Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Paradise in Crisis

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

The Bible is not a series of disconnected stories, each one with a little moral for how to live, but it’s actually primarily a single story about what went wrong with the human race and what will put it right.  Figuring out what went wrong with the human race is really important. In her 1925 diary, Beatrice Webb, one of the architects of the modern British welfare system, says there’s something wrong with us that leads to selfishness and violence, corruption in business and government, war and atrocities—and that it’s consistent across history. Science hasn’t dealt with it. Education hasn’t dealt with it. Social machinery hasn’t dealt with it. Who will explain it? Chapters 3 and 4 of Genesis do.  Let’s start with this very famous text, and let’s notice four features of the narrative: 1) the sneer, 2) the lie, 3) the tree, and 4) the call. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 11, 2009. Series: Bible: The Whole Story - Creation and Fall. Scripture: Genesis 3:1-7. 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. The Bible isn't a series of disconnected stories, each one a little moral for how to live. On the contrary, it's actually primarily a single story, an account of how the world was made and ruined, how it was rescued through Jesus Christ, and how someday it's going to be remade into a new heavens and new earth. Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller is teaching on this central storyline of the Bible and what that means for our lives today. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from

any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we made fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not surely die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat of it,

your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

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 in the cool of the day, and they hit from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? This is the word of the Lord. In this series of sermons, we're trying to get across that the Bible is not a series of disconnected stories, each one with a little moral for how to live, but it's actually

primarily a single story about what went wrong with human race and what will put it right. And figure out what went wrong with human race is actually really important. Beatrice Webb, who is one of the architects of the modern British welfare system, she and her husband and some others founded the London School of Economics, she was a socialist and activist, British leader, and she kept a diary. And in 1925, she went back and looked at her older diary and she wrote this. In 1925, she said, quote,

in my diary, 1890, I wrote, I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature. I have staked everything on the essential goodness of human nature. But now 35 years later, I realize how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in us. And how little they seem to change, like greed for wealth and power. And how mere social machinery will never change that. We must ask better things from human nature

but will we get a response. And without this how will we be of any, how will, oh pardon me, no amount of science or knowledge has been of any avail? And unless we curb the bad impulse, how will we get better social institutions? That's a remarkable statement from somebody who ought to know what she is saying. There's something so wrong with us that leads to selfishness and violence, at least the corruption in business, and corruption in government, and at least the war and atrocities, and that's consistent across history. And she says science hasn't dealt with it, education hasn't dealt with it, social machinery hasn't dealt with it.

Who will explain it? Chapter three and chapter four of Genesis does, and we're looking at it for four weeks. And let's start with this very famous text, and let's learn what we can by noticing four features of the narrative. The sneer, the lie, the tree, and the call. The sneer, the lie, the tree, and the call. The story starts with a sneer.

It says, now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God really say, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? Now, Satan is speaking through the serpent. And right away, readers say, who is Satan and where did he come from and what's wrong with him and how did he get that way. But you know, this text is about us. It doesn't tell us any of that. Anything about that.

It's here to explain how we got to be the way we are and how we are now. And if we read it that way, it's incredibly instructive. But if we ask, where did he come from and what's all this, it doesn't. It's all right. That's not what we need to know right now. Not the most important thing we ever need to know. And what we see is that the fall of the human race starts not with an action, but with an attitude.

Not with an act, but with a sneer. Because this word translated really, which could also be translated indeed, indeed, did he really say? It shows that the sense of this is not that the serpent is denying what God said, he's mocking what God said. He's not saying God didn't say it, he's saying it's ridiculous, it's laughable.

So the sense of it is, if you ever hear somebody say something like this, did he really say that? Now that doesn't mean he's asking, did it really happen? No, he's just saying, was he such an idiot and such a jerk is to say that? Did he really say that? He is not denying that God said it. He's mocking it.

He's trying to get Adam and Eve to laugh at it. He's trying to change their attitude toward it. And therefore, the fall of the human race starts not with an action or even with a thought but with an attitude of heart. Now, we're going to learn two things from this, okay? Two things if we can say. The first thing is that though this doesn't always happen, but I think this happens a lot.

More often than not, we lose God not through argument, but through atmosphere. We lose God not through argument, through atmosphere. For example, here's a little dial, well here's a little speech in a novel. I took this out of a novel. And it's about two people who went to college and lost their Christian faith.

And then one person gets it back later. But the person speaking got the faith back and is talking to the other person about how they, quote unquote, lost their faith in college. And he says this. He says, let's be frank. We found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful.

At college, we started automatically writing the kinds of essays that got good marks in saying the kinds of things that won the applause. We were afraid of the label fundamentalism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, and having allowed ourselves to drift, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believe the faith.

In the same way, a drunken man reaches a point in which he believes another glass will do him no harm. Now, I don't want anybody to think I'm saying that that's how people lose the faith in the college. Very often people lose their faith through argument, but not usually. They usually lose it through sniers. Because everybody's snaring, everybody's snarky. Everybody's saying, you really believe that or she really believes that? You see, does she really believe that?

And you just want to go into your shell. And you want to go along. And you very often lose God, not through argument, but through atmosphere. And over the years, I have to say, for every one argument, I've gotten against Christian belief, I get 99 sneers. And when somebody says, do you really believe that? A proper measured response would be this.

They say, well, that's an assertion trying to create an atmosphere. It's not really an argument. So could you please tell me why you think what I believe is untenable? Let's file that. So first of all, I think we learn here that we tend to lose God as much, if not more, from atmosphere than argument. But here's second, humor. The fall of the human race happened through an attitude of the heart that was expressed

through a particular kind of humor. And here's what I like us to think about, at least briefly. There's a kind of humor that is actually an expression of humility. It persuades. It's humble. And it says we're all alike. And there's a kind of humor that is an exercise of the will for power. It's serpentine. It's a way of putting somebody else down so, it's serpentine. It's a way of putting somebody else down so that it puts you up. There's a kind of humor that brings us all down

and deflates and gets us to talk. And there's a kind of humor that puts one group or one person up and smashes everybody to the ground. It's serpentine. Do you know the difference? Because one brought about the fall of the human race and will bring about earfall. And one actually can be healing.

WH Auden wrote some wonderful essays and did some wonderful lectures on Shakespeare doing literary criticism of Shakespeare. And he, in a couple of his essays, says that he believed that Shakespeare, whether he was personally a Christian or not, he says Shakespeare had a Christian view of human nature and the world, and therefore Shakespearean comedy was different than Greek classical comedy. And Auden says this, in Greek classical comedy, the comedy ends with the audience laughing

and the characters on stage and tears. But in Shakespeare comedies, like much I do about nothing, it always ends with everybody laughing. The people out there are laughing and the people up here are laughing. Why? He says that the Greek classical idea was what is funny is look at those fools up there, they're not sophisticated like us. And therefore the audience has led the laugh by the comedy to laugh at the people up there because they lack the sophistication of the

audience. But he says in one of his essays there's a different kind of humor that Shakespeare had. And he says comedies like much to do about nothing, our quote, based on the belief that all men are sinners. And therefore, no one, whatever his rank or talents should claim immunity from the comic exposure. And then Auden goes on and talks about the fact that the Christian gospel turns the Greek idea of excellence and sophistication

on its head, because in Christianity the ultimate excellence is to know you need the comic exposure, to see your own pretensions and pride exposed, and to seek forgiveness. Therefore, to finish the quote, in Shakespeare, the characters are exposed and forgiven. And when the curtain falls, the audience and the characters are all laughing together. See, David Denby, critic for the New Yorker, movie critic, recently wrote a book, well, actually, he's coming out this week called Snark. And in it, he's talking about how corrosive there

is a kind of humor that just puts everybody down. And it says, everybody's full of it. And everybody's out for themselves. Everybody's full of it. New York out for themselves. Everybody's full of it. New York Magazine this week wrote a snarky review of the book and says, you know, and says, look, and it was snarky review. It says, when you have a society filled with BS,

you just got to get up and say it's filled with BS. And I'm going to get up and say it's filled with BS, but see, Auden would say, that's classical. That's Greek comedy. What you're really saying is everybody but me is filled with BS. Everybody but me are out for everything, you know, out for themselves. There is a kind of humility that says, we human beings are need to be laughed at. Look at our pretensions. And there's a kind of, there is a kind of cynicism as corrosive that laughs at any truth claims,

any claims that this is right and this is wrong, and is therefore basically serpentine. Putting yourself in the seat, the judgment seat, putting yourself up there. And what will happen is that kind of cynical, corrosive, serpentine humor that puts everybody's filled with BS with me. You know, everybody's on the take.

Everybody's out for themselves. But me, it leaves you in the end, no meaning in life. And I can't give you a meaning in life. It leaves you in the end without friends. It's serpentine. And the serpent laughs at you. If you laugh like the serpent, the serpent in the end will laugh like you.

So the fall of the human race starts with the sneer. Number one, number two, it proceeds with a lie. Because the next thing you see is after the attitude of the heart comes a lie for the mind. And we see it here in verse four, after you know, God has said, don't eat of this tree. And the serpent comes back in verse 4 and says, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened.

God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. Now here's what he's saying. God, if you obey him, will keep you down. God knows that if you do this and this, you'll broaden your horizons, but he doesn't want you to. And so what Satan is trying to get into the heart of the human race is this. If you obey God, you'll miss out. If you obey God, you won't be happy. If you obey the will of God, it'll cut you off from other options.

It will keep you from being all you want to be. You will not thrive and flourish. And what's so extremely interesting to see here is that what Satan knows what is really crucial to destroy. Notice Satan does not go after the existence of God. He doesn't say the only way I'm going to destroy the human race is to get everybody to disbelieve in God. No, he knows the whole human race can believe in God practically. The whole human race does believe in God and it's a mess. That's not the issue. He also doesn't actually go after the law or the will

or the holiness of God. He doesn't say, oh God doesn't, doesn't actually go after the law or the will or the holiness of God. He doesn't say, oh God doesn't, doesn't care what you do, God doesn't mind. He doesn't say God doesn't say you can't eat of that tree. He doesn't say God doesn't say this. He doesn't deny the existence of God. He doesn't deny the law of God, the will of God, the holiness of God. He denies the goodness of God. He denies the goodness and the love and the grace and the goodwill of God behind all those decrees. He says, if you obey God, you can't trust His goodwill, you can't trust Him. You can't trust Him. You're going to have to take your life in your own hands. And that lie went in. And that lie is in my heart and take your life in your own hands.

And that lie went in. And that lie is in my heart and that lie is in your heart. And you know what it's doing? It's doing a lot. You see, why is it, we say, I know the Bible says, I shouldn't sleep with this person home not married to, but it would be great. I know the Bible says, I shouldn't spend all this person home not married to, but it would be great. I know the Bible says, I shouldn't spend all this money on myself, I should give it away.

But it would be great to spend it on myself. I know that I'm not supposed to hold a grudge against this person and try to seek revenge, but boy, it feels good, to seek revenge. And so you're tempted. You're tempted. I know God says, I shouldn't sleep with Him. I know God says, I shouldn't spend this much. I know're tempted, you're tempted. You know, I know God says I shouldn't sleep with Him. I know God says I shouldn't spend this much. I know God says, you're tempted. You know,

why you're tempted? There'd be no temptation unless underneath you already believed you can't trust God. Because your heart is saying if you obey, you won't be happy. be happy. The fact that God that Satan has destroyed our trust in the love of God is beneath everything else. Look, remember, in the fall we did our series on the prodigal son. And Luke 15, there was two different guys, weren't there? There was the elder brother, he was very religious, he was very moral, he lived a very good life, he fought all the rules, why? So that forced God and everybody else to respect and reward him. And then there was the younger brother, and he went off and he had sex with prostitutes and he lived it up with all of his, you know, material possessions.

They look very, very different, but look at the bottom of each one. Why is the moralist, the moralist? Why does he say, I'm gonna earn my salvation? Because he doesn't trust in the grace of God. And why does the younger brother go off and say, I'm gonna live anyway, I'm gonna obey, I'm gonna do what I wanna do because he doesn't trust the grace of God.

He doesn't believe that if you obey his God, he'll be happy. He doesn't believe in the love of God. They don't believe in the good will of God. It's the root of everything. And we'll talk about this in more next week, but Philip Roth, the novelist, has a novel called The Human Stain, and it's a metaphor for evil. And at one point, he talks about it, or one of the characters in the book talks about,

The Human Stain is the evil of the heart that makes everybody, number one, want to put everyone else down. It's there before, it's underneath, all are wrongdoing. I want to put other people down and I have to prove myself. You know where that comes from? Eric Erickson in his book Childhood in Society says, if a child in the very earliest years learns not to trust the dominant personality,

the father of the mother, the parents, because they've been abused or because they've been neglected or they've been abandoned. If a child in the very beginning of their life cannot trust the dominant personality in their life, then they have a fundamental inability to attach or trust ever again, and it's a taproot for all other kinds of pathologies. Now, listen, I'm not a psychologist. I have no idea whether Eric Erickson is right about childhood pathologies. And I do know that it's really weird that Genesis says that is exactly what happened in the beginning of the human race.

When we were in our infancy, we believed the serpent that we can't trust God. We can't trust his love. And you know, there's people right now working themselves to death in their jobs because they're trying to prove to themselves and everybody else that they're valuable because they don't trust the love of God. And there's people putting everybody else down and exploiting and lying to everyone. They're putting everybody down, the human stain, why they don't trust God? If you don't trust God, you don't trust anybody.

Why they don't trust God? If you don't trust God, you don't trust anybody. We've been ruined by the lie. Looking for a new way to deepen your faith and understanding of Christianity this summer? If you are, we'd like you to consider the new city of Catechism devotional. Based on the historic Catechisms of the Christian Church, this devotional offers 52 weeks of thought-provoking questions and answers that explore the foundational beliefs of the faith. Each week includes a scripture passage, a prayer, and a brief meditation that will challenge and inspire you. Commentaries are written by contemporary pastors such as John Piper, Timothy Keller, and Kevin DeYoung, as well as historical

figures such as Augustine, John Kelvin, and Martin Luther. The new City Catechism Debotional 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 slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. So first is the attitude of heart. Then secondly, if sneer for the heart, then secondly it was a lie for the mind. But then finally that leads to an act of the will.

But it's a treason. Take a look. Then down here at verse 6, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for getting wisdom, she took some. She ate some and she gave it to her husband who was with her and he ate it. What was the great sin? What was this great horrible action?

What is it that ruined the human race? Eight the tree. Now, you know, what is this thing? What was wrong with that? What in the world could be wrong with a tree? Now, you know, nowadays, by the way, you know, a lot of people say, I don't get it, you know, we have ten commandments. Sometimes to not kill somebody is actually rather hard to obey. Sometimes not to steal is hard to obey, but not to eat a tree. And you can see why stealing could be bad.

And you can see why killing can be bad. You can see why adultery can be bad, but not eating a tree. What was the big deal about the tree? What was so bad about that? What was the logic behind the prohibition? God says, you can do anything. It's paradise, but you can eat that tree. What was so bad about that?

Here's what's so bad about that. What if God had actually given Adam an even explanation? You can see Adam Eve walking into the tree and saying, well, what's so bad about eating this tree? God said, well, if you eat the tree, there will be infinite suffering and misery and death for the rest of the human history. And they would have gone, never mind. There's a whole, I mean, the rest of the world, there's all these other trees.

But you know what? The reason God didn't give them the explanation is crucial to why the decree was so important in what it was all about. If he had given them the explanation and they said, oh, I'm not gonna eat the tree, why, because cost-benefit analysis. It's not worth it.

That's not really obedience, is it? That's cost-benefit analysis. That's self-interest. That you're still in the driver's seat. No, no, no, here's what's going on. God was saying to Adam and Eve, my children, I am God. And your life is a gift to you. And this world is a gift to you. And I want you to live as if I'm God and that you are living by my power. I want you to live as if this world is a

gift and therefore not your possession to do with any way you want. I want you to see that your lives are a gift for me and therefore not yours and there's something you can do with any way you want. And therefore, don't eat that tree and this is your chance. You can either choose to treat me as God and to treat your life and the world as if it belongs to me. And therefore, you have to use it as I direct, or you can put yourself in the place of God. You can act as if your life is yours and that you generated it. You can act as if this entire world is yours and that you can use it any way you want. You can treat me as God, or you me in yourself in the place of God.

And see, the serpent knows that because the serpent says, take the tree, what does he say? And you will be like God. And that's what Adam and he do. And what's important for us to see is you need to look beyond all the rules. You've got to look through the rules. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't commit adultery, don't do fornication, don't spend all your money on yourself, don't be selfish. All the things the Bible says, there's the rules. But behind the rules is this, don't put yourself in the place of God. Obey the rules because you're not God.

God says, obey my rules not because of cost benefit analysis, not because you see why, but because I'm God. Do you think, do you realize that virtually everything that's wrong with us in this world is you and I putting ourselves in the place of God? This is the problem. I mean, on the one hand, it's not that hard to see the killing, murder, murder, that kind of thing, which is awful, of course, and happens all the time, every, all over the place in the world every day.

That's certainly putting yourself in the place of God. But have you ever thought about your anxiety? Some of us are eaten up with anxiety. Some of us are going to the doctor because of the way in which it's corroding our bodies. We're so anxious, why? I can, I'll speak for myself, you've heard me say this before. I get anxious because I have an idea

of how my life has to go, how the church has to go, how things have to go in history, and I'm afraid that God who's in charge of history isn't going to get it right. He's not going to do it the way it needs to be. I know better, what am I doing? Why am I eating with anxiety? I'm in the place of God. See, this is the sin behind these other sins. This is the thing that's staining us. Because of the mistrust, we put ourselves in the place of God. I can't trust God, so I got to do it myself. You know, how do I deal with worry? I deal with worry by saying, I don't know,

God knows. I pull myself a little bit out of that seat of the place of God and I start to feel better. And you know, by tomorrow, I'll be back. But see, from anxiety on the one hand to murder, on the other hand, to grudges, if you won't forgive somebody, because you're putting yourself in a place of God. You think you know what they deserve. How do you know? You think you have the right to see them until they get what they deserve. How do you don't have the right?

You're putting yourself in the place of God. All of our problems are coming because we've done what the serpent asked us to do. Now here you know what this means. Let's get down to get down to Nitty Gritty. One thing that New Yorkers hate doing, they don't mind obeying the will of God. They see what the Bible says, you know, or things are, they don't mind obeying the will of God as long as it makes sense to them. But if they don't, if they feel like this is not very progressive or this doesn't meet my needs, you know who William Borden is, you probably don't. William Borden grew up in Chicago in the late 19th century and

went off to Yale in the 1890s, I believe. He was, yes, he was one of those boardents. He was extremely wealthy, the boardents dairy. He was a dairy milk family, part of that family, and he was the heir of a great wealth. And when he was at Yale, he sensed God's call to the mission field. And he decided that he was going to go to North China and work amongst Mongols and Chinese people, and he was very, very dangerous at the time. And when he announced to his family,

he was going to go to the mission field, going to missionary work, this was appalling to everybody. A man of his stature, of his wealth, of his station in society didn't do that. He got opposition from his family. He got opposition from his class of people, but he was absolutely resolute. And when he graduated from Yale,

he gave his entire inheritance, which is that time, was a million dollars, which was a heck of a lot of money to mission and agencies. He gave it away. And now in relative poverty, moved to Cairo to learn Arabic. And just out of college, you know, and now in relative poverty moved to Cairo to learn Arabic. And just out of college, you know, his whole life ahead of him, bright, gave away.

And within a few weeks he had contracted, or contracted spinal meningitis, contact the spinal meningitis, and with a few weeks after that he was dead. And scratched on an ordinary piece of paper, which he wrote in his diary, as he lay dying, found in his bedroom after he died, where these three phrases, no reserve, no retreat, no regrets.

No reserve, no retreat, no regrets. Now why wouldn't he have written his diary? God, what are you doing? All my obedience, all my commitment, all of my promise, all of my money, all this preparation. Why would I die now? What possible good, what are you doing? I don't know.

No reserve, no retreat, no regrets. Why? Because he didn't obey the will of God for reputation, he didn't obey the will of God for results, he didn't obey the will of God for results, he didn't obey the will of God for impact, he obeyed the will of God because for God's sake, just for God's sake, not because it made sense, not because he understood it,

just because it was God, because God is God and He wasn't. Don't you see that this, that, is the ultimate deconstruction of the human will to power that's ruining the world. If you say, I'm gonna be religious or I'm gonna believe in God, I'm gonna obey as long, but it's cocked, it's part of a career move.

It's part of a way of helping you, get the inner strength so you can get out and do all the things. There's gotta be at some point, I'm doing this because God says so, because He's God and I'm not, period. That's the ultimate deconstruction of the human will for power, which is serpent got into our system and poisoned us with. And even though I'm not saying that, you know,

we important, you know, overcame sin in his human nature, but in that one act where he was faithful to the end, he completely overturned the will of the serpent. He disbelieved the lie that you can't trust God. He refused the action of putting himself in the place of God. And by the way, we happen to know that he ended up inspiring thousands and thousands of other missionaries over the next generation to go into missions. But he didn't know that, and you don't have to know that. See, this is the stain, this is the thing

that's come into our lives. And next week, in the next couple weeks, we're gonna see how this plays out, but we wanna end with this. What does God do? Well, here's the end. At the very end, versus eight and nine, you see the rest of the history of the human race

in a nutshell. You know that? The rest of the entire history of the world in a nutshell. And then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in 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? Please notice two things.

The first thing is we are now hiders. We are hiders. If you take that idea and go back over your entire life and think about it, rethink your life in terms of that, you'll see a lot. It'll be an illuminating exercise. Because we don't trust God, we now hide from ourselves, we cannot bear to know who we really are. We can't have unrealistic honest appraisal ourselves. We hide from ourselves. That's what therapy is all about. Therapists, it wasn't for verse 8.

We wouldn't even have a job therapist. We hide from ourselves. We hide from each other, spend dishonesty, but most of all, we hide from God because in the presence of God, we see what we don't want. We're hiding. We're running from the truth, from God, from each other, from our very selves. We'll look at more of that in the next couple of weeks. But the other thing which is so remarkable is that while we hide, according to these texts, God seeks.

It's our nature to hide. It's God's nature to seek. God comes back saying, where are you now? Does he really need information? Does he really not know what happened? Of course not. But if he knows what happened, what's he doing? He's engaging. He in love, he's coming after them, in love, he's counseling them, he's trying to get them to answer. And we learn two things. The first thing we learn is we hide God seeks if we ever find God's cause God found us. And there's that little hymn that goes like this. It is not that I did choose thee, for Lord that could not be, this heart would still refuse

thee, had style not chosen me. My heart owns none before thee, for thy rich grace I thirst. This knowing, if I love thee, thou must have loved me first. Anybody who ever finds faith with God feels like that. This knowing, if I love thee, thou must have loved me first. You must have come after me. I never would have come after you. That's just a fact.

That's the Bible from the very beginning of the end, teaches that. But more importantly, this God going out in love finds its ultimate expression in Jesus Christ, because it's in Jesus Christ that all the things the serpent gave us are dealt with. Jesus comes back and smashes the serpent's head,

because he deals with a tree, he deals with a lie, and he even deals with a joke here. First of all, how does Jesus Christ do with a tree? In the garden it gets seminy, he's struggling. Here's a garden. See, centuries later, after Adam and Eve are struggling in the garden over a command about a tree, centuries later, Jesus is in the garden,

and he's struggling over a command about a tree. It's called the cross. And he knows that he has got to go to the cross and die for our sins and pay the penalty that we owe, And he's struggling. But think about this. Adam and Eve were in a bright sunny garden. And God said, oh, baby about the tree and you will live.

And they didn't. And Jesus Christ was in a dark garden. And God said, oh, baby, about the tree and you'll be crushed. And he did. For us. For us. Here's what he did. He climbed the tree of death

and turned that tree of death across into a tree of life for you and me. He climbed the tree of death and turned that tree of death the cross into a tree of life for you and me. He climbed the tree of death and turned that tree of death the cross into a tree of life for you and me. And there's the reversal of the tree sin. What's the tree sin? Human beings, us putting ourselves were only God deserves to be.

Putting ourselves in the place of God. But the tree salvation is God putting himself where we deserve to be on the cross. See, the original tree sin was us putting ourselves really God deserved to be taking prerogatives and only God deserves to have, putting ourselves in the place of God, but the tree salvation, which is a salvation of Jesus Christ's death on the cross.

The tree salvation is God coming down and putting himself or we deserve to be and taking it for us. And that not only deals with the tree, but that deals with the lie. See, the lie is you can't trust God. And all the poison, all the poison in your life is because you don't believe God loves you.

You don't believe in the grace of God. You don't believe it. Well, what's going to overcome that? Well, I just believe in God of love. That will never overcome it. That's too weak. It's weak to you. It won't work. This is the only thing that will

overcome it. You have to see Jesus Christ climbing a tree of death and turning that tree of death for him into a tree of life for you and me. That will finally begin to take the toxins out of your soul and you'll finally start to actually believe that God loves you. And this is the only thing that will take that out. It's the only crowbar strong enough to wedge out of your heart the belief that basically I'm on my own. But lastly, Jesus even deals with the joke.

He turns the sneer into something else. Dr. David Martin Lloyd Jones used to say that the way in which he could tell the difference between a person who was a Pharisee, who believed that they were saved because of their good works, because they lived a good life, and a Christian who understood the gospel of grace, the way he could tell was ask them, are you a Christian? And if you ask if a Pharisee, or a moralistic person, are you a Christian, the person gets very, what do you mean, of course?

Why would you even ask? How dare you ask? But if you ask anybody who understands the Gospel of Grace, are you a Christian? They laugh. They say, yes. What a joke, me a Christian, but it's true. See, if you're not a joke to yourself that you're a Christian, but it's true. See, if you're not a joke to yourself that you're a Christian, that God is in the middle of your life, that God is using you, that God is, if that doesn't make you laugh, you don't understand the gospel. It's a whole different kind of laughter than the laughter of the serpent.

Jesus Christ has dealt with a tree, he's dealt with a lie, and he's even dealt with a sneer and turned it to laughter. Let's pray. Our Father, we've got a lot to to to plow through this next month as we try to understand how we got to the way we to be the way we are and as we begin to try to understand the various aspects of that and to know how to try to overcome it using the grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we pray that you'd be with us, and we pray that you will remind us

of what a great joke it is that we belong to you, because of your grace. Help us to smile and help us to laugh at that. Help us to rejoice for the rest of our lives that your son did what he did. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller.

If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 2008 and 2009. 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. Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.