Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Lord We Can Know

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Jesus Christ did not come to start a new religion. He didn’t come to start the best religion. He came to end religion. Every religion has its extremists. Religion causes an enormous amount of conflict and strife in this world. What are we going to do about it? To embrace Jesus Christ is to end religion, is to move away from all religion.  There are two things Hebrews 8 tells us: 1) Jesus came to end all religion and, 2) therefore, Jesus came to give us a radical new covenant relationship with God. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 13, 2005. Series: Christ: Our Treasury (The Book of Hebrews). Scripture: Hebrews 8:1-2; 7-13. 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.

This is Gospel in Life. The book of Hebrews was written to a group of people who were so exhausted by the sufferings of life that they were shaken to the core and were about to give up. In today's message, learn what the writer of Hebrews teaches to help keep them going. After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel changed lives as well

as other valuable gospel centered resources. Subscribe today at GospelInLife.com. Hebrews chapter 8 verses 1 through 2 and then verses 7 through 13. The point of what we are saying is this, we do have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said, the time is coming declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after that time, declares

the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying, know the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. By calling this covenant new,

he has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear. This is the word of the Lord. Now we've been looking at the book of Hebrews and notice the very first verse tells us that the point that's being made here is the main point that the writer's been trying to make all along. See verse one? It says, now the point of what we are saying

is this. So here it is. This is what he's been saying. This is the summary of everything we've been trying to talk about for all these weeks. What is it? Well, I'll get back to it in a second. Let me talk about a subject I think will throw into relief what this passage is about. Just a few weeks ago, not long ago, I was asked to speak on a subject and the topic was, does religion tend to lead to holy war? Does religion tend to lead to holy war? So as I was preparing, my first response as I was sitting down to prepare was to say, well, now that's really kind of an unfair question and every religion's got its extremists and everybody's got their lunatic fringe but the more I thought

about it the more I considered it the more I prepared the more I came to realize yeah it does religion causes an enormous amount of conflict and strife in this world what are we gonna do about? One of the answers is in this text because the main point that the book of Hebrews has been trying to make all along and that this text also tells us is Jesus Christ did not come to start a new religion. He didn't come to start the best religion. He came to end religion. To embrace Jesus Christ is to end religion, is to move away from all religion. Isn't that interesting? There's two things that this text tells us. Jesus came to end all religion and therefore to give us a

radical new covenant relationship with God. Now let's look at each of those two points. The first point is at each of those two points. The first point is Jesus came to end all religion. Chapter 8, verses 1 and 2. The point of what we were saying is this, we have a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man. Now readers of the Hebrew scriptures would

immediately be struck by two things that are different about this priesthood that Jesus has than any other priesthood that ever happened. First of all, you'll notice it says this priest sits at the right hand of the throne. Now the right hand of the throne was a position of authority. The person who sat at the right hand of the throne was usually a kind of co-regent. And I think we've mentioned this before. In the Old Testament, you never have a priest who's a ruler. You never have a priest who is a ruler or a ruler who's a priest. You never have a priest who is a king or a king who is a priest, except for that shadowy

figure Melchizedek. But Jesus is a priest, except for that shadowy figure Melchizedek, but Jesus is a priest king. And the second thing we're told is that though he's a priest, though he's serving, he's ministering, he's seated. Now no priest ever ministers by being seated. What is he doing seated? And it means a lot. But if we want to understand the magnitude of what is being said, we need to think for a moment about the subject that I've already mentioned, which is the subject of religion. What's religion? What is religion?

And if you look out at the world and see all the religions, I would suggest, propose to you, that all the religions have two things in common. Or you might say they have two components. The first thing that they, the first component they have is all religions believe that behind the realities of nature, there's an ultimate reality. There's a reality capital R. There's some transcendent power above

and behind all of nature that can't be reduced to empirical natural scientific factors or causes. So there's an ultimate reality. The second thing that all religions agree on is that there's some gap between us and that ultimate reality. There's some gap that needs to be bridged or there's some barriers that need to be overcome that we were not connected as we should be, and we need

something to mediate to get to create that connection, to bridge that gap. Now that's what all religions believe together, but after that, the diversity is enormous as to how that gap is bridged. The religions differ enormously as to how that mediation is done. So you have religions who say it's done through sacrifices and offerings and ablations and ablutions and there's others who put all the emphasis on moral code and living a good life and leading good works and then you have a lot of emphasis on rituals or incantations or rites or prayer, meditation, transformation of consciousness.

You know, there'll be some religions that say, oh, oh, the ultimate reality is within you. The ultimate reality, the divine, is within you. You just have to learn how to tap into it. But you see, they're still saying you're unenlightened. You see, there's a gap. You have to overcome it. We're going to transform your consciousness.

Everybody says there's an ultimate reality and there's some kind of gap that has to be bridged in order to get to that reality. Well, you say, well, yes, of course, all right, religions. But you know, that was ancients. We're all religious. But we modern people are different. We modern people do not need the God explanation. We, many modern people are different. We modern people do not need the God explanation. We, many modern people believe that everything that exists and everything that happens has a natural scientific explanation. Everything that happens is just really some empirical, natural scientific factor. And therefore religion, we say, you know, we don't need God the way the ancients needed God. We don't need the ultimate reality to explain things.

And of course, if you talk like that, you probably know that there's, for many years, especially in the 20th century, many Western intellectuals and scholars believed that humankind would eventually lose the need for religion, just like a lot of people say they don't need religion themselves. They lose that the human race would basically less and less need God and need religion and therefore it would start to weaken or it would start to fade. But boy that has not happened, not at all. You certainly know if you're up at all

on things that religion not only is strengthening and growing every place in the world in general, and Christianity in particular, but do you know, it's even starting to make a comeback in the academic world, Stanley Fish, who's one of the leading academics in the United States. And he's the person who's always writing for the big newspapers. He's one of our great public intellectuals. And he's an atheist or an agnostic. He's a skeptic in that way. He's no friend of religion. And yet, just in January, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he wrote an astonishing article in which he said, religion is poised to make a comeback in the academic world where it's been considered irrelevant for years. For decades the academic world was a stronghold of people who say we can explain everything in terms of just

scientific natural empirical causes. We don't need God to explain the world. And yet here's what Stanley Fish says. He says the university is about to be influenced by a new generation of academics who will be seeking guidance and inspiration, many of them will believe that religion will provide them. Are we ready for this? We had better be, because that is now where the action is. When Jacques Derrida died, I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of

intellectual energy in the academy? I answered like a shot, religion. It's astounding that Stanley Fish would say that, but of course he's just reading the tea leaves of history, and that is that religion is not weakening, and it's not even weakening in the religious world, in the academic world where more and more people are realizing that if you try to explain everything away, if you try to explain everything as just really scientific natural empirical factors, you explain away explanation. It's a dead end. Oh yes, C.S. Lewis, as usual, put it in a very literate way when he said in the Abolition of Man, he says this, you cannot go on explaining away forever or you will find that you have

explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through everything forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it. It's good that you can see through a window, but that's only because the garden beyond is opaque. But if you could see through everything, then everything would be transparent, and a wholly transparent world would be an invisible world. So to see through all things would be the same as not to see. Now you say, what is that? What was that?

Here's what it is. Let me give you in a nutshell a couple of examples. When Nietzsche says, all claims of transcendent truth and God are really just power plays, that would mean that claim would be just really a power play so we don't have to listen to it. He explained away his own explanation. When Freud says all claims of absolute truth and God are really just psychological projections dealing with your guilt and insecurity, then that claim would be that and we don't have to listen to it. He's explained away his own explanation. When evolutionary biologists

say, oh yes, your brain tells you that there's a god and there's absolute truth, but that's really just a hardwired brain chemical response designed to pass on your genetic code. But if that's true, then what their brain tells them about evolution and natural selection is also the same and therefore why listen to it? To see through everything is not to see. To explain away everything explains away explanation including the explanation. And what this means is the vast, vast majority of the human race will always know that there's an ultimate reality unavoidably that we can't see through. There's an ultimate reality that's there. And everyone will feel the gap and will look to religion to deal with it. This is inevitable. Religion is not weakening, it's just strengthening.

And you know, that's a problem. You know that. Because religion does bring conflict. It brings enormous conflict. Well, you say, all right, maybe the solution is to have a society in which we just stamp out religion. Of course, we know we've been trying that in the last, in the 20th century. There have been a couple of societies who have tried to stamp out religion, and when you try to stamp out religion, it only makes a society more brutal and more oppressive than it was when religion was dominant. We've got a problem. Religion is not weakening, it's only strengthening.

Religion can't be wiped out. Religion is only growing. What are we going to do about the problems of it? Christianity, in the most unique possible way, says, embrace Jesus, because Jesus came not to start a new religion not to start a better religion but to end religion. Now you're in a position to understand what this is saying. He's a priest and a king. Now that never is combined and here's the reason it's never combined in the Old Testament. The king represents the God to the people, represents God to the people, brings God's law and says you must obey it. But the priest represents the people to God. The priest mediates and sacrifices

and atones for the failures of the people to obey the law of God. See, the king represents God to the people and the priest represents the people to God, but Jesus is the priest king and this is what the Bible says. Number one, Jesus is the ultimate reality on the other side of the gap. He is. The whole book of Hebrews is about this. Remember the very first chapter? It says, Jesus, who made the universe, is the radiance of God's glory and the very exact image of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Jesus is the glory of God.

That's what filled the temple. When Jesus in John chapter 2 says about his body, tear down this body and in three days I will raise it up again, he is saying, the glory of God fills my body, as the Shekinah glory of God filled the temple. I am the ultimate reality on the other side of the gap. Every other religion, listen, no one's ever said this before because every other religion has a founder, of course.

But the founder of every other religion has always said, I am the teacher pointing to the ultimate reality. Or maybe they even said, I am the ultimate teacher pointing to the ultimate reality, but Jesus says, I am the ultimate reality to which all the teachers and prophets and preachers and sages point. Nobody's ever said that. I am the ultimate reality on the other side of the gap. But then secondly, he's the priest, and that means he's also the bridge over the gap. His life and his death and his resurrection are the bridge over the gap between us and the divine. And that's why you have Paul saying something like this in Colossians

1. He says once you were alienated from God, there's the gap, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's body through death to present you, oh, perfect in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. Every other religion says, do this, give this, offer this, live this, experience this, and that will send you over the gap to God. But Jesus says, I'm the God who at infinite cost to myself have come over the gap, have come over the barriers to you. Barriers and a gap that you with your puny little religious observances would never have been able to bridge, but I've come to you. And that's the reason why it says he's seated. You know why he's seated? All religious

work is done. Jesus Christ is saying I conclude the work of religion. Bringing God over to us and us to God, it's over. I've concluded it. I have finished it. Religion is finished. You don't need it anymore. He's the final temple to end all temples. he's the final priest to end all priests, he's the final king to end all kings. And he's also, of course, the final sacrifice to end all sacrifices. In the Bible, there is a word for religion, do you know that?

It's a Greek word that means religious observances and ceremonies and religious practice. And you never, ever see it applied to Christianity. There's a place where Festus, the Roman magistrate, calls Christianity a religion, and there's a place where Paul calls his Phariseeism before he became a Christian a religion. But nowhere do you see the word religion applied to Christianity because historians know this. Why did the Romans, who loved religions,

they let everybody have their own religion, every street corner had a different religion, they let a thousand religions bloom, yet they persecuted Christians and they called them atheists. You know why? Because the Romans knew what you and I don't seem to know even and the average person in church doesn't know, the average person certainly in the society doesn't know, that Christianity was not the beginning of a new religion, it was the anti-religion. It was the end of all religions. That's why the Romans considered it the most radical thing that anyone had ever said.

That's why they were called atheists. See, as Dick Lucas, the English preacher from whom I got a lot of ideas for this, my series on Hebrews, he says, if you really want to understand what the book of Hebrews is about you have to imagine a conversation between a Roman and his Christian neighbor in the first century and the Roman says oh you have a new religion that's very interesting where's your temple and the Christian says no temple Jesus is our temple. Where do you, where does your priest operate for crying out loud? We don't need priests. Jesus is our priest. No priests.

Well, where do you do your sacrifices? Where do you do your offerings? Where do you do things so that God will accept you? Jesus is our sacrifice and we're already accepted. And the Roman says, what kind of religion is this? And the answer is it's not a religion. Jesus came not to give you a religion but to give you a relationship, a new covenant relationship with God. Christianity does not bring you a religion, it brings you a person. In fact, Christianity, the gospel is not just the end of religion, it's the opposite of religion because religion says, live like this and God will accept you.

And the gospel is, at infinite cost through Jesus Christ, God has accepted you, now live like this. Utterly different. Totally, not just the end of religion, the absolute contradiction and opposite of religion. 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. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. So, Jesus is the end of religion, number one. Number two, second point, Jesus now therefore brings us not a religion but a relationship, a radical new, what's called here new covenant relationship with God.

Now what is a covenant and what is the new covenant and how do you know if you're in this new covenant relationship? All right, number one. What's a covenant? You know, see this word all the way through here? I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers. What's a covenant? Well, first of all, we don't have a good English word for it. I think

the average person, you hear the word covenant and somebody says, what's a covenant? Define covenant and you'd probably say something like, it's a contract. But the fact of the matter is that's a very inadequate, don't say that, that's an inadequate synonym. There isn't a synonym and here's why. In the Bible, the most intimate relationships were the most binding relationships. A covenant is a relationship that is totally binding and yet totally intimate at once. See, in our culture we pit the personal against the legal and the formal. That's not how the Bible sees it. In fact, the Bible says the more intimate, the more delightful, the more personal a relationship, the more binding, the more solemn and the more legal it should be. And

you know why? Because the biblical understanding of covenant reflects the paradox of human relationships. What is that paradox? I'm glad you asked me that question. If two people start a relationship, it could be a friendship, it could be a love relationship, you know, a marriage. If two people start a relationship and they both start off like this, and they say to each other, I will be what I should be in this relationship if, and to the degree that you are what you should be.

I'll be what I should be to the degree that you are what you should be. I'll be what I should be to you if you are what you should be to me. Now if that's how your relationship starts, you will find that relationship very quickly becoming cold, becoming distant, becoming at best a kind of shaky business relationship. And you know why? There will be no intimacy. Oh my goodness, no intimacy at all. You know why?

Because neither person wants to give up their independence. And there's no intimacy without giving up autonomy. There's no intimacy without binding yourself and limiting yourself. But if two people instead start a relationship like this and they say to each other I will be what I should be in this relationship whether you are what you should be or not. I will be what I should be even if you're failing to be what you should be. And if two people start like that If the two people say to one another I'm gonna put to put to each other, I'm going to put your needs ahead of my needs. If the two people say to each other, I'm going to limit myself, I'm going to bind myself, I'm going to be caring and kind to you, whether I feel like it or not.

The great paradox is, in a relationship where people are committed despite their feelings, that is the place where intimate feelings can grow. You know why? It's safe. The more committed a relationship is, the more intimate it will get. Because the more I see somebody saying to me, I'm going to be what I should be to you, even if you're not, I can be weak, I can share, I can open up. Only, and to the degree, that you're willing to give up your independence, can you know

the freedom of an intimate relationship. That's the paradox. Only to the degree that you're committed to somebody to be kind in spite of how you feel, will you find intimate feelings being capable of being expressed, will vulnerability be possible? The more binding, the more intimate. That's a covenantal relationship. Now, what is the new covenant? Well, God

talks about an old covenant that he had a relationship, that's what a covenant is. It's a binding, intimate relationship. But his old covenant with the house of Israel was very religious. His old covenant with the house of Israel was very religious. His old covenant with the house of Israel had a lot of the marks of religion, not all, but it wasn't, but anyway, this is a complicated issue, the relationship between the old covenant and the new covenant. But let me just make one point here.

In verse 9 you see God says, they did not remain faithful to my covenant, so I turned away from them. Now that's religion. You know what religion is? In religion, you set up a conditional, selfish business relationship with a deity. You know what religion is? In religion, you come to church or you start to pray, you start to read your Bible, and here's what you're saying in religion. I will be the religious and good and moral person I should be as long as you are blessing me and helping me make money and giving me good health and helping me find somebody to get married to. In other words, I'll do what I should do to the degree you're doing what you should do. That's religion. It's quid pro quo. It's tit for tat. And of course,

the idea is in religion that the deity is looking down at the same time and saying, yes, these people over here are honoring me and they're worshiping me so I'll be good to them, but these people over here are not honoring me, they're not worshiping me so I'm not going to be good to them. That's religion. And here it is. If they do not remain faithful to my covenant, I turn my face away from them. If I see their covenant, I turn my face away from them. If I see their sin, I turn my face away from them. But the new covenant isn't religion. In the new covenant we have verse 12.

See in verse 9 it says, they sinned, so I turn my face away from them. But in verse 12 it says, I will forgive their wickedness and I will remember their sin no more. This is the opposite. You see, in the old covenant, God sees our sin and turns his face away from us. But in the new covenant, God sees us and turns his face away from our sin. He even turns his memory away from our sin. The old covenant is basic religious. It's a conditional business relationship, and there's no intimacy in it. But the new covenant is unconditional, and therefore there's a place for intimacy to grow. Now how can it be unconditional? How can God say, even if you sin, I will never turn my face away from you. I'll only turn my face away from your sins.

How could that happen? And here's how it can happen. You know how a relationship gets started that's a covenantal relationship? It's when somebody looks and says, I will be what I should be to you. I'll be faithful to you even if you're not faithful to me. Where did God do that? Where did God say that? Where did God get the covenant relationship rolling? I was talking not too long ago to a woman who said,

you know what I hate about this is it seems like everybody says you need to submit to God's will, you need to submit to God's will, I have to adjust to God, I have to adjust to God. Why do I always have to adjust to God? Why can't he ever adjust to me? And anyone who ever said, I believe that anytime she ever said that to any Christian type,

they said, how terrible would you, what do you mean? God never adjusts to us, we adjust to him. That's not true. God did adjust to us. Cosmically, infinitely, on the cross, He adjusted to our sinfulness. He said, I'm going to be faithful to you even if you're not faithful to me. And you know what that cost Him? On the cross, the Father turned His face away from His Son. On the cross, Jesus Christ was forsaken. That's the covenant curse of verse 9. Jesus did keep the covenant. You

know, he was perfectly obedient, but God turned his face away. He got the covenant curse so that we could get the covenant blessing unconditionally and eternally. And when you realize what he did for you, when you realize he took his own covenant curse, as it were, so that he would, he could say, even when you sin, I will remember your sins no more. We said the more binding a covenant is, the more binding a relationship is, the more intimate it can be. Jesus Christ bound himself, he nailed himself to you. If he bound himself like that

how intimate could this relationship be? And you know what's interesting is that the quid pro quo is over now. See if you're a religious person you sit around you say, you know, I'm coming to church and I'm being very very good and I'm trying real hard to live a good life. My life isn't going all that well and my neighbor who's not trying at all to live a good life, his life's going a whole lot better than mine. That's a religion. Oh, have you ever thought like that? That's because religion is still, your heart's still shot through. It's still the default mode of the human heart. You know why? You're saying, I'm doing this and this and this. What has

God done for me lately? Have you thought of the cross? See, a person who has been changed by the Gospel, who has been brought into a grace relationship, who has been brought into a new covenant relationship with God, will never ask that question again. God unconditionally loved me, now I unconditionally love him. And as a result, the possibilities of intimacy in this relationship are astounding. Now how do you know if you're in this new covenant relationship? How do you know if you've been broken out of religion, the default mode of the human

heart? There are three marks, and I'm just going to look at those three marks and then we'll finish. There's actually more in this passage than I'm going to cover, but we have to just stop somewhere. We'll get to some next week too. There's three ways you can know that you're in the new covenant relationship. And those three are intimacy rather than formalism, they will all know me.

Equality versus classism, from the least to the greatest. And community versus individualism, They will all be my people. Now let's just be brief here but first of all, in religion there's no intimacy with God. You know, you're basically, it's a week-by-week thing, a renewable contract, you know, I'm doing my best and are you doing your best and all that sort of thing. You may get inspired sometimes, you may get convicted sometimes, but let me ask you, do you know

him? See what it says there? They will all know me. Not know about me, know me. Have you ever experienced his love on your heart as an overwhelming encounter? Have you heart as an overwhelming encounter. Have you ever read the scripture and found that instead of just abstract concepts, some of the things that the Bible says begin to just become alive and radioactive and they become living bright realities and they console and they comfort and they change the way in which you react to the world and life. Have you ever had a sense that God is taking you by the scruff of the neck and sticking you up to the mirror saying, will you please look at yourself? Have you ever had a sense that you actually are in a relationship?

There's personal interaction, there's personal encounter, there's personal dealing. Or is God just someone you believe in, you say your prayers to occasionally? That's religion. Intimacy. Intimacy is the mark of being in the new covenant. Intimacy because you know his unconditional regard for you. Secondly, equality versus classism. And boy, this is important. Notice what it says? It says, they will all know me from the least to the greatest. When

you would go into the tabernacle or the temple, barriers everywhere. Have you ever studied? And this is the way all temples are. For example, but if you went into the temple in the Old Testament, right, there was an inner court for Gentiles and outer court for Jews and outer court for Gentiles. There was an inner court for men, then there was the court of the women. If you're a woman, couldn't come in. If you're a man, you could. If you had a disease, you couldn't even come into the building. And when we get to Matthew chapter 1, the genealogy of Jesus, we see women as well as men. We see foreigners as well as Jews. We see prostitutes as well as moral paragons.

You know what we got here? If you understand the radical difference between religion that says if you live this way, God will accept you, and the gospel that says because God has accepted you through Jesus Christ, you live this way. If you don't understand the difference there, if you don't see how radically different it is, you're in trouble because religion leads to conflict and here's why. Religion is based on the idea that you are bridging the gap, that you're doing it. And see, if you base your identity on being a hardworking person, you've got to despise people that you perceive as lazy.

If you base your identity on being an open-minded person, you've got to despise and feel superior to people that you perceive as bigoted. If you believe that if your identity is based on being a moral religious person, you've got to look down your nose. You've got to feel superior to people who don't have your beliefs and don't have your practices. And that's why religion leads to conflict. Because all religion automatically makes you feel superior, which often leads to exclusion, which sometimes leads to oppression. It creates a slippery slope. But see, if you believe you're

saved by grace, from the least to the greatest, there's no difference. We're all equally lost whether we're kind of religious or kind of marl or a prostitute or an addict or a hit man for a mob. It doesn't matter. We're all equally lost. We're all equally affirmed and loved. It's completely egalitarian. It destroys the thing that in religion leads to conflict. It expunges it from your soul. Do you understand that? Have you felt it? From the least to the greatest. The mark of the New Covenant relationship is intimacy versus formalism, equality versus classism, spiritual classism, moral classism, religious classism, and then lastly, community versus classism, spiritual classism, moral classism, religious classism,

and then lastly community versus individualism. Notice it says, I will put my law on their minds and write them on their hearts, I will be their God and they will be my persons. Now I didn't say that. They will be my persons. Listen, this is an important distinction. He doesn't say you will be one of the many individuals who I have a personal relationship with. He says that when you experience my salvation it makes you part of a new community, the new humanity, the new people that he's creating. Remember how we've said over and over that Jesus is not just a priest but a king? He's not just a priest, he's the creator king. Do you know what that means? Jesus did not come just to create a religion. He came to create a new world and

What that in the beginning when God created a world he created the world and then propagated the people to fill it But now as he's recreating Through redemption he starts by creating the people and then later on he will design a world for us to live in. And you know what the people of God is? It's the new humanity. It's the pilot program for the great future that he is going to be producing in which all justice and all injustice is gone, all poverty is gone, all disease is gone, all

evil is gone, all poverty is gone, all disease is gone, all evil is gone. To be saved is to be part of a new humanity, a place where radical grace has changed us and we get a foretaste of what life in the new heavens and new earth is gonna be like. And see, when you realize that God came and said to you, I am going to be faithful to you even if you aren't being everything you should be to me.

That means we can't treat church that way. We can't walk into church and look around and say, I will come to this church as long as it's meeting my needs. I will be with, you know, I'll be friends to you, brothers and sisters, as long as you're meeting my needs, as long as you're meeting my needs. But if you're not meeting my needs, I gotta go someplace else.

That's religion. That's religion. That's religion. Religion says, I will be to you what I should be to the degree that you're being what you should be to me. The New Covenant creates covenantal people who look at brothers and sisters, who look at the church and say, this church is relatively brothers and sisters who look at the church and say, this church is relatively flawed, and all these brothers and sisters around me are relatively flawed, but I'm going to be true to them, I'm going to be committed to them, even if they're not always being what they ought to be. Doesn't that make sense to do that? The New Covenant, if you're in

the New Covenant, there's intimacy rather than formalism, there's equality rather than classism, and there's community rather than individualism. And lastly, do you realize that if God is this personal, this personal, not remote and distant, not some life form, if this personal, it's both a wonderful invitation and a frightening responsibility. C.S. Lewis put it like this, an impersonal God, well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness inside my head, better still. A formless life force surging through us all, a vast divine power which we can all tap into,

that's wonderful. But a living God, a personal God, approaching at infinite speed, the hunter, the king, the lover, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion suddenly draw back, realizing what if we actually find him? Worse yet, what if he finds us? If there is a God, you are in a sense alone with him. You cannot put him off with speculations about your neighbor's hypocrisy or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count for when the anesthetic fog we call the real world fades away and the divine presence in which

you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable. See, if God's personal, you have to relate to him. But if God is this personal, why wouldn't you want to relate to him? Let us pray. Thank you, Father, for inviting us to come to your table. How intimate. You're not a God who simply says come into this great place and go through these great pageants. Instead you say I'm your father and you are my children by grace and we are going to eat together at the table. We pray Father that you would help us understand what

it means to live in a covenant relationship with you of love, what it means to expunge our hearts and our lives and our relationships of all the problems of religiosity and live in your radical grace. We pray this, help us to apply this to our lives. We pray this through Jesus. In His name we ask it. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it equips you to know more about God's Word.

You can find more resources from Tim Keller at GospelInLife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel In Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at GospelinLife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. 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.