Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Running From God

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Words like sin, sinner, heathen and heretic have been used for centuries to exclude and oppress people. That’s one reason we need the book of Jonah. Jonah gives a concept of sin that can’t be used to oppress people. In fact, it shows that it’s one thing to believe in sin and another thing to understand it in your own heart. Jonah was a prophet, but there was a kind of sin in his heart that flew under his radar—until it blew up. Let’s look at four features in the narrative that each tell us something about sin: 1) the coming word, 2) the running man, 3) the deathly sleep, and 4) the stormy hope. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 9, 2001. Series: The Church in the City. Scripture: Jonah 1:1-10. 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 book of Jonah tells the story of a man running away from God and about God pursuing Jonah despite his rebellion. This highlights what Tim Keller will be teaching this month, that Jonah is one of the best places to go in the Bible if you want to understand the depth of our sin and the extravagance of God's grace. away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed

for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own God and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Maybe he will take notice of us and we will

not perish. Then the sailors said to each other, come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity. They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, tell us who was responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?

He answered, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord Lord the God of heaven who made the sea and the land This terrified them and they asked what have you done? They knew he was running away from the Lord because he had already told them so The Book of Jonah, I'm gonna look at for a number of weeks, is small but extremely famous, so I can refer to what happens further on down because you know how it ends, but not exactly. You know about the whale, the fish, I mean, but not about the... There's a whole lot of surprises in the book, but one of the reasons we're looking at it

is because it's really one of the best possible places to get an overview of what the Christian message is about. For example, here in the very beginning, we're given a tremendous introduction to a subject that you just cannot avoid if you want to make any kind of progress in any kind of spiritual journey. You just can't avoid it as much as we'd like to.

This passage is about, this text, the book, is about sin. Now, we really don't, contemporary people really don't like to talk about sin, we don't like to use the word, and there's good reasons. And those good reasons are because words like sinner and heathen and heretic, words like that have been used for centuries

to exclude people, to oppress people, because they dehumanize and depersonalize groups. And so a lot of folks just say, let's just stay away from the word and the concept and it's outmoded, but no, you can't, you can't avoid it. Ernest Becker wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, still very, very prominent book, it's called The Denial of Death.

And Ernest Becker was a therapist, he was a brilliant man, and he was a secular man, he was a self-professed atheist, which actually makes this statement even more interesting. Because Ernest Becker was a therapist, and he was a thinker, and he was a scholar, and he looked at the modern society, and he said, what is the quintessential problem that modern people seem to have?

And this is what he said. He said, the plight of the modern person is this, quote, a modern person is someone who feels like a sinner but has no word for it. Feels like a sinner without a word for it. Now, when he says that, what he's really saying is that you can divide people into three possible categories. First of all, you've got people who feel like sinners

and they've got a word for it, they've got a concept of it so they can deal with it. I mean, there's lots of forms of it, but for years, centuries, people felt like sinners and they had a concept for it. There were sacrifices, there were rituals, there was repentance, there were processes of cleansing and atonement and so on, depending on your culture,

your religion and so on, depending on your culture, your religion, and so on. So, you could feel like a sinner and have a word for it, so you could do something about it. Or, you could not feel like a sinner at all, and therefore have no need of the word or the concept. And Becker is saying, in spite of how many contemporary people insist that that's true of them he says I've never met a person like that he says I've never met

people like that he says really where modern people are is they have a feeling of something wrong they have a feeling that there's something wrong with me a feeling of shame or guilt or inadequacy. They have a feeling that they're a sinner, but they have no concept. They have no word for it, you see. It's outmoded, and therefore they have no way of doing anything with it.

And if that's true, and I think it is, even if you doubt it right now, hopefully you'll see some more evidence of that, then we need this book. We need this book for a couple of reasons, and one of them is because it doesn't ever use the word sin, but not only does it profoundly map out the real nature of sin and it goes deeper than,

it gives you an understanding of sin that goes deeper than what traditionally you'd think the definition of sin is, but it also deconstructs the very danger that contemporary people are so afraid of. It shows you not only a concept of sin, but it also deconstructs the very danger that contemporary people are so afraid of. It shows you not only a concept of sin, but it gives you a concept of sin that you can't use to oppress people once you've grabbed it. You can't use it that way.

And if somebody here says, well, you know, I guess I can skip the next four or five weeks because I already believe in sin. I believe in sin. Well, so did Jonah. There's one thing to believe in, it's another thing to understand it. And Jonah clearly, there was a magnitude of sin

and there was a kind of sin in his heart that in spite of the fact that he was a prophet, he was a preacher, he was a moral religious leader, it flew under his radar. He didn't see it there until it erupted and his whole life flew up. And actually, I think that's one of the reasons why the book of Jonah's written.

Because there's an awful lot of us like that. We believe in sin, we understand sin. A lot of us actually know quite a bit about Christianity and the faith and we consider ourselves a kind of active Christian people and so on, it's one thing to believe in sin, it's another thing to understand it and understand your own heart.

Jonah's sin was such that it flew under his radar till it blew up. Maybe we can avoid that. So we all need this book. So, number one, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at four features in the narrative, at least the part that we've written, taken out tonight. Four features of the narrative and each one is going to tell us something about sin. And the

four features we see is in verse one we see the coming word, see, the word of the Lord came. The coming word, verse three, we see the running man. Verse five, we see the deathly sleep. And then lastly, we see the stormy hope. The coming word, the running man, the deathly sleep, the stormy hope. Each one tells us about sin. Number one, verse one, the coming word, the word of the Lord came.

Now, when it says in the Bible, and it says this quite often in Daniel, pardon me, not Daniel actually, but in, I think it does, but anyway, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, whenever you see the term the word of the Lord came, that is a technical Hebrew phrase to describe the calling and or functioning of a prophet.

And what it means is that the prophets were called by God to preach and speak and communicate his will. And so when Jonah, you see it says in verse one, when it says the word of the Lord came to Jonah, verse one and verse three, but Jonah ran, when it says the word of the Lord came to Jonah, verse one, and verse three, but Jonah ran. This is not simply an isolated incident of disobedience. This is a resignation.

It doesn't just say the Lord asked Jonah to do this and he didn't. That's just a simple, you know, isolated incident. It's a particular incident of disobedience. What's happening here is Jonah's life had been, his whole purpose in life was to be a prophet. His calling, so he was called, his vocation. He was called to be a prophet.

And so everything in his life was oriented toward what God had called him to be. And so he's not just simply disobeying God, he is now saying, I am gonna go off and run my life my way. I am no longer gonna get my identity, my purpose in life, you see. I'm not gonna get my identity anymore from what you say.

I'm gonna go do what I wanna do. I'm gonna live my life as I wanna live. And what he's actually doing then, is he's really saying I'm no longer gonna live my life on the basis of the vocation of God. Now this isn't just something for prophets. Uh, in the book of Genesis, if you notice that everything was, everything that was created was created with a word.

God didn't snap his fingers and there was light and there was sun and it was moon. He spoke, see the word of the Lord. Let God said, be word of the Lord. God said, be light, be stars. He calls things into existence with his word. And what does that mean? It means nothing just exists to exist. Everything exists for a purpose. He has called things to be what they are to be.

He has a design for everything. And you find out what yourself is. You find out who you really are. You find out your true identity only at the feet of God. The deepest secret of your identity is in the word of God. And Jonah has said, I'm going the other way. I'm going to build an identity without the word of God. I'm going to make myself who I want to be. I'm going to live my life as I want. I'm gonna make myself who I wanna be.

I'm gonna live my life as I want. I'm gonna create my own identity. I'm gonna decide who and what I wanna be about. I will forge my own identity without God. That's what's going on, not just simply disobedience. And that, the Bible is telling us here, is the very essence of sin. The essence of sin is not just simply breaking the rules,

it's to try to build an identity without God. And when you do that, as we can see, nothing but disaster follows. It can't be done. Now, before I move on, that's the first principle. Let me illustrate this principle with two very famous existentialist figures, Soren Kierkegaard and Bridget Jones. Now, let me explain.

I don't think they knew each other, but I can almost guarantee you that Bridget Jones had Søren Kierkegaard on her shelf. But Søren Kierkegaard some years ago, 1849 to be exact, wrote a book called The Sickness Unto Death. In fact, the full title is The Sickness Unto Death, A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. And in the book, he gives a definition of sin.

Actually, by the way, as we'll see in a minute, the sickness unto death is the sin, but he says, he gives a definition of sin. And he says, I'm not going to try to describe or catalog all the individual sins, but I want to give a definition that will embrace all forms like a net. And here it is.

Sin is the despair of getting a self before God, and then the despair of seeking to be oneself without God. Do you hear that? What he's saying is sin is the despair. To do exactly what Jonah's doing, despair of trying to get a self or an identity before God, and then sin is the despair that comes from trying to be yourself without God. He says it can't be done.

And he says any person who tries to manufacture his or her own identity without God, quote, gets an identity which is like a king without a country or a country who has subjects for whom rebellion is legitimate every moment. Now, you didn't really expect to understand Kierkegaard the first time, I read it, did you? No, nobody does. Let me explain. Let me explain Kierkegaard in terms

of Bridget Jones. This summer, it was in the Barnes and Noble and I bought Bridget Jones' diary and my wife Kathy looked at me, why are you buying Bridget Jones' diary? And I said, well, because, you know, when it came out four or five years ago, New York Times kept saying that this was the quintessential postmodern, postfeminist, postideological novel. And you know, when New York Times uses big words to describe a book, you have to buy

it. I had to buy it. And the point of the reviewers was this, all those long words. And here's what their point was. Their point was that the sentiment that I quoted in Becker in the very beginning of the sermon is passe. See, Becker said, modern people are filled with angst. They feel like sinners without a word for it. They feel inadequate. They feel shame. They feel guilt, and they don't know what to do with it.

And what the reviewers were saying is, in a book like Bridget Jones' diary, there you see that that's just passe, that idea is passe. Yes, Bridget Jones' mother and her grandmother probably did a lot of things that Bridget Jones does without even thinking about but they felt guilty about it. Yes, of course don't forget this is Britain so it's a little different but in other words, Bridget Jones runs around doing things that her mother and her grandmother would have, her great grandmother would not have done,

and her mother and her grandmother probably did, but nobody knew about it. Her mother did openly, but felt guilty about it, and now Bridget Jones does, and doesn't give a rip, doesn't even think about it. And so when you read it, it does seem to, yeah, that's right, postmodern people don't seem to have this sense of being sinner.

No, look deeper. Look deeper. In fact, she does seem to, yeah, that's right, postmodern people don't seem to have a sense of being sinner. No, look deeper. Look deeper. In fact, she's doing exact, she is proving what this chapter and Kierkegaard are saying. This is from her New Year's resolutions. I chose these from her New Year's resolutions. Three of them. Number one, New Year's resolution number one, buy books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves.

You know, so your guests will say, oh, sickness unto death. Interesting. Resolution number two, develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as a woman complete without boyfriend since This is the very best way to obtain boyfriend In resolution number three

Be assured receptive responsive woman of substance knowing my sense of self comes not from other people but from from my sense of self comes not from other people but from myself. My sense of self comes from myself. Wait, that can't be right. And that's now look. Bridget has bought the postmodern thing. What's the postmodern thing? You create yourself. You don't need what other people, nobody else can tell you how you have to be. Nobody else can tell you who you are or what's right or what's wrong. You create your own self. And

Bridget is showing what Sauron Kierkegaard said and what the book of John is saying and that is you do not have the power to do that. You cannot validate yourself. So here she is saying, I am poised. I know who I am. I am secure. I know that I'm valuable. So why do you need somebody to notice the books on your shelf and to at least think you're intellectually sophisticated? Why do you need to have some hot young thing want to date you? Because it looks like you don't need boyfriends. In other words, if you desperately need every day to have people showing you, telling you one way or the other that you're okay, doesn't that mean that deep down inside you know you're not? And what Kierkegaard said, that strange cryptic statement that I read at the end, he says anyone who tries to find his self apart from God, anyone who

tries to find his self away from God gets an identity like a king without subjects or like a king with subjects who feel they can rebel all the time. What does that mean? It means simply this, that your self, your identity is deeply unstable. You get it a compliment today, get it a compliment tomorrow, and it'll say okay, okay, but if you don't go, you go for a while and nobody wants to date you and nobody thinks you're intellectually sophisticated and your your ego goes nuts, your identity goes nuts. Why? You need a word from the outside. You cannot validate yourself. You can't just say to yourself, I know I'm alright.

You've got to get a word from outside. You've got to get affirmation from outside. There has to be a word. If it's not the word of the Lord, it's got to be a word from someone. You have to have a word from outside. You do not have the power to make yourself a self. That is the fundamental assumption of everybody at college here. It's a fundamental assumption of modern high culture and popular culture that you can decide who you are and you can validate yourself. That's ridiculous. If you don't get affirmation from God, Kriyayoga said, you will be deeply, desperately dependent on all kinds of other words from outside. You're going to have to get other gods.

You're going to have to get, you have to make a god of your boyfriend, a god of the, of the respectability, a god of something. You're going to have to get something from outside that puts its hands on you and says, well done. You can't do it to yourself. And therefore, if you try to build an identity apart from God, the identity you have will be like a rebellious country.

It will be always saying, more affirmation, more affirmation, more affirmation, and you can never, never keep it satisfied. It's like this vacuum cleaner, because it's unstable, because it doesn't know who it is, because you don't know that you're valuable. It just isn't true that you can be yourself, you know? My sense of self does not come from others,

but from myself, that can't be right, right. You need a word from outside. And anyone who tries to build an identity apart from God will experience destruction, will experience a loss of the sense of self. That's the first point. You get that from the opening from the coming word.

You need a coming word. You need a word to come. Secondly, the first point. You get that from the opening, from the coming word. You need a coming word. You need a word to come. Secondly, the running man. Now the running man, verse 3, Jonah running from God. Verse 10, Jonah running from God. Here is the second thing we learn about sin. What's that? Who is this guy running from God? Who's the sinner of this book? Who's the bad guy in a sense? Who's the fool, who's the messed up person? It's not the so-called heathen sailors.

Jonah makes them look good, you know? They're terrified when they find out he's running from God. You know, they're smarter than he is. He makes them look good. He makes the Ninevites, those nasty people with sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the big city. He even He makes them look good. He makes the Ninevites, those nasty people with sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the big city. He makes them, he even makes the fish look good. Who's the bad guy? Who's the sinner in this book? It's the religious man. It's the preacher. So the second thing we're taught here, second thing we're taught

is that sin is more than just breaking the rules, it's building an identity apart from God, and it's something you can do underneath all kinds of religiosity and morality. You can be very moral, you can be keeping all the rules, you can be a leader of the church, and you can still be creating this identity that blows up. It blows up. Why? What does it mean to run from God? Well, now somebody says, how in the world can you run from something that's omnipresent? How do you run away from God when he's everywhere? And you know, look at verse 9. He knows he's everywhere. He doesn't

have this idea that somehow Yahweh is just in Israel. He says, I worship the Lord of heaven and the Lord of earth and who made the sea and the land. He knows he's everywhere. So what does it mean? In the Hebrew, every place it says that Jonah's running from the Lord, literally in the Hebrew it says, from the face of the Lord. Wish the NIV had put it in there, it doesn't,

but he's running from the face of the Lord, and that's important. The face of the Lord, what is that? Jonah is not running from the spatial presence of God. You can't. He can't run away spatially from God. He's running away relationally from God. And when Moses met God in the burning bush, when Moses met God face to face, in the future when Moses wanted to talk to God, did he go back to the bush? No, because God's face is not an experience of spatial presence, it's a relational experience of God's centrality relational experience of God's centrality and intimacy.

In other words, when Moses met God, to meet God face to face, being God comes into the very center of your attention, the very center of your being, you experience this intimate encounter, that's what Jonah's after, is away from. Running from God means God's not in your center. Chances are you've heard some version of the story of Jonah, the rebellious prophet who defied God and was swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim

Keller reveals hidden depths within the story, making the case that Jonah's rebellion also provides one of the most insightful explorations into the secret of God's mercy. As you learn what the book of Jonah teaches about prejudice, justice, mercy, self-righteousness, and much more, you'll gain fresh insight into how to become a bridge-builder in today's culture, how to foster reconciliation across lines of division, and with God's help, bring peace where there is conflict. This month, when you give to Gospel in Life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book,

Rediscovering Jonah as our thanks for your gift. Just visit gospolinlife.com slash give. That's gospolinlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. He's running out of the center. He's running out of the center. He's running away from the center of God's will, which is in Nineveh, and he's running God out of his own center.

Now, what this simply means is this. Your identity has to come now, right? It can't come from yourself. Your identity does not come from yourself. Your affirmation, your sense of value, who you are, your sense of being distinctive, it doesn't come from you, it comes from something else. And whatever that is, if it's not God, that becomes your center. There's something in your center. Kierkegaard in his book, Sickness Under Death, puts it like this. He says, in fact, what is called the secular mentality consists simply of such those who, so to speak, mortgage themselves

to the world. They use their talents to amass wealth, to carry on enterprises, they try to make a name for themselves, but themselves they have not become. They try to make a name for themselves, but themselves they have not become. Spiritually speaking, they have no self.

No self with which they could venture everything. No self before God, however self-seeking they are otherwise. You know what he's saying? Yeah, typical character graph. But here's what he's saying. If you don't have a self before God, you mortgage yourself. You sell yourself to something else. You sell yourself to your career.

You sell yourself to getting married. You sell yourself to something else and you say, now, if I have that, then I'll know who I am. Then I have validation. I get a word, you see, from that thing that affirms me, gives me a sense of myself. But then that becomes your center. And really what that means is you're sold to it. You're mortgaged to it.

You're enslaved to it. You've got to have it. And here's what's so amazing. The running man tells us that you can do that underneath all the morality, all the church going, all the Bible reading, all the scrupulous following of the moral rules. Underneath it all, you can still forge an identity not based on God, but on something else, which is the essence of what sin is.

Okay, thirdly, and what does that lead to? And how is, right away you're saying, well how did Jonah do that? Well, let me see what that leads to. Number one, we said the coming word says sin is trying to build a self, an identity without God, and it doesn't work. Number two, you can do it underneath all your religion

and morality because the essence of sin is to make something besides God the highest love of your life. See, Augustine was always saying it, the essence of sin is a disordered love. It's the wrongly ordered loves. It's loving something too much in relationship to God. It's mortgaging yourself to it so that you can get a sense of self which you desperately need if you don't live before God and you're not getting your affirmation from Him.

And therefore, if you do that something will eventually happen to you. If you build a self something will eventually happen to you. If you build a self, it's not on God, something will happen to you and you see it here in the deathly sleep. In verse five we see, during his terrible storm, he goes to sleep and he can hardly be awakened. This is not just a simple sleep.

This is not simple sorrow. You know, there's escape sleeping, right? You're so sad you escape, you just sleep. This is not simple sorrow. You know, there's escape sleeping, right? You're so sad, you escape, you just sleep. This is not simple exhaustion because the Hebrew word for sleep here is a word that is hard to translate. It's the word that's used of what God did to Adam in order to take a rib from him. You remember back in Genesis 2? It says God put Adam into deep sleep and removed a rib? That's like anesthesia. You're out. You're out. That's what the word means, something like that. And what it means is something has happened to Jonah that has put him into the deepest, deepest, deepest, deepest,

almost a trance. And here's what Kierkegaard says. sin is the sickness unto death. If the essence of sin is to build an identity on something besides God, to get the affirmation from something besides God, when your self-salvation strategy goes wrong, when you lose that thing, when anything comes between you and that thing, you don't just experience distress, you don't just experience discouragement, you don't just experience probably even what you might call normal sort of depression. You experience an identity implosion. You experience the sickness under death. You experience existential despair. Now, does that sound like Kierkegaard? Now you see what he's talking about. The existential despair, the sickness unto death,

the deep identity implosion, the psychological breakdown is what sin is. And it comes inevitably when you make anything but God the central thing of your life. Now you say, well let me give you a quick example. Kind of a painful one. Here's two parents. They both love their child. They love their child. And then something goes wrong with their child. Something, you know, teenager

freaks out, goes delinquent, does nutsy things. And one of the parents gets discouraged, gets distressed, gets very sad, of course. And the other one experiences the sickness unto death. Not a normal sleep. See, not normal distress. Identity implosion, why? Because one parent loves the child for herself.

Loves the child for the child's self. I love my daughter because of who she is, I love her for herself, I love her. The other parent loves the daughter to get an identity. The other one says, the reason I know I'm a good person is I'm a good parent. The reason I know my life means something is I'm living for my daughter. My daughter needs me. The reason I know that I am a worthwhile person is my daughter's turning into a fine young

woman. She's happy. And when her daughter starts to go nuts, when her daughter starts to go bad, she doesn't just get sad. Because her parenting isn't about the daughter, her parenting is about herself. Her parenting is a way to get an identity. And when she, and see what Kierkegaard said,

is she experiences a death sleep. She goes nuts. She experiences psychological breakdown because she's experiencing an identity implosion. She's losing herself. And that is going to happen to everybody who doesn't make God, not just somebody you obey, not just somebody you read the Bible, not just somebody who gives you kind of inspiration,

but the absolute center of your life, the reason you get up in the morning, the joy of your heart, the reason you know that you're loved and valuable. Now you might say, why was Jonah like that? Now here's where I have to scroll forward. Why do you think Jonah ran away from Nineveh? You know what the natural idea is? If you've only read these first ten verses and you didn't know anything else, what you would say is he's scared, right? In 1942, if God comes to an American minister and says, go to Berlin, go out in the streets in the center square, and tell Germany to repent of its violence. A little dangerous, don't you think? And so, of course, you know, if you think that that's what God's asking Jonah to do,

you figure that he's running away because he's afraid that they won't repent. If he goes and preaches against their violence, he's afraid they won't repent, right? If they don't repent, he's dead. But when you get to chapter 4, and we will explore that in great detail when we get there. He says, the reason I ran away to start with was not that I was afraid that they would not repent and I would be killed. I was afraid they would repent. You know why? Jonah is a successful leader of a successful nation. Second Kings, chapter 1425 tells us that Jeroboam, the king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam II,

the king of Israel, began to do a military expansionist policy, he began to conquer people around him and expand his borders, it says, at the word of Jonah the prophet, the son of Amittai. Jonah supported the king's expansionist policies with his preaching. The king was happy with Jonah. Jonah was happy with the king. Jonah was a successful leader of a successful nation. And if Assyria, if he went to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, which was the big new overwhelming political and military juggernaut to come, which absolutely was going

to probably take Israel out. Jonah thought that if he went and they repented, pardon me, and they didn't repent, he would die. But he was more afraid if they repented. Why? Because then he would experience psychological death. If Jonah says, I would be more upset about Assyria being spared than if they killed me, he is proving Kierkegaard's point. He is saying, the thing that really gives me my identity, that really gives me a sense of value is not that I'm pleasing God or that God loves me. It's that I'm a successful leader of a successful nation, and if anything goes wrong with that, I won't have a self

left. Listen, do you know your own heart? Some of you say, I've always gone to church, I've always obeyed the Ten Commandments, I've always been a good person, I've always been a religious person, I live for Jesus, oh really? Do you really, what are you really living for? Do you realize, unless you come to grips with the competitor, there is a competitor in every one of your lives for the centrality of your heart. If you don't know what that competitor is,

if you don't see the death struggle in your heart between Jesus and whatever that other alternative, alternative kind of identity, alternative core center, if you don't know what is competing with Jesus Christ as functional savior of your life, you really don't know your heart. You're looking up here, you're saying,

well, I don't commit adultery, and I don't do this, and I don't do this, and I don't do this. You're looking up here. The Bible's saying, here's where sin is. You can be living, as Jonah was, a life of horrible sin, even though you're keeping all the rules. Do you see that? Do you know that?

Do you know your heart? I can't tell you how many people I've met. Over the years, there were good people, upstanding people, they were going along, living this sort of decent Christian sort of life, and then suddenly, they embezzle, and now they're in jail. Suddenly, they have an affair, and now their family is blown up.

Suddenly, they do terrible things, and they say, I don't understand it. I was not raised that way. I was a good person. I don't even know why I did that. Well, because you was a good person. I don't even know why I did that well Because you're real Savior Your self self salvation strategy the real core your real identity

Something began to come between you and it and you began to experience the dread the sickness unto death You began to blow up you began to do things you never thought you would do Because underneath all your morality underneath all your relig, you're living a life of terrible sin. Building a self without God. Now lastly, do you know yourself? Now lastly, I can only be brief about this because how does God turn Jonah, not now into a nice person, a better person?

You can't make Jonah a better person. What is Jonah supposed to do? Is Jonah supposed to start obeying the Ten Commandments? He doesn't commit adultery. He doesn't lie. He never misses worship, you see? He ties to the poor. He does everything he's supposed to do. What's he supposed to do? He needs to be converted and he's not going to get converted by cleaning up his life. His life's already clean as a whistle. Well, what's he got to do?

He needs a transformation of identity at his core. He needs an experience of the grace of God. He realized that if Jonah had gone off to Nineveh without this horrible experience, he would have been utterly ineffective because you can't preach to people about the grace of God if you don't know it yourself. Jonah needs the transformation of identity.

He needs to have God be the basis. He needs to have the love of God and the grace of God be the thing that drives his life. And how God gets him there, not reformation, but transformation, not becoming a better, nicer person, but radically converting him. That's what the rest of the book is about. But I can tell you this.

You can see right here how God does it, begins to do it with Jonah. Let me tell you how he begins to do it with all of us. Number one, he sends a storm. He sends a storm. I don't know hardly anybody that came to realize, do you know anybody who just sort of walks along the street and says, you know, I suddenly realized that even though I look very stable on the top, underneath I'm actually, you know, unstable, I'm psychologically unstable, you know, I don't have a real sense of self and actually I could just blow up if two or three

bad things happen. I could just, I just, you know, I don't really, and you know, I have a wrong ordering of my loves. I love things too much rather than God, and God's not really, you know, the real source of affirmation. I need to get converted. No, you need a storm. You almost have to have a storm.

And you know, it's funny, when storms come, troubles come, we say, why is God letting this happen? Why is God letting this happen? Because he wants Jonah. So number one, there's a storm. And number two, in the beginning, Jonah just starts to obey God in the storm. He doesn't know what's going to happen. He doesn't expect much. He just starts to obey. Notice in verse eight, when the sailors begin to realize what Jonah has done, who he is, they ask him identity questions. You see that?

They ask him, they say, who is the one that's, who are you? What do you do? Where are you from? They're asking him identity questions and look, he's starting to get it. He says, I'm a Hebrew, but you know what? I worship the God that sent this storm. That's what he means when he says there's a God of the sea. Why do you think he mentions the sea?

He's starting to wake up, and here's what eventually he does, I don't have to, you know, this isn't telling you something you don't know. In a few verses he's gonna say, it's not after you, it's not right for you to be in danger. God's after me, so throw me into the water of God's wrath and you will be saved. The wrath is for me, not for you, so throw me in. What is he doing?

All he's doing is the right thing. And here's what's so interesting about this storm. If he continues to try to run from the storm, that's the only way he'll drown. The only way the storm will drown him is if he continues to run from it. But if he turns and just says, God, I don't know, this might be suicide, but I'm just going to do the right thing, that's when he's saved. And that's how it almost always works. The storm comes into your life, you begin

to experience the sickness and the death, you realize everything's wrong, and what do you do? You don't even know what to do. And it's not, you don't even know, all you know is you say, I'm gonna start to seek God, I'm gonna start to do the right thing, I'm just gonna start, I'm not gonna run from Him anymore. And the irony is, your heart will usually think that's suicide.

If you throw yourself into God and just trust Him in the midst of the storm, he thought he was going to die, but he didn't. So there's got to be a storm. You've got to just start trusting God in the storm even though you don't know what in the world that's going to do. And the only way the storm can kill you is if you keep running from it. The only way it won't kill you is if you say, well, if it's going to kill me, it's going to kill me. Then it won't. And the last thing, and this is the thing that doesn't really even happen in our text, but we have to look forward to it.

You can't get a change of identity just by saying, now I want to be a better person. He's going to have to experience grace. And here's what's wonderful. It's when he does the right thing. And that is, he says, in order to save the sailors, he has himself thrown into the wrath of God. To his shock, there's love beneath the waves. Yeah, there's the fish, right?

But think of what that is. God saves him because he's willing to jump into the wrath of God. He's willing to take God's punishment. He's willing to face the music. He's willing to say, God, whatever you require of me, I will do. No excuses. That's repentance, by the way.

No excuses. And so he throws himself in, trying to help the sailors, you know, he's doing the right thing. And under the wrath, there's love. And until you discover that under the wrath of God, there's grace, there's love. Under the waves, there's love. And until you discover that under the wrath of God, there's grace, there's love. Under the waves, there's love. Until you see yourself as what he sees himself as, and we're going to see him praying in Jonah, too,

as the recipient of grace, he's amazed, he's alive. God has saved him. But you know why? Why is it that God can forgive Jonah? Jonah didn't expect to be forgiven. In fact, Jonah probably when he's down on the bottom of the fish, he's still wondering why he was forgiven. Why would God give me a second chance? Why could God forgive me? Well, the answer is years later, Jesus Christ said to a bunch of people, the Pharisees,

he says, the only sign I will give you is the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and then came forth, I will be in the belly, I will die. But behold, a greater than Jonah is here. Do you know why Jonah was able to throw himself into the wrath of God and be saved? Do you know why you can look at the worst things that are happening in the world and know that underneath, God is really trying to help you

and love you and care for you and refine you and not trying to smite you and trying to destroy you because there was a true Jonah. The true Jonah was the one who was thrown into the real ocean of God's wrath, the real storm of God's wrath, and no one caught him. Nothing saved him. He just sank and he did it.

He did it for us. And only when you know he's done that for you, only when you know that, will that begin to transform your identity. You can't transform, you know, identity transformation doesn't happen just by trying to turn over a new leaf. You've got to see what he's done.

That's got to bring your heart out more than anything else your heart's been set on. And Kierkegaard, at the very end, you know, there's a place where Kierkegaard actually says, the sin under the sin under the sin under the sin of all the sins is that you just don't have the courage to accept how loved you are, that Jesus Christ would die for you. He says that. The reason why it takes courage is because if you're loved that much that Jesus had to die for you, that's an insult. That means you're a sinner. And also it means if you're loved that much that he had to die for you, you lose control. If he did all that for you, then you just have to live for him.

So it takes courage to accept that kind of love. But that's the sin under all the sins, is you don't have the guts to accept it. You don't have the guts to really believe it. You don't have the guts, that's what Kierkegaard said, to say, I am loved like that. He would do that for me. I am so sinful that he had to die for me me. I am so sinful that he had to die for me

but I am so valued that he wanted to and that's the only remedy for the sickness unto death But what a remedy it is There's love beneath the waves Stuff's coming at you right now. You're saying why is God doing this to me? the waves, the stuff's coming at you right now, you're saying, why is God doing this to me? There's love beneath the waves. Obey and give yourself to him and he will not smite

you. Why? You will not drown in those waves because there is one who drowned for you. And he did it willingly. And it's that very fact that he did that, that will save you, that will change you, that will transform you, will change you forever. You need to be converted, not just changed. That's the message. Not just changed will, not just changed, you know, volitionally, changed from the inside out. Let's pray. Now Father, we ask that you help us to get a handle on the power of the gospel.

And the power of the gospel is not just simply to give us inspiration, not just simply to help us live better lives, not just give us a way to help us achieve our goals, not just protection. It's a whole new agenda. It's a whole new life. It's a whole new psychology. It's a relocation of our dearest hopes and joys. In a sense, it's a relocation of our salvation in you and not in other things. Help us to see that some of us who think that we're really good people are living lives of sin and we're on our way to disaster. And some of us who really thought we tried Christianity

never really did. We just tried to live a good life. Help us to apply this through your Holy Spirit because we come to you through Jesus. In his name we pray, 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 resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you.

You can share your story with us by visiting gospelonlife.com slash stories. That's gospelonlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was recorded in 2001. 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.