Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Problem of Guilt

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Guilt is a lot like an iceberg. You don’t see much above the surface, but if you really look, you’ll see it’s under everything. So how do you deal with a guilty conscience?  In Psalm 51, David has been plunged—through the shock of recognizing the magnitude of evil he’s done—into the depths. Imagine the guilt, the shame, the horror, the self-hatred. He’s plunged into an emotional and spiritual dungeon. And yet this psalm is a record of his rescue. There’s no good human explanation for how he got out. But he got out. Here’s how he did it: he made two critical distinctions. He learned 1) the distinction between remorse and real repentance, and 2) the distinction between a reprieve and regeneration. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 31, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 51. 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. Many today have elevated skepticism to such an extent that belief in God can seem almost unimaginable. But many of the human longings that characterize the ancient world are still the same today. We all still desire meaning, happiness, and a strong identity. Today, Tim Keller is speaking on how the Christian faith can address the problems and satisfy the longings of the modern heart. Let's read together from Psalm 51. This fall our sermon texts are taken from the Psalms and you've got printed in its entirety, Psalm 51, there in your bulletin.

And we're gonna read it together now. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,

a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise. In your good pleasure, make Zion prosper. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings, to delight you. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. This is God's word.

Guilt. You know, for 50 years, educators, therapists, and talk show hosts have been working very hard to get rid of our guilt, to get it off of us. And you know, it hasn't worked. Guilt is a lot like an iceberg. You don't see much above the surface, but if you're willing to go down and really look, you'll see, like the icebergs, you only see a little tip up here, but if you look down, you'll see that it's very extensive and it's under everything. And so much of what we call depression, boredom, anxiety, anger,

so many of these things that we use, so many of these words that we use, I believe if you go down and look underneath them you're going to find conscience on fire. Guilt. How do you deal with a guilty conscience? In the entire Bible, it is just generally recognized and understood that this particular psalm is the greatest passage in the Bible on guilt and how to deal with it. Now, in the little heading that is written in, if you're in the Bible, under Psalm 51, there's a little heading that begins the Psalm. It's not printed in your bulletin.

And the heading is this, A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. There's the context. Do you remember the story? It's an amazing story and it's all in 2 Samuel and here's how it goes. When David was a young man, he was so popular that his predecessor, the king Saul, was so jealous of David that he took, that he sought to kill David and David was forced to flee and live life as an outlaw, a kind of Robin Hood sort of figure. Very romantic, very dashing,

but actually wasn't a terribly comfortable or convenient life to live. He had to live off the land and he had to live in the wilderness. He was always being hunted and he gathered to himself during that period of time what the Bible calls his mighty men. You can read about them in 2 Samuel 22, 23, and 24.

These men were mighty warriors and they were loyal to David. After David became king, when the enemies of Israel attacked Israel to try to invade it and take it over, David was forced to flee into the wilderness again and he took his mighty men again. And see these men, these were the men to whom David owed his life. These men would do anything for David.

Do you remember the story in the evening service a couple weeks ago? The Bible says three of the mighty men fought through Philistine lines just to bring David some water from his well inside the gate of Bethlehem. These men were loyal, they were fierce, they were brave, they would do anything for David, and David owed them his life.

And there were 37 of them, the Bible tells us in 2 Samuel 24, 37 of these mighty men. And of these men who were fierce and loyal, dear servants and friends of David to whom he owed his life, one of them was named Uriah the Hittite. Now, some years later, David had sent all of the fighting men off to the front because enemies had invaded Israel again and all the armies were out there defending Israel. But David, for whatever reason, was home in Jerusalem.

And we're told one night he was on his roof of his house and he was walking around on his roof from which, of course, being the king, he had a high roof, he was high up and he had a great vantage point. And he was able to see into other homes and courtyards and onto other roofs. And he caught sight of a beautiful woman bathing. And he felt he had to have her. And he sent for her. And when he did, he discovered that this woman was named Bathsheba, the wife of his old friend

and servant, Uriah the Hittite. A man who was a faithful and trusted servant. But it didn't matter. David wanted her more than anything. And he took her to bed with him and he had an affair with her. And after they had begun this affair, one day Bathsheba sent word to David, I'm pregnant. David suddenly realized there was a trouble here because of course her husband had been away at the front now for weeks and weeks and months.

He had to do something to cover up the fact that she was going to have a child. So he sent for Uriah and brought him back ostensibly to learn news of how the fighting was going. And so he brought Uriah back and he sat him down and he had an interview with him learning about how the fighting was going. And then he said, well, Uriah, it's too late for you to try to go back to the fighting today. Go home, he says, bathe your feet, which of course means you've been out living on the land,

you've been living in hardship. Go home and have some comfort. Bathe your feet. Put on fresh clothing. Have a good meal. Go to bed with your wife. And Uriah looked at David and said to him, What are you asking me to do? My friends, my brothers, my countrymen are out there on the front. They're living lives of hardship.

They're putting their life on the line every day. They're sleeping on the hard ground and they are not with their wives. Far be it from me, he said, to enter in even under my own roof and take comfort there when my brethren are out risking their lives. And so that's the kind of man Uriah was, loyal, brave, trusted, a man of principle.

And he refused to go back in underneath his own home, his own roof, and he slept on his own front step that night. Well, this is a problem. David couldn't get him to go into his wife. So the next morning he sent messengers and brought Uriah back to the palace, and he got him to eat and he got him to drink, and he did everything he could to get Uriah drunk

so he could get him back into his wife. And he got him drunk. But as drunk as he was, Uriah would not go back into his home. It was a matter of principle. He was a fighting man. He was a soldier. And he was going to show his solidarity with his brethren.

That's the kind of man he was. Think of the integrity. Think of the honesty. He wouldn't, he slept again on his own front step. Finally David wrote him a note, wrote a note to Joab, the commander of the army, and sent Uriah back with the note. And in the note it said, I want to get rid of this man. Put him on the line in the place where the fighting is heaviest, then withdraw from him and make sure that he dies. Two days later, three days later, a messenger came back from the front to David and the message said, such and such has happened and such and such has happened and such and such has happened, and such and such has happened, and such and such has happened.

And your servant, Uriah the Hittite, was slain in battle. And what did David do? Not a pang of conscience. He sent a message back. And the message says, don't trouble yourself over this. The sword devours first one and then another. Hard-hearted. What does David say?

He says to Joab, Yes, don't bother yourself about it. He might have died anyway. That's the way things are. These things happen. And after his wife was done with her period of mourning, he took her back. David took her to be his wife.

Nobody knew. Everything was cool. And do we see David walking around, plagued with guilt like Judah in Crimes and Misdemeanors by Woody Allen, or like Lady Macbeth walking around, you see, in a sort of a semi-frenzy with the guilt of what she's done saying, out damn spot. No. David's cool, he's happy, he's got what he wants. The premeditation of it, the hard heartedness of it, one of his trusted and best friends, everything's fine. But the Bible says, but the Lord

was displeased with a thing that David had done. One day to court comes a man named Nathan the prophet. And Nathan says, oh king, I have a sad incident to relate to you and I would like your judgment on it. What is it, says the king. Well, says Nathan, there's two men in your kingdom. One is a very rich man. He has so much cattle and so many flocks that you can't even number them.

And on the other hand, there's a very poor man who's only got one animal, a little lamb. And this lamb is like this man's daughter. And she eats from his plate. And she sleeps in his arms. Well, do you know recently the rich man was entertaining a traveler and decided he had to entertain this man with a great feast. And so instead of going to his own flock to get something for the man to eat, he stole the one little lamb of this poor man and killed it and fed it to his guest.

What do you think of that? And the Bible says David arose in wrath and said the man who has done this does not deserve to live. And Nathan stopped him with just a wave of his hand and said, thou art the man." And in that moment, David was inundated with a wave of horror, the horror of self-discovery, the shame of it. Suddenly a mirror was held up to his face, and he looked into it, and he saw the ugliest thing he'd ever seen in his life. And at that moment, David was plunged through Nathan, through that illustration, through the shock of recognition, through the knowledge of the magnitude

of the evil that he'd done. He was plunged into the depths. He was plunged into an emotional and spiritual dungeon deeper than any physical dungeon anywhere in the world, no matter how sheer the cliffs. And there is no good human explanation for how he got out. But get out, he did.

The guilt, the shame, the horror, the self-hatred, He got out, but get out he did. The guilt, the shame, the horror, the self-hatred, imagine it. He was in the spiritual and emotional depths, and yet this Psalm is a record of his rescue. He got out, he came out of the depths. How in the world did he do it? How? The answer's right here.

And let me tell you something. He comes out, oh yeah. Open now my lips he says, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. How did he get out? I'll show you how he got out, but I wanna point out here in the beginning that if this works for David,

it can work for anybody. If David was able to deal with his guilt and deal with his shame and deal with his self-hatred to the place where he was ready to get out there and tell everybody else how to live his life. You know at the end, I'm gonna tell transgressors your ways, I'm gonna sing a lot of your righteousness. The confidence at the end of that song, how did he do it?

Here's how he did it. He made two critical distinctions, imperative distinctions to make. Two insights that he discovers here that are the solution and the secret to how he got out of the depths. And I'll mention them now and then we'll come right back to them, of course. The first distinction, he learned the difference between remorse and repentance.

Remorse and real repentance. He learned that distinction. That was the first secret that he learned. And the second was, he learned the difference between a reprieve and regeneration. Four Rs. Remorse versus repentance. Reprieve versus regeneration. Let me show you. First, the first thing he learned was there's a huge difference between remorse and repentance.

He learned to repent. Now, just a word about the importance of repentance. What do you think the purpose of this passage is? What do you think the purpose of the story is? The Bible is a very odd book. The Bible, unlike all the other ancient texts, go read them. Read the other stories and accounts of the Greeks and the Romans and the Norse and the Germans and all that, of their great heroes, their men and women that they lifted up as their leaders and heroes.

You'll never see them treated the way the Bible treats the heroes. Never. It is incredible, frankly, the detail with which the Bible rubs David's face in what he did. You go read the account that I just gave you. You know why it was so detailed? You know how I knew all those things? Because it's in the Bible. I didn't put anything in there. Second Samuel chapter 11 tells you with unbelievable detail

the premeditation, the hard heartedness, the incredible things that David said and did. And the Bible does this. It does it to Peter, it does it to Moses, it does it to Abraham, it does it to everybody. It takes all of these great men and women and it shows you they're evil. It shows you what? You know why?

The main message of the Bible is you and I are sinners. The Bible is not here to say, oh look how much worse David is than you and I are sinners. The Bible is not here to say, oh, look how much worse David is than you and me. No, the Bible here is to say even a great man, a poet, sublime poet, an athlete, a warrior, a king, I mean, David had it all. You talk about even as great a man as David is capable of this.

You don't think you are? See, the whole purpose of this book is to say, the whole purpose of the book of the Bible is to say you're a sinner. Put it another way. The Bible says there is a prerequisite, an absolute indispensable prerequisite for you to meet God. You must repent. Remember when John the Baptist knew that the Messiah was coming, he prepared people through the Messiah, he only had one message. What was it? Repent. When the people said to Peter on the day of Pentecost, what must we do to be saved? What was the very first word out of his mouth?

Repent. The Bible does not argue about this. It just postulates it. It just lays it right out. The Bible actually says, in a sense, until you repent, I have nothing to say to you. Until you repent, I have nothing to offer you. Until you repent, nothing else that I have to say to you

will make any sense. Until you repent, nothing else that I can offer you will you be able to receive. Repent. Ha, somebody says, well, that's a retrograde, medieval, unhealthy. Do you think so? Look at the world around you.

What is the one thing everybody agrees on? Something is really wrong. Everybody agrees on it. What's the main issue every time we have an election? There's something wrong. There's something badly wrong. And what we do is we put politicians in for a while till we get tired of them

because they know there's something wrong but they can't figure it out so then we kick them out and put somebody else in so they might, so they can spend the next few years not knowing what's wrong. The philosophers, the psychologists, they all know there's something wrong, terribly wrong. What is it? The economists know that, look, socialism is pretty much a failed system and yet everybody complains about capitalism

everybody's unhappy with it. Why? I'll tell you why. The systems look great on paper but if you put, if you give all the power to the workers you know what happens? We've seen it. They get corrupt and selfish and unproductive. But if you give all the power to the managers what happens? We've seen it. They get corrupt and selfish and exploitive. Well, what's the problem?

Don't you see the Bible says, it's a little elementary. Sin, that's the reason the economic models don't work. That's the reason the political models don't work. Sin is the missing ingredient without which everything about the world and your life is incomprehensible. You want to understand psychology, you want to understand economics, you want to understand

sociology, you want to understand international relations, you want to understand social relationships. It's the problem, the Bible says it's the key issue without which you can't understand anything else. That's what's wrong. And you can laugh, you can say, ah, the biblical doctrine of sin, ha. It's old fashioned, so is the law of gravity. Well, it's unflattering. Look, you can make fun of the biblical doctrine of sin.

The Bible says until you believe it, you won't be able to understand hardly anything going on around you. You can make fun of it, but come on, come up with a better explanation for what's wrong with the world. Go ahead, just try. This is the message of the scripture.

The message of the scripture is, sin is such a malignant evil, and it is rooted so deeply in the heart of every one of us that even the best persons like David the king are capable of the worst deeds. The message is that unless you see the magnitude of the evil in your own heart, and the magnitude of the evil around you and about you, until you realize it, you are the most gullible unsophisticate.

You are naive, and nobody in New York wants to be considered naive. That's the last thing we want, right? But you are. You don't believe the biblical doctrine of sin? Of the sinfulness of humanity? You don't believe that? You are a neophyte. You are a rookie.

You are the merest novice in the things of life. Repent. The Bible says that's the main thing you've gotta do if you wanna meet God. That's the main thing you've got to do if you want to meet God. That's the main thing you've got to do if you want to. It's the first step in understanding anything. The first step to self-discovery. The first step to psychological healing. The first step to anything.

Repent. Okay. Now, but let me tell you why repentance is in such bad repute today. Because most of what people think of as repentance is really remorse. Why does God allow suffering in the world? How can one religion be right and the other is wrong? Has science basically disproved Christianity? Tim Keller addresses these questions and more in his book, The Reason for God. Drawing on literature, philosophy, real life conversations, and potent reasoning,

this book will challenge you to gain a deeper understanding of the Christian faith, whether you're a believer seeking reassurance or you're reading it with a friend who is searching for answers. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of May, we'll send you two copies of The Reason for God, one for you and one to give to a friend who is exploring Christianity. It's our hope that through reading the book with a friend, you can have conversations about the claims of the Christian faith. The books are our thanks for your support of this ministry. To receive your two copies of The Reason for God, simply make a gift at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. We also encourage you to check out our short podcast

series, Questioning Christianity, for people exploring the claims of the Christian faith. To listen to this short series or share it with a friend, visit gospelonlife.com slash questioning. That's gospelonlife.com slash questioning. That's gospelonlife.com slash questioning. Your gift helps the message of Christ's love go out all over the world. So thank you for partnering with us because the gospel truly changes everything. See, a lot of people say,

oh gosh, great repentance. Thank you, I'm so glad I came to church today. This is the very reason I left church. This is the reason I got out of Christianity. See, the whole problem with Christianity is always making you feel guilty. It's always so terrible. And it has hurt me psychologically.

I only have felt a little bit of liberation since I left it. Well, here's what I'm proposing to you. What the Bible says about your sinfulness can be misused. There's a big difference between repentance and remorse. In 2nd Corinthians 7, Paul says, godly sorrow over sin leads to deliverance and no regret. But worldly sorrow over sin leads only unto death. Did you hear that? There's two kinds of sorrow for sin.

Godly sorrow over sin leads to freedom. See, deliverance, no regret. And there's a worldly kind of sorrow that leads to death. And the difference between the two is the difference that I'm talking about. Repentance and worldly sorrow or remorse. Now, what is that difference? And here, let me show you. David gets right to it.

If any of you have felt bad and guilty in the past, a lot of this language looks very common. It looks very familiar. Have mercy on me. Blot out my transgressions. Wash away my iniquity. See, you feel impure. You recognize all that, right?

Don't feel that anyway. You recognize all of that, right? But look, suddenly David says something that brings us up short. It doesn't look like anything we've ever said when we felt bad and guilty and impure. What does he say? Verse four.

Against thee and thee only have I sinned. And right away somebody says, what? What about the poor Uriah laying dead on the battlefield because of the treachery of David? What about Borbath Sheba, ripped away from her husband? What do you mean you only sinned against thee, against God? What are you talking about? Ah, look, David is not denying the fact

that he has violated those people. But what he's actually saying is, I have discovered something profound about the nature of sin. And what he's showing us is that you, this is very, very important to understand. This makes the difference, as I'll show you in a minute, between remorse and repentance.

What he discovered is that sin is not primarily the breaking of a law, but it is primarily, and first of all, an attack on the lawgiver and the creator. Let me show you what I mean. Let me show you real quickly what I mean. Number one, are you an accident or are you created? Do you believe that you were created?

If you were created, what does that mean? It means that your author has authority over you. If you write a character in a book, you have authority over that character. And if you were created, that means that you, that there is an author, there's someone over you. And that's the reason why at one point Daniel, in the book of Daniel, goes to the king of Babylon

and he says, the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways thou hast not glorified. The God in whose hand thy breath is. Well, that's, what is Daniel saying? Every second that you breathe is because God is supporting that. Your molecules are being held together. Your heart is pumping.

Every breath you take is actually, you're on life support. You're not capable of that. God is your author. You owe him everything. You owe not only your existence to him, but your sustenance to him. The God in whose hand thy breath is and whose are all thy way, who owns you, everything you are. He upholds you at every point.

Well, now, what do you owe him? What do you think you owe him? To love and serve him, first of all, number one. But more than that, if you go back and you want to understand the nature of sin, you have to go back to the Garden of Eden. And there's Adam and Eve, and they've been given this paradise, and they've been told, just don't eat that tree. And along comes the serpent, and the serpent shows us

exactly what David is getting at. The serpent comes and says, hey, Adam and Eve, I've been watching you, and I'm very concerned for you. God is trying to hold you down. God doesn't want you to reach your fullest potential. God does not have your complete and best interests in mind. But I do.

If you eat that tree, it'll be wonderful. You know what's going on here? Before Adam and Eve could eat the tree, which was the disobedience, the violation of the rule, first of all, they had to decide that they were wiser than God. Not only that, they had to put themselves in the place of God and they had to decide

that they loved themselves more than God loved them. They had to reject the goodness of God. They had to reject the goodness of God. They had to attack the goodness of God in their heart. They couldn't possibly have disobeyed the rule to eat the tree unless they had assumed that they had their own best interest more in mind than God, that God was really trying to hold them down. And therefore the sin underneath all other sins,

the primary sin, the original sin, is character assassination on the love of God. To say, God, I know what's best for me. You don't. God, I want what is best for me, and you don't. That, that notion, that belief, conscious or unconscious, is the sin underneath every other sin, don't you see? Before David could have murdered Uriah

and slept with Bathsheba, first he had to decide, he had to put himself in the place of God and say, Lord God, I know better than you what is good for me and I want more than you what is good for me. I don't believe, I reject your goodness. I don't believe you love me. Look, what if tomorrow you have an opportunity to tell a lie, which if you tell it will make you money,

and if you don't tell it will lose you an awful lot of money. If you do the lie, there's been a sin that you've done before, the lie. The lie sin is second. The lie sin is a symptom. The lie sin is a result. The lie sin is a result. You must determine in your own heart. You look at the 10 commandments, which says, don't lie,

and you say, you know what? I know better than God what is best for me. I know what's best for me better than God, and I want what's best for me better than God. I see what God says, but that couldn't be in my good best interest. In other words, you doubt the goodness of God, and that's the reason why you break the law of God.

You never break the law of God, unless you doubt, unless you trample on, unless you spit in the eye of the love and the goodness of God. And therefore David realizes, before sin is the breaking of a law, it's a stabbing of God in the heart. Have you ever offered something to somebody

and had them slap it out of your hand and say, you don't want anything good for me, you don't love me. Have you ever had that happen to you? Almost all of us have had that happen to us. When we were really trying to do something for somebody, make a sacrifice, and have it slapped out of the hand, there's nothing worse. And therefore David knows enough to say that the ultimate sin, the sin underneath all the other sins

is all sin is a rejection of God's goodness. All sin is an attack on him. All sin is a form of God's goodness. All sin is an attack on him. All sin is a form of cosmic treason. Now, do you want to know why this is the difference between remorse and repentance? Right here. As dire as that is, as awful as that is, it's the secret that brings hope.

But look, in remorse, you're looking at the mess you got into, and you're looking at how stupid you are. And here's the language of remorse. I was a fool, I was an idiot. My best friend, my trusted man. How could I have done this? What kind of idiot was I? It's gonna get out everywhere. I've undermined my own family.

I've undermined everything. When this gets out, I've undermined my authority as a king. I've hurt everybody. I've gotten Joab into trouble for asking him to help me to be a co-conspirator. How could I have done this? What a mess I've made. That's remorse. You know what remorse is? It's just an aggravated form of self-pity. The very thing, which is what got you into it to start with, the very essence of sin, which is the self-absorption and the self-centeredness. The very thing.

You haven't really figured it out. You're mad at yourself, you're stabbing yourself, you're trampling on yourself, you're hating yourself. You're looking in, you're looking in, you're looking in. But when you repent, you realize that the main thing is not the mess you got into. The main thing is not even the action of murder or adultery or whatever. The main thing is the rejection of the goodness of God. And now listen. Therefore, when you begin to repent for the real sin, the rejection of God's goodness,

you stop looking in, you start to look out. And the very thing that makes you feel guilty for having rejected God's goodness gives you hope too. Because you see, if you start to repent that you didn't believe God was good, it opens you up to the possibility that God really is good. And that He really is merciful and He's really there waiting for you. Don't you see? You know, you haven't really repented for sin if you're only feeling sorry for yourself. And you can't really repent of sin. You only

repent of the consequences of sin until you see that your sin ultimately is against Him, against the and the only have I sinned. But you know what's so weird? The person full of remorse doesn't want to have anything to do with God, wants to get as far away from God as possible. It's the only way to get relief. Don't you see? A lot of people have backed into agnosticism because of their remorse.

There's no other way out. I don't know what you do with it. If you feel tremendously guilty for having done something terrible, all you can do is start to say, well, maybe adultery isn't a sin, and maybe he deserved to be murdered. And maybe there isn't a God, and maybe basically you have to decide on your own what is right and wrong.

Don't you see? Remorse drives you away from God. Remorse absorbs you on yourself. Remorse gets you to hate yourself. But repentance gets you to hate your sin. And repentance moves you toward God. And the very thing that makes you feel guilty also shows you that there's hope.

Because if you start to repent of the real sin that you don't believe God loves you, the moment you do that, you begin to feel the love. You have to. Don't you see, you know, no matter who you are, and no matter who you are, here's the person over here that's irreligious. They say, I came to New York

and I've thrown off all this bourgeois Christian morality and I'm living any old way I want. And over here is a person who's super religious and always down on him or herself and always feeling guilty and always feeling unworthy. What do they have in common? Why? You say nothing. This person is bad and this person is sad. This person is irreligious. This person is super religious. They're the same.

They both reject the goodness of God. They don't believe that the law of God expresses his love. They don't believe the law of God expresses his loving authority and his wisdom. I've talked to people with what we used to call inferiority complexes. I don't know what we call it anymore. And they would, I would say, you know, God loves you. And they would say, oh no, not me. Oh, I'm just terrible. I'm so awful. Oh no, there's no way he could forgive me.

What's the problem? What's the problem? I've got higher standards than God. I know better. I am wiser than he is. I'm more loving than he is. That's the essence. That's ridiculous. That's insanity.

That is the sin underneath every other sin. I don't believe God loves. Not as much as I do. And when you get a hold of it, you start to come up out of the depths. And not until you do, do you. Now that's the first one, but there's one more, one more critical distinction that David makes.

He learns how to get out of the trap of remorse and get into the, on the stairway of repentance. But secondly, besides distinguishing between remorse and repentance, he also distinguishes between a reprieve and regeneration. Now here's what I mean. David doesn't ask for one more chance. He doesn't just say, Oh Lord, forgive me and give me one more chance. Just let me one more chance. He's not such an idiot. Why do you want one more chance? Let me tell you something. If you think you do bad after having blown one chance, you have no idea how bad you feel after having blown two chances. David is not so stupid.

David begins to realize, he says, I'm not so concerned just about the fact that I did this. I'm concerned about the fact that I'm capable of doing this. I'm concerned to know why I really did it. He says in verse five, inc sin did my mother conceive me. And he begins to realize, I've got a nature.

I've got a nature. The reason I put myself in the place of God, the reason I think I'm more good than God, more wise than God, more loving than God, is because there's something in me. There's a rottenness in here. There's decay in here. There's an evil in me. And

he does not ask for a reprieve. That wouldn't do any good because he knows it would erupt again in another way. So what does he ask for? Not a reprieve. I want you to create in me a clean heart. He asks for a new heart. He asks for a new nature. He asks for new life, not just forgiveness. And here's another huge difference between a Christian and just a religious person. A religious person, all they want from God is a second chance. All they want from God is just not to,

you get down on your knees and you say, I know I did wrong, I know I did wrong. Please give me another chance. Let the disease go away, let the person come back. Please give me one more chance. That's how a religious person looks. Not a Christian. A Christian knows one more chance won't help.

I'll find some other way to blow it. I need a new heart. And when he asks, creating me a clean heart, he's actually asking for the new birth. Ah, you know, you might say, if he's just speaking metaphorically, he. Ah, you know, you might say, if he's just speaking metaphorically, he just means, you know, let me start over.

Well, all we had was Psalm 51. Maybe we could conclude that, but we don't have just Psalm 51. We've got the whole New Testament, and Jesus says to Nicodemus one night, unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is David asking for

when he asked for the new birth? But this is absolutely critical, absolutely critical. Don't let anybody tell you that there's such a thing as a Christianity that does not entail being born again. Don't let anybody talk to you about born again Christianity as if it's a variety, as if it's a party. Go to Augustine, St. Augustine, what turned him from a sex addict

into a great teacher of the church, remember? What turned Luther from a guilty neurotic into a courageous leader in the church? What turned stiff old John Wesley into a street preacher in England? Ask him, ask them all. The leaders of the Catholic church, the leaders of the Episcopal Church, the leaders of the Methodist Church,

the leaders of the Lutheran Church, ask them. And every one of them will tell you, I was born again. Don't you dare let anybody tell you that being born again is for certain kinds of Christians, that born again Christianity is for certain varieties of Christians, come on. Jesus says, unless you're born again, you don't even enter the kingdom of God.

And this is what David's asking for. When he says, created me a pure heart, he's asking for the Holy Spirit to do it. In the very next verse, he says, don't send your Holy Spirit away from me, bring your Holy Spirit in, created me a clean heart, oh God. See, in the very beginning of time,

the Holy Spirit moved across the face of the waters and planted life. Right? And now what he's asking is that God's Spirit would move across the chaos of his life and plant new life. How does that happen? Well, he goes on so far as to say,

you want truth in my inward parts. You see that? In verse six, thou desire'st truth in the inward parts. Thou desire'st wisdom in my inmost self. And that is the definition. If you want to understand the new birth, it's all there in verses 10 11 12 and 13 Created me a clean heart. Oh God How by bringing your Holy Spirit into me and by planting truth in my inward parts? Let me show you what I mean

How did David? Know God was merciful How did David know God was merciful? Well, he knew God was merciful because God had helped him in the past. And you see, on the basis of that truth, he took that, he said, Oh Lord, take that truth and put it in my inward parts, plant it down deep. Now listen, friends, we know something far greater about the mercy of God than David did. You know what we know?

You know the place here where David says, hide thy face from my sins? And three verses later he says, don't cast me away from your presence. And of course in Hebrew the word presence is face. And so what he's saying is, hide your face from my sins, but don't hide your face from me. Now that's typical in relationships, right?

If you've got a friendship and somebody has really done you wrong, if you face his sins you won't be able to face him. You won't be able to be friends. But if you want to face him you've got to turn your, you have to turn, you hide your face from his sins, right? You can't look at them both. You can't see his sins and see him. It's one or the other. So David says, hide your face from my sins, oh Lord, and turn your face toward me. We know what David didn't. We know what it cost God to answer the prayer of Psalm 51.

When Jesus Christ had his hand stretched out on the cross and he was dying, he turned to his father and he began to pray. And for the first time in all of his life, he turned to the father and the father didn't turn to him. He looked up to heaven and there was no one there. And he cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

We know now, don't we? We know why, you know why? God was hiding his face from his son so he could hide his face from our sins. You can't look at both. He punished Jesus so that our sins could be blotted out. Now, you know what it means to be born again? You may have known all of your life that Jesus died for our sins.

Here's what happens when you're born again. The truth of that goes down into your inward parts. God takes by His Holy Spirit that truth and He puts it down. It used to be an abstraction, but now it's a real abstraction. And so, you know, Here's what happens when you're born again. The truth of that goes down into your inward parts God takes by his Holy Spirit that truth and he puts it down. It used to be an abstraction Now it's actually down in there and it begins to eat away at the lie the sin underneath the sin That's been causing your problems all along all of your life

You look at the truth of the cross What he did up there God hiding his face from his son. And you take it on in and it begins to eat away at that terrible lie. What was the lie? God doesn't love me. That's the reason you worry. That's the reason you're bitter. That's the reason you lie. That's the reason you can't resist temptation. In it comes truth in the inward parts, cosmic and supernatural sincerity. In it comes, and it begins to eat away your worry. You start to worry, but if you're born again,

the truth is so real and you say, wait a minute, look at what he did on the cross. He's good. You want to lie? Because it'll make you some money. But if you're born again, you've got truth in your word parts, the cross, and you say, wait a minute, if he did all this for me, surely his revealed will could not be bad for me.

If he says not to lie, I know that that's good. I know that he loves me. Don't you see? That's what it means to be born again. It means to have the truth of the cross of Jesus Christ, what he did for you, having God hide his face from his son, the knowledge of that, that he did it for you. It comes in, you trust in it, you believe in it,

you rest in it, it comes in, it becomes real, supernaturally real. That's what it means to be born again. Has that happened to you? I'm not saying do you believe Jesus died for your sins. Lots of people do who aren't born again. Augustine, Luther, and Wesley, those three guys I mentioned, they all believed it for several years before they were born again, but they never got it. Because you see, people don't mind being told that they should be better. They don't get offended at

that, but they don't like being told they need to be born again. That's offensive. Of course it is. And once you realize it's true that you need it, until you say, creating me a clean heart, O God, because I know that my sin is against you. And all of my flaws and all of my sins throughout all my life is against you. And all of my flaws and all of my sins throughout all my life are against you. And because I finally see that, and I see that I've been trampling on your goodness all of my life, and I will always go on

trampling on your goodness until you give me a new heart. I ask that you give me a new heart. Bring that truth in, implant it in me, give me a new nature, and you will. 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. This month's sermons were recorded in 1993. 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.