Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Secret Siege of Nineveh

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Nineveh was the greatest city the world had seen at its time. And yet, God decides to besiege it and sack it with an army of one. How did he do it? He did it by turning one person, Jonah, into a world-changer. Are you an army of one? You have people all around you who need you, people all around you who are dying, and you see it. How could you become a world-changer like Jonah? There are four things God brought to bear on Jonah that made him into a world-changer: 1) God’s persistent grace, 2) God’s calling, 3) God’s strategy, and 4) God’s power. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 26, 1990. Series: Jonah. Scripture: Jonah 3. 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.

Thanks for listening to Gospel in Life. Today Tim Keller is taking us through a series on the book of Jonah, a story which is about much more than the reluctant prophet being swallowed by a great fish. You may be surprised at how profoundly it speaks to the issues we face today. After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Jonah chapter 3. Jonah goes to Nineveh and I'll read all verses in that chapter, verses 1 through 10.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city. A visit required three days. On the first day Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed, 40 more days and Nineveh will be overturned. The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in the dust. And he issued a proclamation in Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let any man or beast hurt or flock taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish. When God saw that they did this and how they turned from their evil ways,

He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. The word of the Lord. It's ironic, is it not, that the book of Jonah is about Nineveh, which is the capital of Assyria, which as we've mentioned I think before, that's Iraq. And in that day, the capital of Iraq was Nineveh, and it was the greatest city the world had yet seen. There's that one little verse there that we read that probably means that in order

to walk through the city of Nineveh, it took three days. It was an impregnable fortress, military might, economic might, cultural might. And nobody in their right mind would even think of besieging the city, let alone trying to capture the city, because you couldn't even get an army around it. Who had an army that could stretch around the circumference of the city? But the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, and God decides not just to besiege the city but to sack it with an army of one. How did he do it? He did it by taking one person, one man in this

case, and turning that one man into a city changer, into a world changer. That was the secret. In other words, God first besieged a person. He besieged his army. And then by turning him into a city changer and a world changer, he then was able to sack the greatest city in the history of the world up to that time. That's what he did. Now, listen. The history, no, I should say the literature of the ages is full of heroic quests to save the world against impossible odds.

And every child who is a real child, every child has these great dreams of being on a world-saving, world-changing quest. Because all of the favorite movies that kids watch and all of the books that they read and all of the stories are all about that. And because it's such a deep and profound human desire to be a hero, to change the world, to save the world. That eventually is going to work itself out into our adult lives, though we have become too cynical to admit it. Because, for example, all right, for example, in some cases it works itself out into our political lives. Any of you who, like me, went to college in the latter part, the last couple of years of the 60s, remember. You remember the talk, don't you? You remember the jargon. We are not going to accept the system. We are going to defy the, do you remember this? The military industrial complex. Do you remember that term? Huh? Some of you are laughing, you know that. The military industrial complex. We defy a

city like that. We defy a society like that. We're going to change the cities. We're going to change the world. We will not accept a society of inequities and materialism. We're going to bring in peace and understanding. What is that? We all felt we were on a heroic mission, a world-changing mission, but that's changed. Oh, it really has. And there is a deep cynicism about being able to change any city. Certainly, there's a deep cynicism about world-changing. Dorothy Sayers, great Christian writer, at one point said that the sin of our times now is not power-hungry materialism, which is what the liberals tell you,

and it's not permissive spirit of lawlessness, a permissive spirit of lawlessness, which is what the conservatives tell you, but rather, she said, the sin that believes in nothing. That's the problem. The sin of the ages, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, and believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing,

and therefore enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. Let me put it another way. What she is saying is that the sin of the age is that there is nothing bigger than my own needs or interests for which I will not only live, but certainly for which I will die. There is nothing worth dying for. Nothing.

The polls will tell you that's what people believe. You see, mission, heroism, heroism is impossible unless you believe that there's a purpose, there's a right, and there's a power much bigger than my needs, much bigger than me, for which I will die if necessary. I will honor it, I will live for it, and I will die if necessary. You can't be a hero, there's no heroism possible, unless you believe in a right and a power and a truth above you that's bigger than you. But that kind of conviction is gone from the Western world. And here is what the irony is.

The irony is that when there is nothing that I see that's bigger than my own needs and purposes and desires and joys, my happiness, if I see nothing bigger than my own needs and purposes and desires and joys, my happiness. If I see nothing bigger than me, I begin to feel small. Because if I'm living for myself, I begin, as time goes on, to feel insignificant because I am making no difference to anybody. I am changing nothing. I could die and nobody missed me, certainly not the world. I am making no

impact, or put it another way, the bigger I get in my eyes, the smaller I get in my eyes. The more important I become, until I become more important than any other cause, the more important I become, the less important I become, the more insignificant I become. Now look at yourselves. Of course everybody here has got a conscience. And everybody here throws some money into this and that charity. And everybody here does a little bit of volunteer work. But the real question is, is there anything gripping your life, a cause that you're serving?

Is there anything gripping your life for which you will die that you believe that if I live in accordance with this, this can change the world? If you don't have anything like that, you're going to find your heart and your soul shriveling up because you were built for something greater than that. Christians are the only radicals left if we would become what we are. Not that we are radical, but Christians can be. We could be the only radicals left. We could be. Because you see, Christians alone can listen to a song from the 60s.

Like if I had a hammer. I'd hammer out justice and love and peace all over this land. A Christian is the only person that can listen to that and say, you know, that's literally true. Because you know of the Kingdom of God, the once and future Kingdom. Rex futuris, Rex quandum, the once and future King. You know that the Kingdom of God is on the way, and you know that with integrity and with sanity you can believe a song like that.

With integrity and with sanity and concretely tomorrow, you can be part of the program. Do you believe that? And I'm not even asking today whether you believe in God or whether you're a Christian. I'm saying, is there anything bigger for which you are living than to pay the rent and to save enough for the next vacation? Is there anything you're actually living for that's bigger than you, that grips your heart, for which you will die?

A cause that you're serving. Are you an army of one? Hey, you've got people all around you that need you, people all around you that are dying, you see it. How could you become like Jonah, an army of one? The answer is, just like Jonah became an army of one, there's four things that God brought to bear on Jonah, and I'm going to have to mention them quickly, four is a lot. I have to mention them quickly.

There's four things that God brought to bear on Jonah that made him into an army of one, and here's what they are. Please listen. These will not be long points, they have to be short points. And so they may go by. So listen, number one, the first thing, be careful now. Well, I'll tell you the four things here, and then I'll go through them. God's persistent grace makes you an army of one.

God's calling makes you an army of one. God's calling makes you an army of one. God's strategy and God's power. His persistent grace, not just grace, His persistent grace, His calling, His strategy and His power, if you're taking notes. Here they go. Persistent grace. Persistent grace. God comes back to Jonah and says, I'm ready to send you to Nineveh. It says there, verse 1, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time saying, go. Now that doesn't make any sense. Jonah has let the guy down. Jonah has let God down. Do you take an officer who's just been court-martialed and immediately give him the command in the most crucial battle

of the war? I mean, these heroic quests ought to be for the cream of the crop, for the people who had the highest grade point, for the guy that whipped everybody else in the tryouts. You don't give it to Jonah, but God does. In fact, God has this funny habit of doing that. Jesus looks at all the apostles besides Judas, all the apostles who had the worst track record during the passion and the death of Jesus Christ, it's Peter and that's the one that Jesus leaves in charge when he goes away. Now what is this? Unfortunately we can't call it the Peter Principle because we've already got a Peter Principle. So we'll have to call it the Jonah Principle. And you

know what it is? The Jonah Principle is very clear in the Bible. it's life out of death. It's failures make you useful. See, look, Jesus actually literally talks about the Jonah principle. The Pharisees come to Jesus and they say, if you're the Messiah, do a great miracle. And Jesus certainly could do that if he wants, but this is what he says in Matthew 12 and in Luke 11. He says, the only sign you will receive is the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly of the deep for three days, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. What does that mean? Why doesn't he do a miracle? And the answer is, Jesus says, you will know who I am by my weakness, not by my strength. Or as one writer put it, quote, it's out of Christ's

weakness that the sufficiency of His saving power will be born. It is out of His death that men will receive life. John 12, 24, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. That's not just true for Jesus, not just true for Jonah, true for all of us. It's failure and suffering that makes you useful. God works it like that. It's a terrible thing to say to God, I'm ready for service. And the first thing God usually does is he puts you in the boot camp.

And the boot camp is invariably, look at the Bible. It's trouble. Suffering makes you a servant. You can even see it at the human level. Take a look at what happens. Look, who's changing society to help the handicapped? It's the parents of handicapped children, or the handicapped themselves. Who is changing the society to

finally cap down on drunken drivers? It's the relatives of people who were killed by drunken drivers. What happens is suffering makes you a servant because deep in our hearts, born of sinfulness and self-centeredness is this belief that God has got to shake out of us and that is the belief that the world is basically a safe place and that most people don't suffer that much and the ones who do suffer, it's probably their fault. We believe that for a long time. We believe basically, look, the world is a pretty safe place and people aren't suffering that badly. They complain an awful lot. They're not suffering that badly. It's not that bad. And if they are suffering, it's probably their fault until it happens to you.

And then you're shaken out of it. It takes suffering and trouble and failure to make you a servant. It also takes suffering and trouble and failure to humble you so that you're not looking down at everybody else. It makes you approachable and that's a big part of being effective in other people's lives. You're not going to be good for anybody else. You're not going to be able to change people. You're not going to be a world changer or a city changer or a people changer until you're humbled. Here's Scrooge, a pretty wealthy man in London. How do we help Scrooge become someone useful?

Do we sit him down for general therapy? Do we sit down and reflect it back? Do we say, well it sounds to me like I hear you saying? Listen, I use that technique when I listen to people. But you see, what made Scrooge into an army of one? He had to have a near-death experience and it had to be the most humbling and humiliating. He was laid in the dust in repentance. That's what made him an army of one.

Failure and suffering makes you a servant. Failure and suffering makes you humble. And failure and suffering makes you compassionate. Again, you can see this on the human level. Many times for some reason in my adult life I've had to have what they call a lower GI series. Oh, it's one of the horribleest things in my life. And what it means is you have to, as many of you know,

you have to coat the certain parts of your lower intestinal system with barium so that somebody can x-ray you. And I'll tell you, it's a very uncomfortable thing as you know, and it's really awful to have x-ray technicians sort of flopping you around out up there on the on the the table like come on move over and you're going I don't believe how long will this be. One day there was a man who had a real gentle touch very kind did all kinds of little things to

make me look more comfortable and I said, hey, I like your bedside manner. He says, last month, it happened to me. See, even on the human level, even on the human level, what makes you useful? What makes you compassionate? What makes you able to comfort? A small thing. We're not talking about the spiritual level, the cosmic level. On the human level, what made that x-ray technician just be able to comfort me and encourage me at a time where even though it's so easy to laugh about, you all know it really, really, really is agony. What? We've been through it.

Life out of death. Now listen, we've got to move on. Here's the application. Dear friends, do not think that you can be passive in this. If you have gone through failures, if you are now going through a failure or through some kind of suffering, don't think this will automatically turn you into an army of one. No way. Because you see, suffering and failures will only turn

you into a world changer and a city changer if you let them draw you out of yourself. Suffering will either make you more self-absorbed and full of self-pity than before or less, but it will not leave you where you were. You cannot stay where you are. Every problem that you ever come up against will make you a far better person or a far worse person, depending on whether you let it drive you inside or outside. Chances are you've heard some version of the story of Jonah, the rebellious prophet who defied God and was swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller reveals hidden depths within the story, making

the case that Jonah's rebellion also provides one of the most insightful explorations into the secret of God's mercy. As you learn what the book of Jonah teaches about prejudice, justice, mercy, self-righteousness, and much more, you'll gain fresh insight into how to become a bridge builder in today's culture, how to foster reconciliation across lines of division, and with God's help bring peace where there is conflict. This month when you give to Gospel in Life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book, Rediscovering Jonah, as our thanks for your gift.

Just visit GospelinLife.com slash give. That's GospelinLife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. Do you hear that? God loves to use failures and suffers, but you better be careful because it's up to you what it does to you.

Is anybody here think you're a big failure? Too big a failure for God to use? I was reading with my family about Manasseh, one of the great, the nastiest kings of Judah in the Old Testament. The city ran with the blood of his children that he was sacrificing on the altar. And yet, when he humbled himself, God received him and restored him to be king of Israel. God uses Jonah's, God uses Peter's, God uses Manasseh's. He can use you. But somebody says here, I'm going through suffering right now and it's driving me into

myself. It's ruining me. Only if you let it. Don't waste your sorrows. It can make you an army of one. Let it drive you out into compassion, servanthood and humility. Not drive you in into bitterness, self-pity. That's up to you. Second, God's persistent grace. He continually loves you and helps you and comes back to you and uses you out of your failure and suffering. Secondly, God's calling.

Now here's something that I need to run through quickly, but it's very important. God by nature is a sending God and a calling God. God by nature is that. When God comes back to Jonah, he doesn't say, Jonah, you've had a rough time in the lower gastrointestinal tract of that fish. That's very hard to be down there. You need at least a week off. But instead he says, go. Hey, what does that mean? Verse 1 tells you that mission is not for the well-rested. It's not for the elite. It's not for the people with time on

their hands. It's not for people with money. It's not for people without money. It's not for people with an outgoing gift of gab. It's not for people without money. It's not for people with an outgoing gift of gab. It's not for people with a theological education. It's for anybody who says, I belong to God, because God is by nature a calling and sending God. If you know him at all, he's always coming back a second time and a third time and a fourth time. When he says, will you go now?

Will you get out of yourself? Will you start to live to serve me and other people? When he says, will there be something, some cause, some mission that is more important than anything else you do in your life, what he's really saying is, when are you going to finally see who I am? If you wanna be like me and if you wanna know me,

that's the way I am. I live to change people. I live to change the world. And I send people out. God is a spiritual tornado. I've said this before. That means He never sucks you in without spinning you out. Never.

Look at Genesis 12, the calling of Abraham and you'll see it's a paradigm. God calls to Abraham and he says two things. He says, I will bless you so that you may be a blessing, get you out of your country." He says, go to the promised land. I will bless you that you might be a blessing, get thee out. Now what is he saying? First, God never blesses you except to make you a blessing. He never heals you except to make you a healer, ever.

And secondly, the only way that you can be that blessing and be a healer is if you get out. Get out of what? For Abraham, it was get out of his country, get out of his family, get out of his culture. But the principle is he got out of his, come on, some of you know this, his security zone. He got out of the familiar. He was called to do things that are scary, do things that make you vulnerable, and some of you are afraid of that. If I sign up for this ministry, if I get involved with

this person's life that looks like a basket case, it might take gasp, commitment. That person will then have a piece of me. Yes, that ministry will have a piece of me. Yes. They could call on me when I want to go out of town. Oh my word. They could cut into my budget. Absolutely, for sure. And until you get out of your security zone, you cannot be a healer.

God will never heal you but to make you a healer. God will never fill you except to fill the earth with his glory. And until you're willing to get out, you not only can't be a blessing, you can't even be like God. You can't even be like Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ, many years after Abraham and many years after Jonah, He left the ultimate security zone. He left his own, the safety and glory of heaven. And he hazarded everything.

He gave up everything. He paid every price possible in order to come and to reach out. And what did he do? He got involved. He wrestled. He hurt. He said unpopular things which transformed some people and moved other people to kill him, which is kind of the way in which things work when you lay yourself out to be a city changer and a world changer. You transform some people and you get other people ready to kill you. It's inevitable. And yet, by humbling himself like that, Jesus Christ exalted himself. By losing himself, Jesus Christ found himself.

And if you live for yourself, remember, the bigger you get in your eyes, the smaller you get in your eyes. The more important you are than anything else, the less important you are to anything else. Application to our hearts. It's very easy, even though you say I'm a Christian and even though I say I'm living for God, day in and day out, to actually live for nothing more than your schedule and for your career and for your love and for your goals. What are you living for? Can you say, here are the

places in which I am making myself uncomfortable? Here's where I'm moving out of the familiar. Here's where I am giving of myself, whether it's financially, whether it's emotionally. Here's where I'm giving myself to serve God and other people. Can you show me that? Well, somebody says, I don't have the gifts. I don't have the talent or the time.

I don't have the smarts to do that. And the answer is, God doesn't need any of those things, even if you don't have them. All He wants is your will. And look, even now, it's in your hand. Give it to Him. God is by nature a sending God and he's a calling God until you get a grip on the fact that Jesus and the Father live to change people's lives and live to change the world.

Until you begin to live like that, you are out of touch with reality and you're out of touch with your identity and you're out of touch with who he is. All he wants is your will. Give it to him. Thirdly, watch this. Those of you who are through the New Members Class know that the third thing is God's strategy. The third thing that God did to change Jonah was to change his attitude toward the city. God's strategy for Christians is to send them first into the city. Listen, those of you in the New Members Class are going to laugh at this because you heard this, but watch, 90 seconds. Watch this. God sends people

into the city. Why? He sent Paul into the city. All of the Roman Empire was changed by a bunch of slaves and street people. How could that have happened? How did Christians actually literally take over the Roman Empire? Because Paul did all of his missions in the city. He ignored the countryside and the small towns. And the reason he did that was, first of all, city dwellers have always been more open to new ideas than other kinds of people. City dwellers have always been more open to change. He went there. And secondly, the city is the place where everything starts and moves out into society. Immigrants come here before they move out into the society. People go to work here and to school here before they move out into society.

Ideas in the theater, in the media, in the journals, they start here and they move out into society. This is the heart. If you want medicine in the whole body quickly, you inject it into the heart. You don't inject it into one of the veins. By 300 AD, half of the urban populations of the Roman Empire were Christian. The rest of the country, the rest of the empire was all pagan. In fact, the word pagan comes from the word paganus, which means a countryman. The country dwellers were the, they were the pagans, literally, and the urban dwellers, they were the Christians. And because of that, Christianity won the Roman Empire because whatever has the city by the throat has the culture by

the throat. Friends, because God loves cities and because God sees that they're the most strategic place to go, God tends to say to Paul, to all missionaries, go to the city first. Work down there. Gardens are places where there's more plants than people. Cities are places where there are more people than plants. Since God loves people far more than plants, He loves cities far more than anywhere else. And He says so. At the end, the last verse of the whole book,

the key, the point of the book is, shall I not have compassion on that great city? What are you doing in the city? Do you use the city or do you feel like you're sent and called here? Do you come into the city and say, I'm here because it's the most strategic place to be a Christian? Or do you say, I hate this place, but I'm going to use it and get out? God looks at you and says, I didn't use you. I served you.

So don't use the city. Serve it. And until you have that attitude, you're not going to be able at all all, to be an army of one. Lastly, the last thing, the power of God makes you into an army. Literally it says that when the king of Nineveh heard the news, you see what it said in the NIV, the translation I read, when the king of Nineveh heard the news, it says he repented, he called, he made this decree. In the Hebrew

it literally says, when the word touched even the king, he turned to his subjects and said, let's turn from our evil ways and our violence. Every urban planner, every sociologist, every politician, every counselor, every social worker wants this to happen. If only the people of the city would turn from their evil ways and their violence. So we'd be done with the oppression, and we'd be done with the crime, and we'd be done with the racism, we'd be done all with the problems of the city. How did Jonah get it? Jonah got it, get this, through repentance. He led the people to repentance.

And this is the last thing I've got to tell you, but it's very important. The Bible teaches that the city's problems will only be dealt with through repentance. I know that our modern discourse about the city has completely gotten rid of any language that smacks of moral overtones or values. And we have borrowed to talk about the city jargon out of the disciplines of psychology and sociology and anthropology. That is not the way to go. Repentance is not just an emotional upheaval, it's a thorough going change of life.

I have a little quote I remember talking to a couple of people that one time went off for a summer program, they went into the city because they heard somebody teach to them. The Bible said that they needed to go and take care of people who were hurting. These people were urbanaphobic. They hated the city. They were xenophobic. They didn't like people of other cultures and races.

They went in and later on they told this to me and as best I can remember it, this is the quote. They said, I came when I was rehabbing houses for these families, I came to repent of my paternalism, my racism, my materialism when I saw how many of these people were trapped here with so little. And many people I ministered to were also led to repent of their cynicism about authority, their distrust, their lawlessness, and their addictions. Both sides were brought to God. See what happened there? What happened there? A bunch of xenophobic or

banaphobic white people from outside come on in. They start to work with people in the name of Christ, rehabbing houses. What they're doing touches the lives of the people there who mistrust and actually hate them and what they represent. How was their healing brought? It wasn't a world-changing thing. It was sort of a family-changing, neighborhood-changing thing. What happened? Repentance. Is that an old-fashioned word? Do you feel like when we get rid of talking about repentance, then we can really start to work on this city. The king of Nineveh said, repent of your evil ways. Repent. Repent of your violence. Repent. And when everybody on all sides are led to repentance, oh my friends, when the word of God went sweeping through Wales in the early

1900s in a tremendous revival, and a fifth of all of the country was converted and came into the church. There were tremendous labor union problems that were happening inside the mines. When the revival came, they were wiped away because on company time, the managers started to sponsor Bible studies. And the people, the miners, were part of the Bible studies. They began to bring back all the things that they had been stealing. You know how all mines had one shed where the company kept its tools and you used the tools? Miners had been stealing it for years. During the revival, they had to build five new sheds at most mines

just to put back all the tools the miners started bringing back. The managers started to say, on company time we want to spend time praying and reading the Bible with you. What happened? Repentance, not negotiation. Repentance changes cities, that's what it says. Conclusion. Conclusion. If you are not a world changer, if you're doing nothing much more than just being absorbed in your own problems, look, I recognize that there are seasons for things. There are seasons for rest and restoration. There are seasons for healing.

And you might be going through one of those things. I am not trying to make you feel guilty. What I am trying to do is to say, aren't you tired of the lack of greatness in your life? Won't you be willing to see that if you're not a world changer, it's A, because you're wasting your troubles and sorrows. You're not using them in your life in the right way. B, you're not taking a good look at who God is. Or C, you actually are guilty of unbelief. You don't believe in the power of God's word and repentance.

Somebody here says, I'm too scarred. God will use your scars. Somebody says here, I'm not articulate. I don't know what to say. It's easy for you to say you're articulate, you're well-trained. Look at Jonah. Jonah changed the city.

Did you see what he said? He got up and said, 40 days and then it will be overturned. You call that a good message? He didn't even tell him to repent. He didn't even tell him there was a possibility of escape. That was a lousy job. And God changed it. The whole country threw him.

You can do better than him. Look what it cost Jesus Christ to be an ambassador for you. What will it cost you to be an ambassador for Him? It won't cost you anything but what you're going to have to give up some day anyway. The word of the Lord came a second time and it came a third time and it will come a fourth time. How many times has it come to you? Do you hear it this morning?

Let us pray. Our Father, thank you that you're a God who calls us regardless of our failures. You love to use failures. You call us. You send us into the city to change it. And you say, believe in the power of the gospel and repentance to change any place, any family, any neighborhood, any social structure, anything. Lord, we are guilty of stewing in our suffering instead of using it and letting you use us. We are guilty of not seeing your power. We're

guilty and we repent, but we also see that repentance is the way to leadership and usefulness. Use us now, for we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you a deeper appreciation for God's grace and helps you apply it to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at GospelInLife.com.

When you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. 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. ,

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