kind of, you know, not think about things that are unpleasant. And she wrote and she said, he wasn't a monster. He was just like all the rest of us. It was boring and superficial and uninteresting and shallow. And people got very upset with her. And they said, you can't say that.

Anybody can do this. This man, anybody who can do this cannot be like us. But Hannah Arendt got it partly right, but partly wrong, at least according to the Bible. Because she said, because he was so banal and superficial, it led him to do evil. But the Bible says it's evil that leads you to be banal. The most advanced, the most prominent, the most characteristic, effective sin on the human heart is not to make us bad but boring. There's nobody that said it better than C.S. Lewis, of course, and actually I've got a number of his quotes that help me with this sermon. He says, I am really upset with the most pernicious of all the literary images of evil.

It's Gertes Mephistopheles in Faust. the humorous civilized mephistophily strengthens the illusion that evil is liberating but the real mark of hell is a sleepless unsmiling concentration upon the self we must understand hell is a place where everyone is perpetually concerned about his or her own dignity and advancement where everybody always has a grievance and where everybody lives in the deadly seriousness of envy and self-importance here's another section in preface to paradise loss louis says this to admire Satan is to give one's vote for a world of lies, propaganda, and incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement toward it in every one of us. Sin in each of us is something that wants just to be petted and admired to take advantage of other

lives. It especially wants to be left to itself. It wants to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it. Anything that would make it feel small, but unimpeded, sin will exploit the whole universe if it could. Now, here's what Lewis is saying. Here's what Hannah Arendt saw, at least partially. Here's what we're being told. Why in the world would this be considered? Hmm? A case study of human beings without God. Why not something more awful? Why not something more cruel? Why not something more like the last part of the book? What is this about? And the answer is what what Lewis says. Listen,

advanced sin makes you boring because all you're ever worried about is how you're doing, how you look, how things are affecting you. There's always a grievance. Incessant autobiography. You can never get out of yourself.

You're always feeling sorry for yourself. And you know what's so weird about this. You say, that's not like, you know, Jack Nicholson is the Joker in Batman. I mean, there's evil. You know, no.

Sin makes you mediocre. The most advanced sin makes, there's nothing more boring than somebody's always worried about how you look. Sin makes you these very uninteresting, unprincipled, shallow, boring people. It's pretty interesting. There's an article, the Culture Zone column in the New York Times Magazine today, about the tremendous popularity of one person shows, have you seen that? Where they just get up and they stand up there and they talk about their lives, they talk about their stories and they talk about everything that one person shows.

And virtually everybody knows, it's sort of an open secret, even though it keeps going, that the vast majority of people are just boring. The vast majority of people, those one person shows tell you way too much. This is what the line says in the article, way too much about people that you have no desire to know. Why are people so uninteresting when they just simply talk? When they're not part of a story, when they just say, here's how I feel, Here's what's on my mind. Sleepless, unsmiling, concentration on the self.

That's the essence of sin. And the first thing we see here is that what sin really does is not make you bad before it makes you boring. That's the primary thing. Incessant autobiography. But that's the first surprising thing. But the second surprising thing is in a way more seminal. Because in the Bible, when sin,

ruins you. It's because already, your attitude toward yourself is always based on your attitude toward God. Your understanding of yourself is always based on your understanding of God. Your emotions toward yourself are always based on your motions toward God. Because what we have here is just as surprising. It tells us what sin leads us to do toward God. What does sin lead us to do? How does sin lead us to regard God? Now again, most people would think that advanced sin would make you an atheist. That's advanced. We have a lot of those advanced sinners around New York City. Actually, a pretty surprising number. A higher percentage than amongst any other city in the country. People say, I don't believe in God. And maybe you're one of those. I don't know. You know,

somebody brought you here out of curiosity. Maybe you're one of those. Well, I got good news for you. Atheism is not the essence of sin at all. Here's what we're told. mom says, I dedicate to the Lord these two images. Boy, that's terrible. Doesn't she know what the Ten Commandment says, the First Commandment? Thou shalt not worship any other gods. Doesn't the First Commandment say, thou shalt have no other gods before me? Why is she making those idols?

Doesn't she know? Why would she worship other gods? Right there in front of God, right in his shrine, you see. And the answer is she's not worshipping other gods. Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty, and heartache. We feel it in the world around us and in our own lives. How did it get this way? And what can be done about it?

In his brand new book that's releasing this month, What is Wrong with the World? Tim Keller offers a clear and compassionate answer. Drawing from a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Dr. Keller shows how the reality of sin explains the pain we see all around us and how only the gospel offers lasting. freedom and healing. Whether you're overwhelmed by the state of our world, struggling with your own mistakes or choices, or looking for hope and joy, what is wrong with the world

will help you see how the gospel speaks to both the heartache of our world and the pain within each of us. This newly released book, What is Wrong with the World, is our thanks for your gift this month to help Gospel in Life share the good news of Jesus. Request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Listen, there's plenty of gods named in the Book of Judges. The Canaanites had the Bales and the Astros, and the Philistines had Dagon,

and the Syrians had Rimon, and the Moabites had Kymash. But she doesn't say, I'm going to make an Isle of Kymash. She didn't make a bail. She didn't make an Asturoth. She didn't make a Kymash, or a Degon. Ramon. What did she make? Who are these images of? Well, they're the ones in whose name they're dedicated. These are images of God. These are images of the Lord God. These are images of Yahweh, the God of Israel. What she has done is not she hasn't, she hasn't worshipped

another God, and she's not worshipping no God. She's worshipping a reduced God. She has whittled God down. She has made him, she has put a handle on him. This is a God you can put in your purse. This is a God you can take places with you. This is a God who's manageable. This is a God who's tame. And this is the heart of sin. A little God, a manageable, tamed God will make you a little, manageable, controllable person. Is it, Hannah Arendt said the scary thing was that banal person was capable of unbelievable terror and evil under certain circumstances. And the point at the end of the book of judges is banal people caused by sin. Sleepless concentration on the self, unsmiling, humorless, therefore boring.

Incessant autobiography makes you feel so sorry for yourself that you are capable of terrible things eventually. All of our problems come. in essence, from whittling God down, Psalm 50, verse 21, talks about it when God looks at the people, and he doesn't say, you've rejected me. He doesn't even say you're worshipping other gods. What does he say? He says, you thought, this is Psalm 50, verse 21, you thought I was like yourself. And this is the essence of sin. We are sure God has got to be like us. We're going to Whittle them down to our size. Let me give you some examples of how we do it. I'll only a few. Kathy said, please keep it about 30.

Because we were sitting and talking about him. I began to realize, well, this is the essence. Look, number one. First of all, we think God's like us, and we think he can be bought. Some of you have started coming to church, started reading your Bible, started cleaning up your life because you say, I need strength, I need inspiration. Stop it. well wait a minute shouldn't I read my Bible shouldn't I pray

shouldn't I live a good life shouldn't I come to church isn't that what God wants well you said all depends on why you're doing it because here's what I'm afraid almost always the way we when we move toward God our hearts are filled with this

and therefore we always in the beginning start like this we think God can be bought we think God can be impressed and the reason we start cleaning our life up is what so we can say and here's the essence of sin, now God has to be good to me, because I'm doing everything right. See, Michael was so happy that he knew he was out of compliance with his own son as a priest.

He realized what the word of God said, but say, oh, wait a minute, I can get a Levite. Now surely God will be good to me. He's obeying, but why is he obeying to get control of God, to buy him? Highly religious people. who are absolutely sure that God has to be good to you, God has to answer your prayers, God has to bless you, God has to give you a good life, God has to give you the spouse of your dreams. Why? Because I'm doing everything right. Now the Lord has to be good to me. What have you done? You put a handle on God. You're trying to control God. You've whittled him down. You think he's like you. They can be bought, that he can be impressed. He can't be.

And by the way, there's nothing that will make you more boring. than making you a smug, self-righteous religious person, nothing. They're the worst kind. Little God creates little people. Secondly, we think God's like us because, you know, that it can be bought. Secondly, you think God's like you because you don't think he's any wiser than you are. Do you know why we're so scared so often, why we're so angry because things aren't going right? Do you know why so many of you have walked away saying,

I cannot believe in a God who would let this happen and this happen and this happen. What are you saying? What are you saying? What you're saying is because I can't think of a good reason for this to have happened. There can't be one. When you say, I can't believe in a God who would let this happen, you simply have pulled him down and you said, he couldn't be wiser than me. Well, now, what? How asinine is that intellectually? You know, to say, if you believe there's a God big enough to have caused this, then you've got to believe there's a God who's big enough to have some reason for it bigger than you that you wouldn't know. You can't have it both ways. You can't be mad at God because you acknowledge he's more powerful than you, but then you won't let him be more

wise than you. I mean, that's just, and yet we're so bitter in our soul and we're so cast down all the time. Why? Because we just don't believe God. You believe I'm like you, he says. You have whittled me down. You've made me into an image, something controllable. You've revised me. You've edited me. You've pulled me down. You know, Elizabeth Elliott, who I often quote, when she, there was a book she wrote years ago about how her husband and a number of other women's husbands were killed in the jungles of South America as part of their missionary work. And it's called through the gates of splendor. And many years later, it was reissued in a kind of silver anniversary edition. And she wrote an epilogue to it. And this is what she said in it. And it just

slam me. She says, people asked me, what did you? learn from all that? What did you learn from your husband, the love of your life being killed when you had a little baby girl and you had only been married for two years? What did you learn? And this is what she said. I reflected on all that happened to me. And one thing, one thing is pointed out, quote, if he is God, he is worthy of my worship and my service and I will find rest nowhere but in his will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notion of what he is up to. The one thing I learned is if he's God, I will find no rest anywhere but in his will,

and that's true of everybody on the face of this earth. There'll never be freedom in your heart unless you're willing to admit that his will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notion of what he's up to. Let me give you a couple more. we think we think he's like us in our in math

in other words we think he can be bought secondly we think he is like us in his wisdom therefore if we can't think of something if we can't know what he's up to then he can't be up to anything good

thirdly we think he's like us in our scale scale I got this from Kathy late last night she's been reading the series in the New York Times science section on what we're learning about the galaxies. Now listen, you know this. You know stuff

like this. If the distance from the earth to the sun, 93 million miles, was reduced to the thickness of a piece of paper, then the diameter of just this galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high. And our galaxy is just one of gazillions and gazillions of galaxies just in our cluster. Our galaxy relates just to the cluster of galaxies, the way it's. The way it's a single grain of sand would relate to all the beaches on the entire, and all the sand on all the coasts of Florida. That's how many galaxies there are. And that's just in our cluster.

And even from the moon, you can't see us. We're even a speck from the moon. Right? And yet the Bible says that if there is a God, right? Think about this. He holds the world together. He holds it all up with a word of his power. The entire universe is like a contact lens on his little finger.

Now, do you say to the world? to somebody like that, please come into my life to be my assistant. Do you say to somebody like that, don't call us, we'll call you? Do you say to somebody like that, well, yeah, I might deal with you after I've had a little fun. I've moved to New York City after all. Do you say, well, I'll be happy to believe in you if you'll give me a complete explanation for all of my questions. You've forgotten the scale. You think I'm like you. The audacity of it, give you another one, you know what racism is? You know what racism is.

It's taking cultural differences and imbueing them with moral significance. Let's just say, and listen, white racism isn't the only kind of racism, but it's pretty prominent. So let me pick on us white people, all right, for a second? Okay, what do white people do? Especially what do Northern European types do, you know, us with a background in, you know, British or German and all that? We see these ethnic groups and they're much more emotional. So when they're happy, they're more emotional, and when they're sadly more emotional, What do you feel when you see that?

You say, they sort of lost it, haven't they? Kind of, you know, they're different, but you deep in your heart have assigned moral superiority to your difference and moral inferiority to their difference. And they're going to do the same thing. I know that. But here's the point. What is white racism? It's saying, my God is white.

My God is like me. God is white. That's exactly, see, what, Psalm 50, verse 21, you thought I was like you. Everything comes from that. All of our doubts, all of our anger, you see, all of our self-righteousness. I'll give you another one.

You think God is like you in his attitude toward time. You know, when God sees time, he sees it all at once. If you were high up over the earth, you would look down at the Mississippi River, and all parts of the Mississippi River would be equally visible, right? If you're down on the Mississippi River, you only see your bend. Now, a lot of you are saying, oh, years ago, yes, I did this and yes, I did this and yes, I did, I did these things.

But, you know, they were bad, but, you know, I've gotten over it. Certainly God wouldn't hold that against me. My friends, God's attitude towards God is the very, the thing you remember way in the past, he is seeing now. It's still happening right in his nostrils. This is the reason why God is a God of justice. This is the reason why God never gets over anything. This is the reason why there has to be atonement. There has to be punishment.

And when you say, well, you know, why? I can't believe in a God who judges. You think he's like you. You think that because of the terrible things you've done, and at the time you felt doggone guilty, and it hurt a lot of people. But now it's been a year, it's been two years, it's been ten years, it doesn't bother you anymore.

You thought I was like you. All of our problems come from this. Because our God has become little, we've made him little, we've made them manageable. We get rid of the things that we don't like. Oh, I can't believe in this anymore. I can't believe in that anymore. We've whittled them down as a result. We've been whittled down. There's no greatness to us. There's no freedom. Do you realize if you really accepted the God that Elizabeth Lely is talking about? A God who is infinite, his will is infinitely immeasurably

beyond anything you can ever, any notion of what he's up to. If you said, I accept that. I embrace that. You'd be free. Totally free. Nothing can bother you anymore. If you said, I'm not trying to obey God so he'll be good to me, so he'll give me the things I want, so he'll give me the status, he'll give me the marriage, so he'll give me the things I want. Instead, if you said, not I'm going to use him to get the things that give me meaning in life, but that he is my meaning in life. If you really made him the meaning in life, if he was the ultimate instead of just a little mean soon end, something you've learned how to handle in order to get what you want. If he was your meaning in life, in other words, if he was big, you'd be a meaning in life. In other words, if he was big, you'd be a good. You'd be a little. big. If he was great in your eyes, you would be a great heart. You would walk through life greatly. You wouldn't be scared and upset and circumstances beating you around all the time. This is the reason why there's this one little place in the Narnia Chronicles, those fairy tales by C.S. Lewis. It goes by so fast that you just don't even notice its significance. But it's so incredibly interesting. It's where little Lucy meets Aslan, who's Jesus. He's a lion. And she

She meets him in the second book, and she says, Aslon, Aslon, at last. Welcome, child, he says. Aslon, said Lucy, you're bigger. That's because you're older, little child. Not because you're bigger? No. The bigger you get, the more you grow, the more you'll find me bigger. Now, what is he saying? Goes by so fast, you know, you don't even stop and think about it, but let's. Lewis is saying, the bigger your God is, the bigger you will be. The more you let God be God, the more you make him not a means to an end but the end. You know, not someone has to answer your questions. The more you put him on his proper scale, the more of a great heart you will be. Well, how? How is it possible?

How on the world? And you know what? The normal thing for a Christian to do, and I'll tell you over the years, I used to end my sermons here, I used to say, now what? I know. I've got sermons like this from the past. I've been looking at him over the last couple weeks. I would say study the attributes of God. Think of his holiness. Think of his majesty. Think of his wisdom. Don't whittle him down. Except everything the Bible says about it. What is what is this commandment? Where he says, do not make a graven image of me, he says. And what he's saying is, don't imagine me to be what you want me to be, but worship me as I am. So what does it mean? Except what he says. But you know what? When I study, when I just study his holiness, when I just study his majesty, When I just study his wisdom, I don't feel, I'm not getting greater. I'm not getting bigger.

It just starts to crush me and it'll crush you. This thing that Aslan is saying to Lucy, I don't sense that dynamic at all. It just makes me feel worse and worse and worse. Like, oh, my word, this is God, but I'm going to have to just put up with it. But the answer is this. In verse 6, it says, the reason for all this was there was no king. Do you see that? It says, the reason all this idiocy, the reason all this smallness, in those days, Israel had no king.

Now, what is the author saying? He said, there's no savior. We need something better than these judges. We need a king. But when you get to the king, even the best king, David, we see that he needed a savior. And what we're being pointed to is simply this. Why is it that God said no image? Why is it that Israel was the only religion on the first?

face of the earth at that time. It's the first religion, it almost invented it, that if you went into this temple, you went into the Holy of Holies, into the inner sanctum, and you even went to the Ark of the Covenant, which was the throne of God, and there was the cherubim, the angels, facing inward, and right where you expect to see an image, something palpable, something you could grab hold on, something accessible, right? We're physical beings. We have, we have, we have, we taste, touch, hear, see, smell, we have senses, and we want to see something, we want to feel something. And right there, there's nothing. God says, don't you dare put an image there. My throne is empty. And you say, oh, my word, is that it?

We have to put up with an abstract, invisible God, a God we can't touch, God we can't see, hear or smell. And God says, no, no, no, no. Don't you dare put an image there, but not because there never will be one. In Colossians chapter 1, verse 15, we read something amazing. He is the image, Jesus Christ, is the image of the invisible God. For by him all things were created, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. Now, here's what God is saying. God is saying, I understand why you want an image. I understand why you want something you can grab, hold on. And I will give you something.

I will supply the image. Don't you supply the image. Because any image you try to make of me to make me something you can relate to will only make me tinier and smaller, and it'll make you smaller. But I will give you the true image, a living image, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will so reveal my glory that on the one hand he'll be someone you finally can relate to a human being a person, someone who loves and who weeps and who embraces, finally someone who's successful. But somebody who actually makes me, in your mind, greater than you could have imagined, not smaller, but greater. Why? because this great God, you know, before whom we are nothing but specks, we are nothing but specks of dust, we are nothing but paramecium, we're nothing but amoebas.

No other image could possibly have told us what this image does, and that is he came to die for us. He died for the paramecium. He died for the amoebas. When you have a god that's so big that he could become small, you've got a bigger God than you could have imagined. No other religion has such a God. No other religion admits that God is so big, he's going to become small.

Only when you have a God like that. Only when you admit that Jesus Christ is the image of God, that he died for me, that is what finally shows me a greatness beyond anything I would know otherwise, but it's not a greatness that crushes me. Now I want to live for him. Now I won't say, now God's got to be good to me because I'm obeying all the rules. Because Jesus is my goodness. He is the thing I would want.

what I want more than that. He's my meaning in life now. You see, God can't be bought, but we can. The bigger he gets, the bigger we'll get. Let's pray. Father, we know that one of the reasons for the Lord's Supper is it's something physical. It's something we can put in our hands, and it reminds us that you have put Jesus Christ on the earth to be our image, the image of you, our way of understanding your greatness. it's only as we receive him as we remember who he is remember what he's done that you finally take in our minds your proper proportions and when that happens we'll be so free we pray lord that you will make yourself real to us and your proper proportions as we take the lord's supper as we

take the bread in the cup be yourself in our eyes be yourself in our hearts be yourself so we can finally be ourselves, what you've made us to be. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelonlife.com. slash partner. That website again is gospel and life.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1999. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were recorded between

1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you.