Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Problem of Injustice (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

In Psalm 73, Asaph is mad at God. He’s been living right, but everything is going wrong. Yet all kinds of abusive people are having great lives. Life seems unjust. Asaph’s just about to chuck his faith. Yet at the end, he’s able to say in his pain, “God is always good.”  I’ll tell you, if you’re trying to live a decent life, this is going to happen to you. At some point, you’re going to say, “God, why are you letting this happen? You’re not running my life right. You’re not running history right.” It’s going to happen. How will you handle it?  How does Asaph do it? He goes through a number of steps: 1) he grabbed hold of a negative, 2) he entered the sanctuary for understanding, 3) he saw the big picture, and 4) he asked the ultimate question. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 28, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 73. 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 characterized 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. I'm going to read to you from Psalm 73 just as we did last week because this

week and last week the teachings being taken from this psalm. It's a long psalm, however, we're gonna read it again because the thought, especially this week, the thought of the psalm and the teaching of the psalm as a whole is what we're looking at. It's printed in your bulletin. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold, for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles, their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man. They are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace. They clothe themselves with violence. From their calloused hearts comes iniquity. The evil

conceits of their minds know no limits. They scoff and speak with malice. In their arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven and their tongues strut through the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance. They say, How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge? This is what the wicked are like. Always carefree, they increase in wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure. In vain I have washed my hands in innocence.

All day long I have been plagued, I have been punished every morning. If I had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed your children. When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me. Until I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny. Surely you put them on slippery ground. You cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors? As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant, I was as a brute beast before you.

Yet I am always with you, you hold me by my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? and earth is nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart shall fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Those who are far from you will perish. You will destroy all who are unfaithful to you, but as for me it is good to be near God. I have made the sovereign Lord my refuge, and I will tell of all your deeds." God's word.

Now the reason we're looking at this for two weeks is because the subject that this psalm addresses is a very common problem. It's talking about the condition of being mad at God. Being mad at God, see? In verse 20, verse 21, when my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant, I was a brute beast before you. And we said a couple of things last week. We said, for example, that many people who say they don't believe in God really are mad at God.

They say they don't believe, but actually they're angry. And their doubt is actually anger masquerading itself. And we also said there are many Christians who say that they are spiritually dry, they're spiritually discouraged, but actually they're mad, and they're mad at God. And we said that this is not a problem that is just for weak people, weak Christians.

I mean, people, especially Christians, tend to say mad at God, me, no. Good Christians aren't mad at God. And we said that the whole teaching of this psalm indicates that the more decent you are, the more godly you are, the more self-disciplined you are, the more you're living a life of self-denial and compassion, the more you do that, the more likely you are

to feel like this, because the more likely you are to feel the inequities and the injustices when you see life go wrong, the more likely you are to question, why are these things happening to me? When your life goes wrong, the more likely, the more you are a godly person or a disciplined person, the more likely you are to fall into this. So the question comes up, what do we do about it?

Now the reason we have to look at it so carefully is because this man, when we read him, we can identify so well with him. He has lived a very godly life. He says, I have kept my heart pure and I've kept my hands clean. But, every day he's plagued. Every morning he's in trouble.

So we don't know why, but there's something really going on in his life. And he says, my feet had almost slipped. I lost my foothold. That was his way of saying that up to now I've been living for God, but I'm about to throw it all over. I'm about to lose my basis for living. I'm about to just throw it over and say, the heck with it, I'm going to live for myself, I'm going to live for fame or for wealth or for pleasure. Why should I continually live for God and these standards of righteousness?

So he's just about to chuck his faith. And yet we find that in the end, he's able to say what you find in verse one, in spite of the fact that we have no evidence that his circumstances have changed, his pain and his trouble hasn't changed, and yet in verse one he says, surely God is good to those who are pure in heart.

And that word surely means God is always good. And that word surely means God is always good. So here's a man who we can identify with. He keeps his heart pure, he keeps his hands clean, and yet all kinds of people who are violent and oppressive and abusive people are having a great life, and he's having a crummy life, and he says, I'm ready to throw the whole thing over. Now we can identify with that.

But then suddenly we see that he ends up being able to say, God is always good, even though his circumstances haven't changed. Now can you do that? I returned to an illustration I read recently. In 1851, there was a missionary, an English missionary named Alan Gardner, and he was on a ship on his way to South America. He was supposed to open up a mission field, and instead his ship was wrecked on some islands off the coast of South America, and he died there.

But he lived for quite a while with the survivors, and eventually they all died a painful, terrible death of hunger and thirst. And so everything went wrong for him. He never got to the mission field. He died far away from his family. He prayed, oh Lord, rescue me, and no one ever came to rescue him. He died.

And later his body was found and he had a journal. And the last thing he wrote in his journal was Psalm 34 10. Young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. And the very last line he wrote in his journal before he died underneath that verse was, quote, I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God. What? But you see, it must be possible. Here is the psalmist, Psalm 73. Here's the man everything's going wrong for him.

Even though he's living right, everything's going wrong. Life seems unjust. And yet at the end he's able to say, in his pain, in his trouble, God is always good. And you say, okay, that's the Bible. That's just some trick. Somebody said, nobody can do that. And yet here you have proof and it's not just this guy. Many people in their trouble, in the injustices of life, have been able to say, I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God. And I'll tell

you something, if you're able to do that, you can face anything. You can face anything. Now my question to you is, can you do that? Are you right now in your wheelchair, as Donnie Erickson puts it? He says, she says we're all in wheelchairs. She's a quadriplegic. I put her quote in the bulletin last week in the front page, it was last week. She's a quadriplegic, she's in a wheelchair and she she says, we're all in wheelchairs, okay, sometimes. Here's Alan Gardner, he's shipwrecked on an island, and in a sense he's saying, we're all sometimes shipwrecked on islands. Can you say in your wheelchair,

can you say on your deserted island, can you say when the chips are down, everything seems to be going wrong, God is always good. Is it possible? Of course it's possible. Here it is. It's all here. And if you're able to do that.

So it's not a question of if this happens to you, if you get into the situation, if you're trying to live a decent life, it's going to happen to you. You're going to get confused. You're going to say, God, why are you letting this happen? You're not running my life right.

You're not running the history right. You're not running circumstances properly. It's gotta happen. How will you handle it? It's all here. And what I'm gonna have to do, unfortunately, is give you a helicopter ride over the passage, because it's a long one.

And there's a number of steps that this man goes through, and I have to at least touch on all of them so that you see the whole. I wish I could get down deep into every one of the individual principles, because they're deep and they're profound. But what I want you to see is all of them, all of them, they are vitally important.

If you would get a handle on them, if you would understand them, and if you would apply them, you'd be able to navigate yourself through these situations and through these conditions, and really come out on the other end saying, God is good. Here, let me just show you what they are. How does he do it?

How does he come to the place where he's able to say, what are the steps? All right, the first step, in some ways I'll say most, I will describe most briefly, and yet it's important to point it out. The first step is, he grabbed hold of a negative. He didn't have a positive, so he grabbed hold of a negative. He didn't have a positive, so he grabbed hold of a negative. In verse 15, he says, if I had said, I will speak thus, I would have betrayed your children. But when I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me. Now here's a man saying that my thinking is going around and around in circles. I still don't get it. Why is God so unjust? But he says, if I had actually blurted out everything that was in my heart,

I would have hurt a lot of people. I would have caused a lot of people to stumble and hurt. You know what he's doing at this point? You know, he says I'm slipping. Well now, if you've ever been on a surface and you're about to slip off the side of a mountain, the very first step to stop your sliding very often has to be a pretty small one. In fact, if you take a big one, you're dead.

Sometimes, if you're trying to get your traction back, the first step has to be a very tiny one, but it has to at least give you some traction. I mean, if you're sliding down, the first step's just like that, that's all you can do. But you've gotta get traction. And sometimes that first step, the thing step's just like that, that's all you can do. But you've gotta get traction. And sometimes that first step, the thing that stops your spiritual slide,

your downward spiral that some of you are on right now, angry at God, confused, sometimes the first thing you grab is a negative. All he says is, I thought about the children. I've talked to many people over the years that have said I was ready to chuck it all, I was ready to kill myself. I was ready to run out. I was ready to chuck the faith or whatever, but I thought about my children Well now that's what this man's talking about not literally I don't think he's real children

But he's talking about other people who will watch what I do in other words His first step was a negative. He grabbed at a negative. He says, I don't understand what's going on, but I know one thing. I'm not all by myself in this. What I do will have ramifications. If I don't make sure that what I do is the right thing, I'm gonna bring a lot of other people down with me.

I'm not gonna blurt things out. I'm not just gonna talk in a kind of uncircumstant way. I'm gonna think it out, I'm gonna keep it to myself until I know what I'm doing. So what is he saying? He says, I don't understand what's going on, but I'm going to think of some other people besides just me. That's hard.

Us modern people like to think that when we got a problem, it's our problem only. And yet, the first step this man takes, the thing that gives him a little bit of traction is he stops thinking only of himself. He says, well, one thing I know is I don't want to hurt the people around me, so I better put a lid on what I'm feeling right now and think it through better.

Traction. Hey, you can't stop there. That's not enough to get you back on the mountain. But sometimes, just grabbing at a negative is enough. So the first thing he does is he thinks about others besides himself, and at least that stops his slide long enough to go to the next step. So the first step is he grabs a negative he thinks of some other people besides himself. He says well I'm going to at least keep on with my life just because I because it'll have ramifications for others

if I just throw everything off. Then the second step. By the way, some of you, don't despise that step. Some of you, that may be all you've got right now. That's okay, you can't stay there. That won't be enough to keep you on the mountain. It won't be enough to get you going back up. But don't despise the day of small things. If that's all you've got right now, grab it and move on. And here's what the next step is. The next step is, he entered the sanctuary for

understanding. In verse 17, it says, it was all oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood. Now, this is, there's two parts to this step, and maybe actually it's two steps, but you know I hated to give you eight steps in a sermon so maybe I put them together. But the first thing is he says, I go into the sanctuary. What does that mean? Okay, very important. Any of you, would you ever get into one of these downward spirals, spiritually depressed, mad at God. This man, perfectly understandable and is perfectly common, had

stopped going to the sanctuary. Now in his case it meant he had stopped literally going into the temple, into the sanctuary where there was the altar and the sacrifices and the priests and all that. But the principle is this, if you find that you don't understand God and what he's doing, if you start to get discouraged and depressed and mad at him and the way your life is going, it's okay to think about him and to think it all out, but you must think about it in his presence. It's okay to be confused, but be confused in his presence. Go into the sanctuary. So many parallels between Psalm 73 and the Book of Job. In the Book of Job, Job says some terrible things,

doesn't he? Read through the book, and he says horrible things. He curses the day he was born, and he says, "'God, you're unfair,' and he goes through all of this, and at the end, God is very, very happy with Job, you know? At the end, God vindicates Job and says, Job was faithful to me and so on. You know why? Job was confused. Job was embittered. Job was grieved.

And he said all these awful things about God, but you know who he said them to? He said them to God. He talked to God. He stayed in God's presence. He prayed. Now, it's perfectly natural what happened to this guy. The psalmist here says, I haven't been going to the sanctuary. Hey, you know, we have a spiritual allergy anyway. Prayer is hard. Talking to God is hard. It's difficult. Anyway. But when your life is becoming a mess, and when things in your life are going wrong,

it's just so easy to say, why should I read the Bible, why should I pray, why should I go to church, why should I talk to Christians, why should I take the sacrament? In other words, we'll move the sanctuary. The principle is, and it's just common sense, if you wanna think these things out, you will never get out of your downward spiral

unless you think about it in the sanctuary. Unless you keep up your Christian disciplines. John White, a psychiatrist who's a Christian, wrote in his book on the masks of melancholy, a great book I think on depression. He said he went through a terrible time of depression years ago and the only way he got out of it was he sat down, believe it or not, with the book of Hosea. Now that's a very hard and difficult and uninspiring book, I think. He sat down with the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, and every day he spent about an hour studying the thing

in the original Hebrew. Dry as dust, no feeling, no sense of God's presence, but every day he said, I wrestled with the text and what the meaning of the text was. And he says, slowly, over a period of God's presence, but every day he said, I wrestled with the text and what the meaning of the text was. And he says, slowly, over a period of about a month, he found himself pulling out of it. You know why? He was in the sanctuary.

I'm gonna think about these things in the presence of God. Don't expect yourself to get out of the spiral unless you're willing to keep up all those Christian disciplines, the Bible study and the prayer and the worship and the sacraments and the fellowship with Christians and even Christian service and helping other people.

No way are you ever gonna get out of your spiral unless you go into the sanctuary. Don't you see how important that is? Hey, you know, it's common sense. If you're beginning to think, if you're starting to get confused about a particular friend of yours, what she's doing, why she's doing it,

you're never gonna get to the bottom of it if you only think and talk about her and never go into her presence and think and talk about your doubts in her presence, you're never gonna get to the bottom of it. So the same with God. Why would it be any different? Go to the sanctuary. 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.

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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. Thank you for partnering with us, because the gospel truly changes everything. Think in his presence. But, he said, I went into the sanctuary and then I understood. Now, if you're in a spiral, if life is looking bad, if you're getting depressed and mad at God and so on, what do you go into the sanctuary for?

Ah, this is critical. What do you go into the sanctuary for? Ah, this is critical. What do you go into the sanctuary for? You go for understanding. If today you're depressed or discouraged or mad at God and you just feel alienated from God and alienated from life and you have a grudge against life, you don't know why things are going the way they're going, why did you come to church? Now let me tell you why a lot of people come to the way they're going. Why did you come to church? Now let me tell you why a lot of people come to church when they're depressed.

They want to feel better. They want to go, well, you haven't gone to the right place. People like to go to the church to see a beautiful sight. They love the flying buttresses, and they love the aesthetic experience of the beautiful stained glass windows. And let me tell you, in New York you've got some great places. If you want an aesthetic experience, you've come to the wrong church.

Or you hear the inspiring music. Or you go to hear an inspiring sermon. Or you read the words of scripture. And many people say, that's why I go to the sanctuary. It makes me feel better. Ah, you know, the words of the and many people say, that's why I go to the sanctuary, it makes me feel better. Ah, you know, the words of the psalm and the words of the Bible are so soothing. You know, the Lord is my shepherd.

When I go, I just have a general sense that somehow things are right in the world. I'm like, listen friends, if that's how you use religion, if that's why you go into the sanctuary, to feel better, I could save you the trouble a nice sherry by a warm fire will do the same thing. Or a good game of golf or something like that. If you want to feel better, you go into the sanctuary to understand. The Christian message, the Christian faith is utterly different than what the way we've just been describing. People who say, I want to have an aesthetic experience, I want to forget my troubles.

You know, yeah, a sherry by the fire, maybe three or four or five sherrys by the fire if you want to forget your troubles. In Christianity, you feel better when you start to think properly. Some of you are going to hate that. Some of you are gonna hate that. Some of you, that's not your temperament. But don't you see, this man goes into the sanctuary to understand. You will never get out of your spiral unless you go to God saying,

the reason I'm mad at you, and the reason I'm depressed, and the reason I'm discouraged, is because I'm missing something in my thinking. There's some false premises somewhere. You see, I'm missing something. I've got the wrong end of the stick. I need to understand. The Bible does not act upon you like a warm sherry.

No, it doesn't. It says in Hebrews chapter 12, the Bible is the word of exhortation, which addresses you, and that word address in Romans, in Hebrews the Bible is the word of exhortation, which addresses you. And that word address in Romans, in Hebrews 12 is the word argue. Let me tell you what that means. The Bible is truth. That means its job is to argue with you, to take you on, to show you you're wrong, to correct you, to train you, to put you on the right path.

And if you come into the sanctuary, you're coming in to get truth, you're coming in to see things better, you're coming in for understanding. And unless you come in for understanding, you'll never get out of your spiral. Okay, so first, he grabs hold of a negative just to stop a slide, he thinks of other people. Then secondly, he goes in the sanctuary, he does not avoid the disciplines of the Christian life. Number three, he goes in the sanctuary. He does not avoid the disciplines of the Christian life. Number three, he goes to the sanctuary,

but not just to feel better, not just to feel closeness with God, not because he wants to hear his favorite hymns somehow. That's gonna make him feel better. Leonard Bernstein always used to say, when he would hear great music, it made him feel like probably there really was meaning in life, and that's fine.

Aesthetics is fine, but that's not what we're talking about here. That's not what happened to the psalmist. The psalmist went into the sanctuary to understand. Okay, now the next step. You see, every one of these principles is vital. You leave it out, and you'll continue, you know, to balance on the precipice,

ready to slip off. Okay then, grabbed a negative, went into the sanctuary for understanding. Then thirdly, he saw the big picture. Now I'll just mention this briefly here because last week we spent the whole time on this and if you really want to get more on this step of how to get out of your spiral,

you need to buy the tape from last week because I can't spend the whole time on it again. But here's the basics. When he went in, what did he understand? He said, I saw their end. I saw that you put them on slippery places. I understood their destiny. I saw that on the other hand, you have me by your hand,

and that you are gonna take me to glory. Now what does he mean by this? It's fairly simple but very profound. Whenever you're in perplexity about God or your life, whenever you've got a grudge, whenever you're in a downward spiral, you're not seeing the big picture. He was only looking at the present and now he stands back

and he starts to see the past, the present, and the eternity, the future. He was only looking at the present and now he stands back and he starts to see the past, the present and the eternity, the future. He was only looking at an aspect and now he sees the whole thing. The illustration again, there's a house out in Long Island that sometimes we go to, some folks here from the church that very often let us go to it, and from the front it looks tiny, absolutely tiny, you know, just a few feet across. When you get into it, it goes around forever. There's all these passageways,

and you realize it goes way back and it has wings upon wings upon wings. And not until you get in there, not until you look all around it, do you see how big it really is. Whenever you feel life doesn't make sense, go into the sanctuary, ask for understanding, and what you need more than anything else

is to see all sides. See, for example, someone says, if God is loving, why does he allow suffering? Well, it's because you're only seeing one side, the front of the house. God is also holy. And because God is holy, this life is filled with people who are rebelling against his rule. And the brokenness and the pain and the suffering of the world is here because we rebel against God. You're only looking at one side of it. He's not only loving, he's holy.

You're assuming when you say, well, why does God allow all this evil and suffering? You're assuming that nobody deserves it. You're assuming that we deserve a good life, aren't you? Prove that. Prove it. Now you see what I'm doing? During the sanctuary, you're starting to see

there's more than one side to things. Well, you say, why does God allow such evil and suffering? There's an assumption in that question. The assumption is that God owes the world and owes the people of the world a comfortable and nice life. Prove it. Show me what he does.

Look at the behavior of people toward God and toward each other, and then prove to me that he owes us a nice life. Well, that's another side to it. Of course it's another side to it. That's the idea of going into the sanctuary. So God is not just loving, he's holy. Well, you say, all right, if he's holy, why does he let this bad person ascend to success

and why does he let this good person die young? And then you say, but God has wisdom. And the man in the psalmist goes into the sanctuary, he begins to see this. He says, I begin to see that those people that look like they're so secure, those bad people that are so secure are really in slippery places.

I begin to realize that they are going to be gone in a second, they always are gone in a second. They'll be like dreams that we despise when we awake. So God has wisdom. He's very just. He knows what he's doing. He is not going to let anybody get away with anything. It's just that his judgment doesn't work the way your judgment would. But in the end, as somebody once put it, the mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine. Have you ever heard that one? The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine. Have you ever heard that one? The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

And he begins to see this, hey, look, look at the whole house, don't just look at the front. God is not only loving, he's also holy. He's not only holy, he's also wise. He's not only wise, he's also loving. And I tell you, as you move around, that's the nature of God's truth. All falsehood always is too simple. God's truth is always multifaceted. Every heresy, everything besides

the false, the truth of God, is always too simple. We said that last week. Here are all the various theories and philosophies that put themselves up in distinction to the Christian message. And they always are too simple. They see human beings as nothing but animals, or nothing but a body of conditioned responses, or nothing but an economic unit, or nothing but good without any sin, or nothing but sinful without any good, and so forth.

They're all too simple. Whenever you finally get ahold of the truth, you see all the signs. Are you mad at God? Are you got a grudge against life right now? I'm telling you the problem is you're in too close. You can't see the whole. You got to stand back.

You're in a little ravine and you got to be lifted up so you can see the whole house. If you're mad at God it's because you're in too close, you don't have the proper vantage point. Go around, look at all the aspects, look at all the phases, look at all the sides, see what you're forgetting. Look at every part of God's attributes, not just one. That's the answer. See the whole.

Grabs a negative, goes into the sanctuary, seeks understanding, sees the whole. Lastly, he asks the ultimate question. You know what the ultimate question is? Who have I in heaven but thee, and there is nothing else on earth I desire besides thee. Now let me tell you something. That's the nail in the coffin of your anger against God. If you will finally ask that question, what he's asking is, what do I really, really want?

Why am I mad at God? And the answer always is, because I want something more than I want God. Let me put it again. Why are you mad at God? The answer always is, because I want something more than I want God. Let me put it again. Why are you mad at God? Always because there's something I want more than God. And think about that. Think about the ramifications of that.

Think of the logic of that. Think of the stupidity of that. And that's what happens to him. He suddenly gets it. Let me put it to you this way What if somebody Was what if you were dating somebody imagine being a situation you were dating somebody and you seem to be falling in love and As part of the getting to know one other you let it be known that when you got married you were coming into a trust fund

Another person, you know the person who, you're falling in love with said, oh really, well, doesn't make any difference to me whether you're rich or poor, I love you for who you are. And what if you found out, oh, just before the wedding, that you weren't gonna get that trust fund and you relayed that to your spouse-to-be and your spouse got so disappointed that he or she called off the wedding, how would you feel?

I'm, and this is serious illustration here. How would you feel? What would that tell you about your spouse, your fiance's love for you? What would you say? You know what you would say. You would be utterly devastated. And you would start to say,

you never loved me for me. You were using me. You loved me because I was gonna get you somewhere or get you something. You didn't love me, you were using me. All right, why are you mad at God? God says, here I am, you've got me. I'm your Lord, you're my child.

Oh, well, no career success. No spouse. Poor health. But you've got me and what do you do? You look beyond him and you say, in vain I have kept my hands clean. In vain I have kept my heart pure. You're telling me I've got you,

but I can't have this and this and this and this? It's not fair, it's not right. I'm ready to, wait a minute, what am I doing? When you come into the sanctuary and you realize what you've done, you're treating, if you're mad at God today, you're treating God the way you would be absolutely devastated to be treated by someone else.

You're treating God in a way that you would absolutely and utterly despise if someone else did it to you. He says, whom have I in heaven but thee, and on earth there is nothing I desire besides thee. You have to say to your heart what he was saying to his heart. The psalmist said, you know what? What I really want in all these things, the success and the health and all these things,

is I want God. And these things are just success and the health and all these things, is I want God. And these things are just ways of giving me some pleasure, but ultimately only God will fulfill those very things. Only God is going to give me the kind of joy that I'm after when I want money. Only God is going to give me the kind of fulfillment that I'm after when I want love. Only God, only God. What do I want? How can I use him like this? And to the degree that you would realize that, to that degree, you will learn to say with Paul,

in whatsoever state I am in, I have learned to be content. God is always good because I can always have him. Can't always have my health, I can't always have my success. You know, it kind of comes down to this. When he, I believe, and we mentioned this last week, that when he went in there to the temple, the reason he felt like a beast, he says, I was as a beast toward you. When my spirit was embittered, when my soul was grieved, I was senseless and ignorant. I was as a beast toward you. When my spirit was embittered, when my soul was grieved,

I was senseless and ignorant, I was as a beast toward you. I've been thinking about it since last week. We have a cat, and we have to wash her all the time, we have to bathe her all the time, because some of our kids have allergies. And of course, you know, she's very happy living with us. She absolutely hates the baths. She particularly hates the baths.

And so when you put her in there, she just bites and scratches and she's very upset because she's a beast. What's a beast? She's a beast. And that means she only knows her own comfort. She can't see the reason. She can't see the whole. She can't see that if we don't give her a bath, she can't even stay with us. She can't see that it's his kindness. She's a beast. And when you begin to, when you go into the sanctuary and when you seek understanding and when you see the whole

and you ask the ultimate question, you begin to realize what a beast you've been. And he goes into the sanctuary and up on the altar, what does he see? Being slaughtered. What does he see being slain up there? You know what he saw in the temple? Beasts.

Beasts being sacrificed. And I looked up and he said, you know, you go to the temple, you're surrounded by beasts. And he looked at them and he says, I should be up there. I should be sacrificed. Why am I not being sacrificed? And of course, you know, he figured it out. But we know better than he because we live in the area in which we live. We know that Jesus Christ himself was sacrificed for our sins. He took our punishment.

He was slain like a beast so we wouldn't have to be slain for our beastliness. Now look at that and ask yourself, who have I in heaven but thee? And on earth, what else could I want besides someone who loves me like that? Johnny Erickson, at the end of her, at one of her books, she's the lady who I mentioned before, was a quadriplegic, she's gonna spend all her life

in a wheelchair, and she has the audacity to say this in one of her books. She's a Christian and she says, I really don't mind the inconvenience of losing my hands and legs for 60 years if it could help me know him better and if my faithfulness to God while in this wheelchair will bring glory to him. Have you considered the potential glory that your life could give to God if you could overcome your anger and in your wheelchair you remain faithful to him?

And you must, you know, when I read that, I think most anybody when they read it they say, how can she say that? How can she live? Why isn't she angry? I'll tell you why. She went into the sanctuary. She sought understanding.

She saw the whole. She asked the ultimate question when she realized Jesus Christ was slain for me. He became a beast slain so that I wouldn't be slain for my beastliness. Dear friends, she can say in her wheelchair, God is always good. Alan Gardner, as he was dying, could say,

God is always good. You too, and think of the strength you'll have, and think of what kind of person you'll be, and think of how you're gonna be able to sail through life if you can say, God is always good to Israel, God is always good to the pure in heart, come into the sanctuary, let's pray. Give us grace, Father, to understand and see these things

and how to apply them to our own lives. It'll take the Spirit of God to do that. All of us, Father, either have been through these kinds of spirals where we get mad and angry and confused. Either we've been through them or we're in one now or we're going to be in one later. And so we pray that you will help us understand from this great psalm and this great passage the principles

so that by your Spirit and in your Son's name, help us understand from this great Psalm and this great passage the principles so that by your spirit and in your son's name they can become part of our lives and thereby we can also say to you there's nothing on earth I desire besides thee. 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.