Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Song of Creation

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

If you live in North America or Europe, the question almost everyone has in mind when they read Genesis 1 is “How?” They ask, “How did it happen? How long did it take?”  But how questions aren’t as important as why questions. What you really need to know about this world is why did God make it? What is it for? Why do we feel the way we feel about it? How do we live in it?  Let’s look at what Genesis teaches us about 1) how the world began, but most importantly, 2) why the world began. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 15, 2000. Series: Genesis – The Gospel According to God. Scripture: Genesis 1:1-8, 31. 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.

The Book of Genesis is an ancient book that gets down to some of the most foundational questions we have. We get answers to the big why questions and the what for questions that have plagued us for centuries. Join us today as Tim Keller preaches from the Book of Genesis. We just finished a series on who God is and what I want to do now is move into a new series not on His person but on His work. Not on who God is but what He does. We're going to be looking at Genesis 1 to 11, or the next few weeks in

which we look at what God does. And we're going to read this first passage. It's one of the most famous pieces of literature in the world, Genesis 1, verses 1 to 8. And then I'll actually read, since I want to talk to you about the whole chapter, it's so familiar I don't have to read it all to you, but I will read the last verse as well, verse 31. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light.

And there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day. And God said, let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above

it and it was so. God called the expanse sky and there was evening, there was morning, the second day. God saw all that he had made and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. This is God's word. Now, one of the problems, if you, over the last 150 years, if you've lived either here in North America or in Europe, the question that people always have had when they come to Genesis 1 that describes the world's beginning and the question almost everybody has in their mind right away is how?

How did the world begin? Yeah, how did it happen? How long did it take? Did it happen through evolution or not? I mean that's right away the question everybody has and that's unfortunate Because how questions aren't as important as why questions really I mean for example Imagine somebody gives you a present and you open it up. And there it is, a machine of some sort. What if you opened a package and there's this machine of some sort there? What's the first question you have? Do you say, oh how long did it take them to make it?

No. They say, well, what tools did you use? No. What you say is, what in the world does this do and how do I use it without blowing us all up? You want to know what it's for. You want to know the why. You want to know the design, okay? And what you really need to know about nature and about the birds and about the fowl and the fish and about the ocean and the trees and about the animals, what we really need to know about this world is why did God make it, what is it for, why do we feel what we feel about it, how do we live in it, rather than how long did he take to do it and exactly

how did it happen. Now one of the reasons why we have to be careful about this is that I'm pretty certain after many years of thinking about this that Genesis 1 is not designed to answer the question how, it's designed to talk about why. It's designed to talk about what creation means and its significance and so on. What it does mean is this, you have to be relatively careful not to push the details because it's not there to give you details. So I'm going to give you a quick example of this. As many of you know, if you studied this over the years, is that you've got plenty of people

who say, well, you know, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other. If you've taken any kind of course on Genesis or on Hebrew scriptures in the Bible or ancient history, they'll say, well, you know, Genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other. They're two different accounts of creation, and they contradict. And that's only if you don't really read

the rest of the Bible. There's a lot of places where you have two accounts of things. For example, in Exodus 14, you have an account of the crossing of the Red Sea, but in Exodus 15, you have a song about that, a song, Miriam's song. And it's much more lyrical and it's much more repetitive and it's much more metaphorical. If you go to Judges chapter 4, you have the account of a historical event which is the great battle victory of Israel over the invading armies of Sisera. So you have

the account in Judges 4 but in Judges 5 you have Deborah's song about it and it's much different. You see a song as repetition. For example you notice the the lyrics of the song John Fisher just wrote and you see those laid out there. You wouldn't even have to know it's a song because you look and you see wide angle, then more than I used to see, then you see those laid out there, you wouldn't even have to know it's a song because you look and you see wide angle, then more than I used to see, then you see wide angle again. Why is he saying that again?

What's all this repetition? Didn't he say that once? If you're writing an essay, you don't say things over and over again, but if you're writing a song, you do. If you're writing a poem, you do. And so when you get to Judges Five, you see Deborah using repetition and using a lot of metaphor like at one point she says the stars came in the heavens and fought against Sisera.

Now does she mean that that's what happened? Comets nailed him? No. What you have in Judges 4 and 5 is not history and a myth. You have a historical event and a song about a historical event talking about the significance of it. What you have in Exodus 14 is not history and a myth, but you have two genres looking at the same event, both a historical event, but the second genre is lyrical and it's poetic, and therefore you don't press the details. You don't ask, well, probably the stars aren't literal, but the chariots were. And it's not that easy always to tell, but you know it, it's a poem. You interpret it as a poem.

Genesis 1 is a poem. Genesis 1 has enormous amount of repetition. Don't you see it? Over and over again, you have the evening in the morning was the first day, the evening in the morning was the second day, and God says, and it was so, and God said it was good. Repetition, repetition, repetition. You get to Genesis 2, it's totally different. Why? Because Genesis 2 is historical reporting

and Genesis 1 is a song and because Genesis 1 is a song we ask the general questions not so specific. We don't press for all the details. That's all I want you to know to start with. You can't press the thing for any more details just like you wouldn't press Judges 5 or Exodus 15. And therefore these are not contradictory. They're two genres talking about the same thing. So what does Genesis 1 teach us about how the world began? But most important, what does it teach us about why the world began? Now first of all, let's just tell you two things about how.

This text, again, looking at it more general instead of pressing for details, it tells us two things about how the world began. And it's very important. First it says, God began the world. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, which means the world is not the result of chance. It's not the result of an accident. It's not the result of random forces, which is the secular view that this world was not created by God, but it's just, you know, you can account for it by an accidental collocation of molecules. On the other hand, it doesn't just say God created the heavens and the earth. It says God created the heavens and

the earth. And the word created is a word in Hebrew that is never used of anybody but God. It's a word that means to create out of nothing. It means to create something that wasn't there before at all. Now, what I would like to show you is on the one hand, we have a modern mythology and we have an ancient mythology about nature. The modern mythology says it's an accident and it's the only thing that's really there. The material world is the only reality, nature is the only reality, there isn't anything else. But you realize that the ancient mythologies, and there's tons of them, so many of the ancient religions

have all these different creation accounts, they're very interesting and I went back and read a number of them, you know, getting ready for today. And they all have one thing in common. The world is never created out of nothing, ever. The world is made out of the... You know, for example, human beings are made out of the blood of a slain god. Or the heavens and the earth are made out of a slaughter of a sea monster. Over and over again, you have have in all of the other ancient

mythologies this world is always derivative, it's always an extension, an emanation of God. It always comes out, it's usually an afterthought, sometimes it's an accident in a sense. It's never created out of nothing. It's always created out of some primordial eternally pre-existence ooze or something. Or you know, the gods come out of the ooze and they fight against one another, and then the gods that win build the earth and the heavens out of the carcasses of the dead gods and so on. You never have what you have here in Genesis 1, which is God creates the heavens and the

earth ex nihilo, which out of nothing, which means he gives it its own being. All the ancient mythologies, all the ancient nothing, which means he gives it its own being. All the ancient mythologies, all the ancient religions, including even Eastern religions today say, this world isn't real. This world isn't that important. This world's an illusion. You want to get beyond this world. You know, the body is the prison house of the soul. You want to escape this world. You want to move on. This world isn't real, this world is unimportant, this world is due, you know? This world is just a dew drop and eventually we get beyond all this. Now do you see how different this is? The modern myth says this world is all there is, that's materialism, and you live for matter.

You live for wealth, you live for pleasure, you live for it because that's all there is. On the other hand, the ancient mythology has always said this world isn't important at all. That's the reason why you never get science that arose out of any of the ancient religions. This world isn't important. You never get social justice. You never get anybody saying we've got to put it into slavery. Why? Because the ancient religion says this world isn't, you know, you resign yourself, you're passive, you know, you're detached, you say, what can you do? This is just the way it is, this isn't real, we're going to move on beyond that, we're going to get into the afterlife. Genesis 1 says, God created the heavens and the earth, so it's not an accident, this world is not all there is, don't worship it.

Don't live for material things. But on the other hand, it says God created, it gave it its own being, it created out of nothing. The world is important, the world world is good the world is real and Therefore it's not unimportant and therefore you fight injustice and therefore you heal the bodies and you and put an end to slavery this world's important Genesis one Stands against both of those mythologies Because it says how the world began. It began by God and it began by God out of nothing.

But now, here's what I want to do. I don't believe that, you know, if you've heard people talk about Genesis 1, you've heard that before. Probably. Probably for me. I've talked about creation a couple times in the last few years, and that's what you're going to hear me say. The Christian doctrine of creation is wonderful. For example, against the ancient mythologies, the Christian doctrine of creation says that physical pleasure is fine. You know, the ancient mythologies, the Greek Roman idea is that

is the way to salvation is to kind of avoid pleasure. And you know, shave your head and you go into a monastery and you just, I'm not talking badly about all monasteries, but the idea of you get away from the world, you flagellate yourself, you deny the body. That's the way to find God. You see, au contraire. Genesis 1 says this world is good.

This world is pleasant. What is God doing when he says it's good? He's enjoying it. Well, get back to that. We're not against pleasure. We're not against physical things. On the other hand, we said the other thing that's good about the doctrine of creation is that means Christianity knows this world is important enough that we try to fix it if it goes wrong. We don't say well someday we're all going to go to heaven anyway. In fact, the doctrine of creation is very interesting. If you get to Revelation 21, you see something pretty interesting. All ancient religions and ancient mythology say

salvation is escaping earth to heaven, or something. We escape earth to heaven. But Christian salvation is we bring heaven to earth. In the end, the city of God, where's it coming? Is it drawing us up like a tractor beam, you know? Scotty, beam me up. And so, you know, the city of God appears and beams up the true faithful. No, the city of God is coming down in Revelation 21. Heaven is coming to earth. You know, our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Doesn't say, oh, let us go to heaven, we can do your will. No, bring it here. God created body and soul. He's redeeming body and soul. That's what the resurrection means. God didn't just redeem the soul, but he's redeeming the body. And he's going to restore it. So the Christian doctrine of creation is this world is great. We're not afraid of pleasure.

We work against injustice. We work to fix it. It's not unimportant. We believe against injustice. We work to fix it. It's not unimportant. We believe that someday God's going to repair it, so we need to get to it now. You know? On the other hand, we're not materialists. We don't live for pleasure.

We're not afraid of it. We don't live for it. We don't live for comfort. We don't live for wealth. We don't live for food. We don't live for sex. We don't live for those things. On the other hand, we We don't live for sex. We don't live for those things. On the other hand, we don't think they're bad.

They're wrong. They're bad. We know we have to get away from them. Isn't that wonderful? But that all comes when you think about how the world began. But I think there's more in here. What does Genesis 1 teach us about why? Why did God create the world?

And you have to look a little deeper. And yet, it's amazing to me that almost everybody I looked up and I did a lot of study on this and almost everybody agrees on this. Why God invented the world, there's clues you have to look at them. Let me show you what the clues are. For example, one of the clues comes with the fact that eight times God says and God said, let there be light. God never creates without speaking. Do you know that? Eight times he speaks, he speaks into creation.

He never creates without speaking. He creates through speaking. And what's different about his word as opposed to my word, when I say let there be light, then I have to go over and flick on the switch. Or, you know, or strike the match. Or tell somebody to go do it. When God says let there be light, what does it say?

Does it say God said let there be light and he went and made light? No, it says God said let there be light and there was light. Because God's Word is an agent. God's Word has agency. God's Word has a power in itself. Why? How? Here's another clue. The Spirit of God is hovering over the water. Now, you know what? You can't tell, but let me show you this. This is a remarkable personification of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is not depicted here as a force suspended like a gas over the waters, you know, like a mist.

Because the word hover is a word that's only ever used for mother birds. It's a Hebrew word that only is ever used for mother birds and it always means a mother bird hovering, fluttering, you know, having her, the idea is her wings are out over her babies, over either her, either the eggs that she's trying to help hatch, or over the young who she's trying to teach to fly. Most people think Christianity is either incredibly inclusive or unbelievably exclusive. But the fact is, Christianity is both radically inclusive and radically exclusive. How can this be? In his short book, The Gospel on the Move, How the Cross Transcends

Cultural Differences, Tim Keller shows us how we can make sense of this apparent paradox. Through the New Testament story of Philip and the Ethiopian, we learn how the gospel allows us to humbly critique our own cultural biases while becoming a united people of God. This month we have an exclusive resource only available through Gospel in Life that we want you to share. When you give to Gospel in Life in October, we'll send you three copies of Dr. Keller's short book, The Gospel on the Move, as our thanks for your gift. This short book is a great way to present the Gospel to a friend or loved one.

We hope you'll prayerfully consider who you could give each copy to and that it helps you live more missionally. To receive your three copies of this short book, 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 the gospel. And so instead of the spirit being considered an impersonal thing, the spirit is personified. We're talking about the spirit in terms of motivation and so on. And then the biggest clue is when you get down to chapter 1 verse 26, which we didn't print down here, but you've heard this, It's where when God is about to create male and female, he says, let us make man in our image.

Us? Us? Who's he talking to? And somebody says, yeah, people say, well, he's talking to the angels, but no, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know, we're not made in the angels' image. Who's he talking to?

For example, Isaiah 40, it's interesting, Isaiah 40 verse 14 says that when he created the world, with whom did he take counsel? See, Isaiah 40 says that God did not take counsel with anybody. He didn't ask anyone's opinion. He didn't say, hey, let's kick this idea around. You want to make someone in our own image? He wasn't talking to the angels about that. He wasn't talking to the animal. Who's he talking to? And here's the answer. The Bible later on tells us something. The reason the Father's Word can actually do, can actually create is because the Father's Word is a person. The reason the Word of God has agency is because the Word of God is a person. The Father's Word is the Son. John 1 says, nothing was created without, except through the Word of God who is Jesus. And if you go back to Genesis 1, you see he's absolutely right.

God never creates without speaking. The creation comes through the Word. And the Spirit, and what we have here is the Trinity. And here's what we have. Polytheists believe that many gods, there's many gods, but they came up out of the primordial ooze and they began battling with each other. And non-Christian monotheists believe there was one God, one person who never experienced love or community until he finally decided to create some other beings. So the eternal, you know, the endless, beginningless eons before creation, God was existing kind of all by himself. So love comes in second, right?

It comes in later. Communication comes in later. But the Bible, Christians believe the Bible teaches, and you can see it right here in Genesis 1, that God is a community. Get this now. God is a community. Get this now. God's a community. You have the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit doing creation together and saying, let us make them in our image.

And here's what he's doing. God, from all eternity, has been a community. And that community is a circle of love. Maybe the Trinity, the idea of three persons in one God, maybe the idea of the Trinity kind of overloads your little circuits up there. I know it does. But St. Augustine says, yeah, the Trinity overloads your circuits, but I want you to realize that unless you have a triune God, love is not the ultimate reality. Community is not the ultimate reality. Love is not intrinsic to the universe. It came in later. But creation is this. There was a community and they knew and loved one another from all eternity. There was a circle of love. The Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And they were delighting

each other's being. And they were praising each other's glory. And they were enjoying each other's beauty. And they were pouring love into one other's bosom. And one day they said, let's expand the circle. Let's expand the community. Let us create beings that can become part of the circle. Now, as I said to you in the very beginning, one of the things people miss is that Genesis 1 is a song. Look at the repetition. Look at it. 1 is a song. Look at the repetition. Look at it.

It's a song. What does that mean? Why is God speaking to creation? He wants a relationship. Why does God make us in His image so we can reflect His glory? Why does God make, for example, even the moon and the stars, and it actually says they govern, they're rulers over the light and the darkness. Everything, to some degree, images God. Psalm 19 says, the heavens are telling of the glory of God. Deep calls to deep are the

thunder of thy cataracts. You know, speech is always going out. What does that mean? Psalm 19 says, Genesis 1 is saying, by its very form as a song, God created in nature a whole community of beings, all of whom can reflect God's glory. In other words, they can praise God, they can glorify God, and then he comes to them and what does he keep saying to them over and over and over again? What is he saying? It is good. Now, what's that mean?

It is good. You know, when I buy my shoes, I'm starting to put my feet in the shoes and there's a little thing down there and I pull it out and there's a little slip of paper that says inspected by number 28. Okay, so somebody looked my shoes over and said, they passed inspection. Is that what God was doing? Was he going around saying, sun, the moon? Passes inspection.

It's good. No. Think about it. When he looks at it, especially the climax of the narrative, in the climax of the narrative he says, it is very good. What is he talking about? He's enjoying it. When do you say, it is good? You put down the drink and you say, that's good.

What are you doing? You're enjoying it. You say it is good after you put the drink down. You say it is good after love making. You say it is good after you put the drink down. You say it is good after lovemaking. You say it is good after this incredible piece of music. You go, it is so good. What are you doing? What is God doing?

God creates a community of beings who can reflect His glory and praise Him. And then He completes the circle by looking at them and saying, I have made you so beautiful. I adore you. You are glorious, you are good. And therefore what he has done is he's created a community of beings who can enter into the circle.

The purpose of nature is community. The purpose of nature is singing. And that answers the question. Let me tell you what the question is. Why is nature so moving to you and me? There's anybody out here who says, you know, I don't even know if I believe in God. For all I know, nature is the result of random forces. Why is it that when you look at the mountains, you look at the sea, you listen to the noise of the waves, you listen to the babble of the brook or the thunder of the waterfall.

And you hear music. Why are you so moved? Genesis 1 tells you why. It's nature singing the praises of its maker. And it's calling you in. Simone Wey, a wonderful Jewish Christian writer who died in the 1940s, says something very intriguing about the beauty of nature. She says this, she says, the love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains,

the sea, and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is born in upon us in its thousands of tiny sounds. The love we feel for the breath of the wind or the warmth of the sun, this love of which every human being has at least an inkling, is incomplete and painful. It calls us in but we can't get in. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, we do not just want to see beauty when we look at nature, we want something else which we can hardly put into words, we want to be united with the beauty we see, we want to pass into it, we want to receive it into ourselves,

to bathe in it, to become part of it. That's why in our legends we have peopled the air and the earth and the water with gods and nymphs and elves. That's why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods, they talk as if the West Wind could really sweep into a human soul, but it can't. At present, we feel like we're on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and the beauty of the morning, but they don't make us fresh and beautiful. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. We feel cut off from something.

Now, what's Simone Veil and what's C.S. Lewis talking about? Genesis 1 explains half of this. Genesis 1 says, nature is a choir. Look at a clam, look at a horse, look at a mountain, look at an ocean, listen to the waves. Even if you don't have the worldview to understand it as such, they're singing to you. They're saying, our maker loves us. Our maker says we're good. Why do you think nature is so happy and we're so sad? Why is it so beautiful? Why is it so gorgeous? Why are you drawn out?

As Simone Vey says, there's a beauty in nature. It's spiritual, we're drawn to it. We're deeply moved by it. What is it? It's music. But it's not just music in general. It's praising its creator. It's glorifying its creator. It's reflecting its creator. And it's singing to you about its creator. And it's inviting you into the circle.

And yet, we can't go. Now Genesis 1 doesn't tell us about that. Genesis 2 and 3 tell us about that. We're going to get there. But let's look ahead briefly here to conclude. Why is the beauty we sense in nature painful, as Simone Weil says? Why? By the way, the way you spell her name is W-E-I-L. You probably say wild, but I mean,

that's the way it's said, okay? Why does Simone Weil say it's painful? Why does C.S. Lewis say it calls a symbol we can't go in? Because we can't sing the same song. Every human being has made a choice to be their own Lord, their own master. We all have done that. The Bible says we don't want to go in under the king.

We have tried to be our own masters. We try to call the shots in our life. And as a result, we experience two things. First of all, when we hear nature calling us to praise our Maker, we have a little trouble with it. Because that's not the way our lives go. As a matter of fact, there's a great place where George Whitefield, who is the old Anglican preacher, he's got this great line in his sermon and it goes like this.

He says, haven't you ever noticed that when you come near the animals, they growl at us, they bark at us, and the birds screech at us and fly away? Do you know why? They know we have a quarrel with their master. Their nature is praising God and being what God made it to be by and large, though with some imperfection. We can talk about that later. But we're not.

It's inviting us into a song that we can't sing. But here's the reason we can't sing it. The reason nature is singing a song of praise is because it's under the benediction of God. It sings a song. And this is what the song is saying. It's saying, our Maker loves us. Our Maker says that we're good.

Our Maker enjoys us. Our Maker delights in us. And every human being, according to Genesis 1, was built to live under the benediction of God. Deep in your soul, you need one thing more than anything else. This is water and your grass. This is gas and you're an engine. You need this more than anything else, this is water and you're grass, alright? This is gas and you're an engine. You need this more than anything else. You need to know that your Maker looks at you and says, you are good, you are right, I love you, you have no flaws, I see no blemish on you. You need to know that your Maker sings to you of your beauty. You need that. But you know you're not good.

You know that you're not right with him. You know that you've rebelled. That's what Genesis 1, 2, and 3 tells us. So how, we can't sing the song. We need it, but we know there's a barrier. So what are we gonna do? Genesis 1 points to it. Where's the other place in the Bible

that starts in the beginning? Where else? John chapter 1. And it tells us there that the word of God through whom everything was created, Jesus Christ, became flesh. Isn't that amazing? The word who made matter became matter. The one through whom everything visible came became visible himself. And he came to earth and he went to the cross. And on the cross you see the exact opposite. On the cross what happened to Jesus was the exact opposite of what happened to him in Genesis 1. He spoke and there was no answer. Nothing happened.

My God, my God, no answer. He was made without form and void. He was emptied instead of being filled. He sought the presence of God. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Forsaken. You know what that means? The Spirit of God was not hovering over him. The very opposite of creation happened to Jesus Christ on the cross. He was decreated. He was deconstructed. Why? Our Maker had to be unmade so that we could be remade. Our Creator had to be decreated, deconstructed so we could be recreated. And here's how we get recreated. Do you believe that He died on the cross for you and that He lived the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died? If you believe that, He did that in your place, then when you believe in him, you know that God loves you and that

God can actually look at you in Christ and say, you are good. And you need to hear that so badly that until the Spirit of God brings that word into your heart, your life is without form and void. Your life is empty. You've got a hole there. You've got a void there. And you will either go in the direction of materialism to do everything you can to fill that void, because you know you're not good and you're trying to fill that void, or you'll move in the area of anti-materialism

and you'll try to be really good and really holy and really religious and deny yourself and just say no all the time. You'll do everything you can, but what you need to deal with that void is to see that Jesus Christ was made void for you. You need to know that because of who Jesus is and what he's done, the Father can now look at you and say, you are good.

And until you hear him say that, you can't have the right attitude toward creation. But most of all, you can't join the song. You'll exploit nature, or you'll be afraid of nature, or you'll ignore nature, or you'll worship nature, but you won't join the song. Because the song of nature is, our Maker loves us, He says we're good. God's singing to the nature, we're singing back to God, join the choir. Nature is talking to every human being about God. We all know it down deep. But it's not just talking about God in general. It's pointing us to sing.

And we can't sing until we see the Maker was unmade so we can be remade. Let us pray. Father, we ask for the next few minutes that you would help us. We ask that your Spirit would take the word of the message that we just heard, the message that in Christ we know that the Father can look at us and say, you are good. We need that message to move across our hearts with the power of the Spirit to continually remake us, to continually strengthen us so that we can live the doctrine of creation. And I ask that you would help us do that now through the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life's resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting gospelinlife.com slash stories. That's gospelinlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to stories.