Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Pierced For Our Transgressions

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Isaiah 52 is the best chapter in the whole Bible to explain what happened on the cross. We know that because the New Testament writers were constantly referring back to it. It was the basis for their understanding of what happened on the cross.  As I stand as a preacher before this text, I not only see too much in it to tell you, I feel too much about it to express to you. Therefore, I want to give you a due sense of the solemnity of this text. I want you to exercise the mental equivalent of taking your shoes off, because this is a holy place. Looking at each of the five stanzas, it teaches us to 1) understand the mixture, 2) accept the ordinariness, 3) realize the magnitude of the love, 4) commit to justice, 5) live out of and live off of the principle. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 21, 2010. Series: The Songs of the Servant (from Isaiah). Scripture: Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. If someone asked you what Jesus' mission on earth was, what would you say? Today, Tim Keller is preaching from the book of Isaiah to help us understand the mission and purpose of Christ while he was on earth, and how it can transform our lives today. Thank you for joining us. us. The scripture reading is taken from Isaiah chapter 52 verse 13 through chapter 53 verse 12. See my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness, so will he sprinkle

many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing and his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before

her shears is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants, for he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth, yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

And though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

This is God's word. We're looking at the last chapters of Isaiah, and at what Isaiah prophesies as the servant of the Lord. This is a mysterious figure that is to come in the future, according to Isaiah, and he's going to bring the salvation of God. And of course the New Testament identifies the servant of the Lord as Jesus himself. Now this, what you just heard read, is the most famous of the servant songs. And in some ways it poses a horrible prospect for a preacher.

Let me just be personal. This is the chapter in the whole Bible explaining the best single chapter to explain what happened on the cross. And the reason we know that is because the New Testament writers were constantly going back to it, referring to it, or alluding to it so often, it really was the basis for their understanding of what happened on the cross. And so as I stand as a preacher before this text, I not only see too much in it to tell you, I feel too much about it to express to you.

And therefore, I'm telling you this not just to, you know, because it's a good idea to be honest, but also to give you a due sense of the solemnity of what you are looking at. I want you to exercise the mental equivalent, the mental equivalent of taking your shoes off, because this is a holy place. There's five stanzas of three verses each, and all I can do is to give you the kind of birds-eye view of the text by showing you the one main lesson for each stanzas.

There's five stanzas, there's five points, five main lessons. Here they are. First of all, verses 12 to 13, 14, 15, which is actually at the end of chapter 52. The first stanza's lesson is you have to understand the mixture. You must understand the mixture. What mixture? Well, this. Look at verse 13.

He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. My servant will act wisely, and the word wisely means successfully. He will triumph. He will get it done. But then verse 14 says that when they looked at him, they were appalled. And the word appalled is a very strong word. It means to be shattered. It's actually a word that can be used to mean a city that has just been invaded and destroyed, turned to rubble. And when it's used of a person, for a person to be appalled, means to be so shattered by something they're looking at, so as to want to vomit. Well, what is it that makes them so shattered they want to vomit? We're told. His appearance was so

disfigured it was marred beyond human likeness. Here's what's happened to the servant of the Lord. He has been so disfigured by violence and torture that he doesn't look human anymore. He doesn't even look human. And to look at him is to be nauseated and need to vomit. And this is the servant of the Lord. What do we see here? We see incredible triumph and incredible defeat, incredible honor, and effectiveness, and unbelievable suffering. Now why is this the first lesson? The mixture. The mixture that will always happen in the lives of the servants of the Lord and people who God are using.

People who God's using. I can't tell you how often I've heard over the years people say, I thought God loved me, I thought God was working in my life, I thought God was really using me, but then all this horrible suffering happened to me. And now I know he couldn't be. You see the premise?

If God was really using me, if he was really loving me, he wouldn't let, he might be let, you know, some difficulties, but not terrible things. And all I want to say is, look at Jesus. Look at Jesus, look at this incredible mixture, not only in his life, but in, look at any of the sermons of the Lord in the Bible. It's always enormous, sunshine and storm, of the Lord in the Bible. It's always enormous sunshine and storm, success and defeat, great joy and horrible misery, all mixed. But why? Well, we can't see usually. Remember the story of Joseph? He's sold into slavery by his brothers, and then he's a falsely accused and actually thrown into a dungeon. He's not just a slave, but now he's in prison.

And there's like 20 years in which nothing goes right for this man. Every single prayer he sends up is just turned away. But the perspective you get by reading the book of Genesis and the story of Joseph, the perspective is that you really begin to see that unless all those things happen to him, all of them, he himself would not have been saved from being proud and stuck up and miserable. His brothers would never have been changed and redeemed out of being violent and bitter people. His family never would have actually have perished in a famine if Joseph hadn't gone through all of that. So he had become a wise and great person who rose up to become the

Prime Minister of Egypt and prepared the world for a famine and saved everybody. But not only that, but even at the end of Joseph's life, he was able to begin to see why terrible things had happened to him and how this was all part of the way which God was working in his life. But only we, reading thousands of years later, realize how important it was for the children of Jacob to come down into Egypt, to become a great nation, to be prepared, to be the vehicle for the salvation of God to the world. The point of the matter is you never really know by looking at your own life why in the world these horrible, terrible things are happening. But you do look at Jesus because he's the servant of the Lord in this horrible mixture, this astounding

mixture of light and darkness, of success and defeat, of sunshine and storm is always there in the lives of the great servants. So understand the mixture. And don't you dare say, well if God really loved me and was really working in my life, he wouldn't let these terrible things happen to me. Understand this, that God's wise, redemptive love in your life is completely compatible with very rough, difficult experience. That's the first lesson, first stanza. The second stanza is verses one to three. And the lesson of that stanza is, accept the ordinariness. Understand the mixture, and now accept the ordinariness. What do you mean?

Well, if you look at verse one to three, we learn that Jesus Christ, before he was beaten to a pulp, was just unimpressive. It says he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that would draw you to him. He was despised, and the word despised means to be taken lightly, to be made light of, to be laughed at. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Now what is going on here? Here's what's going on. When you sell yourself, when you're promoting yourself, when you're doing interviews, whatever, you have to show people in your resume, you have to show them indicators of future success, don't you? People are looking for predictors.

Look at where I went to school, look at what I've done, look at my talents, look at my scores, look at this, look at that. These are indicators of future success. Well, I want you to know that Jesus had none of them. None of them. He didn't have looks, he didn't have money, he didn't have connections, he didn't have credentials, he didn't have cultural power, or he didn't have any of the things

that the culture thinks are power. Nothing. He was utterly unimpressive. Remember that place? I mean, you wouldn't because you're not my age, but not most of you. But, you know, there's the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Superstar. It's a place where Pilate meets Christ for the first time and says, oh, so this is Jesus Christ. I'm really quite surprised. You look so small, not a king at all. And that's what this text is saying.

What does that mean? Well, in the Scriptures, you'll see that when Jesus shows up at Nazareth, his hometown, they say, who's this? He thinks he's a big cheese, but my gosh, we know him. We saw him grow up. I wiped his nose. I changed his diapers. Do the head diapers, then? Probably not. But the point is, you know him, we saw him grow up. I wiped his nose. I changed his diapers. Do the head diapers then?

Probably not. But the point is, you know what I'm saying. In other words, there's a commentator, Bill Lane, in the Gospel of Mark that looks at that passage in Mark 3, I think it is, where they're all despising him. He says he hasn't gone to school, he doesn't have the credentials. What makes you think he's going to be successful? And Bill Lane says their eyes could not penetrate the veil of ordinariness around him. Now the problem is, many people, as I just said, under point one, are, they turn aside because they can't believe God could use suffering in their lives. They believe

that that's just not, with no way. That means God doesn't love me. But the second reason I see a lot of people turn aside is because they don't understand the ordinariness of the way in which God usually deals with us. They want the spectacular, they want the dramatic, they want the sudden. And that's not ordinarily the way God works. He works through ordinariness. Let me give you three very quick examples. For example, a lot of us in guidance, we want God to guide us.

And we want a revelation, we want a voice, we want strong feelings that I just know this is the right one, oh Lord, give me this incredible peace in my heart. My experience after 35 years of both being a Christian and it's been that long to be a pastor, pretty close, yeah, 35 years of being a pastor, maybe 30, almost 30 years, 40 years of being a Christian is this. The way God guides you, study your Bible, study it day in and day out, get to know it, read every chapter over, over, over.

It's a discipline, it's just a matter of doing it, doing it, doing it until you know it so well and its themes and its principles and even its attitudes so permeate you that when you make decisions, it just guides you whether or not you can say chapter and verse. You just become wise in the word. And guess what? That's the normal way in which God guides you. Not the spectacular, not the voice from heaven. Or here's another example. A lot of us just want God to change us like that. Get rid of our problems. Get rid of our bad habits.

Just dramatic. I want to be liberated. I want to feel something. I want the feelings to go away, the bad feelings. You know the place in 2 Corinthians 12, I think it is, where Paul says, I prayed to God over and over and over again to take the thorn in my flesh away. Now, we don't really know what the thorn in the flesh is. It's a metaphor. But it's not the same as a spear in the heart. In the spear in the heart is a real problem.

You die. A thorn in the flesh, a thorn in your side is just a pain and it's an irritation, but you can keep on moving. But what Paul is talking about is something that is very painful and very difficult and very nagging, and he's prayed over and over and over again to God, and he's saying, oh, Lord, will you please take it away? And what does God say? No. Why? God says, this is 2 Corinthians 12, I guess, my power is made perfect in weakness.

In other words, he says, if you want my power in your life, you think it's going to come in dramatically. No. It comes by teaching you patience, the day in and day out. That thorn is going to humble you. That thorn is going to strengthen you. That thorn is going to make you lean on me. Look at verse one. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

What they're saying is, it's unbelievable that the arm of the Lord is a metaphor for God's power. The main embodiment of the power of God in the world is through Jesus, is through this servant. Yet he doesn't look like what the world thinks of his power as at all. If you want God's power in your life, we think it's gonna come in with guns of blazing.

Instead, he gives you irritations, irritating people, irritating colleagues at work, irritating siblings. He gives you people that are just a pain, they're a thorn in the side. And you say, Lord, why can't you change me, or why can't you change them, or why can't you just change the situation?

And he says, don't you understand my power works? It works through ordinary stuff, ordinary day in and day out, leaning on me, learning patience, learning humility. We want it spectacular. Let me give you one more example. A lot of the reason why many of us turn aside because we just don't accept the way God deals with us through such ordinars accept the way God deals with us through such ordinariness is we don't like how ordinary other Christians are. See, most of us, at least when you're new in faith and haven't grown much, you think you're really pretty special. And when you show up at church, you

really don't want... I mean, everybody feels like, you know, there's a certain level of smart and hip and cool and neat and decent. And I really don't want to be dealing with people that are further down the scale. And when you show up at church, there's lots of people who are further down the scale. And so you say, you know, if Christianity is supposed to be this great thing, you know, why are there so many Christians out there that are so unimpressive?

That I don't esteem, that I tend to despise, or at least I did, that I have't esteem, that I tend to despise, or at least I did, they have no beauty or majesty to attract me. And we get turned off because of the ordinariness of other Christians. They just seem very ordinary, flawed, kind of normal people, many. The Screwtape Letters was a book written by C.S. Lewis. It's a funny book and it's a book of a devil screw tape who's writing a junior devil on how to tempt human beings

and screw them up spiritually. And the guy he's writing, screw tape is writing a junior devil and it turns out that his client has converted. And screwi says, well, that sounds really bad. But there's hope because he's starting to go to church and he's going to meet other Christians. And the ordinariness of those other Christians will be something that you can use. And this is what he says. He says, work hard then on the disappointment and anti-climax which is certainly coming to your client during his first weeks going to church. For when he gets into his pew, I know some of you I'll explain what pews are later, but what when he when he gets to his pew and looks around him

provided that any of those people sing out of tune or smell bad or have double chins or odd clothes Your client will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore somehow be ridiculous. The enemy, that's Jesus, allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have gotten married and then begin the real task of learning to live together. Jesus, the enemy, takes this risk because he has

this curious fantasy of making all these disgusting human vermin into what he calls his free lovers and sons, as the word he uses. Desiring their freedom, he therefore refuses to carry them by their mere affections and habits to any of the goals which he sets before them and therein lies our opportunity We want the spectacular we want that we want we want the you know, we want the Dramatic we want the climactic we want the instantaneous and he uses the ordinariness He uses people that have no beauty or majesty to attract you He's his people that have no beauty or majesty to attract you. Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth, and his story has been told in hundreds of different ways.

Can anything more be said about him? In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal, calling each of us to look anew at our relationship with God. Jesus the King is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the transforming love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. That's

gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. It's point two. So understand the mixture, accept the ordinary. Thirdly, realize the magnitude of the love. Verses four, five, and six. I want you to see the voluntariness of Jesus' love. When it says in verse four, he took up our infirmities. Do you know that word is even stronger than it looks in English? It doesn't, even though it, this doesn't say

that merely our sins and sorrows were put on Jesus. It says he lifted them off of us and took them on himself. That's what that word means. His death was absolutely voluntary. So in John chapter 10, Jesus says, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down on my own accord. He says, well, that's nice, but there's been other voluntary deaths, not really. I've heard of people, you say, that, you know, gave their life rescuing someone. Well, listen, you realize that for the rest of us, we can choose

the circumstances of our death, but we don't choose to die because you're going to die. That's happening to you. It's unavoidable. But Jesus didn't have to die at all. Death had no rights over him. Eternal life is what he deserved. He did not. Jesus Christ's death is the only truly and completely voluntary death. And you know what that means? What could have bound the limbs of the maker of the universe to the cross? What would be strong enough to hold down the arms of the one who created the stars? What would be strong enough to bind the limbs of the maker of the universe to the cross? Nails? Chains? No. Nothing but his love for you.

The voluntariness of Jesus' death shows the depth of his love. And also, if I can look ahead to the last stanza, there's another place where he says, when he sees his offspring in verse 10, that's us, the people who believe in him. It says, he will see the results of his suffering and be satisfied. Oh my gosh, do you know what that's saying? You know what he's saying? What was the suffering? He lost everything.

He was crushed. He was marred beyond human likeness. He didn't even look human anymore. And he lost his father and he lost the world that he was the Lord of the world. He lost the universe. He lost his glory. He lost his beauty. He lost everything. And yet he looks at you and me and says it was worth it. What does that mean? I lost all of this. But I got this. You and me. And it's worth it. You know what that means? He loves us more than all of this. He loves you more than the world. He was willing to let everything go in order to get us.

Do you understand the magnitude? Do you realize the magnitude of that love? When people are dying, as a pastor I've talked to people who are dying, and I've sometimes referred to this, one of the things I learned is that people know at the end of their life that what life is really about was relationships and love. People who are dying never say, I regret I didn't spend more time at the office. What do they regret? They always have regrets with with regard to relationships and love. But the love that most, the love that fills your heart the most is when someone you admire and respect to the sky loves and admires you. That's heaven. And therefore

there's never been a love that satisfies the human heart more than this. Do you live in the knowledge of that? As her J.I. Packer some years ago say. Are you melted by spiritual understandings of how much he loves you? Do you live in the reality of it? Is it a walking reality? Can you breathe it? Can you feel it? Can you taste it? Can you touch it? Do you know how different Can you taste it? Can you touch it? Do you know how different you'd be if you realized the magnitude of his love? That's the third stanza.

The lesson of the fourth stanza, you must commit to justice. Understand the mixture, accept the ordinariness, realize the magnitude of the love, and commit to justice. Verse seven says he was oppressed. But verse eight is very clear. He was oppressed by oppression and judgment. He was taken away.

What does that mean? In other words, it was a miscarriage of justice. It was a kangaroo court. It was trumped up charges. It was wrong. Why? It says there was no deceit in his mouth. He had done no violence. He was treated as if he was a criminal. He was a criminal.

He was a victim of injustice. All the religions of the world have pictures of God, but only the biblical God was a victim of human injustice. I was reading a book recently that put up three examples of garden variety injustice that are happening all over the world to millions of people. A place in Asia where a man is in jail because the mayor of the town wanted his land and he wouldn't sell, so he just found some reasons to put him in jail. He's been in jail for two years.

And even though by the laws of the land he shouldn't be in jail and there have been five court orders to release him. All the prison officials are dependent on the mayor, the local mayor, for their jobs and so he's still there. Or there's a place in the Honduras where it was a man who was in Indian living in a very remote part of the Honduras where the government just didn't care, it just didn't give any kind of help or services, largely through racism. And he was part of a demonstration in the capital to try to ask the government to please come and help us and do things for us that you're doing for everybody else. And soldiers fired on the crowd and he was hitting it in the face and in the leg and

he no longer can work and as a result he's lost his job, he's lost his home, he's lost his land, his's lost his home, he's lost his land, his family is homeless, garden variety. And there was a story from a man who talks about the inner city of, not here, but I don't know, I mean it was some American city. And when he was a college student he led a Bible study for kids in a housing project in the summer. Went well. Then he was a college student he led a Bible study for kids in a housing project

in the summer. Went well. Then he went back to college and at Christmas break he comes back and he talks to them and finds the kids at Christmas break to see how the Bible study going. They said, oh, sad thing was Eva who used to come to our Bible study has dropped out. She's not coming anymore and she's working as a prostitute. So the young man, his name was Robert, was very upset and he tracks her down and finds her and goes to her apartment and says, Eva, how could you do this? You were walking with God and you were in the Bible study and she says, I was forced. I was forced. They forced me. And they said they beat up my father or they would turn him in and he'd go to jail.

They forced me to work as a prostitute. And Robert says, but why didn't you go get some protection from them? Why didn't you go to the local police? And he said to him, you are the most idiotic, stupid, do-gooder I've ever seen. Who do you think they are? They are the local police. This is garden variety injustice. Now what do you have in this passage? Here's what you have. If God was so willing to identify with the victims of injustice that he was willing to pay this terrible cost, then we should do the same thing. If we know what he did in order to save us, he's so identified with human victims of injustice

that he paid a terrible cost. We know that if we take on the forces that create injustice in this world, we're gonna probably pay a cost too, but we're gonna do it, aren't we? If you understand the cross. So, understand the mixture, accept the ordinariness, realize the love, commit to justice, and lastly, live out of and live off

of the principle. What is the principle? The principle that's in the last stanza but actually it runs all the way through is substitutionary sacrifice. Jesus Christ's death is not just violent and not just voluntary, it's vicarious, which means over and over and over again, ten times in this passage we're told that Jesus took upon himself something that wasn't his but was ours. Verse 4, our sorrows went on to him. Verse 5, our punishment went on to him. in verse 11 Which by the way Jesus quotes in the upper room in Luke 22 He looks at the disciples the clueless disciples who don't know what's going on and he says it is written

He shall be numbered among the transgressors verse 12 of Isaiah 53 Jesus says it is written. He will be numbered among the transgressors and he says, this must be fulfilled in me. The very last night of his life, he's looking at Isaiah 53 and saying this is what's about to happen to me. What does it mean to be numbered with? What does it mean to be counted with? It means to be treated as. Jesus was treated as if he had done all the things that we have done. And so what's the result? It says in verse 12, but in verse 11 it says, by my knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, justify many, means to make righteous the many. What does that mean? If Jesus was treated as if he had done all the things we've done, then when you believe in him, you are treated as if

you've done all the things he's done. You are treated in God's eyes as if you were as great, as perfect, as good as him. And the principle of the whole Bible has been summed up in John Stott's words. John Stott says, is the principle of the whole Bible has been summed up in John Stott's words. John Stott says, as the principle of the whole Bible, substitution. Sin is you and me substituting ourselves for God, putting ourselves where only God should be, which is in charge of your life. That's sin. And salvation is God substituting himself for us, putting himself where only we should be on the scaffold, on the cross, in the dock.

Now once you know that principle, live out of it, live off of it. What do we mean live it out? Live it out. Live out of it means take substitutionary sacrifice and live out in your life, in every era of your life, like this. If you're a parent, you know this. If you say, I don't want to lose my freedom just because I've got children. I want to have the same kind of freedom.

I want to have as much fun. I want to have as much control over my life as I did before. And if you do that, you'll screw up your kids horribly. Because they won't see you, they'll grow up feeling unloved. And therefore, it's them or you, either you can lose your freedom, and they'll grow up strong and have their emotional freedom because they'll grow up strong and self-sufficient. Or you can keep your freedom and do anything you want, and they'll grow up enslaved to all sorts of fears and insecurities. It's them or you, but that's how it works. All real love is a substitutionary sacrifice.

Do you see that? Or look at the poor out there. If you hold on to all your wealth and all your time and all your security, and you don't invest it in them, they won't be lifted up. See, it's them or you. You can hold on to all your wealth and all your time and all your expertise and they'll have nothing or you can plow it into them.

It's them or you. If they're going to be lifted up you have to be willing to empty yourself. That's substitutionary sacrifice. But you'll find that if you empty yourself of riches for the poor, a new kind of richness, a real kind of richness permeates your life. Or if you, parents, if you give up your freedom and really give up your freedom to serve your children

as they grow, a new kind of freedom permeates your life. You give up freedom and you get real freedom. You give up wealth, but you get real wealth, and that's the principle of substitutionary sacrifice. And go to God and give your life to Him, and you'll get your life back. And that's why C.S. Lewis can say at the end of Miracle Christianity, this is the principle that runs from all life top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life, and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions

and favorite wishes every day. Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Listen, nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing that you have never given away will ever really be yours. Nothing that you have never given away will never really be yours. That's the principle here. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ

and you will find Him and with Him everything else thrown in. So live out the principle of substitutionary sacrifice, but also live off of what he's done. Live off of this. What do I mean by that? You know in Beauty and the Beast, that story, there is a man who is disfigured beyond human likeness. He's done it to himself, but he's been marred so that he's appalling to look at, right? I would like you to know, it's a simple fact that an awful lot of us feel like if people

felt it was really on the inside, they'd be appalled. And so we're desperately trying to create a beauty for the eyes of others. For some of you, you're trying very, very hard to really look good. It's really important that you look good, physically. And it's quite a burden. For many of us, that was never a real option. And therefore, we have worked on talent and we have worked on accomplishment or making money or something like that.

And we're desperately, desperately trying to get people to feel like that we're attractive, you see. We're attractive. We're something you, you know, we're trying to create a beauty. Inside we feel ugly and by the way, counselors will say this kind of person is disproportionately present in the population of New York City where people come in order to be ambitious, but very often it's because they're trying to create a beauty that they inside feel they don't have. Well get this. In the Beauty and the Beast story, remember what the girl does? She kisses the beast in order to transform and save him.

But Jesus Christ goes one better. He has to become a beast in order to turn you and me into beauties. He was disfigured. He lost his beauty. He became a beast. So that his righteousness can be transferred to us so that in the eyes of the one person in the world who cares, matters, the God, the Father. You look like a beauty now. And someday you'll be in actual beauty because it says in Ephesians 5, he's gonna turn us into something holy and beautiful and without blemish or stain, spotless.

Can you live in the light of the knowledge of your beauty in Christ? You embrace him and you can live off this principle all of your life. And then the more you sacrificially love other people because of the security you have in knowing how beautiful you are to God They will see his beauty in you They will see the arm of the Lord revealed But his pray Stan and let's pray

Our father But let's pray. Stand and let's pray. Our Father, how grateful we are for this text, actually. I'm going to just thank you for this chapter. It is the most complete, breathtaking, amazing, vast, and rich description of what your Son, Jesus Christ, did for us. And it should change us in every way. It helps us to deal with suffering. It helps us to understand the day in and day out ordinariness of our life. It invests the ordinary life with splendor. It shows us His love. It shows us our beauty

to you. It gives us a pattern, sacrificial love, substitutionary sacrificial love, a pattern to live out. It commits us to justice, it changes everything and now we pray that you would help us to be changed, not just be information but make it a living, bright reality to our hearts. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner.

Your partnership helps more people discover the truth of God's Word and the hope of the gospel. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 1990, 2003, and 2010. 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.