Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Freedom of Hope

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Most people think the job of religion is to call people into a life of morality. But Paul says that’s not what Christianity is at all. Gospel transformation is completely different than moral reformation. In Galatians 5, Paul says there are two different reasons you could obey God—and the reason for your obedience makes all the difference in the world. Paul tells us 1) there is a wrong reason for moral obedience, and it enslaves us, and 2) there is a whole other engine for obedience, and it is hope and love. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 22, 1998. Series: Galatians: New Freedom, New Family. Scripture: Galatians 5:1-12. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Is being a Christian just about moral transformation or a pathway to the good life? Tim Keller looks at the book of Galatians to demonstrate how the Christian life is so much more than that. It's about how Christ transforms us in a radical and life-changing way. Throughout this month, Tim Keller will be teaching from the book of Galatians and how the gospel transforms us. Now, let's take a look at this passage, and I'm just going to read from Galatians, chapter

5. We've been going through the book of Galatians, and we come now to a section that I want to assure you, if you see verses that I haven't touched on tonight, this is an introduction. In some ways the message can't be as long tonight and we're going to get into Galatians 5 for a couple of weeks, so don't be afraid, you can come back and I will elaborate on the basic points that I'm making tonight. In Galatians 5 we get to an issue which all along I've been telling people after services when they come up and ask me about this. I said, don't worry, we'll get to it in Galatians 5. Now, here we are. Galatians 5. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and

do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ. You have fallen away from grace. But by faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. You were running a good race who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth. That kind of persuasion does not come from the

one who calls you." Now, I think I'm going to stop right there because this is as far as we're going to get tonight. This is God's Word. All along, not only all along in this series on Galatians, but all along, as long as we've been redeemer, we've been saying, gospel transformation is different than moral reformation. The gospel transforms you from the inside out. That's different than just plain old fashioned moral reformation. First time I ever heard that, I think, or at least it was clear in my mind, I was in seminary and one of my professors, Richard Lovelace, gave this illustration and it stayed

with me. And occasionally, maybe some of you heard me use it before, I don't know. He says, you know, if you take a rod of iron that's bent, there's two ways to fix it. The one is, he says, it was bent this way, you can just take your hand and with an exertion of external power, just bend it back. But you know, if you take a rod that's been bent and you bend it back, even if it looks straight, it is far weaker than it was before. Because there's been tremendous stress, there's been actually all sorts of little fibers, in a sense, being broken in there, and if you bend it one more time, it'll break off.

When a rod is bent and you just bend it back, just exerting physical force on it, it looks like it's straight but it's weaker than before. But if you put it in the fire until it glows, you know, fiery from within, and then in that fire, when it's been transformed in a sense from the inside, you can shape it and make it true and straight, straighter than ever and stronger than ever, tempered because of the experience of the fire. And then he says, that's the difference. He said, if you've been abused, if you're kind of a mess, if you've got all these bad habits, he says, you can just through moral reformation, you know, you've been bent one way by somebody,

okay, you can bend back. You know, accountability, behavior modification, there's all sorts of ways of doing that. You can just bend yourself back. Or through the gospel, you can put your heart in the fire. The fire of the one who made you. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of the Creator, the one who made you, who's stronger than you are. And what will happen is when His very power comes in, you'll glow from within, there'll be a fire, there'll be a softness, there'll be a sweetness. And when you are shaped in that experience, stronger than ever, organically you've been changed.

Gospel transformation is very different than moral reformation. C.S. Lewis put it also around the same time I was listening to Richard Loveless, I was reading Mere Christianity and CS Lewis put it this way and it's powerful, especially if you can remember, if you can overlook the fact he wrote in 1943 and didn't use gender inclusive language. But once I assure you that he wanted new women as well as new men, it's a powerful passage. It's near the end of Mere Christianity. He's got a chapter called Nice People or New Men. And this is what he says, a world of nice people looking no farther than that would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world

and more difficult to save. For mere improvement is not redemption, though in the end, redemption will improve you to a degree that you can't even imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons, not simply to produce better kinds of the old creature, but to produce a new kind of person. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but it's more like turning a horse into a winged creature, a whole new kind of being altogether. See, now there it is. That's very powerful. Gospel transformation is something different than moral reformation. And so what we've always said is when the gospel comes

into your life, when you learn the gospel, when you see the gospel, when it becomes real to you, it changes you. It makes you an honest person. It makes you a bold person. It makes you a courageous person. It makes you an unselfish person. And it changes you, makes you a godly person. But over and over again, as we stress the gospel, and what is the gospel? That now there's no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. Your sins can never separate you from God. Now your acceptance with God is absolutely complete. It's based not on your past, but Christ's past, not on what you have lived and done,

but what he has lived and done. Not on your performance, but on his performance. And as a result, through faith alone and nothing else, by faith in Jesus Christ, you're accepted. Not on the level of your surrender or lack of surrender, the level of your repentance or lack of repentance. The level of your purity or lack of purity doesn't count a bit.

It doesn't merit it a bit. It's a free gift. It comes to you now and you're completely accepted in God's sight through Jesus Christ and nothing can separate you. That's the gospel. And after, almost after every service, somebody has come up to me and said, how does that create a godly life? How does that create a transformed life? How is it possible that when you tell somebody, God will love you no matter what you do, how could that possibly turn you into a better person? Wouldn't the gospel, if anything, lead us to feel like, hey, I can live any way I want? See, how does the gospel create any kind of energy for change? How specifically does the gospel really change us? Now, if you really... Can I drive this home? If I was being mean to me,

in other words, if I was arguing with me about this, and I often do, all the time, I don't lose, but I often do, I would put it this way. I would say, if I heard me preaching like this, I would say, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, I've had an experience recently, I have two sons now, my oldest two sons who applied for college, And one of the things I've noticed is that the last semester of their junior year and the first semester of their senior year, they bust a gut to get the best grades they ever have. And then somehow their applications are in and they're getting accepted to their various colleges and somehow, you know, the grades come in in April, May, and they're way low, they're much lower. I mean, you know, the grades come in in April, May,

and they're way low, they're much lower. I mean, you know, the grades have gone down. A's become B's, B's have become C's. And you look at them and you say, well, gee, son, why are you slacking off here? I mean, why are the grades going down? And they look at you and they say, Dad, I'm in.

I mean, the college doesn't see that. I mean, I can't fail, of course, but I have to pass. But I mean, but see, I'm in now. The college doesn't see that. My grades don't make a bit of difference. I'm accepted. See? I'm accepted.

My grades mean nothing now. And I look at them. And you know, just so naïve, like, idiot. I walk right into it. And I say, let's say, why should I bust a gut now? Why should I work so hard now? I'm accepted.

Why should I try? And I say, why? Love of learning. The joy of creativity. Intellectual integrity. And they say, Dad, when you're done, could you pass the ketchup? You know, or something like that. Now, here's what I want to know.

If it's common sense, it is absolutely the case that when acceptance is so total, that it makes your performance invisible. How is that an incentive for excellence? How is that an incentive for living full throttle? How is that an incentive for sacrifice? How is that an incentive for sacrifice? How's that an incentive for discipline? It retards it. It works against it. How's it possible that something that obviously works in this sense with my sons, why would the dynamic suddenly totally reverse itself writ large with God? See, listen, I sit around arguing with myself

all the time. I think of the worst things I could possibly say to myself. Now, that comes, and listen, one of the bad things, now, by the way, I'll answer this tonight, even though next week we'll elaborate on it. I won't keep you in suspense. But there is a common, a very, very common approach that I think is very misguided. And even though some of you may think I'm attacking this or that church, I'm not actually. My mentor, C.S. Lewis, himself was wrong at this point. The way a lot of people answer this is they say, yes, you know what?

That's right. That's right. If you talk too much about free acceptance and free grace, you know, that's just going to lead to slack living. It has to lead to slack living, to tell people over and over and over. You're always telling them they're accepted, always telling grace, you know, that's just gonna lead to slack living. It has to lead to slack living, to tell people over and over and over. You're always telling them they're accepted, always telling them, you know, God loves you no matter what, it doesn't matter how you live, it doesn't matter, God loves you anyway.

If you do that all the time, of course it's gonna lead to slack living. Of course it's not gonna create any energy for, so you have to tell people they have to obey as well, and you need a balance, a balance. See, the relationship between grace and good works is mysterious. We really don't know.

The important thing is balance. We need to tell them they can't commit adultery. We have to tell them they can't lie. We have to tell them about the 10, we have to preach and show them how they have to live. So we just need a balance. Don't talk about faith and grace all the time. Talk about works and, you know, moral living and virtue. You know, we really need to have a balance. Don't talk about faith and grace all the time. Talk about works and, you know, moral living and virtue. You know, we really need to have a balance. That's

absolutely wrong. I'll tell you why. Read the letters of Paul. What is this controversy about? Is it true? Here comes the false teachers, and Paul is saying the false teachers who are telling them that they're justified by their works, he's going to the mat, he's going tooth and nail. Now is it true, when you read the letters of Paul, he talks about grace and faith all the time. He never tells people about sin. He never tells them that they can't commit adultery.

He never tells them they can't lie. Is it a matter of emphasis? Is the difference between Paul and the false teachers a matter of emphasis? Is it the false teachers were always talking about good works and never about faith? Of course they were both, they were saying faith. Is it true that God, that Paul was always talking about faith and never about good works? Of course he was telling them how they had to live. It's not a matter of emphasis.

Paul says the difference between day and night is not the balance on how much you talk about it, but the relationship. It's not enough to say the relationship between faith and works is mysterious. Paul says the reason for your obedience means everything. Paul is not somebody who came to the Galatians. When he started churches, he didn't say, by the way, now you don't have to obey God. Of course not. He told them about obedience left and right. And the false teachers were not, the false teachers did not come in and never talk about faith in Christ. Of course they said you have to have faith in Christ. The difference between them was not that one stressed faith and one stressed

works. They both did the same thing. It's not a matter of imbalance, but it was they utterly differed on the reason you obey God, the reason you get up tomorrow morning and have your quiet time. It makes all the difference in the world. What Paul is trying to say here is the two different reasons that are in front of you, the two reasons you could get up in the morning and pray. Why are you getting up in the morning and praying? Why when you see that you could give in to temptation do you stop and say, no, no, no, I want to obey God? That's good, but why are you doing it? Why? Paul says the why is everything. He says, in front of you is the way I've put it and the way the false

teachers put it, and these two different reasons for obedience create two different humanities, two different religions, two different personalities, two different sets of relationships, two different worldviews. Everything hinges on this. It's not a matter of balance. It's not a matter of how many sermons out of 52 sermons in which somebody tells you, obey God. It's all a matter of how they're motivating you to obey God and the reasons they give

you to obey God. Okay? You see, Paul says in Titus 2.13, he says, the gospel of salvation has appeared and it teaches us to say no to unrighteousness. Now, that's the point. Paul says, what is getting you to say no? Why are you saying no? Just say no?

No. It's not enough to just say no. I want to know why I should say no. In fact, one of the things, okay, let's, I guess that I want to introduce you to the basic points and we don points and we can get back and elaborate it later. So what does Paul say?

What does Paul tell us about the reason to obey and how the gospel changes us and how the gospel creates an energy and a motivation for obedience to God? First of all, he speaks negatively and he basically says up here in verse 1, at the wrong reason for moral obedience is bondage. So he speaks negatively first and says, the wrong reason for moral obedience is bondage. Look what he says. He says, stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Now, three weeks ago we pointed this out, and I'm so glad he says it again. He said it back in chapter four. I'm so glad he says it again because it's so astounding.

I'm so glad we can repeat. Some of you weren't here and didn't hear this. Some of you were here and need to hear it again, and I do too. What is so astounding by the word again? How can we best understand the freedom we have in Christ? What is the relationship between the law of the Bible and the grace that Jesus offers? In the book Galatians for You, Tim Keller takes you through a rich and deep study of Paul's letter as he reflects on the amazing grace we have in Christ.

Galatians is a powerful book that shows how people can think they know the gospel but are actually losing touch with it. In this study of the book of Galatians, Dr. Keller helps you understand how this short book in the New Testament can transform your life. Galatians for you is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with more people. Request your copy today at gospelinlife.com slash give.

Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. What is so astonishing is this. The Galatians are being told by the false teachers, you've got to be circumcised, you've got to go under all the mosaic ceremonial law. And what false teachers have been telling the Galatians is, believing in Christ isn't enough. You have to obey the whole law. Believing in Christ isn't enough to you have to obey the whole law. Believing in Christ isn't enough to make you acceptable, you have to obey the whole law or else you'll lose God or else he'll reject you. You've got to be obedient. That will make you justified. But you see, the Galatians had never done this before. They never obeyed the law of

God. They never obeyed the Bible. How do I know that? They'd never been circumcised before. How do you know they'd never been circumcised before? Think. Are you thinking? You can only be circumcised once. So if they can be circumcised now, it means they never were circumcised before. It means they'd never been in that. They were not, they never obeyed the Bible. They were pagans. And the most astounding thing is this, Paul looks at the Galatians, who before they became Christians had been pagans, had been, as we said last time, copulating in the streets. The sexual morals and the ethics of paganism was cruel, paganism was selfish, paganism to such a great degree was sexually licentious.

And Paul has the audacity to say, if you obey the law of God for the reasons you're about to obey it, you're going back into slavery. You will be no better off. You see, now, most people think that the job of religion is to call people away from selfish and licentious living into a life of virtue and moral restraint and responsibility. And Paul is saying that's not what Christianity is at all. I mean, some of you may know that one of my hobbies is to read left-wing and right-wing periodicals. I like to see it. I like to read. I like to dissonance. I like to try to think about how people see things. And one of the things I noticed, for example, is that really secular liberals are very, very much just like the old pagans.

Their sexual understanding is like the pagans, their view of religion, their view of life is very much like the pagans. And of course, they say the important thing is individual freedom. And modern conservatives, they say, oh no, no, no, what's wrong with society is we need to be virtuous. We need moral restraint. That's what we need. Conservatives think religion's good for us. Liberals do not. And there's a tremendous danger for Christians right now because conservatives will look at Christians and they say, come to our conferences and write for our journals

because we think religion's good. We think we need to have restraint. We think we need to have virtue. We think we need to have self-control, we think we need responsibility, we need virtue. And see, they invite us to their conferences and that's good, and liberals don't, and I hope someday they will. But we must not miss something. This must not obscure something. The Galatians used to be liberals, and now they're about to be conservatives, and Paul is saying, you will be no better off. In fact, as C.S. Lewis says, you'll probably be harder to save now that you're becoming nice instead of new.

See, Paul has the audacity to say, if you decide to obey the law of God for the wrong reasons out of a desire to earn salvation, you will be a slave and you will be burdened. Now why? Well, now we don't have time tonight, but I'll just, in a nutshell. If you were a pagan, what did the pagans do? Well, the pagans, it depended. If you were a fisherman, you worshiped the fisher god. If you were out for a spouse, you worshiped the beauty god. And if you were out for money, or if you were a soldier, you worshiped the military god. And of course, you know, everybody had their own god and everybody was living for something else. And that's a life of slavery. Why? Because if you live for anything finite, if your bottom line, if your meaning in life is anything finite, whether it's military success or whether it's beauty or whether it's sexual attraction or whether

it's your family or whether it's your job or whatever, if you're living for anything finite, you are absolutely burdened and always enslaved. Why? Because circumstances. Circumstances will kill you. If circumstances threaten the thing you're living for, you'll be filled with fear. If circumstances block the thing you're living for, you'll be filled with fear. If circumstances block the thing you're living for, you'll be filled with anger. And if you fail through your own stupidity to achieve the thing that you're living for, you'll want to kill yourself. And so you're always burdened with guilt and with pride and with fear. And Paul is saying that when you obey the law of God for the wrong reason, you actually

go right back in the same kind of burdened, proud, fear-driven lifestyle that you were before. You will be just as enslaved. You will be just as in bondage. Why? Because now ministry success makes you feel, now God loves me. Moral achievement makes me feel, now God loves me. And yet, you will be just as much in bondage because when circumstances or when your personal failure get between you and those achievements, you will be just as touchy, you will be just as fearful, you will be just as angry, you will be just as despondent, you can become just as suicidal, you can become all of these things, you're just as much in bondage. You haven't been changed.

You've been bent back. Now what he does is he says here, there's another way. There's another whole engine. And here's what they are. I'll just read them to you and describe them and we can get back later about how important they are. First of all he says in verse 5, but, which of course is the alternative, but by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith working by love. Now here's what he says, hope and love become new engines when you know, not when you're

afraid but when you are absolutely certain of God's love for you. Now first of all, take a look at the word hope. The trouble with the word hope in English is it does not get across the meaning of the Greek word that it translates. In fact, I don't know how you can read the New Testament. You know the word hope comes up all the time, unless you know what I'm about to tell you. The word hope means certainty.

See, in English, it means uncertainty. I only, if somebody says, gee, you think we can raise $5 million? And I always say, I hope, which means I don't know. But the word hope in English means I don't know. But the word, this is one of the worst things about the New Testament. And I don't know why, there word, this is one of the worst things about the New Testament. And I don't know why, there's really almost no way to remedy this.

When you translate the New Testament, the word that's always translated hope means absolute certainty. If you are trying to save yourself, you can never be sure that when you die, you're going to be in absolute splendor. You're going to be in absolute beauty. You're going to be clothed with perfection. You see, you don't know that. But the point is verse 5 says, unless, you see, by faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit, the righteous for which we hope. At least the word eagerly is there to show that there's no uncertainty.

It says, the first thing that happens is when you know you're saved by grace alone through the finished work of Christ, it fills you with an absolute certainty and you see your future and you see the beauty that God sees you to be now legally, and you will see yourself to be actually someday. And what does that mean practically? Here's what it means. It says, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. Now this is what that means. You want to know how to work this out practically? It's very simple. But very, very practical.

It means when you do... What does circumcision and uncircumcision mean? Circumcision means moral achievement. Uncircumcision means paganism and moral debauchery. And Paul is saying it means nothing. What is that? Well, here's what it means. When you do something good on Monday, get holy yourself and say this means nothing. God doesn't love me because I did this. I did this because he loves me.

See, if you're a Christian, that's what you... You would never say God loves me because look what I've done. I've helped this person. Look what I've done. I did this thing. No, no, no. God doesn't love you because you did that. The only reason you did that is because he loves you, because he's working in you, because he's helping you. Get rid of that. Bring yourself down. Circumcision means nothing, but uncircumcision means nothing. And that means when you fail, when you blow it, when you do something incredibly stupid,

when you do something unbelievably selfish, when you give in and you turn to God and there's a part of you that says, and you call yourself a Christian, why should he listen to your prayers? You know what you want to say? You want to say, if I had not blown it, if I had had a great day on Tuesday instead of a crummy day on Tuesday, if I'd said the right thing instead of the wrong thing, if I'd said the unselfish thing instead of the selfish thing, that would not make me one bit more fit for His presence. Uncircumcision means nothing. It's Jesus Christ.

Because of what He's done, I'm righteous in God's sight, and I will be clothed actually with what I'm now clothed forensically and legally. And therefore, you know what you say? You say, God doesn't love me less because this crummy thing happened. As a matter of fact, this crummy thing happened only because he loves me. He let me see my sinfulness so I could be humbled. He let this happen to me only because all things work together for good of those who love God. You see, he never loves me because I did good. I He let this happen to me only because all things work together for the good of those who love God.

You see, he never loves me because I did good. I did good because he loves me. He never disloves me because I did bad. I only was eight. Even the bad thing I did, God is weaving into a pattern for my life out of his love. Every day, you fill your heart with a certainty of who you are in Christ.

And what that does is it completely removes your fear. And it's your fear that is what's driving you into both the highs and into the lows. There's an unbelievable poise. There's an unbelievable equilibrium. And then lastly, it says, and the only thing that counts in the end is faith expressing itself through love. Charles, I'll tell the story and then we'll get back to it next week. Charles Spurgeon tells a story, and this has not been on any of these Galatian tapes

and it needs to be because people are listening to the tapes. OK, great. Charles Spurgeon says, until you know that you're completely saved by grace, you have never done a single thing for God. All that obedience, all those things you've been doing, you've never done a single thing for God. All that obedience, all those things you've been doing, you've never done a single thing for God. If you're filled with fear, if you're constantly up and down, if you feel like God hasn't loved me because I don't know that I'm being good enough, I'm trying so hard, I'm trying so hard,

I don't know if he loves me, you've never done a thing for him. What do you mean? You say, I've never done a thing for him. Well, Spurgeon tells a story. He says, once there was a gardener, and he grew a carrot, and it was a huge carrot, and he took it to his king, and he says, this is the greatest carrot I've ever grown.

And I want to give it to you because you're the king I love, you're a great king, and I want you to have this as a token of my love. And as he walked away, the king said, I see how much you love me, and let me give you another whole acre next to your garden so you can be a much greater gardener than you are now. And the gardener went home rejoicing.

And there was a nobleman at court who saw what happened. He overheard it or he looked and he saw what happened and he says, my goodness, if you get an acre for a carrot, what would you get for a horse? And so the next day he brought a horse and he says, you know, I raise horses, oh sovereign, and this is the greatest horse that I've ever raised and I want to give it to you as a token of my esteem and love. But the king discerned, the king discerned his heart and he says, aha. And he says, thank you, I'll take the horse.

And he walked away with it. And the guy looks at him and the king turned around and says, wait a minute, let me just explain. The gardener gave me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse. See, in Charles Spurge and the Great Baptist Preacher, the way he used to use this sermon, this illustration is this. He says, if you have ever done anything in your life for God,

you thought, in order to get into heaven, you never did a single thing for God. If you're doing it out of fear, you're never doing it for God, you thought, in order to get into heaven, you never did a single thing for God. If you're doing it out of fear, you're never doing it for God, you're never doing it for the joy of who he is, for the delight in who he is, you're doing it for yourself. You've never done a single thing for God.

If you're out there clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, in order, hoping that you'll get into heaven, it's yourself you're clothing, it's yourself you're feeding. You've never done a single thing for God. And you're not doing anything for the poor either. You're using the poor. You're using God.

You're not loving them for who they are in themselves and you're not loving him for who he is in himself. Only when you see that the reason that you can be saved is because God looked at you and was willing to lose his son for you. Not because of anything you could possibly give him. What in the world could we do?

He loved you for who you were in yourself, for the greatness of what he made us. He valued you so much for who you are in yourself that his son died for you. And once you recognize that, and only once you recognize that, will you ever be able to do anything good. Until you see you've never done a single thing good to merit God's salvation. You can't even begin to do something good. You see the irony of it. You've never done anything out of love until you know you're a sinner saved absolutely

by grace. You've never done anything in freedom until you see you're a sinner saved absolutely by grace. That is enormous energy. That is by grace. That is enormous energy. That is enormous peace. That is enormous equilibrium. That is enormous strength. With this, you'll move out into the world in strength

no matter what else is going, what else is happening out there. Who cares? Do you see that? How does the gospel change us? In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love. Let's pray. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast.

If you found today's teaching helpful and something you'd like more people to hear, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the hope and joy of Christ's love. Just visit Gospelinlife.com slash partner to learn more. Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. 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. , and the gospel and life podcast.

We're preaching from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.