Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Power of the Incarnation

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

In the middle of John 1, the religious leaders send people to interrogate John the Baptist. It doesn’t look like it’s got much to do with Christmas, and yet it does. Some major inner change has happened to John the Baptist. And if John the Baptist has had that change with what little knowledge he had of Jesus and the meaning of Christmas, how much more should we be exhibiting that change?  Let’s take a look at 1) John’s view of himself, 2) John’s view of Jesus, 3) the resulting character change, and 4) how we might know it as well.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 18, 2016. Series: Jesus, Mission, and Glory: Advent. Scripture: John 1:19-28. 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. Today, Tim Keller is looking at a passage from the opening chapter of the Gospel of John. John begins his account of Christ's birth not with shepherds or angels, but with the mystery of the word becoming flesh, God himself entering the world as a person in Jesus Christ. Join us as Tim Keller explores the meaning of Jesus's birth. Tonight's scripture reading is from John chapter 1, verse 19 to 28. Now this was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, I am not the Messiah. They asked him, then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not.

Are you the prophet? He answered, no. Finally, they said, who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet. I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness. Make straight the way for the Lord. Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him. Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. I baptized with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. The Word of the Lord.

Now, during these weeks leading up to Christmas, we've been looking at John Chapter 1, because John Chapter 1 tells us in there, the gospel writer John, is telling us about the meaning of Jesus coming into the world, which of course is the meaning of Christmas. But here, right in the middle of John Chapter 1 is this passage in which the religious leaders come out and they send people out to interrogate John the Baptist. Who are you? Who do you think you are? And it doesn't look like it's got much to do with Christmas, and maybe not real directly, and yet it does. And here's the reason why. We begin to see in John the Baptist some very deep changes in him in his inner life, even though he knows that the Messiah is coming, as he testifies here, yet according to he doesn't, he doesn't know anything, he doesn't

know much at all compared to what we know about who Jesus is and why he came. And yet, even though he knows a lot less than you and I know, I want to show you some kind of major changes happen to him, some kind of inner changes happen to him. And if he's had that change with what little knowledge he had of the meaning of Christmas, how much more should we be exhibiting that change? So let's start here by looking at, put it this way, John's self-image. because this whole passage is about something about that. Verse 19.

This was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. So this is all about who was John the Baptist? What is his self-image? What is his identity? What does he understand his identity to be?

Let's take a look at John's view of himself, John's view of Jesus. the resulting character change and how we might know it as well. Okay, first of all, John's view of Jesus, John's view of himself. John the Baptist was the leading religious figure in the country, but he'd not come up through the channels. He didn't come up through accredited religious institutions or anything like that. And so, you know, gatekeepers, when they see somebody getting very big in their field

and he or she didn't use their gates. They get pretty upset because they know that they've lost control. So the gatekeepers send some people out and say, come on, who are you? Who do you think you are? What's your identity? And they ask him at least these three questions. Are you the Messiah?

Are you Elijah? Are you the Prophet? Now, the Messiah. Are you the Messiah, John? And he says, no. Are you Elijah? Now, what's that about? Well, in Malachi chapter 4 in the Hebrew Bible, there's a prophecy that says before the Messiah comes, there'll be a forerunner.

The before the Messiah gets here, there'll be someone like unto Elijah. Probably like unto Elijah means he wears a rough clothing, calls people to repentance, that kind of thing. And so somebody, before a Messiah comes, the forerunner, someone like Elijah, They called him just Elijah. Are you that? He says, no. Then it says, are you the prophet? That's actually from Deuteronomy 18.

In Deuteronomy 18, Moses says, someday a prophet will arise and he'll lead our people. Some people thought the prophet was Elijah. Some people thought the prophet was the Messiah. It doesn't matter. Because basically, what he's being asked, are you the Messiah? No. Are you Elijah, the forerunner of the Messiah? He says, no.

Was John right? No, it wasn't. He got himself wrong. He did not understand who he was. Because in Matthew, in the Gospel of Matthew, there's a couple places where people ask Jesus what he thinks, what he thinks of John the Baptist. When John the Baptist is beheaded, thunk, he was beheaded.

We'll get back to that in a bit. Somebody came to Jesus after that and said, you know, what do you think of John the Baptist? And this is what Jesus says. This is in Matthew 17. He says, Elijah has come. and they have done to him whatever they wished even as it was written of him. So that's Jesus saying, John was the Elijah who was to come.

He was the one that the Bible wrote about, that the Bible the prophets spoke about. But even more amazing is in Matthew 11 when Jesus speaks to his listeners about John the Baptist, and this is what he says. He says, what did you go out into the wilderness to see when you went out to see John the Baptist? Because that's where he preached in the wilderness. What did you go out in the wilderness to see? A prophet, Jesus says? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.

Truly, I tell you, among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. If you're willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Now, first of all, again, he says, he's Elijah, he's the guy. But then he says an amazing thing. He says, among those borns, of women, which, by the way, is just a nice rhetorical way of saying everybody, okay? I mean, I think unless if you have not been born of a woman, come tell me afterwards, because, you know, you're very

special, and you're probably from another planet. However, what is Jesus saying, he says, among all those born of women, there's never been one greater than John the Baptist, this is Jesus Christ saying, this is the greatest man who ever lived. Here's Jesus saying, John the Baptist is the greatest person ever born, up to now. And he's Elijah. But when they asked him about that, he said, no, no, no, no, no. So the first point here is that Elijah had no idea, pardon me, John had no idea about his own greatness. He couldn't see it. He couldn't see how great he was.

And he got it wrong. Now, by the way, when you see somebody who really just does not have any real concept of how great he or she is, doesn't seem to see how talented, how great, what a tremendous person he or she is. There's only two possibilities. The one is that person is so self-absorbed, is spending so much time examining him or herself all the time, that every little flaw looks big. So you've got some people who are just so, you're so absorbed on themselves,

they're just down on themselves. So one reason some people just can't see how great they are is because they're just looking at themselves so much, They're always examining themselves. The other possibility, and it's more rare, the other possibility, is he's actually just not looking at himself much at all. He's not assessing himself.

He's not looking at himself. You know why? Because he's looking at someone else. And that's where John's going, but let's keep going here. So John's view of himself very, very low, and actually mistakenly low. Then secondly, what's John's view of Jesus? Well, it's like nosebleed high.

when they begin to ask about Jesus he's well they begin to ask about who is this person who is to come in verse 40 in verse 23

uh john quotes Isaiah chapter 40 and he says John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness makes straight the way for the Lord

now when he says I'm all about helping this one who is to come. And John says, Isaiah prophesied about him in Isaiah 40 when he said, prepare the way of the Lord. Now, if you go back to Isaiah 40, you'll see that Isaiah had predicted that someday things would get so bad that God himself would come to put things right. And that we would build a highway for him through the desert. So basically, it's Isaiah predicting that God himself would come. and the word that Isaiah uses there is the word Yahweh will come. And Yahweh is the divine name,

the name that God gave to Moses and the burning bushes, it's his personal name. But John is applying this to Jesus. You see that? By quoting Isaiah 40 and applying it to Jesus, John is saying that the one who is to come that I'm talking about is God himself. And then he actually does a little rhetorical,

that really drives us home near the end verse 26 he says among you stands one you do not know you see this verse 26 and 27 now that's that's that's that's remarkably dramatic john no john says he's out there he hasn't appeared yet but he's out there he's with us he might be standing there right now himself he might actually be in the crowd right now that's very dramatic but he's john that Jesus was about. And he wasn't coming in 20 or 30 or 40 years. He was already here. But then he says,

he is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. Now, you know, in every culture, there are some things that is so demeaning that no one is so offensive and so demeaning that people don't want to do it. And in that culture, it was to untie the sandal. It was a hot, dusty culture.

Of course, people would come to, into a home and the only people that would take off the smelly, dirty, foul, sandals off the feet had to be the lowest of the lowest of the low, the most menial of all the slaves. There are rules that said nobody could be forced unless you, if you had any social status, no one could be forced to untie someone's sandal unless you were the lowest of the low. So it was considered incredibly demeaning. Now, what John the Baptist should have said in the, you might say he's using a figure of speech here. And what he should have said in the idiom of the time is this, if you stand before a great person or a great king,

in fact, if he was standing in front of Caesar, what John, what you should say is this, I am only worthy to untie your sandal. There's nothing else I'm worthy of doing except that. Why? Because that was the bottom of the social ladder. Anybody who just untied sandals, you're at the bottom of the bottom of the social. And if you say, I am only worthy to untie your sandal, that was your way of saying that, you know, I am nobody, I'm at the very bottom. But that's not what he says.

He says, I'm not even worthy to untie a sandal. And what he's doing there is he's rhetorically showing that Jesus Christ is not like anyone else on earth. He's not like Caesar. He's not even like the king of the world if you had Caesar in Genghis Khan, you know. rule into one because you say to a king i'm only worthy but no john the baptist is saying the one who is to come is so much higher than even an earth any earthly king or emperor that i'm not even worthy to untie his his sandal so john has this incredibly high view of jesus and he has this incredibly low view of himself what is the result what would you think the result would be not what we expect

And here's the result. What kind of personality does he have? He's got an unbelievably bold personality. The way that comes out is down here in verse 24. He says 25 and 26. Now the Pharisees who had been sent to question him said, why then? See, why then?

If you didn't come through our schools and you're not the Messiah, you're not the Elijah, you're not the prophet, where do you get the authority to baptize? people the way you do. Now see, this is what, this is where it's coming, what's really been after. John's baptism ministry is like nothing you could imagine. In those days, people did get baptized. But only Gentiles were baptized when they converted to Judaism. Jews were never baptized. If you were a Gentile, you were considered very unclean. And so when you, when you converted to Judaism, you were baptized because it was your way of saying,

I was very unclean but now becoming clean. And you self-administered. See, if you were Gentile converting to Judaism, as you converted, you washed yourself. And it was a way of saying, you administered to yourself, it was a way of saying, you know, I've become clean now because I've, you know,

I've converted to Judaism. But that's not what John the Baptist was doing, and you know what he was doing. First of all, he was baptizing everybody. He was demanding, Jew and Gentile be baptized if they're going to meet the Messiah. Everybody. Do you remember how radical that is?

He was challenging the religious order. He was challenging the religious order by saying, I don't care how pure you think you are, I don't care how moral you think you are, no amount of purity, no amount of morality, no amount of religiosity can possibly save you. You are lost. You need radical grace. but he was not only challenging the religious order, which is an astounding thing to do to say Jews have to be baptized as well as Gentiles,

but he was challenging the social order because you know what that means. It means everybody's equal. It means whatever your record, whether you're religious or not religious, or whether you're Jewish or pagan, whether you're Jew or Gentile, it doesn't matter what your race. Everyone is equally lost, and therefore everyone can be equally saved through repentance. And therefore, he was challenging the religious order. He's challenging the social order.

And you know, he did the baptism himself. He didn't let anybody baptize themselves. He did it himself. That is enormous boldness. That's innovation. That's revolution. He's challenging everybody. And he was so incredibly bold.

And you can even see it right here. If you look carefully at what they say, well, then why do you baptize? Where do you get this authority? Who do you think you are? See, back up in verse 19, who do you think you are? Do you think you're the Messiah? No.

The prophet? No. Elijah, no. Well, then. where does all this boldness come from? How dare you baptize? Who gives you the right to baptize? You know what he says? I baptize.

I baptize with water. He doesn't say, he doesn't answer the question. Why then do you baptize? He says, I baptize. You know what he's saying? I don't need to answer you. I don't care what you think. At Christmas, we are animated by the gifts we give and receive.

But the greatest gift of all, is that Christ was born into this world as a gift to us. We've recorded a special Christmas message to highlight the gift of hope, joy, and peace we can have and share because of Christ's birth. In this special video, you'll hear how the ultimate gift, salvation, is ours because Jesus loved us so much that he entered into our world to save us. You can watch this Christmas message at gospelandlife.com slash Christmas. That's gospel and life.com slash Christmas.

From the Keller family and everyone at Gospel in Life, we send our thanks for you, and we pray that you and your family will experience joy and peace this Christmas because you have the gift of God's son. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's message. You know, one of my favorite movies, actually, it's an old 1965 movie called The Greatest Story Ever Told, story of Jesus, you know. And what I like is, there's a little bit of overacting in it, but I like it. and Charlton Heston plays John the Baptist.

And if you ever want a great depiction of John the Baptist, though there's lots of stuff that's written in there, Hollywood put it in, it's not in the Bible, but it's still true to the idea. Charlton Heston plays John the Baptist as a bold one. He was bold. So he's always saying, repent, repent, repent. When the soldiers come, I love it,

when the soldiers come to try to arrest him, He starts throwing him on the ground saying, repent, repent, you know, and then they overwhelm him. And they bring him to Herod, and he sees Herod standing next to his wife. And he says, that's your brother's wife, repent. And Herod says, you'll die for that. And John the Baptist says, you'll go to hell for that. So they, you know, Herod says, I can have you killed. and John the Baptist says that'll only free me.

And so, of course, Herod has John the Baptist hauled off camera to be beheaded. We'll get back to that in a minute. But honestly, even though none of that, of course, none of those little dialogues are in the Bible, it's true to the Bible. John the Baptist was like that. Now, here's the point. What I've been leading up to is to say, do you understand that it's hard for us modern people to understand how to explain John the Baptist personality and his identity because he has a low view of himself but he's incredibly bold

see we we know people who are very confident of their ability and then they're bold or people who have very very low confidence in their own ability and therefore they're hesitant and diffident but here's a guy who unites humility and boldness he's incredibly humble and sensitive and yet absolutely fearless. Absolutely fearless. Now the reason why that shocks us, or at least we have trouble explaining it, is because we do not know today, in fact, human beings have never known, an identity, and this is what this is all about, man, verse 19, who are you? Who do you think you are?

What's your identity? We don't know of any identities that aren't basically performance-based. A performance-based identity is an achieved identity. You have to achieve. achieve it. And you know, it really doesn't matter what part of the world you come from. See, here in Western culture, you decide who you want to be. Okay. Now, there's many traditional cultures, and lots of you are from those traditional cultures, where your family decides who you should be, right? So here in the West, you know, the question is, who do you want to be? You know, in other parts of the world, the answer is my mother and father say, this is who you should be and this is who we want you to be. And in many parts of the world, you know,

your identity is rooted in pleasing your parents, living up to their standards, right? Okay? So a lot of you know that because you've been in both cultures. But here in this culture, it's living up to your own standards. In other words, I want to be an artist. I want to be, you know, this. I want to be successful in business.

I want to do all these things. And then so you decide who you want to be. You don't let your parents tell you. But then you have to live up to it. And either, you know, as different as those seem to be, they're the same because your sense of self-worth is rooted in how. well you're doing. That's, it's performance based. And if you're, if you're living up to standards, then you feel good about yourself. And if you're not living up to standards, you feel terrible

about yourself. And that's the reason why we only know that if you feel like I'm performing well, well then those kinds of people are confident, but not humble and sensitive. Or if you feel like I'm failing, those people are actually usually broken and they're going to 12-step groups and they're, you know, and they're humble and sensitive, but they're not confident. But here's a guy who is both humble and confident. You know why? Because he didn't have a performance-based identity. In fact, if you think about it, when you look at John the Baptist and read about him, he's not looking at himself at all. He really isn't. There's like no ego there in a way. You know, he's not thinking more of himself or thinking less of himself. He's thinking of himself less.

He's not got a superiority complex or an inferiority complex. He's not, he's not got an inflated ego or a deflated ego. He just is not looking at himself. He's looking at somebody else. And that's what both leads him. See, even John, who knew so little of the gospel compared to us at this point, didn't know anything about the cross or any of those things. And yet even John knows, in myself I'm nothing.

But in him I'm everything. in myself I'm nothing but when I look at him and if I even think of him it fills me with glorious joy see even he was getting this kind of unique unusual identity that wasn't rooted in his performance but it's somehow rooted in what Jesus

in his relationship to Jesus how can we get this kind of identity and the answer is actually there's a hint of it right here John didn't know know he was being a prophet. But he says in verse 27, he is the one who comes after me and the straps of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. Now, if you've been coming to church here, you know that we were looking later on in John chapter 13 to 17 is Jesus Christ's last time with his disciples before

he dies. And you know, you will know this, that actually the gospel writer, John, is for foreshadowing what he's going to write about later, but John the Baptist doesn't know he was prophesying something. Because the night before Jesus Christ was to die, he gets down in his knees, he shocked his disciples, he got down in his knees, he didn't just untie their sandals. Now here's the person, no one in the world is even worthy to untie his sandals. Yet this person, so high, comes down so low, and not only goes around to his disciples that unties their sandals, but then washes their feet too, and they're all shocked. Wait a minute.

This is not seemly. This is not right. On your knees to us. And Peter says, you must not wash my feet. And of course, Jesus says, Peter, if I don't wash your feet, you're not going to be saved. And that's Jesus' way of saying,

this is just a symbol, Peter, of what I have done and what I'm about to do. See, if Jesus Christ had come down from heaven in great majesty only. And he landed here, and he called to us all, and he said, those of you who want God's blessing, follow me and imitate me and live lives like I'm living and summons up your strength and be good, and then you will be blessed. If he had done that, he would have been just giving us one more identity like everybody

else's identity based on performance, up and down depending on our performance, you know, bold or humble but never both at once. You getting this? But he didn't come down in majesty. He came down in humility. He emptied himself of his glory. He had no beauty that we should desire him. He looked unbelievably ordinary.

And then he went to the cross. And what he did there was he performed for us. See, he lived a perfect life and earned the blessing of eternal life. But then he died of death in our place. He took our penalty. that means that when I believe in God through Jesus Christ, it's his performance. It's the basis for my relationship with God.

And God loves me infallibly and unconditionally, regardless of whether I'm up or down. And you know what that means? On the one hand, it means, what does it mean? It means you're humbled into the dust. See, everyone has to be baptized. Everyone has to repent. It doesn't matter what you've accomplished.

Everybody's the same. you are absolutely lost if it wasn't for what Jesus Christ did that humbles you and it never stops humbling you never you never get off the floor in a sense for that but on the other hand you're affirmed to the sky you've got love that can't be lost it can't be lost it doesn't go up and down depending on how you're performing and so this mixture of humility and boldness that john the baptist had you can have too uh it's uh yeah one of my favorite quotes is by Isak Denison, who says this about people who don't know whether there's a God, don't know whether, maybe they're here by accident, and she says this. She says, there's people who do not know that God made them,

and they have to accept a success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness even their own selves at the quotation of the day. Do you hear that? It says so many people, they have to accept a success, what others warrant it to be so. In other words, who are you? Are you saying, well, I know I'm a good person because I'm pleasing my parents. Well, then they define success.

Or you say, well, no, no, I'm accomplishing. You know, whenever people in our society say, I don't care what anybody else thinks, I've decided who I want to be, well, that's not exactly true. You know, whenever people say to me, well, I feel really good about myself because I've, and I've decided who I want to be. I don't care what anybody thinks. I said, okay, well, why do you feel? feel good about yourself. You said, well, I'm a great piano player. I'm a great, you know, I'm

working on this. I never hear anybody say, well, I feel really great about myself because, you know, when I put, when I get in my bare feet and I step into the mud and I wiggle my toes, the mud comes up through the toes. Now, the reason nobody says that is because nobody values that. You see, when people say, well, I just decided that because toe, you know, mud comes from my toes that I'm a good person. See, here's the point is, you care about what people think. That's what you care about. You think, oh, I'm defining myself. No, no, no, no. In traditional cultures, it's what my parents think. In Western cultures, everybody thinks, especially on Twitter. You can know, I, I need social recognition, I need affirmation. See what she's saying?

She's saying, apart from this new identity you get in Jesus Christ, you have to accept a success, what others warrant it to be so. And to take your own selves and even your happiness at the quotation of the day. Other people are defining you. You think, oh no, nobody's a fight. Yes, they are. Because if your identity is based on your performance, living up to your standards, or if it's based on performance,

living up to your parents' standards, or the cultures, or whatever. And you know, one of the reasons why people are always demonizing other people is that performance-based identities always, to some degree, at the expense of other people. In other words, if you're proud of being smart, you're really not proud of being smart. You're proud of being smarter than other people.

So when you're around people that you think are dumber, then you love just to bolster yourself image by thinking, look how stupid they are. You're not proud of having money. You're proud of having more money than other people. And so you say, look, I've got this, and these people don't, they can't even afford this. You see, there's, the world's identity always is unstable for you,

and the world's identities are always lead you to exclude and demonize other people. But in Jesus Christ, when your identity is absolutely stable, there's no fragility to it, it's absolutely certain. So you can be bold, you don't care what people think,

but at the same time, there's no one you feel superior to. You're humbled enough to not feel superior to anybody, and bold enough not to care what anybody thinks. Don't you want that? I do. And of course, no Christian, it's a Christian gift,

but nobody's living, we're not living into it as we should. And here's how we're going to end. Here's a test. Maybe it's a little bit of weird of a test to be talking to you about at a Christmas service, but here's the test. The degree to which you have one of these wonderful identities that you've lived into your Christian identity, oh Christian, like John the Baptist, humble enough not to actually really be superior to anybody,

but bold enough not to care what anybody thinks. things. One of the tests that you've got an identity like that is actually you're pretty good at talking to other people about Jesus, even in New York City, where everybody gets so upset if you talk about your faith. And you're afraid of people not liking you. If you talk about your faith, well, see, that means you're not bold. You do care what people think. You are taking yourself at the quotation of the day. But on the other hand, if you come across as abrasive and you put people off, that shows you don't have the humility either. What I love about John the Baptist is, do you know, here's how we're going to conclude, do you realize that when they keep saying, who are you,

who are you, no, are you, no, are you, no, does he ever answer? He does, actually. Do you see what he calls himself? I'm a voice. I love it. He says, I'm just a voice. Who are you? I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. And it's his way of saying, in myself, I'm nobody. but as I talk about Jesus Christ, then I know that the power of God is coming through me into other people's lives. I don't have to feel like I'm a great person. I don't have to feel like I'm eloquent.

I'm just a voice. Do you have the boldness and the humility to talk to people about Jesus? What I really love, by the way, about the way John the Baptist dies in The Greatest Story Ever Told? I told you that what they do, what the camera does is

the camera just shows you Herod's face. It was played by Jose Ferrer, who didn't do a bad job. He shows Herod's face. And he says, you know, be away, you're going to die. So they pull John the Baptist off camera. And you can hear him going away. Repent, repent, repent, repent, repent, repent, going further away. And finally, one last time, he says, repent.

And you hear chunk. Down comes the blade. He's dead. But of course, it all happens when you're still, the camera's on Herod. And then, after the blade has come down, after the chunk, after you know he's dead, suddenly, and this was a brilliant move on the part of the movie maker, suddenly you're still seeing Herod, but in Herod's ear, the word comes, repent. What?

I remember the first time I watched this, and I was like 19 years old. The first time I watched it, I was thinking, what? He's dead. Why does he still hear and repent? Well, see, he's dead. he's a voice. You can't kill the voice. All he's there is to point the way to Jesus.

And when you point the way to Jesus, that can't be stopped. You're not pointing at yourself. See, do you feel weak? Do you feel too weak to point people to Jesus? Do you feel too weak? All the better. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you that you have offered us in the Word of God, a unique identity that other people don't have a reason, that we don't have access, they don't have access to it. And in John the Baptist, we see a forerunner of this. He's kind of a prototype. He's too humble to feel superior to anyone, so he's winsome, but he's too bold to care what everybody thinks.

And so he's an innovator, he's a revolutionary. Oh, Lord. that mixture of boldness humility how we want it how we long for it and frankly lord the world needs people like that and so we pray that you would recreate the this identity of john the baptist which is the Christian identity in us to the power of your holy spirit through faith in Jesus Christ in his name we pray amen

thanks for listening to tim Keller on the gospel and life podcast if you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel Center teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2000.

17 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.