Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Praying Our Guilt

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Guilt and shame, having your heart broken under a sense of failure and general unworthiness—I feel this is probably more rampant in places like New York than anywhere else. Do you know why? Because we have so many successful people in New York, people who, in many ways are driven more acutely than other people by this fear of failure or unworthiness.  In Psalm 130, we see guilt and shame likened to a hole, to something we’ve sunk down in. And then we’re shown a way out that’s available for a person who’s in that hole of guilt and shame. And then we see a little bit about the process of how you climb out.  So let’s look at: 1) sinkhole of guilt and shame, 2) the rope that’s given to a person sinking in guilt and shame, and 3) the climb out. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 12, 2000. Series: Psalms – The Songs of Jesus. Scripture: Psalm 130:1-8. 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.

Thank you for listening to the Gospel in Life podcast. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, and your gift to Gospel in Life will help more people, both here locally and in other parts of the world, discover the life-transforming power of Christ's love and mercy. We ask that you prayerfully consider how God may be calling you to respond tomorrow to help Gospel in Life spread the Gospel. And know that any gift you give to Gospel in Life tomorrow helps shine the light of Christ's love into a world that needs it.

Because as we continue to see over and over again, the Gospel truly changes everything everywhere. Now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching. Psalm 130. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness. Therefore, you are feared.

I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord. More than watchmen wait for the morning. More than watchmen wait for the morning More than watchmen wait for the morning Oh israel put your hope in the lord for with the lord is unfailing love And with him is full redemption. You know, I missed verse eight. Listen with me. There's a verse eight That's my mistake. I did something wrong when I gave

them Pardon me That's my mistake. I did something wrong when I gave them pardon me Sorry about this my fault. There's an eighth verse 130 and a very important verse it is alright. Let me read you verse 7 and 8 together Oh Israel put your hope in the Lord For with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. He himself will redeem Israel for all their sins. I better keep that open for future reference. We've been looking at the Psalms briefly. We're going to do one more week. And each week we're

saying this. the Psalms give us a unique way to deal with our emotions and with our feelings. On the one hand, it's unique because on the one hand in religious circles amongst religious people, there is a fear of admitting and facing our feelings. Why? Because if you are trying to warrant God's blessing through a good record, if you are trying to warrant God, if you're trying to if you're trying to evoke God's blessing through the goodness of your record in your life, you are psychologically unable to admit dark, intense, turbulent feelings. You can't admit who you are. You can't look and see what's really in your heart. unable to admit dark intense turbulent feelings

you can admit who you are you can look and see what's really in your heart not if the whole year the whole basis for your understanding of who you are is i'm good i'm a good person i've got to get all together that's the only way i know god will listen to me so in religious circles these are there's a strong tendency to deny uh... to not want to look at feelings in secular circles there's a there's a strong tendency to deny, to not want to look at feelings. In secular circles there's the opposite mistake which is there's a tendency to simply see expression of feelings and discovery of feelings as a good in

itself and once you've found what those feelings are, well that's who you really are. But the Psalms says it is very bad and dangerous to either deny your feelings or vent your feelings, to either stuff your feelings or bow down to your feelings. We start every one of these psalm sermons by saying the psalms tell us we're supposed to pray our feelings, not just pray about our feelings, but to actually take them before God and pour them out in a pre-reflective way and process them in the presence of God, in the light of whoreflective way and process them in the presence of God in the light of who He is and who we are in the light of the realities that come to us

that bear down on us as we are in His presence. And next week we're going to do some summing up of this, but what we've been doing for the last several weeks is we've taken a particular feeling because so many of the Psalms process a particular feeling or strong emotion we looked at doubt We looked at sorrow and grief We've looked at fear and Each case we we we saw how we process that through prayer. It's almost like looking at God's counseling notebook, isn't it? But then today we could look at one I think we'll just call guilt and shame. Having your heart broken under a sense of failure, liability, and general unworthiness. Now,

this is something that I personally feel is probably more rampant in New York than anywhere else. You know why? Because we have so many successful people in New York. And why are so many successful people successful? Because in so many ways they're especially more acutely than other people driven by this sense of guilt and shame, of fear of failure, of liability or a sense of unworthiness. Now this particular psalm, it's got eight verses in it, not seven, and it's in it, and yet, in these wonderful eight verses, we actually see guilt and shame likened to a hole, to something we've sunk down in, and we're also shown a rope that you throw a person, that's available for a person who's in that hole of guilt and shame, and then we even see a little bit about the process of how you

climb out with that rope. So we have the sinkhole of guilt and shame. We have the rope that's given to a person sinking in guilt and shame and something about the climb out. Sinkhole, the sinkhole, the rope, and the climb out. Sinkhole is in verses 1 and 2, the rope is in verses 3, 4, and 7, 8, and the climb out is in verses 5 and 6. Let's go.

First of all, you notice that there's a vivid image here, and it has to do with sinking and standing. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand? Now, what's being spoken of here? First of all, this idea of sinking out of the depths or out of the deep is something that comes up in other places in the Psalms. So, for example, in Psalm 69, we read, Save me, O God, I'm up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold.

Psalm 40, which is a gratitude psalm. The psalmist says, he heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mire and the mud, and put my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. So what's going on here? He's talking psychologically. He's talking phenomenologically. He's talking about how it feels and He says I feel like I'm in quicksand. I feel like I'm in a mud sinkhole

I'm going down and I'm kicking my legs and I'm feeling and I'm grabbing and there's nothing to grab on I'm in a bottomless hole and the more I kick and the more I grab and the more I struggle the more I flounder the Faster, I'm sinking. I'm gonna die. I'm up to my neck Pretty vivid image and of, something that most of us can emotionally remember times in which we felt like that. But what is this guy, this psalmist, we don't know his name, what is he sinking in? He's sinking into guilt and shame. How do we know that? Well, notice verse 2. Generally speaking when you're going down in a sinkhole, you don't cry out for mercy, you cry out for help, you know, but he's crying out for mercy. And then when we get into verse 3,

we see what he's talking about. He says, I can't stand because of the sense of the weight of the record of my sins. And so he's talking about guilt and shame, a sense of failure, a sense of unworthiness, a sense of self-blame. And he feels like I'm just sinking, I'm smothering, I'm drowning, in a sense, in it. Now the first thing we have to immediately discuss and debate here is, is this relevant anymore? Here's a man just going down under guilt. Well, plenty of people could say, and they have a good case here, they could say, you know, that's the way it was in traditional cultures, when people lived in traditional cultures under traditional systems of morality and religion. People were so guilt-ridden

back then. This is different today. We live in a postmodern era in which guilt really isn't part of the sensibilities anymore. We live in an age of, you know, we can laugh about this, we live in an age of talk shows, of tabloids. We live in an age in which people now talk about things very freely that even just 20 or 30 years ago everybody would have been ashamed of and everybody would have felt so guilty about. You know, it was rather, it was fairly interesting to watch. I watched like the last five or ten minutes of a biography of, oh dear, who's the guy that was the, oh my goodness I've forgotten, who was the guy who was the star of Hogan's Heroes. Bob Crane, that's it. I keep thinking

wrong one. Bob Crane. And some of you may know, he died very tragically. Somebody killed him, but right afterwards what came out was that he was somebody who had a had a sex addiction and he went out and he he found prostitutes. He brought them back into a motel room and he filmed himself having sex with them. And I kind of remember, I think it was in the late 70s, when he was killed this came out. And it was in every place and it was a terrible scandal. And by the way, this is, I'm not really saying anything good or bad about this as you're going to see in a minute. There were some interviews with his children, Bob Green's children who now are looks like they're about my age actually

and they interviewed and they said you know the thing was so bad back in the seventies people thought that was still shameful and as a result everybody made us feel ashamed that our father did that sort of thing but nowadays nobody would be all that upset about such a thing. Now by the way you know there's a good and bad in this. I don't think it was very good at all for everybody to take those kids and to

make them feel terrible about their father. On the other hand, they're also saying something that says, as in Psalm 130, basically getting more and more obsolete. Who would feel guilty about such a thing? Why, you know, I mean, why feel that way? Don't we today live in a culture that says, you decide what's right or wrong for you. Don't let anybody put you on a guilt trip. Don't let your culture, don't let your parents, don't let your friends, don't let anybody, you decide what's right or wrong for you and march to that drummer. And more and more people are doing that and therefore more and more we're not going to struggle with a sense of guilt. Now, that's true as far as it goes.

Except we don't realize that the depths, according to the Bible, the depths that need atonement, the depths, these emotional spiritual depths, a feeling of sinking because I'm falling short and I'm failing and I'm unworthy, it's not only made, strictly speaking, of guilt. There are two words in the Bible that are used, neither of them are actually used here, though I think they're referred to in a sense. There's two words in the Bible that are very, very overlapping. One is guilt, another one is shame. Now, Dick Kaizen, a good book on this, Beyond Identity, points out that if you look through the Bible and you read carefully, you'll see that the opposite of the word guilt in the

Bible is what? Innocence. But the opposite of shame in the Bible is glory. Because in guilt, you're dealing with something very specific. I broke a rule. I've done something I shouldn't have done. But in shame it's something different. In fact, not only more general but even more positive. In shame we're not so much saying I've done something, I feel bad about something I've done. With shame I feel bad about something I am. I feel bad about what I am. In guilt we're concerned about the negative. Here's the rules I broke them. In shame, we're saying I aspire to be something. I had a vision of what I should be.

I have a sense of where I want to go and I failed. It's more general and in many ways more devastating. Just to make sure you understand the difference here and yet the overlap. If you tell a lie and you're caught, you can feel both guilt and shame. Just to make sure you understand the difference here, and yet the overlap. If you tell a lie and you're caught, you can feel both guilt and shame. They're both there. Why? First of all, you feel guilty because I broke a rule.

But on the other hand, you say, I didn't realize I was such a coward. You see, the lie not only covers you with guilt because you did something wrong that you know all your life was wrong wrong it's bad to lie. On the other hand it covers you with shame because you say I feel like I I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I had more integrity than that. I thought I was more courageous than that and I lied because I was scared. Guilt and shame are not quite the same and this is the reason why modern authors and modern thinkers are

recognizing the fact that even as the guilt seems to sort of go away, that means more and more people today say, because my moral standards are up to me, it gets harder and harder for anybody to feel guilty about a particular deed. In other words, it's easy to justify anything we do. Any particular thing we do, we can justify it. We say, well, you know, that's what you think is wrong, but in that culture it's wrong, but I think this. And yet we can't get rid of the sense of shame.

John Bratchaw, a few years ago, wrote a book called Healing the Shame that Binds Us, right? Flew off the shelves. Some years ago, many years ago now, Franz Kafka, famous writer, none of his books will ever be made into Disney films, I get back to him, in his diary said, the problem that modern people have now is that we feel like sinners, though independent of guilt. Now I of guilt. I read that over the years and I said that doesn't make any sense I could see why he might say we feel guilty even though we don't believe in sin

but no he's smarter than me he's right he says we feel like sinners even though independent of guilt and what he means is this we've gotten rid of the idea of guilt because there's no one personal there's no one thing that I feel like I've done wrong yet for some reason I still feel like there's something wrong with me. In fact, modern people have really in some ways screwed themselves badly because we have no way of knowing now what we're really doing, yet we aspire. Now why would this be true? Ernest Becker, a brilliant intellectual, secular intellectual, Pulitzer Prize winner,

died in the 70s. His last book, Escape from Evil, he was working hard to say, where does evil come from? Why do we do evil things? This is what he said, interestingly. He says, evil comes from our urge to heroic victory over our own vulnerability. It all comes because through a heroic victory in this life, we are attempting a visible testimonial to our cosmic importance." And then he actually says, which is probably the clearest thing of all that he says, he says, We are all born with a deep neurotic fear of insignificance

that we will have no effect on the world, and therefore we're driven to heroism. Now that, let me translate. Here's a man who didn't believe in God, yet he says one thing I know is absolutely sure that whether you have a good family or bad family, had good child-bearing or bad child-bearing, everybody grows up with a feeling that we're insignificant. Everybody's growing up with a sense that we are of no importance and we deeply aspire, he says, to do something enduring. We aspire to heroism. Interesting. He says the source of evil in the world is the need to do something heroic,

to achieve, to do something great. And as a way of why though? In order to deal with the fact that we feel very insignificant. And therefore what he's really saying is that in spite of no matter how much you try to get rid of rules and regulations and therefore even get rid of the idea of guilt, we all deep down inside feel like we need to achieve. We need to be courageous. We need to be bold. We need to be creative. We need to be self-donating. We need to be courageous. We need to be bold. We need to be creative. We need to be self-donating We need to do all these great things and we feel and we know we fall short of the glory Because glory is the word for significance glory is the word for worth and

Therefore we are still sinking There's no doubt in my mind and surely there should be no doubt in your mind, that in spite of the fact that people less and less are able to identify any particular thing they feel guilty about, the sense of shame, the sense of unworthiness, the sense of sinking under not being good enough, looking around and comparing yourself to other people and constantly beating yourself up, has that gone away? Isn't it weird? For the last 80 years, we've been doing everything we can to loosen the moral strictures, everything we can to say, look, you have to decide what's right or wrong for you. And most people do, at least in New York and at least in modern secular Western culture. And yet they're still sinking. They're still

going into the depths. Why? Becker's right. Even without guilt, Franz Kafka's right. Even without guilt, we will still have shame. In fact, without guilt, we will have no way of doing anything about our shame. In some ways, it's worse to be sinking in shame, sinking with this general sense of unworthiness. We have absolutely no way of knowing where it comes from. So the first thing we see is Psalm 130 is very relevant. There is a sinkhole. Many, many, many, many people are sinking into it.

What do we do about it? What do we do about the guilt and the shame? The sense that we are liable, that we're failures, that we've fallen short. In guilt, we've fallen short of the rules. In shame, we've fallen short of the vision. In guilt, we feel bad about what we've done. In shame we feel bad about who we are. Now what are we going to do about it? By the way, I know what the therapists say, and here's what they do. What they say is, don't feel guilty, just decide

what you want to be. That diminishes guilt and increases shame because who in the world is ever going to even achieve what they want to be? The more emphasis you put, at least the nice thing about rules, the nice thing about moralistic cultures, was the rules at least were doable. But whenever somebody says the only thing that matters, the only thing that matters is you decide what you want to be and you go for it. That's far worse than, say, the Ten Commandments. Considerably easier are the Ten Commandments.

And so Ernest Becker and Franz Kafka and everybody agrees, we're all sinking. If anything, the 20th century is making us sink worse. So now what do we do about it? Second thing the text tells us is that there is a rope thrown to us. There is a rope. That's what you need, by the way, in a sinkhole.

You don't need somebody else to come running in. Somebody dives in, I'll save you. You say, There is a rope. That's what you need, by the way, in a sinkhole. You don't need somebody else to come running in. You know, somebody dives in, I'll save you, you say, throw me a rope. I don't need you in here. Okay? We'll just go down faster. And, of course, there's an awful lot of people who feel like that's all we need. In other words, somebody says, you're sinking in guilt? Well, so am I. You're sinking in shame? Let's get together and talk about it. And you know, for... And I'll show you in a minute, the community is extremely important. But see, that's why this idea of the sinkhole is so fascinating when it comes to guilt and shame.

You can't get yourself out. And three people can't get themselves out. Because once you're in there, you can grab hold on each other, but you're all sinking. You might even sink faster. So what is the rope? The rope is something that actually has two strands, though if you look more carefully, you'll see the second strand has got two strands to it. So I didn't know whether to call it two or three, but here's where we go. The two things that the Bible tells us we have to grab onto, and you've got to grab onto both. You need a standard, and you need a new Redeemer.

That's the reason why I can't believe I left off verse 8. You need a standard, the record of sins, and then you need a new Redeemer. Put your hope, O Israel, in Him. He Himself will come to redeem. Now, what do I mean by that? I'll show you, then I'll go back and explain how the two are absolutely critical. The first one is you need a standard. Now, this might be obvious, but I need to show

you this. In verse 3, he says, if you kept a record of sins, now, we'll get back in a minute, the real point is, if you keep that record, but the one thing he's not denying, the psalmist is not denying that there is a record. He's saying, Lord, if you keep it, I don't know where I am. But the one thing he's not denying is that there is one. And therefore, what he has grabbed hold on, first of all, is that there's an objective standard by which I can judge my guilt. That there is an objective standard. Now, see, Franz Kafka, for example, I already hinted at this, Franz Kafka has a very, shows

what happens when you try to deal with shame, when you've gotten rid of a whole idea of guilt, when you try to deal with a sense of coming short, when we tell ourselves there is no objective moral standards. The great book on that is Franz Kafka's book, The Trial. It's an incredible book, I think. Again, you're never going to see Walt Disney make it into a movie, but here's what it's about. A man named Joseph Kay, who one day is arrested and for essentially years and years and years goes from hearing to hearing, interrogation to interrogation, house arrest to prison, waiting and so on. And he keeps saying, what am I charged with?

Well, it's very serious. But what is it? He's never told. All he knows is he's condemned. All he knows is that he's been charged. All he knows is everyone's treating him as if he's a very bad person, but nobody will tell him what it is. And he goes on and on and on and on until the very end his jailer kills him. And that's how it ends. And you can laugh and say, oh yeah, well listen, that is the modern person. Kafka's absolutely right. He says, here's the problem. We call it complexes. We call it bad child rearing. the problem. We call it complexes. We call it bad child rearing. We, we, we, we psychologize it. We sociologize it. We do everything we can and we do everything we can and yet we still have this sense of condemnation, of failure and we don't

know why anymore. And here's the reason why. When you feel guilt or shame, you have to make a decision to resist it or agree with it. This is the most important decision. You have to decide whether to resist it or agree with it. This month, we're excited to let you know about a brand new resource based on Tim Keller's best love books. Go Forward in Love, a year of daily readings from Timothy Keller, features a short passage each day from one of Dr. Keller's books to use for daily reflection. Each day's reading offers deep insight, biblical wisdom, and spiritual encouragement.

The passages are meant to lead you into worship, help you reflect on God's attributes, and encourage you to live more missionally. Go Forward in Love is our thanks when you give to Gospel in Life in December. To receive your copy, just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us share the love of Christ with more people. Now, everybody's going to have to agree with this. You mustn't resist all guilt. There are plenty of people who say, well, guilt's all bad.

All guilt is a bad thing. You should never feel guilty. It's all very bad because after all, all moral standards are subjective. Therefore, if you ever feel guilty, it's a subjective thing. It's a psychological thing. Get rid of it. But no, we don't agree with that. You can't say we have to resist all guilt. Shouldn't Hitler, if he ever felt guilt feelings, shouldn't he have resisted them? Wouldn't that have changed history? Yes. I think everybody says yes. If Hitler had any guilt feelings, he should have resisted them. I mean, if he felt guilt, he should not have resisted them. He should not. What he should have done instead, I'm sorry I said that wrong, he should not have

resisted his guilt feelings, you say. Well, you see, because when he felt guilty, he should have done instead, I'm sorry I said that wrong, he should not have resisted his guilt feelings you say. Well if, if, if, you see because when he felt guilty he should have said, there's something wrong I better change. You know he should have agreed with them. So we all agree number one that we can't resist all guilt. Some guilt is right. On the other hand we also have to agree we can't agree with all guilt. Some of the nicest people in your life, in fact you might be one of these, some of the nicest people in your life are people who are always out to help you, always want to work with you, so kind, so nice, always opening up and sacrificing for other people. You know why? They're utterly guilt driven people. Some of the nicest people indriven people. Some of the nicest

people in the world, some of the nicest people at Redeemer, some of the people who go into the ministry. They're so nice and they're so self-giving and they're so self-doubtful, they're driven by guilt. Every little thing bothers them. Every little thing they do wrong bothers them. And so we all say, yes, that's right, obviously you can't always, Jiminy Cricket's not right. You can't always let your conscience be your guide. So if we always agree, if we... we agree we mustn't always resist guilt, but on the other hand we mustn't always agree with guilt,

how will we decide when to do what? And the only answer is you have to have an objective moral standard. You've got to. If you don't believe that there is some way of judging whether your guilt is true and should be agreed with, so you confess it and then it's over. Or false so you resist it and you say, forget that, and then it's over. But unless you have some way of deciding, you can't deal with guilt. So the first thing you need is a standard. A perfect example of this is right here in verse 3, even though I think it's alright the way they translated it, they said, if you keep a record, oh Lord if you keep a record,

that's not literally what it says. The psalmist says, if you watch sins, it's really more, you know, it's interesting how often the Hebrew is always more anthropomorphic, more pictorial, more than our English language. What he's really saying is if you watch sins, and here's It's interesting how often the Hebrew is always more anthropomorphic, more pictorial, more than our English language. What he's really saying is if you watch sins, and here's what he's saying, the eyes of God are the only eyes that matter. That's it. See, in your parents' eyes, you feel ashamed. Why? Because they wanted you to make a lot of money and you never had that kind of career. Okay, let's test it. Your parents' eyes. Is that a sin

in God's eyes? No? Then throw it away. Send it away. Resist it. Forget it. It's false guilt. It's illusory guilt. See, now you have some power to do that if you believe in the eyes of a God whose eyes flash at the sight of sin On the other hand, what if you've committed adultery? If you say well, you know, I I needed to it. I needed the relief, but what does god's eyes think? If in god's eyes to sin confess it If in god's eyes, it's not a sin resist it send it away When you've got god's eyes when you have what he says in the prophets and the apostles,

when you have God's will, you have an objective standard, then you can deal with it. And that's the first thing you need. That's the first part of the rope. You will go down, you will go down, unless the first thing you do is admit that there are these eyes. I know there's people out here, surely, who don't believe there is such a thing as an objective moral standard. You say it's all socially constructed or psychologically constructed. Here's what I want you to realize though. This is good news.

To believe that God has a will, and that his will is the one thing necessary. And it doesn't matter what you think, or it doesn't matter what other people think, it doesn't matter what your parents think. Paul in 1 Corinthians 4, verses 3 and 4 says something so radical. There's a place where Paul says this. He's talking to the Corinthians and he says, I do not care what you think. He says it's a small thing whether I'm judged by you or any human court. And then he says, yea, I judge not my own self.

My conscience is clear but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me, he says. Now here's what he's saying. He says, first of all, I don't care what you think. Now that's freedom of a sort. But let me show you something even more radical. See, because the modern secular person will say, it doesn't matter what your parents think. All that matters is what you think.

But that still weighs you down with shame. Maybe it gets rid of the guilt, but it doesn't get rid of the shame. But here's what Paul says. He says, I don't care what you think. And then he says, guess what? I don't care what I think. He says, my conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. Right? Of course, there's plenty of people who've done terrible things, but their conscience was clear and they weren't innocent. He says, it's the Lord who judges me. If you believe that there is the moral law of God, if you believe that there are the eyes of a, there is, there is somewhere there is one set of eyes and nobody else's eyes matter, and he is the absolute standard of what's right and wrong, that's good news. You've got something to grab on. It means you're not only free

from what others say about you, you're even free from your own conscience beating you up. And I don't know how else you're going to... Listen, how are you going to be free not only what the world says but even what your own conscience does to you? How are you going to do that? Not unless you believe in a God whose eyes flash at the sight of sin and whose eyes are the only eyes that matter. But that's not enough. Because if you only have that strand, think of this rope as having two strands in it, as I said. And all by itself, this won't hold you up. Because if you say, good, okay, I will go into the Ten Commandments and I'll read the Golden Rule,

and I'll take a look at those things, but you see that in verse 3 it says, that won't be enough. Why? Because of the very first thing you see is the law of God, and that's all you have. He says, oh Lord, who will stand? In other words, if I start to really look into the law of God, and that's all I've got, I'm going to start to feel like I can't possibly live up. There's a second thing you've got to believe. There's a second thing you've got to do, and that is in verse seven and eight, he says, oh, Israel, hope in the Lord. And verse eight, for he himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. Now, why would he be telling them to hope in the Lord? Who were

they hoping in? Why is he, in a sense, telling himself to hope in the Lord? And why does he say God himself will come to redeem Israel? Here it is. As a pastor over the years, the one thing when I was a younger pastor always stymied me was there's a kind of person who would always say, you know, I'm sinking. I'm sinking in guilt, I'm sinking in despair, I feel bad about myself, I'm sinking in unworthiness. Now the typical thing that I would tell them, but of course everybody had told them this,

and it wasn't helping, is we love you and God loves you. We think you're great, you're talented, you're nice, you're this, you're that, and more than that, God loves you. And if there's anything you've done in the past that you were ashamed of, yes there is, yes there is. Well, he's forgiven you, don't you know he's forgiven you?

Jesus died for you, he's forgiven you. And you say, the person says, the trouble is I can't forgive myself. You've forgiven me, God's forgiven me, I can't forgive myself. You love me, God loves me, I can't love myself, and I'm still sinking. And I guess we never knew what to do.

I never knew what to do, the church wouldn't know what to do, the people wouldn't know what to do. In other words, they were still sinking. If you told them about the law of God too much, they just, you know, would sink faster. And if you told them about the love of God, they would just sort of sink slower. But they would still sink. And why? Here's why.

This psalmist realizes something. First of all, he realizes, he says, I put my hope somewhere else. Now, what's a hope? In the Bible, and we've actually talked about this at the very end of the Apostles Creed sermon, in the Bible, hope is what is the basis for your future. And what he's getting at is simply this. How do you deal with what Becker says? How do you deal with this sense that we ought to be somebody? That we need to be significant, we need to be courageous. How do you do?

How do you deal with that? The answer is we figure out a way of doing it. And we put our hope in saying, if I do that, then I'll get rid of this problem of insignificance, this feeling that I don't count. See Becker, even though he's not a Christian, but he wasn't a believer in God, he understood that nobody comes out of the womb naturally feeling significant. I mean, he realizes there was an old humanist notion that as long as the parents didn't screw you up, you'd have perfect self-love. And he says that's just not the case.

And I think that's fair. Everybody's got this sense of insignificance. And so what we do at some point is we put our hope and we say, if I can have that, if I can do that, then, then, then I'll have glory. Then I'll get rid of this sort of inherent shame. And what are those things? Now see, we actually talked about this last week under a different heading. We choose a way of doing it.

We say, my career, or we say, my family, or by being a good parent, or by being a good child, or by being a good brother or sister. There's a hundred different ways, but the fact is, our functional hope is someplace. That's how we're dealing with the inherent shame that every human being has to deal with. And if you're going to get, if you start to sink, you can't just say, God loves me, God loves me, God loves me. You have to say, I need a new Redeemer. I've already got a Redeemer. I've already got a hope. And the hope is not forgiving me. See, when somebody says, you forgive me, God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself, what

they really mean is this. I chose a way in order to feel good about myself, I haven't reached that way, and now I'm beating myself with my hope. You see, in other words, if career is my real God, then my career, in a sense, is cursing me now, I haven't done well. If my family is my real God, then the fact that my children don't like me, that's cursing me now. I haven't done well. If my family is my real God and the fact that my children don't like me, that's cursing me right now. When somebody says I can't forgive myself, that's not true. They're right when they say, God has forgiven me, that's not enough for me, because you're real God. If your real God forgives you, you'll be fine. If your real God loves you,

you'll be fine. The real problem is the biblical God isn't your God. The biblical Redeemer's not your Redeemer. The biblical hope is not your hope. And that's the reason why you're sinking under a sense of unworthiness always. If you feel unworthy, it's because you're looking at something else and saying, I don't have that, and if I don't have that, then the only way I stay in the human race is I beat myself up about it.

At least I can show you how unhappy I am that I don't have that. That shows that I'm worthy, at least a little bit. What that means is you've got to shift, you have to look underneath. That sounds very weird. You have to look underneath all of your bad feelings and saying, what is it that I have looked to as my redemption? What is it I've looked to as my hope instead? And then you have to say to yourself, hope in the Lord.

You have to say, he himself will come. Now, how do you do that practically? See, this is extremely important. On the one hand, the relativistic person, the secular person going under because of shame, has to see that there's an absolute standard. There is a God. There are two eyes. They're the only eyes that count. But the religious

person who's sinking out or moral person who's sinking down, they have to see you don't just need a standard, you need a new Redeemer. That means your own functional way of redeeming yourself through some kind of pursuit or some kind of object. That thing has to be acknowledged and seen. That's the thing that's killing you. That's the thing that's cursing you. That's the thing that's pulling you down. That's the thing that you're beating yourself up about. And you're right in saying the fact that God loves me and forgives me, it doesn't matter. Why? Because he's not your real God. He's not your redeemer. You're going to have to shift. You're going to have to admit it. Do you see that?

going to have to admit it. Do you see that? How? Well, verse 8. You know, the thing about the Psalms is that the psalmist, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gets the basic idea, the general idea, but we, standing where we stand in history, we see the specifics. In verse 8, that wonderful verse that I left out so intelligently, he himself will redeem Israel. Now the psalmist was saying, what? By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he realizes God himself someday will come. God himself. God will not just give us a set of rules whereby we can redeem ourselves. God himself will come someday and he will redeem us with unfailing love. That's there in verse 7. God, with his eyes, sees you to the bottom. He knows everything that's wrong with you. And the thing you need to finally deal with, get a healed self-image, is to know that somebody who's seen you all the

way to the bottom has been willing to sacrifice for you because he values you like that. Every time I watch a movie, even the bad movies, for example, I haven't liked the last 20 Robin Williams movies, but that one place in the Fisher King, one place in the Fisher King, you know, he's a homeless man and they spruce him up so he can go out with this girl he's attracted to and it's Amanda Plummer. And at the end of their first date, Amanda Plummer says, it was nice, but you won't want to get to know me. So we shouldn't date again. He says, why?

He says, because if you get to know me, you'll hate me. It'll be too painful. It was nice to have a date, but everybody who gets to know me, everybody who really gets to know me, drops me. So I'd rather you just drop me now. It'll be less painful. And then he has to admit something. Because he was a homeless man, he had been following around for weeks and months

And he looks at her and he says listen. I know you're clumsy and you drop things and knock things over all the time. I Know you're painfully shy. I know you don't like yourself. I know you don't have any friends. I Still love you. I know all about you and I still love you. There know all about you, and I still love you. There's not going to be any surprises. I know everything about you that you know and maybe a few others, and I still love you." And she looks at him and she's transformed. Now over and over and over again in stories that sort of thing happens. Even at the end of the music man, the movie or the play, there's a place where Mary in the librarian has discovered that Harold Hill is a con man, and she him on the bridge and he realizes she knows and still loves him. He says you better get away before they come. He stays. Why? He repents. Why? He's changed. He's changed by a love

that says I know you to the bottom and I still love you. I'll still sacrifice for you. Jesus Christ on the cross is saying to you, I know you to the bottom. My eyes can see everything and I love you anyway. And you see, when you see that, what Jesus is saying is is there anything else you could put your hope in that will forgive you? Is there anything that you could put your hope in that will love you like I do? No. And it's the knowledge of that that will transform and change you. You need an absolute standard but you also desperately need a new Redeemer. Recognize the fact that the thing that you're really beating yourself up with is a false Redeemer. Here's the only one,

the one with unfailing love, the one who sees you to the bottom, unfailingly loves you, and he himself came to redeem us from our sins. Lastly, first of all you see the sinkhole of shame and guilt. Secondly, you see the two things you need, the two strands, an absolute standard and a new Redeemer. Always if you're sinking you need a new Redeemer. Even if you think you're a Christian you need a new Redeemer. You need to figure out what your old Redeemer really was functionally and get the heart

on the right one. Now lastly, there's a process. I want to show you a couple things quickly. Verses 5 and 6. A lot of people say, okay, today I'm going to make that change, I'm going to change. But now look carefully, what does it say?

Suddenly we have this interesting discussion. In verse 5, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. The first thing, look carefully at what we learn here. Number one, you have to wait.

It's a process. If you, today, suppose today some penny dropped, and you say, I realize that even though I've been a professing Christian for a while, I realize I'm still totally guilt-driven, I'm still just sinking in this, now I realize why. Or maybe you're not a believer and you say, this is what I need, I don't know where you are. But even if today the penny drops and you start to change,

it's going to take a long, long, long time. It's a process, you must understand that. You're going to find that most days for a long time, you're going to operate on the old approach. It's a process. You must understand that. You're going to find that most days, for a long time, you're going to operate on the old approach. It's almost like becoming a Christian, you have A drive and B drive, and you can boot off of either one. You have two different self-images going on. Always you do. That's what Paul calls the old man and the new man. But the fact of the matter is, it's a process. So get started. It's going to take some time. It's going to take waiting. The first thing is you have to wait. Secondly, you wait expectantly.

When you wait for the morning, it may take forever, but it always comes. Wait expectantly. If you get hold of that rope, you will be pulled out because of who's on the other end of the rope. Not only that, wait in community. Look at verse 7. Oh, Israel, what's going on? He's turning to other people. Once you have other people who know about the rope, grabbing the rope together is wonderful. Just grabbing each other in the sinkhole isn't so wonderful.

But grabbing the rope together is wonderful. Talk to each other, tell each other. He's getting himself out of the sinkhole by counseling other people who are there. So wait. Wait patiently. Wait expectantly. Wait in community. And wait fearfully. Verse four, some of you know this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. With you there's forgiveness, therefore you are feared." What? What? Now we begin to realize something really unique. The Bible says, the more you see how loving God is, the more fearful you will be of Him. Now what does that mean? Well, first of all, the word fear has got to mean humbled, amazed.

But it also means happy, joyful. The Christian self-image is a unique paradox of boldness and humility. If you've been trying to save yourself through some other hope, you'll feel bold when you're doing well but not humble, or you feel humble and upset with yourself but not bold when you're not doing well but if you're a Christian what you know is that I'm both a sinner and yet I'm loved and therefore there's this bold humility that grows and it's a unique self-image it's the reason why Paul's able to say I don't care what you think see that's bold he says I don't even

care what I think that's humble it's what the Lord makes it thinks and that means that you have a boldness and humility that is absolutely unique. And that's the way you know that you're really changing your redeemer. And that's how you're getting out of the sinkhole. Wait patiently. Wait patiently. Wait expectantly. Wait in community. And wait fearfully. The Bible says exactly what we're going to sing after the offertory. Bold shall I stand in thy great day, for who ought to my charge shall lay, fully absolved

through these I am from sin and fear, from guilt and shame. As you sing that in the final verse and the final hymn, ask yourself, how does this apply to me? So during the time of prayer right now, during the offertory, ask yourself, to what degree am I sinking? To what degree do I need to change my redeemer? Let's pray. And Father, we thank you for giving us time to think about these things and we ask that you would help us to not just sink in our guilt, not just talk to other people about our guilt, not certainly not just simply try to ignore our guilt and absolutely not be crushed by our guilt.

Help us to pray our guilt in your presence. Help us to understand what it means, what it means to grab hold of the great rope that says, He Himself will come with unfailing love and redeem us from all our sins. Now we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life's resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting gospelinlife.com slash stories.

That's gospelinlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was preached in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.