Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Advocate

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

To be able to handle life, there’s nothing more practical than to know that Jesus is your advocate. This isn’t just an abstract doctrinal issue. Because this whole book of Hebrews is written not as a theological treatise, but as a piece of intense pastoral counseling.  So let’s ask three questions: 1) why do we need an advocate? 2) how is Jesus Christ the advocate we need? and 3) what difference will it make in your life if you receive him as such? This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 6, 2005. Series: Christ: Our Treasury (The Book of Hebrews). Scripture: Hebrews 7:18-27. 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 Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were weary of troubles, struggling with fear and discouragement. Sound familiar? Today Tim Keller is preaching from the book of Hebrews, showing us how fixing our eyes on Jesus is the only way to truly deal with the challenges we face in our lives. The script you're reading this morning is from the book of Hebrews, chapter 7, verses 18 through 27.

The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless for the law made nothing perfect and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God and It was not without an oath Others became priests without any oath But he became a priest with an oath when God said to him the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever. Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now there have been many of those priests since death prevented them from continuing in office, but because Jesus lives forever, he has a

permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need, one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. This is the word of the Lord. We've been saying that the book of Hebrews is written to a group of people who are so

beset by troubles and difficulties that they're about to give up, and that in a sense, in a very real sense, the book of Hebrews is actually a piece of pastoral counseling, very intense pastoral counseling. And this week we come to a place where the counselor says there's nothing more practical for you to be able to handle life than to know that Jesus is your advocate. Now what does that mean? That's what we want to look at. And it's not just obviously an abstract doctrinal issue because we have to remember that this whole book is written not as a theological treatise but it's a piece of, in a sense, pastoral counseling. And so let's ask three questions. Why do

we need an advocate? How is Jesus Christ the advocate we need? And what difference will it make in your life if you receive him as such? Why do we need an advocate? How is Jesus the advocate? What difference will it make in your life if you receive him as that? Okay, first of all, why do we need an advocate? I look right here at the beginning. The form of regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless, for the law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God. Now this is talking as if Jesus is a better priest.

And it's talking as if everybody tries to draw near to the deity through priests and through temples and through sacrifices. Sort of assumes that everybody's trying to do it, but that Jesus is the way that is going to really work for you. And right away we're into having trouble as modern people reading this and trying to apply this to ourselves because yeah there was a time in which on every street corner as it were there were temples and there were priests and there were sacrifices and

there was really no religion without them. In fact, and there was no one without a religion. Okay? So everybody was doing it. It was, this is the way life was. But it's not true anymore. So all this stuff about Jesus being our priest in here and sacrifices and all, doesn't seem to work, but but it can, especially because in verse 25, there's a word that talks about Jesus' work in this regard, the word intercede.

And the word intercede, and we're going to look at this all through this talk to sermon today, the word intercede doesn't just mean something that priests do. Of course, priests intercede to God for the worshipers. But the word intercede also't just mean something that priests do. Of course, priests intercede to God for the worshippers. But the word intercede also had a legal meaning. It also meant to appear as a representative in court, to appear as the representative of someone who was on trial. And that immediately begins to open a few doors to us. That immediately begins to make us say, well, okay, wait a minute. Okay, maybe I can get into that. And yes, we can. Let's think of it like this.

What do you really look like? Do you have any idea what you really look like? You have a picture in your mind of what you hope you look like. I mean, some years ago I remember reading in the New York Times Magazine this article. It said, it was a woman writing it, it says, �More than 40 years of looking at myself in the mirror have left me like so many other people I know, almost totally ignorant of what I really look like. In the mirror I see not reality but a composite of memories, wishes, half-truths. I�ve learned to live with my shadowy self image.

I know there's a real me lurking somewhere, though I can't see her." And what she goes on to explain is, for example, you don't keep the pictures you hate. You throw them away. You keep the pictures you like. You don't even look in the mirror in certain angles. You come to learn that there's certain angles that you want to look at yourself and you just stop looking at it in other angles. In other words, you walk around with an image in your head of what you hope you look like to other people, but you're kind of afraid that you don't. And that's just the physical. Because you also walk around with an image of your head of what you look like as a person

to people, what your character is like or what your soul is like. Are you a lovable person? Are you a hard to love person? Are you a good person or a bad person? Or how good are you? Or how bad are you? Are you beautiful or are you ugly morally, spiritually, personally? And we walk around, again, with an image in our head of what we hope to be, that we look

like to other people, but we don't actually, deep down inside, we're afraid we don't. Now, here's what's interesting. You can't not care about this. No matter how hard you've tried, even if you think that it's a sign of mental health and it's not, but even no matter how hard you try, if you really think you can live satisfied with your own evaluation of yourself, your own verdict, your own pronouncement of whether you're good or bad or beautiful or ugly, you can't. You can't live

just with your own evaluation. You desperately need pronouncement from outside. You need to know, though you're afraid to know. But basically you're living your entire life trying to prove yourself so that you get those verdicts, so that you get that pronouncement. One person who put it awfully well, I think, is this character that Arthur Miller creates in his you know Arthur Miller just died, the playwright, in his play after the fall there's one place where one of the characters talks like this. He says, for years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you're young, you prove how brave you are or smart. Then later on, what a good lover you are. Later you prove what a good father or husband you are. Finally you prove how wise or powerful or whatever. But underlying it all, I see

now I always made an assumption that when moved on some kind of upward path toward some elevation where I don't know what, I could be justified or condemned of verdict at any rate. I think my disaster began when I looked up one day and I realized the bench was empty. No judge in sight, and all that remained was the endless argument with myself, this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench, which of course is another way of saying despair. Now that's a pretty powerful statement. Here's what it's saying. First of all, it's saying that no one can avoid basically turning your life into one big trial in which you are arguing and trying to prove to other people that you are good rather than bad, that you are lovable rather than unlovable.

You're trying to prove yourself. And you cannot, you cannot rest in your own evaluation. You've got to get it from outside. Someone has to pronounce you. And what's intriguing, of course, is that Arthur Miller, like so many modern secular people, are describing a person who came to the realization that all along he was actually trying to impress God. But then one day he realized there is no God. He kind of grew up and he began to realize,

oh, you know, I'm now sophisticated and I don't believe in God. But guess what? He couldn't stop arguing. He couldn't stop the trial. He said, I couldn't stop it. There's this endless argument with myself now, an endless litigation, but that's not really what I'm doing. I'm trying to prove myself. I need approval. I need verdicts. I need accomplishment. I need these things. And yet, of course, he's sort of in despair because he can't stop it. And yet, who is he impressing? Who is he trying to get this from? Now the book of Romans explains what Arthur Miller is describing, which of course is quite impossible to deny. And the book of Romans explains it and that is that whether you

admit with your mind or not that there is a God, your heart knows that there is one. And that actually your life is a trial. It's unavoidably a trial. And underneath all of the efforts to get verdicts from people, verdicts about how you look physically, verdicts about how you're doing vocationally, verdicts about how you are morally and personally, you're after verdicts, you're after pronouncements, you're after awards, you're after accomplishments, you're looking for a word from outside and underneath it all, you're looking for a word from the Lord of the universe. Because there really is an ultimate bench before which we're all arguing.

There's an ultimate court before which we all know we must or we are in a sense appearing. And the real question is are you going to go into that court alone or not? You know, I know there's these fiction, you know, every so often you'll see a TV show or a theater or something, some dramatic courtroom drama in which the accused decides to be his or her own lawyer. You know, I'm going to be my own attorney, I'm going to represent myself. And of course sometimes occasionally they win the trial. But all real attorneys know that that never happens. It is an absolute

disaster to be in court without an advocate, without an attorney, without a representative. To be your own representative just simply doesn't work. And the book of Hebrews says, you don't have to go alone. People that go alone are crazy. People who go alone are nuts. People who go alone are religious. Who think that they can argue themselves. They can say, look, I'm living a pretty good life. I'm doing very good.

I'm a good father. I'm a good mother. I'm a very moral person. That's not what Christianity is all about at all. Jesus, according to the book of Hebrews, is the advocate you need. In that trial that you unavoidably are in, Jesus is the advocate. Secondly, let's take a look. Why?

Why is Jesus, how is Jesus the advocate we need? Here it is, verse 24 and 25. Jesus lives forever, so he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. Okay, now we're mixing our metaphors, but it's fair because, you know, here we are, I've been giving you the metaphor of going before the bench with your advocate, your representative, your attorney. Here of course it's talking about going before God with a priest, but it's essentially the

same thing and this word intercede, this word intercede does mean that. If you go take a look at what the word meant in Greek, it can certainly be used for a priest arguing before God, but here's what it also can mean. If back in those days you got in trouble with the magistrate or the local ruler or the local king or the emperor, if you got in trouble, you did not want to go and appear before the seat of authority by yourself. Very seldom did you know people in court. Very seldom were you eloquent enough. Very seldom did you know the rules and the

issues and all the ways in which the court kind of worked. So what you did was you went and got an advocate. You went and got someone who could appear before you. Now, what do you look like in court? What do you look like in court? You look like your advocate. Now think about this. It's your advocates performance, not yours, that will make or break you. If your advocate is eloquent, if your advocate is brilliant, then quite literally you are eloquent, you are brilliant because

all of the benefits of that eloquence and brilliance are going to be imputed to you. If your advocate wins, you win. If your advocate loses, you lose. Why? Because your advocate is not just your advocate, you are in your advocate. Your advocate is your substitute. Now if you're in a court and you have an attorney and your attorney is brilliant and your attorney is skillful, then all of that comes to you. And what we're being told here though is something extremely powerful. And that of course is, this is what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is not simply to have Jesus as your example. When you say, well I pray to Jesus and I ask him for help and I try to live like Jesus

lived, I try to love my neighbor as myself and I go to church and I read my Bible, I try all those sort of things. That's to appear in court and be your own attorney. And that's a disaster. Here's what it means to be a Christian. And a lot of people think that's what it means to be a Christian, to use Christ as an example or have Christ as a helper. To be a Christian, to use Christ as an example or have Christ as a helper. To be a Christian means to be in him. Paul says this over and over and over again.

It's union with Christ, it's to be in him, it's to have him be your substitute. This is the reason why, and it's really pretty interesting, an awful lot of people believe they're Christians because they come to church, because they try to obey Christ's teachings, and they have some general understanding. He died for my sins, yeah that's right, I don't know really how that worked. But that's not the same thing as understanding him as an advocate. According to the Bible, according to the book of Hebrews, Jesus Christ is the ultimate advocate. He stands as your representative before the ultimate throne, the ultimate bench, in the

ultimate trial, before the court, which is the only one that counts. Jesus is your advocate. Now how does this work? When I first became a Christian, when I was a new Christian, a young Christian, I heard of this idea that Jesus Christ intercedes for us before the Father. And it was of no comfort to me at all. And one of the reasons why it sounded bizarre, and it was also of no comfort to me, partly because I think of some of the ways in which some high-profile lawyers actually operate in court. And because of what I saw in some of those high-profile trials, I really misunderstood what this was all about.

Here's what I thought was really happening and here's why it wasn't a comfort to me. I figured every day Jesus came before the Father with a kind of caseload. And okay, they pull out a folder, Keller. All right. Okay, so he looks up and he says, ah yes, Father. You you know all these promises he's made to change and change and he's doing it again anyway. But please give him a break. For my sake. Give him one more chance. I know he means well. This one more time this could be it.

And you owe me. I went to earth and all those things. So pretty please. I asked for mercy for my client. I throw myself on the mercy of the court. And then I expected, I guess, that the Father would say, well, all right. And here's the reason why that was of no comfort to me. Because I understood that what Jesus was doing,

if that's the intercessory work of Jesus Christ, spinning to get mercy out of the Father, I thought to myself, how long can he keep that up? Because why wouldn't one day, finally, the Father say, there's no particular reason why the Father one day couldn't just say, look, he's a minister now. It's too late. I've had it.

You can't keep doing things like this. But that's not at all the kind of advocate Jesus is. We all long for a home, for a place where we can truly flourish and belong. In One with My Lord, a new book by Sam Albury, he shows how the Bible promises that there is a place like that for all of us, but it doesn't have a zip code. Instead, the key to home and the very heartbeat of the Christian faith itself is that we find ourselves in Christ.

For the New Testament writers, this phrase was so important that instead of using the term Christian, they referred to followers of Jesus as those who are in Christ. Jesus is not only our Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend. He is also our home and our location. Each chapter of One with My Lord is short enough to be read as a devotional, and in it, Albury examines what being in Christ means, giving us a fresh lens to view the gospel and all that it means for our hope, purpose, and identity. We believe this new book will help you grow in your relationship with Christ. To request your copy of One with My Lord, visit GospelInLife.com slash give.

That's GospelInLife.com slash give that's gospel and life.com slash give now Here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching He You see an effective attorney Doesn't just wheedle and control and and and emotionally manipulate the jury and the and the judges sometimes that might work But actually frankly, that's right. How long can you keep that up? effective attorney has a case. And according to this passage, Jesus Christ is not up there asking for mercy.

When you ask for mercy, that means you've lost the case. You know what he's up there doing? Look, verse 27 and 28. Unlike the other high priest, it does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. Rather, he sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. This is what Jesus is saying, as it were. It's metaphorical, but I'll get to that in a second. He's saying, Father, you demand justice. You are a just God. And my friends here, the people on whose behalf I'm speaking, are guilty. But I have made payment. There is my blood. And it would be unjust to get two payments

There is my blood. And it would be unjust to get two payments for the same debt. And therefore, because I've made payments for this debt, I am not here asking for mercy for my brothers and sisters. I am not here asking for mercy. I demand justice. Your very justice, your very righteousness demands your complete embrace and acceptance of them throughout all eternity."

That's an infallible case. You know, the book of Isaiah says that the righteousness and the justice, the divine justice and righteousness of God is inexorable so that the mountains are like dust in the scales by comparison How dare you think that you can every day when you sense whether you're whether you're a believer or not whether you believe in God or not as Arthur Miller pointed out every day. You're trying to prove yourself Every day you're making arguments every day. You're saying well. I do this and I'm okay like this You know you're dealing with yourself to try to bolster your self-image, to try to deal with your conscience every day. What are you look, what are you pointing to? I'm a good mother, I'm a good father, I love my parents, I try my best, I work harder than most other people

in my department. What's that compared to this? What this is saying is, in 1st John 1, 8 and 9, you notice that little place where John says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Let me repeat that. 1 John 1, 8 and 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. It doesn't say he's faithful and merciful. You know what that's saying?

The intercessory work of Jesus Christ, the high priesthood of Jesus Christ, the substitution of Jesus Christ, who lived the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died in your place, has changed things forever so that now the very law and justice and righteousness of God demands your acceptance. To be in him is to have that kind of confidence. You know there's that place where Jesus, I mean where God comes to Cain after he's killed Abel and he says to Cain, the blood of your brother Abel cries out to me from the ground for vengeance. But there's a better able, Jesus Christ, whose blood cries out from the ground for grace. And it's an infallible case.

Jesus Christ is the ultimate advocate, he's the ultimate attorney, you know, it's the ultimate case and to be in him is to have that kind of confidence. Now, I want to lastly ask the question, if this sinks in, if you understand that that's what Christianity is, does that change your life? It better. And I'm going to say two things before I get on to say how it changes your life in some very specific ways. But two things. First of all,

the metaphor. Now here's the problem with metaphors. Every metaphor, every image is both important and crucial and also limited. So when it says Jesus Christ is our shepherd, that doesn't mean that we're senseless animals. When it says Jesus Christ is the door, that doesn't mean he'll give you splinters. And when it says Jesus Christ is the high priest pleading before the father, it doesn't mean the father is some kind of grumpy person and Jesus is up there trying to work on him like that because you can't take these images out to the place where they contradict other things the Bible tells us like the fact that the father and the son did all this together and this whole rescue operation is done together. Every image is

sort of like, every image is a partial but important way of getting across some aspect of the spiritual reality it's pointing to, but not the whole thing. However, you must let every one of these images sink down deep into your heart because they are the way in which God is getting across this incredible spiritual reality. And this is what you need to realize. High priests. Do you remember, and do you know much about high priests? You ever see pictures of high priests? They were absolutely covered with gold and silver and jewels. Basically, the net worth of the entire nation was in

the ephed, which was a whole bunch of jewels, or on the turban. There was gold, there were pearls, there were diamonds, there was rubies, there was silver and gold everywhere. I mean, the high priest had all this wealth. Why? You just pick up a candle and the reflection was dazzling. The high priest was an absolute beauty. And to say that Jesus Christ is your high priest is to say this. The Father has worked things out within the Godhead so that your sin has been dealt with. But not just that. You're not just pardoned. It's not just a matter of mercy. It means that when the Father looks at you, he sees an absolute beauty. He sees an absolute exquisite beauty. You're a beautiful beyond bearing

Has that sunk in Being a Christian is not just a matter of forgiveness and pardon is not though Jesus died on the cross and so that means My sins can be forgiven But now I have to really work hard to sort of keep up in other words if you just think Negatively about salvation as wonderful as pardon is as, as wonderful as forgiveness is, that's only that's only half of it. It's not that, you know, I get pardoned, it's not just that. It means that in Him I'm an absolute beauty. Do you understand that? David Martin Lloyd-Jones, an old British pastor and preacher, I've sometimes referred to

this but I just I pulled this out of a of an old sermon of his and it's incredibly clear and incredibly simple. A child can understand this but there's an awful lot of people who think they're Christians and they're not because they only understand the negative not the positive. They only understand the idea that Jesus somehow procured my forgiveness and not that he is my beauty and is my glory and is my righteousness and is my worthiness and that in him I'm beautiful, I'm not just simply forgiven. Dr. Lloyd-Jones says, to make it quite practical, I have a very simple test. After I've explained

the way of Christ to somebody, I say, now, are you ready to say that you're a Christian? And they hesitate. And then I say, what's the matter? Why are you hesitating? And so often people say, well, I don't feel that I'm good enough yet. I don't think I'm ready to say I'm a Christian now. And once I know that I have been wasting my breath, they're still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, well, I don't think I'm good enough, but it's a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that he is good enough and I am in him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying I am not

good enough, oh, I'm not good enough, you're denying God, you're denying the Gospel, you're denying the essence of the faith, and you will never be happy. You think you're better at times, and then again you'll find that you were not as good at other times as you thought you were. You'll be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn't matter if you've been almost entered into the depths of hell. It doesn't matter if you're guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.

Do you understand that? Do you understand that? I must tell you that I'm sure though I was a Christian when I first embraced the idea of forgiveness, I didn't start living anything close to being what I should be living in Christ until I understood He's not just negatively my forgiveness and my pardon, but He's my advocate. He's my wisdom, my righteousness, my sanctification, my redemption. Lastly, if you do embrace that, what difference will it make in your life? Oh my goodness. I'm just going to mention five, and maybe that's all I'm actually gonna be able to do is

mention them and I can only be brief because actually don't worry if you stick around here you'll get a whole sermon on every one of these five so be patient. But here's what, if you believe if you embrace Jesus as your advocate it means you get a completely new identity, you get total abolition of guilt, you get it deeply undermines your disappointments and discouragements, it suffuses your life with playfulness, and it gives you a foundation for complete courage. Number one, it's a completely new identity. As I said before, unavoidably, every single person is on trial.

You know there's a trial, whether you believe in God or not. Arthur Miller points it out. You're always arguing. You're trying to prove yourself. And you're going to either grab hold of Jesus Christ, you're going to grab hold of something else as your advocate. Something else is the way in which you prove to yourself and other people that you're okay, that you're good, that you're beautiful, that you're worthy.

The trouble is, as Martin Lloyd-Jones just said, is how does that work for confidence? How does that work when there's a test? How does that work? Sometimes you're doing well at your identity factor, sometimes you're not doing well at your identity factor, but to know that you stand complete in him and that when God looks at you he sees an absolute beauty. Jesus Christ is your high priest. He stands with your name engraved over his heart. All those jewels on the high priest's effort is just a way of getting across the fact that when God looks at you, he sees a diamond, he sees a rib,

he sees beauty. You see, if you know that you can stand with absolute confidence in that court, then all the little courts are okay. You can handle them. There's a kind of confidence that you have. There's a kind of identity that's the most deeply secure identity possible. Okay? Number one. Number two. Secondly, it means the complete abolition of guilt. The complete abolition of guilt. When you think, when you think only of a... well, I put it this way. I don't know, we're all a little bit different on this,

but let's just, I know that a lot of you are like this, sometimes you're walking along and all of a sudden you get a slide show of all the things you've ever done wrong. And there's a little voice that comes up and says, you failure, you liar, you betrayer, now what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You say, well, I've had a good month. See, as soon as you try to be your own advocate, you're going to lose. Don't you dare try to be your own lawyer. Instead, you need to take out a Bible passage that has to do with this or a hymn. My favorite one is, you know, well may the accuser roar of sins that I have done. I know them all and thousands more.

Jehovah knoweth none. Depends on what you want to take out. But the fact is that if he's really your worthiness, not just your pardon, then you're complete in him. Okay? You just, you have to, it abolishes guilt. It gives you the new identity. Thirdly, it deeply undermines discouragement and disappointment. Now why did I say deeply undermines, not abolish?

The understanding of Jesus as your advocate abolishes guilt, but it only can undermine disappointment. Why? Because life is disappointing. It's filled with brokenness. Jesus Christ was always walking around weeping. Why? Because he cared. And you're going to weep too. But so often our deepest discouragements, I'm going to say this slowly so you can hear it. So often our deepest discouragements and disappointments are due to the fact that we are trying to become or make something else what only Jesus Christ can be for us. You see it's one thing to, you know, there's a discouragement that comes in your career which would be deeply mollified

and mitigated if Jesus is your worthiness but if your career is your worthiness then your discouragement is going to know endless steps, endless steps. In other words you're just going to have to keep in mind that so often our deepest discouragements are due to the fact that we're trying to be for ourselves, we're trying to make something else what only Jesus Christ can be for us. And therefore, the understanding of Jesus as our glory, Jesus as our worthiness, Jesus is our righteousness. Completely changes that so that we can handle the loss of things, we can handle them. Fourth, playfulness.

I mean, that sounds kind of interesting, but I mean, it may sound kind of weird. Look, if you're a moral religious person, then the very foundation of your life is how well you're doing. So if somebody comes and criticizes you, you take it very seriously. How dare you say that? You're either devastated or you're furious when people criticize you. But do you know the gospel, this gospel? When someone comes and criticizes you, what do you do?

Well if you were true to this gospel, if somebody comes and criticizes you, you look at them and laugh and say, you don't know the half of it. I'm a whole lot worse than you think. and criticizes you, you look at them and laugh and say, you don't know the half of it. I'm a whole lot worse than you think. Or somebody once said, if you ask a religious person, are you a Christian? The religious person says, what are you talking about? How dare you?

And if you ask a real Christian, are you a Christian? They say, yeah, what a joke. Me, a Christian, it's amazing. I don't understand why it's true. But it's true. It's like God's great joke. You see, here's the two things that can rob you of humor. Superior pride or inferiority and shyness and self-consciousness.

But Christianity gets rid of both. You're such a terrible sinner that how can you be pride proud and you're so absolutely exquisitely loved, how in the world can you be shy, which means you should be laughing a lot. It should suffuse your life with humor. Why would you need to take yourself that seriously? Or as somebody once put it, you know, Christianity doesn't make you think less of yourself or more of yourself. It makes you think of yourself less.

And that makes it a whole lot easier to laugh. And then last of all, courage. And here's the last point. When Stephen was about to be executed, Stephen in the book of Acts chapter 7, one of the early Christian preachers, so they lined him up and they were about to throw stones at him, that's how they executed him. He looked up and he saw something in heaven and his face shone like an angel. And as they executed him, he said, Father, don't hold this against them. In other words, there was such joy at the moment he was being executed and such

love that he was able to forgive them. What did he see? You know what he saw? We're told in Acts 7, he saw the majesty on high and Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of Majesty on high and Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of the Father, not sitting. He saw Jesus Christ as his advocate. And here's what was so intriguing. At the moment that an earthly court was condemning him, the only court that mattered was commending him. And what that meant to Stephen was he didn't care what the court down here was doing. He didn't care if they were actually executing him.

He not only had a courage, but it wasn't an angry courage, it wasn't a defiant courage, it was a courage of absolute grace. What a foundation for courage. What a source of playfulness. What an amazing way to mitigate our disappointments, not eliminate them. What a tremendous way to absolutely destroy guilt for your past. And what a way to have a confidence and a security in who you are and what you look like. It all comes from this. Jesus lives forever. He who has a permanent priesthood, therefore he is able to save completely to the uttermost, absolutely, those who come to God through him, for he ever lives to intercede for them. He lives to do this. Do you know what that means? He

lives to do this. This is his life to do this for us, to do this with us. I don't know if you believe Christianity. I don't know if you can believe this, but why wouldn't you want it to be true? Let us pray. Thank you Father for giving us such an advocate and we pray that you would help us to apply to our lives the all the as we reflect on this image all the the benefits of it. We don't live as if this is true. We don't live with the confidence. We don't live with the clear conscience. We don't live with the the playfulness. We don't live with the confidence, we don't live with the clear conscience, we don't live with the the playfulness, we don't live with the with the courage that we ought to. But we pray that because we spent this time

here listening to your word and now partaking of your table that you will take these truths and make them part of our lives so that we can walk in the footsteps of the one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life for us. In his name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life Monthly Partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit Gospelinlife.com slash partner. That website again is Gospelinlife.com slash partner. And thank you!

Today's sermon was recorded in 2005. 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.