Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Search for Substance

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

A plant without roots is at best a tumbleweed. Is a tumbleweed freer than an oak tree? Yeah, it’s free to be blown about forever.  There is what the Bible calls a rootlessness and a weightlessness about our society right now. Many of the problems you face today are that you’ve been affected deeply by this weightlessness we experience in our culture and society.  The roots of this rootlessness were addressed long ago in Psalm 1, which tells us 1) the diagnosis of rootlessness and 2) the prescription for rootlessness. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 19, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 1. 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. A scripture reading this morning again is found in the first psalm and it's printed in your bulletin and we're going to read the entirety of that first Psalm. Just six verses.

Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But if the light is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night, he is like a tree planted by water, streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, does not wither. Whatever he does, he prospers. Not so the wicked. They are like shash, that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." This is God's word.

In the 1950s, 60s, or into the 70s, from 1955 to 1975, we passed through in this country one of the eras in which there was the most economic growth. There was a fast rise in lifestyle, in the standard of living. There was an enormous optimism for the time of those things that we will probably never see again. And during those 20 years, the teenage suicide rate in this country went up 300%. And all the social commentators agreed that that was very significant,

and none of them could agree on what it was significant of. But I think probably the best answer of all came out of the mouth of one of the kids themselves. It was a young man in the mid-80s in Houston, a young teenage boy who hung himself on a tree and left a note on the tree. And it said, this is the only thing around here that has any roots. Now to have roots goes two ways. There's two sides to having roots.

On the one hand, roots is a very positive sounding concept. To have roots means you are substantial. It means you're rooted in. It means you endure. It means you are substantial. It means you're rooted in. It means you endure. It means you last. Roots enable you to be able to handle storms, to help you stand your ground. And so in all those ways, roots give you stability and certainty and build up, it builds mass, you know, that's what roots are there to do, and they protect. But on the other hand, roots limit your freedom. Roots confine, even as, and actually because they protect and nurture and nourish and stabilize

you. To the two sides, in the mid-80s, Tom Wolfe, the novelist who lives, I think on this street, somebody told me once, but anywhere pretty near, Tom Wolfe, the novelist who lives, I think, on this street, somebody told me once, but anywhere pretty near, Tom Wolfe spoke at Harvard Class Day. And in that speech, it was a memorable speech, I think, he said that throughout history, through all ages, all human beings have always sought two kinds of freedom, but today we're after a third kind as well. He said the two kinds of freedom that we've always searched after are freedom from tyranny

and freedom from want. And under freedom from tyranny is included things like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of political determination, and under freedom from want is included things like freedom of economic opportunity and so on. But Tom Wolf went on and said today we are seeking and even expecting a third kind of freedom that is unprecedented. And he said, this was freedom from religion. Not freedom of religion, we've always wanted that.

He says, today we expect freedom from religion, and he defined it this way. Freedom from the internal monitor that your parents stick in there, that the clergy stick in there. Freedom to write your own morality, freedom to determine your own destiny, freedom to decide the nature of spiritual reality for yourself. He says that's never, ever been thought before. It's the final freedom. Now what's the result of the final freedom? The result of the final freedom is rootlessness.

You see, our ancestors, when they said I have roots, here's what they meant. When they said I had roots, that means this is my country, this is my family, this is my faith. And so many of the things I do, I do because I've got obligations, because I've got commitment. I mean, I want to do that my feelings go this way, my impulse goes this way, sometimes it doesn't look like it's in my best interest, but I have roots. See, I've got some things here, some commitments. We have cut all those elements.

We have cut all those filaments. We have cut all those things. We have said, now we're free. But our ancestors had both less freedom and less despair than us. Because, you see, a plant without roots is at best a tumbleweed. Is a tumbleweed more free than an oak tree? Yeah, it's free to be blown about forever. And there is what the Bible calls a rootlessness and a weightlessness about our society right now, a superficiality. And everybody in this room, every one of us, to one degree or another, are affected by it and we have to fight against it. What I'd like to do this morning is

to talk about what the Bible says regarding this condition. It's not the kind of thing that many of you walk in here thinking you need to know about. I'm hoping that as we actually do the biblical analysis you'll begin to see some of your problems today. Many of your problems today, maybe the main problem you face today, is that you've been taken over or affected deeply by this weightlessness and rootlessness that we experience in our culture and society. Even though it's a modern condition, even though it's running rampant today, even though Tom Wolfe says in a sense it's unprecedented, the fact is that the root of the rootlessness,

the roots of this condition were diagnosed the roots of this condition, were diagnosed long ago in the psalm, and the prescription is laid out here. Let's take a look at them. First of all, the Bible talks about chaff and says that there is a life on the surface. There's a life of superficiality and rootlessness, which can affect people. It's called a life of chaff. It says the wicked are like chaff, which the wind drives away. Now let me talk to you about what that means. What is a life of chaff? Chaff is referring to an agricultural thing. When you would harvest, back in those days, you would throw the grain that you gathered

up into the wind. Now the grain consisted of two parts. On the one hand you had the internal kernel. You had the life itself, the organic part of the grain. And it had more substance to it. And because it was heavier it would fall down. The chaff was the cut around the kernel. It was the sleeve. It was lighter, it was useless, and the wind would blow it away. When the Bible talks about a life of

chaff, what is it talking about externals, totally consisting in show and façade, a life without an anchor, a life without any enduring internal reality behind the façade. A life of chaff means to be constantly blown about by the winds of public opinion and trends, by the winds of your own impulses and feelings of the moment, blown about by the winds of suffering and trial because you've got no root. You've got nothing to keep yourself from being continually blown about. Now I know I'm talking metaphorically, but I'm going to bring this right down to earth

and let's start right now. When the Bible talks about this, what is it describing? Recently, a very, very, very popular movie was Indecent Proposal. Robert Redford finds Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore happily and faithfully married to each other and he mischievously says, I'll give you, he says to them, I'll give you a million dollars if I can sleep with her. This was an enormously popular movie. People came out not just because it was a sexy theme.

I believe people came out, spent a hundred million dollars watching it, because they were wrestling themselves with the central, crucial question of the age. It's the thing that Tom Wolfe was getting at when he said, this is an unprecedented issue. Our ancestors would have realized that the proposal was just wrong, it was a temptation. So we sit in there and modern men and women listen to that proposal and they watch that movie and this is what they're asking. Is there anything that under any circumstances is always wrong?

A million dollars! Hey, think what we could do with that, honey. Just imagine. Is there anything that's always wrong? or let's put it this way, is there any rooted convictions in you that regardless of the wind blowing, regardless of the advantages or the disadvantages, regardless of the feelings, regardless of conditions, are there any rooted commitments that will never change? Let me put it another way. Is there anything in you that's always there? That's just there, always there. Is there anything about you that's non-negotiable?

No matter what people threaten you with, no matter what people entice you with, no matter how your feelings are, that's a given. That's a root. That's a commitment. In other words, is there anything behind your role, behind the image, is there anything deep inside you that's always there? That's the question. The Bible says if there are no non-negotiables in your life, if there are no commitments, things that you're always true to, that you always believe, that you always hold onto, you always do regardless of either the enticements on the one hand or the threats on the other hand, from the outside or even from the inside, if there's nothing in the center, then you're chaffed. That's what the chaff, then you're chaff.

That's what the chaff is. It's centerless. The kernel of dawn. It's a husk. It's a shell. You're a form without power. That's the life of chaff. It's really quite amazing.

Picture. I know plenty of people, to one degree or another another who are like that, especially in New York. Let's move on. That's the life of chaff. Now, what causes the life of chaff? What causes it? The Bible says the answer is ungodliness. Now, you know the word ungodliness, unfortunately, does not appear in the translation that we printed. In the very beginning it says, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. Now, I think that's a poor translation.

In the older translations it says, blessed is he who walks if not in the counsel of the ungodly. Now, the word wicked, of course, ungodly people, pardon me, of course wicked people are always ungodly, but ungodly people aren't always wicked. Wicked means violent, vile. To be ungodly, though, is this. It means the roots of your soul are not in God. That's all.

Now, of course, an ungodly person might be somebody who doesn't believe in God, or doesn't know if there is a God, or is just indifferent to God. But an ungodly person could also be someone who believes in God, but the roots of your soul do not actually go into God and make him your life source. The roots in a tree, the roots of a plant go down into the water, go down into the minerals, go down into the life source. You can believe in God in general, but if God is not your life source, if He's not the way in which you decide things, the plumb line for your decisions, if He's not the joy of your life, if He's not your life source, that's a life without God, and that's what the ungodly life is.

And the Bible says ungodliness creates a life of chast. Not just whether you believe in Him or don't believe in Him, but whether your roots are in Him. Well, now how does ungodliness create a life of chast? Let's take a look at it. First of all, ungodliness, which means to leave God out of the picture. Remember, ungodliness does not simply mean you don't believe in Him. It means to leave God out of the picture. Remember, ungodliness does not simply mean you don't believe in him. It means to leave him out of the picture in your thinking.

Leave him out of the picture in your decisions. Leave him out of the picture emotionally. When you dismiss God, first of all, it creates this life of chaff because it creates intellectual instability. Blessed is he who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. Stay away, says the psalmist, of the counsel of the ungodly. And the word ungodly, the actual Hebrew word that's used here, means pitiful, sleepless, and restless. Look, there's an intellectual instability when you leave God out.

Those of you who today are Christians, it's great to know that for the last 3,000 years, people have essentially, there's been people who have taken the Bible and based their lives on it, and it's true. And a thousand years from now, the world is still here, there will be people doing the same thing, lots and lots of them. And if they can read your diaries, your quiet time notebooks, they would understand them. Just like we can read the great journals and the prayers of the men and women of God of a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, and say, this is my brother, this is my sister. There's a stability there, intellectually. There's changes, of course. New ages, new cultures, new regions, new places in which we make changes, we adapt, we understand,

we ask the Bible new questions, we see new things in it. But there's a stability there. However, don't walk in the council of the ungodly. It's totally different. Any intellectual system that leaves God out is a revolving door. Last week in the New York Times book review, interestingly enough, 60 years ago, Freud and psychoanalysis was considered the wave of the future. If you had trouble with it, if you didn't believe in it, you were primitive, you were unenlightened, you didn't realize this is how

we were going to solve our problems. And the New York Times Book Review was reviewing another book that is just simply assessing the fact that Freud is largely mocked today. Sixty years ago, and now he's mocked, he's made fun of, he's vilified. Peter Drucker recently wrote a book, Post-Capitalist Society, and in the beginning of the book he says, we all know capitalism is changing. We all know it's not going to be what it was. What will the post-capitalist society be? He says. He says, for the last 60 years, everybody who was intelligent thought they knew the answer. The post-capitalist society would be a socialistic society. And he says, now in the last 10 years, that's all changed. Because everyone knows now that

whatever comes after capitalism, and something will come after capitalism, it won't be socialism. What's the point? Friends, what right now is put to you in the journals, in the newspapers, in the media, as being the assured result of reflection and research, the wave of the future, 50 years from now, a large part of it will be on the dustbin. It'll be on the scrap pile. Why?

Because the counsel of the ungodly is restless. It's rootless. It constantly changes. And if you believe it, it will turn you into chaff. That's what it's saying here. Blessed is the one who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. Ungodliness creates that rootlessness because it creates intellectual instability, constantly changing. Let me go a little further. Secondly, ungodliness creates social and personal instability. We'll get into it. Friedrich Nietzsche, somebody you've got to read in order to understand our world today.

A hundred years ago he realized that the belief in God was losing its compelling power in Western society and it bothered him. He wasn't happy about it. He said, literally, he said in one of the most insightful things he ever said, he says, when God dies in Western society, all things will seem weightless. Weightless. Hollow, he said. My generation in the 60s saw this, the thing that Nietzsche thought was coming, we saw

it. And we sang songs with tambourines about it. We didn't say, oh my gosh, do you realize what this means? You see, recently I've been listening to some of this music from the 60s and it was great to listen to the Mamas and the Papas blissfully crooning, you got to go where you want to go. Do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with. Remember? You got to go where you want to go. Do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with. Remember? You got to go where you want to go, do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with. Ah, that's what Tom Wolf was talking about. That's what Nietzsche was talking about. No higher obligations from God, no 10 commandments

that we have to follow, no absolute truth over us, nothing to guide us but our want to do. You got to go where you want to go, do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with. And we thought it would be great. This leads, just like Friedrich Nietzsche said, to a hollowness both sociologically and psychologically. Do you want to see how? Listen, one of the problems today is that we find, because people believe that, that more and more people are mugging us. More and more people are not telling us the truth in their advertising. More and more people are not keeping their promises to us. More and more people make a covenant commitment with us and then they get out of it. And we start to say, this isn't right, this isn't right, oh yeah, you know what they're doing to you?

They're going where they want to go, doing what they want to do, to whoever they want to do it to. And all this, you know, all the research shows that Americans are beginning to perceive that we can't trust anybody, that everybody is motivated by self-interest, and no matter what they say on the outside, there is not a reality behind it. Americans are unbelievably cynical over what they were 20 years ago about what the politicians tell them, about what the clergy tell them. I found that out as soon as I got to New York. But what the politicians, what the clergy, what the clergy tell them. I found that out as soon as I got to New York. But what the politicians, what the clergy, what the doctors tell you. Doctors, we don't trust you. The polls all say so. About what big business tells you, about what the advertisers tell you. We think they're all out for themselves. We think that they put up a good front, but behind it there's

no reality. There's a hollowness in our culture that's growing and growing, and we're all part of it. And we start to say, well, I'm being ripped off, why don't I rip off? This is what the tax form says you made this year, but beneath, behind it there's no reality to that. This is what the advertiser says. Hmm? Nietzsche said, if God is dead, everything becomes weightless.

But not only that, not just sociologically and culturally, but psychologically. 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. What happens to us psychologically

and I've already hinted at it, if everything is negotiable, if you say, well, I don't believe in committing adultery, but $2 million, $100 million, think of what that would do for my kids. Think of what I could do with that money. Here is the rich, sleazy Robert Redford. He's just going to spend all that money on himself if I get $100 million from him just because I let him sleep with my wife, think of the great things I could do for my hometown.

Think of the factories I could build. So you think of the great things I could do from my hometown. Think of the factories I could build. So you think of all the people I could look back to work. This couldn't be wrong. And if there's nothing inside you that is always, always right and always, always wrong, if there's not something inside you that you're always committed to, there's no you in there. You're just a series of there. You're just a series of faces, you're just a series of facades, you're a series of masks. Going where you want to go, doing what you want to do, with whoever you want to do it with, and you don't

know who you are, and people don't know who they are. Everything is hollow. Everything is weightless. Why? Because ungodliness leads to it. The wicked are like chaff. The ungodly are like chaff. The wind drives us away. All right. Now that's the problem. So what's the solution? How do we get a life of substance? Everybody in this room to some degree or another is hurting because of this tremendous modern pressure to be hollow and weightless. Those of us who are Christians have found that out. We tried very hard and yet we're so concerned about show. It would be very easy for a large church to be concerned about show. This morning I got up at 5 a.m. My wife doesn't know this yet, in a sweat, because I was going

to preach to you about hollowness. And yet God was saying and convicting me and saying, you know, if you worry as much as you do about how things look, about whether the greeters will be making people feel good, about whether the air conditioning is going to be on or off, if you're that worried about the outside, if you're that worried about the outside, if you're that worried about show, if you come into this church, you come on in and unless the music is great and unless you really get a high, you're not coming back. You just move all around from church to church.

All depends on what meets your needs today. The idea of being committed to something and sticking with it, don't you see what's going on? There's a hollowness about us. It's creeping in on us. It's pushing in on us. We want to have our needs met. We want to go with the flow. But we're actually being blown about from church to church,

from morality to morality, from marriage to marriage, from gender to gender. Everything changes because there's no reality behind the facade. Now how do we get that life of substance? It's fairly simple. What's the difference between a tree and chaff? The chaff is connected to nothing. The tree is connected to something beside itself. Do you hear that? The chaff is connected to nothing. The tree is connected to something beyond itself, beside itself. Do you hear that? The chaff is connected to nothing. The tree is connected to something beyond itself, beside itself. It has roots that go out beyond itself. That's the reason why the chaff is representative of a life in which the only thing that guides you is

what's inside you. Your impulses, your feelings, and therefore there's no you. Nothing in it but your one is, nothing outside of you that can discipline you. And the tree goes outside. Well, what does it go to? The first thing we see from this metaphor is the tree goes into the law of the Lord. If you look, it's not that hard to see. You see, in verse 2 it says, it is the light in the law of the Lord on this long meditation day and night. And verse 3 it says, he is like a tree planted by streams of water. So it's very, very clear the parallelism is the tree putting its roots down into water parallels the man, the lighting in the law of the Lord.

And so the very, very first and most important thing to understand is for you to get a life of substance, for you to avoid the hollowing out, the chaffiness of modern life. You have got to get yourself connected and committed to God's truth, not just any truth. You know, Hitler was a man of principle. It was the wrong principle, and so he destroyed himself, and he destroyed the world, and destroyed all kinds of people,

because he chose the principle that wasn't in accord with God's reality and God's truth. The way in which you develop a life of substance is you have to connect with God's truth, and here's why. Let me show you this. The Bible says that God alone has glory. The early part of our service was all about God alone has glory. Now the word, Hebrew, word for glory, means wait. And the Bible says because God has no beginning and no ending, God alone lasts. God alone has substance. God alone is there.

God alone is solid. God alone matters. He is matter. And everything else, everything else is ephemeral. Everything else is fleeting. everything else is fading, everything else is transitory except to the degree that it is connected to him. When you give God glory and only to the degree that you give God glory do you get any of that weight or that matter or that reality of that substance yourself. When the law of God, let me be very practical about this, when the law of God is revealed to us in the Bible, this is not busy work. The law of God is actually revealing the very fabric of God's heart and the fabric of the reality that he has made in his own image. It reveals the

glory of God. So to the degree that you are obeying the law of God, to that degree you're real. You've woven yourself into the fabric of things. But to the degree that you disobey God, the more you disobey the law of God, the more unreal you become, the more of a fantasy life you have to live, the more ephemeral and fleeting and ghost-like you get. Let me be very, very, let me just show you. Let me be extremely practical. Every time you lie, why do you lie?

You know why you lie. You lie to keep up a front. When you tell an unreality, which is what a lie is, in order to make sure that you look okay, so you keep your job, so you make the money, so the person will go out with you. Whenever you decide, I'm going to lie in order to look good, what you're doing is, you are voting for the front, the chat, the ha. And you're denying the inside, the kernel, the reality.

And every time you tell a lie to keep up the front, you're hollowing out. Don't you see what you're doing? You're becoming a shell. Only goes, every time you break one of the Ten Commandments, don't lie. I was going to give you another one. Every time you have sex with somebody you're not married to, every time you have sex because it feels good, because you're following those feelings, following that desire for satisfaction, instead of making marriage what God says it should be, which

is an expression of permanent marital commitment, you're hollowing out. People say, well, I want to live with him, I want to live with her, but I don't want to be married. You know what that means but I don't want to be married. You know what that means? I don't want to be vulnerable. I am committed to nothing except my right to be happy without commitment. I'm committed to nothing except I should have the right

to do what makes me happy without having to honor commitment. There's nothing there. You don't want to be vulnerable. In other words, I'm committed to nothing, but the fact that I shouldn't have to commit myself. You're hollowing out. All right. Every time you decide you know better than God. Did you notice this week, one of the last of the campus radicals turned herself in.

Somebody my age, Katherine Ann Powers, she was part of a bank robbery in Boston years ago in which a police officer, a father of nine was killed. She turned herself back in and said, and it was amazing, she said, back then I thought that the only way to work for the poor and work for the oppressed, she actually said that the reason she tried to rob the bank was she wanted to take from the rich and give to the poor. Now there was this thing in the Bible that's been there for years saying, thou shalt not steal. There was a substance, there was a reality behind that.

You can't decide to do an end run around one of the commandments of God, around the law of the law. You can't decide to do an end run around one of the commandments of God, around the law of the law. You can't do that. When you break the commandments of God, the commandments of God break you. Not because they're mean or cranky, because they are reality. You're trying to drive through a wall and there's no door there. The paper said that when the officer was killed, Officer Schroeder, when he was killed in this bank robbery during the height of all the campus radicalism, his oldest son was in college

and right after his father was killed, imagine this, he saw flyers appearing on his college campus excited about the fact and saying, pig is dead. Talking about his father. Those out the fact and saying, pig is dead. Talking about his father. Those of us who remember talking like that are absolutely embarrassed, are absolutely humiliated that we ever thought or talked like that. But you know what we're feeling? The weightlessness of our lives. Because we think we're smarter than the law of God, we could have been carried along like that, blown around like that, and we still are weightless, and we still are rootless today, if the only way we make our minds up about what is right and wrong is about how it feels right now, or what the latest public opinion is. Don't you see? God alone is real. To the degree you obey God, you become real. To the degree you disobey

God, you become chaff, you become unreal. You're hollowing out. Now finally, it's not enough just simply to take out a rule book and say, okay, the Bible's a rule book. I'm going to take it out and I'm going to start living according to the Ten Commandments. I'm going to start living according to the Sermon on the Mount, and then I will start to become more substantial, I'll start to become a personal principle, I'll start to become a person of conviction, I'll start to know who I am, I'll start to develop roots. That's not the whole picture, because the image here is that when the tree puts its roots down into the truth, the truth is actually turning this into a living organism.

The picture is that the picture that the Bible is trying to get across to you is an abstract principle won't do. You've got to not just obey the Bible. You've got to be born again by the Word of God. 1 Peter, chapter 1. We are born again not by perishablecy, but by imperishable, the living Word of God. The Word of God, the truth of the Word of God, has to not just be taken in an abstract way, just obeyed in a kind of abstract way. It's actually got to be taken in, in such a way

that you're born again through it. That's what it's saying. In Bonfire of the Vanities, there's this great little, I remember this great little place where Larry Kramer, that's the guy's name in the Bonfire of the Vanities, he's a lawyer. He's a young man graduated from Columbia Law School. And when he was in Columbia Law School, he had a principal. He had an ideal. He says, I'm going to make my life count. So he goes to work for the city as a public defender. And one day he's walking down Park Avenue and he sees one of his classmates, somebody graduated with him, coming out of a Park Avenue apartment,

carrying a $500 at Taché Cave, getting into a car with a driver and going off to work, and he's making $30,000 and he makes no money and he gets no glory and he gets a lot of crap stuff every day, and suddenly that abstract principle completely erodes and withers. He suddenly says, I'm going to get mine. I'm making no money. My life is pointless. I'm gonna go get some money. I'm gonna sell out. I'm gonna do it. And Tom Wolfe, actually the author of Von Friede vanities, actually said that goes to show that principle, abstract principle, isn't enough

to overcome the feelings of the heart. That's right. The Bible says it's not enough just to say the feelings of the heart. That's right. The Bible says it's not enough just to say honesty is the best policy. No! You have got to take the truth of God in in such a way that you become a new person with it. You know how that works? You have to grab the truth of the Bible by the right end. You know they always talk about getting, you know, getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. You have to grab it by the right end. You know, they always talk about getting, you know, getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. You have to grab it by the right end of the stick, and the right end of the stick is what Jesus Christ did for you. A tree, a godly man is like a tree.

A tree doesn't plant itself. A tree has to be planted. You don't make yourself a Christian. You become a Christian when you accept what Jesus has done for you. What did he do for you? He left heaven and he was born as a child. But not just that, he lived a perfect life, a perfect human life of compassion and perfect justice and perfect compassion and perfect obedience. But not just that, he died on that terrible hill to take your punishment. Why did he do all that?

To stand in your place, to live a life you should have lived and to pay the debt you should have paid. And when you realize that you will never ever ever be right with God simply by, in an abstract way, taking his principles out and trying to cram them in, but when you realize that he's done all this for you, Jesus has, and you rest and receive him as your Savior, the truth comes in. And you become a living organism. The psalmist doesn't say, ah, the godly is like a great pine tree, but the wicked is

sort of like a little dogwood tree. It's not what it says. It says one is like a tree, one is like a chaff. The difference between the godly and the ungodly is not that the godly is a nicer person, a better person, it's the difference of nature. The godly has been planted, the godly has been given a new nature. Dear friends, think about this. Some of you so desperately want no one to know how afraid you are that you don't matter, that nobody notices you,

that you seem inconsequential. Many of you are so unhappy because you're not romantically involved. Some of you are unhappy because your career is not going in the right direction and you feel so inconsequential. Nobody notices, like you don't matter. You don't want people to realize how upset that makes you. But you see, don't go to counselors for that.

It's not so abnormal. The Bible says you hunger for glory. You were built for his glory. Here's the only way to get it. The paradox of the gospel. When you finally go to God and say, Lord, your will matters more than my will. Lord, I'm going to live for your glory, not my glory. Lord, you matter more than I matter. Your will and your word is more important

than my feelings and my needs. And the irony is, when you say, You matter more than me, you begin to matter to the only one who matters. You are loved by the only one whose love is eternal, is solid, and is lasting. God says to you, Heaven and earth may pass away, but my love for you will never pass away. That's glory! God is saying to you, the heavens, the earth, the mountains, they're nothing compared to you.

They're ephemeral. They're fleeting. They're ghosts. They're a mist compared to my love for you. That's glory, not the acclaim. So many of you come to New York to try to make it in a particular profession. That's not the glory that will do it. Some of you have come here to find somebody so you get married.

That's not the glory that will do it. This and this alone, heaven and earth will pass away, but my love for you will never pass away. Do you want a life of chaff? Do you want to be blown about by the wind? Do you want to be blown away? Or do you want to be a tree? Christian friends, do you have a reality inside that matches the facade? Are you really what you show other people that you are? Are you

glorying in Him? Are you making Him the most important thing in every part of your life? Are you? That's what it means, the glory in him. The more you glory in him, the more you put him first in your job, the more you put him first in your romantic life, the more you put him first in your sex life, the more you put him first in your possessions, the more you put him first in your thought life, in your intellectual life, the more you give him glory, the more you make him matter more than anything else, the more you grow yourself in reality and fluidity. Are you more like a tree? Is your life more like that or more like a chaff? Choose this day whom you will serve. Let's pray. Now, Father, we ask that

you grant as we spend some time thinking about these important images which get to these great realities we ask that you would show us, what it means to live lives of conviction, lives of rootedness, lives of solidity and substance. We pray that all of us will not be finding ourselves hollow and weightless, but solid joys and lasting pleasures, none but Zion's children now. We thank you for that truth. Help us to take it in now. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. 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 learn more.