Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Church Before the Watching World

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

There’s a subplot in the book Jonah: it’s Jonah’s impact on the sailors and their impact on him. Do you see the exquisite irony here? Jonah runs away because he hates the dirty pagan Ninevites. He doesn’t think they can change and he doesn’t care enough to want them to change. But then, Jonah ends up sacrificing himself for dirty pagan sailors. The very truth missing from Jonah’s mind and heart is imparted even as God seeks him. Let’s see what this shows us about how we should regard the world. Here is what the sailors teach us: 1) every human being has a deep, spiritual longing, but 2) in our natural state our deep, spiritual longings are distorted by fear. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 5, 1990. Series: Jonah. Scripture: Jonah 1:4-16. 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.

Thanks for listening to Gospel in Life. Today Tim Keller is taking us through a series on the book of Jonah, a story which is about much more than the reluctant prophet being swallowed by a great fish. You may be surprised at how profoundly it speaks to the issues we face today. After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Watch carefully. We're reading the section of this chapter that tells us about the relationship between

Jonah and the sailors and the impact that Jonah had on the sailors' lives, and the impact that the sailors had on Jonah's life. Jonah 1, verses 4 through 16. 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 is 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, 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 sea was getting rougher and rougher,

so they asked him, what should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he said, and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Instead, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried to the Lord, O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased. And then they took Jonah and

threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him." The word of the Lord. Now we've been looking at the great story of Jonah for a number of weeks. We're going to continue to do it for the rest of the summer, the rest of this month. And we've seen how the story goes. It's very familiar. Jonah

is called by God to go to Nineveh, the greatest city in the world, and warn the city about impending disaster and preach there. Jonah refuses, heads in the other direction, gets on a boat. God sends a storm to hunt him down, endangering the lives of everyone in the ship. Jonah, recognizing this, offers to be thrown into the ocean so the lives of the other sailors will not be forfeit. And finally, when Jonah actually is thrown into the sea, instead of drowning, God provides a fish which swallows him and protects him from the drowning. And now you think, well, let's go, Chapter 2, what goes on? And instead, the slowpoke preacher says, wait, let's take a look again at a subplot

within the plot. Maybe not as scintillating, maybe not quite as exciting as the major plot, but the subplot, some of you artists know subplot, subthemes can be every bit as critical and important to the overall work of art as the main plot. And the subplot is this. Jonah and his relationship and impact on the sailors and their impact on him. Do you see the exquisite irony here? The whole idea, we talked about this previously, the whole idea of Jonah in fleeing is to get away from those despised heathen.

He hates the Nevites. He's proud of his own people. He's proud of his own pedigree. He's proud of his own faith. So he's fleeing from despised heathens and now what happens is he finds himself surrounded by them. Not only that, put it another way, the whole idea is to get as far away from dirty pagans as possible and he ends up dying for dirty pagans.

The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. Don't you see, somebody might say, what a primitive, crude view of God, a God who gets angry and sends a storm, somebody might say, what a primitive crude view of God, a God who gets angry and sends a storm, a killer storm after the prophet. What a crude view of God. Crude? No way.

This God is not a vigilante. This God is a master teacher. Look, the very truth missing from Jonah's mind and the very character missing from his heart is imparted even as God seeks him. Now what we have here is Jonah, who has forgotten a truth that God is teaching him. That's the truth that's missing from his mind, and God's teaching him even as he reclaims him. God is so efficient.

And the truth is very well put by Malcolm Mugridge, very, very famous British writer who in his latter years became a soundly converted Christian. And at one point he wrote this, as Christians we know that here we have no continuing city, that crowns will roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometimes flounder. Whereas we acknowledge a king, men did not crown and cannot dethrone. As we are citizens of a city of God, they did not build and cannot destroy. We acknowledge a king, men did not crown and cannot dethrone. As we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy."

Jonah forgot that. You see, Jonah had gotten so enamored with the power of the world and actually also with the ultimacy of his own citizenship as a Jew, that he neither believed that God could change Nineveh, nor did he love Nineveh enough to want God to change it. He forgot the ultimacy of the kingdom of God. He's being too taken with the power of Nineveh and with the power of his own citizenship. He's forgotten the fact that God is the real God and the only kingdom that will last is the kingdom of God and the only power that really ultimately will prevail is the power of the kingdom. And as a result, Jonah is both proud and scared at the same time because he's forgotten that. And so what

we have here is Jonah who is fleeing because he doesn't believe God can change the city nor does he care enough about the city to want it to be changed. So what you've got is a cynicism on Jonah's part. He doesn't believe things can be changed. What about us? How do you look at the world around you? How do you look at your society? How do you look at your city if you live here?

Are you like Jonah, just as cynical? Are you just as intimidated by it and just as cynical that you believe that the possibility of radical change is not, it's negligible, it's not even there? Are you cynical about the possibility of it? Are you like Jonah, not only cynical but not caring enough about the society around you, so that like him you have pretty much decided to let that go the way it goes and I'm just going to deal with my own personal goals and try to achieve a few things in my own life. The other people in your boat, the people you live with, the people you work with, the people in your neighborhood, the people in your apartment building,

do you believe that you can make an impact on them? The purpose of the sailors is for God to take Jonah by the nape of the neck and put his face in them and say, you are here for them. If you belong to me, you're here for these people. I don't care that you don't like them. I don't care that you think they're beyond hope. I don't care that they're very, very different than you are. You have no right to be absorbed in your own goals. You're here for them. Now how much like Jonah are we? A lot of you say, hey, I don't really live here. I'm just here for a while. And the people around me, they're so strange. I couldn't make a dent here even if I tried. You're just like Jonah. Exactly like Jonah. You've forgotten what

the real kingdom is. You're cynical, and so am I. To some degree, you're proud of the people like yourself, and you don't like the people unlike you. And in New York, everybody's a minority. And so everybody around you, you feel like you're overwhelmed with people who aren't like you, who you don't really know that you understand, and you're not sure you like them at all. Just like Jonah. God takes the sailors to say to Jonah, Jonah, if you belong to me, you're here for them. And my kingdom power is the ultimate power, so you shouldn't either be cynical and you shouldn't be scornful about them. When God speaks to Jonah, he speaks to us.

Now let's just take a look and see what the sailors teach Jonah so that shows us how we are supposed to regard the world. It shows how we are supposed to handle the world. And who's we? I'm talking about the church. But in particular, I'm thinking about when you look out, no matter who you are, where you're from, what country you're from, what social class you're from, what profession you're from, the great thing about New York is most of the people around you are different. What

is your attitude and stance supposed to be toward them? Here's what the sailors teach us. Number one, first of all, the first thing we're taught here, and you especially see it here in verse five, is that every human being has a deep spiritual longing, but in our natural state, those deep spiritual longings are distorted by fear. Every human being is deeply religious, but the religion that we've all got is a religion of fear. And you see it here in verse 5,

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. Now, here's what we learn from this. First of all, Romans 1 is being confirmed here. Paul says that every human being is homo religioso, is inherently religious. The deepest need that any human being has got is to worship. We all have got to have some overarching religious goal or purpose that gives everything else meaning. We are not like animals. We cannot get up every day and simply do what's there. We can't get up and feel like we've got any meaning in life if we're just eating and sleeping and working and resting and going through the cycle. We have got to have something bigger. We all

worship. We have to worship, every human being is deeply religious, regardless of what you think, regardless of what you claim. Know yourselves here. Some of us are so bitter because we say, my life is ruined because so-and-so didn't love me. That's a religious statement. I haven't got meaning, I haven't got purpose. It's a religious statement. Have you ever gone to certain poetry readings or even certain concerts where the people who are there obviously like it, but they demand a kind of atmosphere of religious reverence? Have you ever noticed that poetry readings, it's like going to a church service sometimes? And I'll tell you the reason why. There's

people there who rightly love literature, who rightly love the music, but it is the only source of beauty and joy in their lives. They're worshipping. It's the only thing they've got. They might say, I'm not a really religious person. They have to be. Why is it that some of us will work ourselves into the ground, work ourselves into the ground, even when our spouses say, I'm leaving you if you keep this up, and we keep on anyway, and we feel so absolutely useless and absolutely meaningless and absolutely worthless if we're not working ourselves into the ground, when we try to relax, we feel like we're not worthy to live. That's religion! That's worship!

We have to have some kind of ultimate meaning. There's something that we bow down and prostrate ourselves before, that we give ourselves to because it's the only way in which we can have meaning. Everyone must worship. Nature will be served and will worship something even if it's bad. Nature will be served. Deny it food and it will gobble poison. And notice here, it says, every man cried to his God. It's very unlikely that every one of these sailors was equally religious. But in extreme conditions, they all got religious. Because this is what Paul says in Romans 1. Our need for worship and our belief in the divine

may sleep very deep, but extreme conditions always bring it out. And when that happens, we see that we need God, and we cry out to whatever God we've got. That's the first thing. Every human being has deep spiritual longings. But secondly, this tells us what the Bible tells us everywhere, and if you're going to understand the world, you have to understand this, that all of our religions, unless the Holy Spirit has come in and renewed our heart, unless we've actually found the true God through faith in Christ, all of our religions are essentially

religions of fear. Just like these men are afraid and they cried out in fear. Because you see, ultimately, the reason we cry out in fear, well, now let me put it this way, I've gone ahead of myself, look at these guys, look at these sailors. In the beginning of the chapter they're crying out to their gods. At the end of the chapter they're crying out to the true God, that's progress. And yet, even at the end they're still scared. You notice if you look and see what they say, when Jonah says, throw me in, they start talking

to the true God Yahweh and they say, are you going to get us if we throw him in? You know, oh Lord, don't strike us down if we throw him in because Lord you did as you pleased. These are not men who are speaking to a God they trust. These are not men who are speaking to a heavenly Father. They have no confidence that the gods that they serve love them. They have no confidence, period. These are not men that are speaking to a Father who know that whatever happens, their Father will either give them what they ask or He will give them something better for them. They don't believe that they've got a Father up there that will listen to their prayer. And the reason for that is simply this. The natural bend of the human heart

is to know there is a God, but to not trust Him further than you can throw Him. And you know what? You can't throw God very far. How heavy is omnipotence? A friend of mine, Jack Miller, once told a great story about he was a hospital chaplain and 3 a.m. in the morning he was roused out of bed because a man was calling. He needed a chaplain. He needed to talk to somebody about God. When he got there, the patient was very embarrassed and he said, you know, I'm sorry to tell you this, but what happened was they mixed my x-rays up and they thought my x-rays were

the x-rays of a man with terminal cancer, and they told me about it, and I really wanted to talk to somebody about God, but you know, I'm not a religious person. And now that I see that I'm all right, I really am sorry to bother you. And what he was saying is, I will deal with God if I have to. I will deal with God if I've got to. This is the way the union deals with the management. This is the way you deal with your superintendent of your building. I'll deal with him if I have to, but I don't trust him.

The prayer of terror therefore is not a sign of grace in the heart. It's the natural response of every human heart to extreme conditions. Whenever you're brought to the brink, as we see, your natural religiosity comes up. And you begin to bargain with God, and you begin to negotiate with God instead of trusting and surrendering to Him because you don't believe He loves you. The natural heart, until it begins to actually find God through faith in Christ, the natural heart is full of bargaining. And a lot of you will admit, I think, that you only get religious when you're in trouble. And therefore, you don't trust Him. Therefore, you're like the sailors. Some of you can remember a time in your life

where you had troubles. They might have been mighty smiths, you know, it might have been when you were 16 years old and now you look back and you laugh, you know, the trouble was somebody that you wanted to date didn't want to date you. What was the end of the world for you then? And now you can laugh at it, but at the time it was like being in a boat and it looked like the storm was above you and it looked like you were about to sink. And you cried out and bargained. And you said, I'll give myself to you, Lord. And you cried out and bargained. And you said, I'll give myself to you, Lord, if you get me out of this.

That's the prayer of terror. That's bargaining. That's dealing with a God that you don't trust. And you made a commitment. And to this day, even though there's been no growth in your life, there's been no real desire over the years to really grow like Christ. You haven't had any kind of real relationship with Him where you talk to Him and He speaks to you through His Word. There's been nothing like that. Yet you hold on and say, well, I know I'm a Christian. And it

might just have been no more an act of faith than when I hit my knee, the knee bounds up in a reflex. The reflex of the human heart who doesn't trust God and doesn't like God and doesn't want God in charge of your life, whenever you get in trouble, is to pray. See? That's the reflex. The reflex always is when you get in trouble to pray. But there's no actual coming out to Him and saying, I surrender to you. The natural human heart believes, number one, that God wants to rule it. That's right. And that if that happens, that's the end of your joy and freedom and that's wrong. How do you know whether in trouble right now, some of you

are in trouble and you're getting more religious than ever and you're seeking Him more than ever, how do you know whether right now you're moving toward God is a prayer of terror or is actually a response of faith that is born out of trouble? How do you know you're moving toward God in a manipulative way where you still want to be in charge of your life or in a way of trust and love? It's fairly simple. What happens when you get out of trouble?

Because when you get out of trouble, do you find yourself no longer having any interest in praying, no longer really having any interest in the things of God? Do you find that if your prayer is answered, you cool off immediately and you might not even really crack a Bible or really work that much at your walk anymore? Or do you find if your prayer of terror is not answered that you get so bitter and so angry that you walk away from God, showing that all you ever wanted to do was use Him anyway? away from God, showing that all you ever wanted to do was use Him anyway. You see, the prayer of Terah says, God, I'll deal with you if I can use you.

And the prayer of faith said, Lord, I now see that you need to use me. Any way you want, I give myself to you. 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 GospelInLife.com slash give. That's GospelInLife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love.

You know what's really ironic about the prayer of terror, which is not the prayer of faith and surrender? The prayer of terror goes which is not the prayer of faith and surrender. The prayer of terror goes like this, Lord, I'm in a pickle. I'll do anything, anything, anything if you'll help me. And the one thing he asks is the one thing you won't give him. You say you'll give him anything, but you won't. The one thing is to come to him unconditionally and trust him and to say, I'm going to obey you no matter what you do for me in this condition No matter how you handle my prayer just because I know that you're trustworthy

You are more competent to run my life than I am I know because of who you are I owe you my life. I know because of what you've done for me in Jesus Christ. I can trust you In other words when you say I'll do anything if you'll get me out of this, the one thing that he really wants from you, you won't give him. And that is to stop saying, I'll do anything if you get me out of this. And to say, I'll do anything for you, period. Use me. I trust you. I surrender to you. How about it? I surrender to you. How about it? Listen, what we learn about this is number one. Now, I hope some of you, listen, some of my believing friends here are going to think

that I'm insulting your intelligence. You know what this teaches us? Everybody needs Christ. You say, hey, I know that. I'm not trying to tell you a cliché. I'm telling you that I don't know it. When I walk out there, I always, everybody looks tougher than I feel, and everybody looks more together than I feel, but this passage in the Bible teaches me that every human being

is desperately clinging to something that gives their life meaning, and they're clinging in fear, because you can never, ever, ever please a false god. Whatever you are clinging to, if it's not the true god, to give your life meaning, you will always be living a life of fear. Because you'll never know what's going to happen tomorrow. You'll never know whether you'll come up to standards. You'll never know whether the thing that gives your life meaning is really going to treat you right. And if it's your business field that you say, boy, if I can make it in that area, if it's your artistic field, if I can make it in that area, then I'll know. You have no idea how those fields are going to treat you.

You are living in fear. And until you finally give your life to the true God, you will continue to live in fear. My dear Christian friends, everybody out there is like that. You ought to know that you are like that. You were like that totally, and to a certain degree you still are, even as believers, because we have fear to the degree that we serve other gods than the true God, the heavenly Father, who loves us and who gave His Son to die for us. Second thing we learn, the second thing we learn, is that we are called upon, who are believers, to take our faith and to use it for the public good. We're not called upon just to be sorry for those poor people all around us who are living

lives of fear. We're also called to take our faith. You were wondering when I was going to do that. Some of you have been waiting. Some of you have been taking bets every week. When is he going to stub his toe on that thing? You're embarrassed, see, because you know it's true. You've been doing that. Okay. Ah, yes. A word of knowledge. All right. Now, listen. The second point, and there's only two points to this sermon, very strange, why not three? The second

point is the sailors rebuke Jonah for not using his faith for the public good. One of the most intriguing verses I know in this entire book, if you meditate and think about it, is where the heathen captain comes down and speaks to the godly man and yells at him. And he says, you know, in the Old King James, he says, what meanest thou, O sleeper, arise, call upon thy God. Perhaps he will have pity on us and we will not perish. And what he's saying is this, listen, I understand you're religious. What are you doing down here asleep, absorbed in your own problems, not even realizing what kind of situation we're in? If you're religious, if you've got a God, why aren't

you getting your faith out where it can do some public good? Why don't you do something for us? Don't you see that we're dying up here? Now, it's interesting. He's rebuking Jonah for two things. First of all, this heathen captain is rebuking Jonah for being a man of God who has no idea about the problems of the people surrounding him. Too absorbed in his own worries, he's probably asleep because he's full of his own grief. He's full of his own self-doubts, full of his own guilt. You know what happens when you're so wrapped up in your own problems you have to go to sleep. He's being rebuked because he is so distant from the problems of the people around him. He doesn't even know their predicament.

And secondly, he's rebuking him because he's not using the resources of his faith to help them. And we see that when Jonah actually does stand up, begin to deal with these people, repent, and offer to die for them, you see the incredible impact of his behavior on them. They turn to the true God and they're saved. And we see what a tremendous public good the Gospel can have. Now let's take a look at those two things because the two things that Jonah is sinful, is guilty of, are the two things that the church is guilty of. Number one, not even knowing about the world's problems and number two, not doing anything about them. Now, only

can say a word about these two things but boy, are they important. Number one. Jonah is rightly rebuked by the captain and the world rightly can rebuke any church and reject as false and as superfluous any church that sleeps in sweet oblivion to the problems, the real problems of the real world around us. Now that's true corporately. Very often unfortunately the church is so absorbed in infighting. You know, we've got different parties inside the church that have different views on how we should do things doctrinally and so on. Or we might be actually having personality clashes inside the church, and we're too fighting who's going to have power of this or that congregation. Or we're battling and absorbed over whether or not we should have a pipe organ or an electronic organ. Or how we should be decorating the sanctuary. The church like that is rebukeable. The captain,

the heathen, the world has a right to reject a church like that. But it's not just true corporately. Friends, let's be honest about ourselves. Let's be very honest about ourselves. Many of us, like Jonah, are too personally wrapped up in our own problems, too personally wrapped up in our own hurts and our own pains, and we look around and we see the incredible problems around us, we say, oh my, oh my, I'm too hurting for this. I'm too messed up myself. I got too many of my own problems and we're asleep below deck. And the world should be, the world comes to us and says, get up! You've got a God? If

you've got a God, why aren't you doing something for us? Use the resources that you've got for us. Here we are, completely absorbed in our problems. Meanwhile, families are breaking apart. Our society is being pulled under by an underclass of despairing people who are there largely because of our neglect for hundreds of years. You've still got just thousands and millions of people, refugees, people coming to this country

who are both physically needy and spiritually open. The children are dying in the streets. Meanwhile, we're asleep below deck because of our self-image problem. We're asleep below deck because of our own hurts, because we want somebody to help. And now listen, listen. There is a balance here, and surely you know that. And surely you see that God says, I realize that you've got to get input from me if you're ever going to be of usefulness out there. But God also comes to you and says, you're not going to very often feel strong until you begin to move out. It says in Philippians 2, work out your salvation and fear and trembling for it is God at work within you,

both to will and to do is good pleasure. Work out for God is working. As you do the work, as you do the service, very often the strength comes. One of the reasons a lot of us feel so weak, you know this from trying to help somebody recuperate who's been sick a long time, they had to be in bed for a long time, and at a certain point you say, you've got to get up. I'm too tired to get up. Well, you're too tired to get up because you're not getting up. Those of you who work in healthcare know that that's what happens. At a certain point you say, until you get up and start to make yourself feel like you're going beyond your physical capacity, you'll never get beyond your physical capacity. The reason that we are so self-absorbed in our

problems and the reason that Jonah is self-absorbed, let's not forget what it is, it's Jonah's self-righteousness. Ultimately, Jonah believes he's better than these pagans and as a result he doesn't care for the pagans. He's forgotten he's a sinner saved by grace. That's the reason why the Bible can tell us in Isaiah, in Matthew, in James, and right here, that the way you can tell vital faith is by the way in which you treat those who are different from you, those who are downtrodden, those who are dirty, those who are ugly, those who are loveless, those who are outcasts. You know, some faiths require that we go to hurting people and meet their needs. Like Islam, you must take care of the poor. But Christianity goes beyond that. It doesn't just say you must take care of those people

who are different. Christianity says you will. Christianity says the way you can tell whether or not you understand the gospel, that you're not just a good moral person who looks around at other people who are failures and says, pick yourself up, I did. But if you understand the gospel, and that is that you are a spiritual failure and that you've been saved only at the incredible cost of the death of the eternal Son of God. If you understand that, that changes and revolutionizes the way in which you look at everybody and therefore your willingness to deal with the hurting, the outcast,

the different is a sign of whether or not you are a believer or at least whether or not your faith is a totally intellectual one or not. Let me put it as starkly as possible. The gospel says this, the difference between, before God, before God, before God, the difference between a goody two shoes, moral upstanding, decorated national hero, and a criminal drug lord, before God the difference between those two people is negligible. You know why? Because in their natural state, neither of them love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. Both of them are living for their own pleasure and for their own glory, but they're expressing their self-centeredness and their unwillingness

to live for God. They're expressing that in two different ways. One in a socially acceptable way and one in a socially unacceptable way. And a real Christian knows, regardless of your pedigree, regardless of your background, regardless of your record, when you look in the face of an outcast, you say, spiritually, I'm as much a failure in God's eyes as this person is to me. And if you say, if there's anybody here who says, I don't believe that, you're one of the few people that Jesus ever yells at. You know, Jesus almost never yells at anybody but Pharisees. Jesus yelled at the people who were Pharisees and he said, the prostitutes and the whoremongers go into heaven before you. Does that mean he thinks it's alright to be a prostitute? What he's saying is prostitutes and whoremongers are more open to the gospel. The gospel is

that you're a spiritual failure, but that if you admit who you are and you ask Jesus to cover your sins, you can rule and reign with Christ forever. That's the gospel. And when you receive that, it finally, finally chips away at the natural bigotry and sense of superiority that every human heart's got. Without the gospel, you'll never overcome bigotry. The best you'll ever get is to get angry at bigots and to shout them down and to hate them and have nothing to do with them. That's as far as you'll get and that's not very far. My friends, do you understand what happened to Jonah? Jonah began to realize, and we'll

see it next week when we look at Jonah chapter 2, he's a sinner saved by grace. When he realized that, when he grasped it, it revolutionized his attitude toward people. He was willing to die for the dirty pagans. He was willing to give himself for that. It's an inevitable sign of true faith. And if you do not sense that same going out toward the people around you, even the ones who are different, you're either not a Christian or your understanding of the grace of God is as intellectual and not personal, as intellectual as it was to Jonah at this point. Now lastly, last thing, you're done. The captain was also saying, Jonah, you have got to get active. You've got to actually do something. You've got to

use your faith for the public good. I can do no more than just make a quick statement here, and in the future we want to explore this at this church. The modern mind says your Christianity, your spirituality is for your private world. Do not bring it out into public. Do not let it affect the way in which you operate in the public arena. Do not let it affect the way in which you do business or the way in which you do politics. No, it's for the private realm. Now listen, up until a few years ago, in the whole history of the world, that was a laughable position. Because you know, what is truth, for goodness sakes?

I guess there's a couple of kinds of truth. You could say there's protein truth and there's baroque music truth. Well, here's what protein truth is. If you find out that protein's good for you, then you should try to get everybody to eat protein because regardless of their beliefs, if protein is truly good for you, it's good for you no matter what you believe. That's primary truth. Now, Baroque music is good for some people, but not good for everybody. And after years and years and years of believing that religious truth was primary truth, arbitrarily, several years ago, a bunch of people said,

no, no, religious truth is like Baroque truth. It means that if you believe it, that's good for you, but don't bring it out in the public because it's not primary truth. My friends, if God is a king, he's not just a musician, though he surely is that. But God, if he's a king at all, he's the king of all. He's king over music, he's king over science,

he's king over business and politics. Now the most incredible thing about Christianity is that it is not an ideology. And it will push you out into the world and make you look sometimes like a liberal and sometimes like a conservative, but never an ideologue. Here's why. Because if you look at the left, the left says, you know what's wrong with the world? Those in power. It's the people with the riches. It's the people with the power. They're the problems.

Take their power away. That's where the evil lies. And of course, the conservatives, people on the right are saying, no, it's the lawless. It's the shifless. It's the lazy. They're the ones that are pulling our society down. They're the ones to deal with. And a Christian says, listen, you can never say the evil's all out there. You have to say it's out there and it's in here. The

churches have brought down the left-wing governments of the Eastern Europe. But churches also, does that mean that they're conservatives? No, they also bring down right-wing governments and they identify with the poor and they say, stop oppressing the poor. They're doing that in Latin America. What happens is the church is, Christianity is ardently political but it's not a political system. And it will push you out into public and it will make you say how do I creatively bring to bear the word of God and the justice of God on the needs of all the people around me. The captain says, how dare you, Jonah, keep your faith in private. Get it out here where its resources can do some public good. So we've come full circle.

Jonah is finally seeing that he is really able to have an impact on these people around him. He gives his life to them. And at the end, Jonah really has become self-forgetful. He remembers that he's a sinner saved by grace. He gives himself up for the people, and the impact is tremendous. And that's how we should be. If you want to have an impact on the world, we've got to be just as self-forgetful. We should be the most approachable of people, because a Christian is someone who's not always standing on his own dignity, not always looking at himself. A Christian is someone who is both ethical and yet compassionate and patient in the extreme. So people who look at you say, here's a person who though I see moral beauty in the life,

I don't feel put off at all. Instead, I can see this person is what he is by the grace of God alone, and being around him makes me realize I can be that way too." So what do we say here in the end? You are capable of changing things. You are capable of changing things. You're capable of changing the city. Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury years ago, 1500s, when there was a queen who was trying to put tremendous pressure on him so she could get control of the church. And she said, I will kill you if you don't sign a particular statement, which he didn't

believe. And under pressure, he at one point signed it. He called it a recantation and he signed it. But later on, he realized he had done the wrong thing and he repudiated it. And as a result, she burned him at the stake. Yet Thomas Cranmer walked up to the fire and before he actually himself was put in the fire, he put his hand out, the hand that signed the recantation, the hand that had offended and done the bad deed.

He put his hand out to show everybody what he thought of the truth. He put his hand in there and kept it there until it was consumed. And recently I was reading a history of England and in it the writer who is no believer says this amazing thing and I was so impressed by it. He says, there is no wonder that he's talking about Cranmer. There is no wonder that his timid nature hesitated and recanted in the presence of a terrible death. It is more amazing though that he saw his way so clearly in the end and held the hand which had signed the recantation in the fire till it was consumed.

Had the men of those days a less highly strung nervous system than ours? Or can the power of a scholar's mind be so triumphant over physical pain? In that magnificent gesture, the Church of England revived." You know, the writer can't believe it. How could somebody get that kind of courage to stand up publicly for the truth, put his hand in, and he says, are these people made of something different? How could... And the answer is, no.

Thomas Cranmer got a hold of the grace of God. And who knows what magnificent gesture you're capable of if you get back in touch with who you are. Dear friends, there's two kinds of people here. To some of you I say, find that the God that you fear is a father of love. Stop trying to earn your salvation by being good enough or pursuing any other thing. Make Him preeminent in your life and approach Him through Jesus Christ.

Make Him your Savior. And to those of you who are believers, I say wake up. Use the gospel of grace on your boredom and on your cynicism. Who knows what magnificent gesture you're capable of? Go to Him. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that the world is a place where you want to put forth your power and transform it.

Forgive us for our cynicism. Forgive us for our boredom. Help us to see we're sinners saved by grace. Help us to recognize that it's not fear but love that should rule us. And in all these ways, we ask that you would now meet us over the table, for we ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching.

We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you a deeper appreciation for God's grace and helps you apply it to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at GospelInLife.com. When you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel In Life podcast were preached from 1989 to Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.