Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Wounded Spirit

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

We all at certain times have a lot of trouble dealing with the deep, conflicting, confusing, powerful, sometimes warring dynamic impulses and feelings that just roll through our hearts.  Sometimes we don’t feel we have any power over it. We don’t know how we got to feeling like that. We don’t know what to do about it. We need wisdom with regard to the complex realities of the inner being, the inner life, or what we would today call the psychological life. Proverbs shows us that we won’t be wise unless we understand 1) the priority of the inner life, 2) the complexity of the inner life, 3) the solitude of the inner life, and 4) the healing of the inner life. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 5, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 12:25; 13:12; 14:10, 13, 30; 15:4,13-14; 16:2; 18:14; 28:1. 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. There are lots of things the Bible is pretty clear about. Don't steal, for instance, or don't commit adultery. But no single Bible verse will tell you exactly whom to marry, which job to take, whether to move or stay put. We need God's wisdom to make good decisions in every part of our lives. Join us today as Tim Keller explores how we can cultivate wisdom with God at the center of all life's choices.

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled as a tree of life. Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy. Even in laughter, the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief. A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot. The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly.

All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord. A man's spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear. The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. This is God's word. Well we're looking at the book of Proverbs every week. We continue to do that. We're looking at the subject of wisdom. We've said that wisdom is competence with regard to the complex realities of life. So, for example, it means being not less than moral and good, but more. So, for example, if you want to help a poor family out of poverty, that's wonderful,

that's right, that's good, it's moral. But if you're simple-minded, if you're simple-minded conservative and you think poverty is completely the result of lack of personal responsibility, or if you're simple-minded liberal and you think poverty is completely the result of unjust social structures, in other words, if you're reductionistic, if you're simplistic, if you're not savvy about the complex realities of poverty, though you have...you mean well and you're being moral and right and good, you can ruin that poor family's life. Now tonight what we want to do is talk about wisdom with regard to the complex realities of the inner being, the inner life, or what we would today call the psychological life, which as we're going to see in a moment

is a modern category that's actually itself too reductionistic. Nevertheless, what are we talking about? Well, you know, we all at certain times just have a lot of trouble understanding, dealing with a very deep, conflicting, confusing, powerful, sometimes warring dynamic impulses and feelings that just roll through our heart, roll through ourselves. And sometimes we don't feel we've got any power over it, we feel helpless, and we don't know how we got feeling like that, we know there's something deeply wrong with it, we don't know what to do about it, well tonight maybe we'll get some wisdom. Because we're taking a look at what the book of Proverbs says about this subject, and I'd like to look at the passage under four headings. Let's see

what we learned from these collected proverbs about the priority of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life, the solitude of the inner life, and how to heal a crushed spirit. You're not going to be wise unless you understand the priority of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life, the solitude of the inner life, and the healing of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life, the solitude of the inner life, and the healing of the inner life. Now, let's take a look first. Take a look at the second from the last proverb in the list, and we'll learn something about the priority of the inner life. A man's spirit sustains him in sickness,

but a crushed spirit, who can bear? Now, what's the word spirit mean? In the Hebrew scriptures in the Old Testament the word spirit is actually literally the word for wind and whenever the word wind, ruah, spirit is used in the Old Testament, it has to do with force, with power, with energy. When it refers to your inside, the human inner being, the human spirit is roughly analogous to what we would call today emotional energy, passion for life. That which propels us out into life makes us want life, makes us want to take it on, navigate, deal with it. So what's a crushed spirit? A crushed spirit then is to look out at life and to have no desire for it,

have little or no joy in it, have no passion to get out there and deal with it, and of course there's degrees of a crushed spirit. It can be anywhere from listlessness and restlessness to discouragement, to despondency, to being very, very cast down, and to losing all desire to live. Now what is this proverb saying? Look at it again, and here's what it's saying. There is nothing more important than maintaining your inner being. When it says, a man's spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear, here's what it's saying. A broken body can be sustained with difficulty by a strong spirit, but a crushed or broken spirit can never be sustained or carried by the strongest body of all.

In other words, this proverb is getting at something that actually the whole Bible gets at. We human beings are obsessed with the idea that our happiness is determined by our external circumstances, that our happiness is completely determined by whether our body is healthy or whether our body is looks good, whether we have money, whether people are treating us right, whether things are going well out there. That's what makes us happy, that's what makes us unhappy when the Bible actually says no. It has nothing to do with your circumstances. Happiness is determined by how you deal with your circumstances from inside, how you process, how you address, how you view them. That's the reason why Paul, Paul's prayers for the churches he's writing in the

New Testament letters are amazing. When you consider when he's writing all these these churches, he's writing churches that were in great difficulty in Straits. He's writing churches that were persecuted. He's writing churches that were in great difficulty in straits. He's writing churches that were persecuted. He's writing churches where civil magistrates had broken in and pulled off some of the Christian families to jail. And yet whenever he prays, he says, I'm praying this for you, or I'm praying this for you, he never mentions things like that. He never says, I'm praying that that civil magistrate won't come in and take any more of you off to jail. He doesn't pray for protection. He doesn't pray against suffering. What does he pray for?

He prays this sort of thing. Here's Ephesians 3. He says, I pray that out of his glorious riches, God may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inmost being. What are you saying? If your life is all broken, all things are wrong, and your spirit is strong and powerful, you move out into the world in strength. But if everything about your life is going fine, just all the circumstances are doing fine, but your spirit is crushed. You move out into the world in weakness. Now do you believe that? Do you understand the priority of that? The Bible says, Proverbs says, if you don't, you're a fool. Or put it another way. Are you any... are you far, far, far more concerned to deposit grace in your spirit than you already deposit money in your bank account? If you're not, you're a fool. The priority of the inner life. Now secondly, you're not wise, if we don't see the priority,

but secondly you're not going to live a wise life unless you see the complexity of the inner life. See, after having said what we just said, it's natural to ask a question like this, alright? So what do you do to keep your inner being from deteriorating? What goes wrong with a spirit? What causes a crushed spirit? Why do our emotions and our feelings seem to get out of control? Why do we get so downcast sometimes? Why do we lose all passion for life? Why do we struggle so much? What is our problem? And you know what the biblical answer is? It's complicated. In fact, I want to show you this for the next couple of minutes. In fact, the Bibles, understanding of human nature, understanding of what goes wrong inside

is more nuanced, more multifaceted, more multi-dimensional, more complex than any other answer that I know of. Any other counseling model, any book on despondency or what's wrong or how to have emotional health or how to have a happy life, you read them all and compared to the Bible, they are one dimensional, they're reductionistic, they boil everything down, they're too simple-minded, they're too simplistic, they're not savvy, they're not wise. The Bible gives you the most fully nuanced, the most complex assessment of what can go wrong and lead to despondency and lead to a crushed spirit. Let's take a look at five of them. They're right in here, okay?

Here's five. First of all, a crushed spirit may have a physical aspect. I know that sounds very weird. Your spirit has a... Yes, a crushed spirit may have a physical aspect. I know that sounds very weird. Your spirit has a... Yes, a cross spirit may have a physical aspect. So for example, let's take a look sort of in the middle of the page. It's chapter 14 verse 30. A tranquil life gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot. And the word passion means literally a hot feeling, and it's... that word can refer to anger or bitterness or envy or fear or something like that. But what it's giving us here is a very nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the relationship of the body to the emotions. Emotional unhealth leads to physical unhealth in all kinds of ways, disintegration, deterioration, but what's the implication?

The implication, of course, is that since the body and the emotions are united, then bodily weakness can lead to emotional unhealth. If you're weary, if you're not eating right, if you've got chemical imbalances, there's a physical aspect to your spirit, to being crushed in spirit. There can be. There often is. You say, how could that be? Well, for example, I had a thyroid problem a couple years ago, and of course the problem's gone, as well as the thyroid, where that's why it's gone. One of the things I learned about is thyroid hormone. What happens when you don't have it or you don't have enough of it? Oh, my word. And even though I didn't experience anything like this, here's one, here's something I

can just tell you the truth of. And that is, if you don't have enough thyroid hormone in your body, you're going to eventually want to kill yourself. And you say, well, of course that's all in your head. Well, of course it's all in your head. I mean, I mean, the crushed's all in your head. Well, of course, it's all in your head. I mean, the crushed spirit is in your head. But the point is, if you lose all desire to even live because of something wrong with your body,

you've got a crushed spirit. Doesn't matter what the cause is, and one of the causes can be the physical. And one of the causes can be the physical. There's a physical aspect to what goes on in our inner being. Secondly, there's an emotional relational aspect. Emotional relational. Look at the very first proverb on the list. An anxious heart weighs a man down. That's synonymous with a crushed spirit. It's talking about literally

sinking. An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. And don't trivialize it. In English it comes across a little bit trivial, Sonny. What is it saying you need sometimes? What is the...what do you need? You need an outside word of love, of kindness. You need support. Sometimes you don't need medicine. Sometimes you don't need therapy. You don't need an answer. You don't need complicated reflection. You need love sometimes because we have an emotional, relational nature. You just need arms around you. You need a shoulder. You need intimacy. You need support because we have an emotional relational nature. Third, there's not just a physical aspect of what goes on inside, an emotional relational aspect of what goes on inside and what can go wrong inside.

But third, there's a moral aspect. Take a look at the last of the Proverbs in the list. The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. What's that talking about? Well, it's a quote from Leviticus 26 where God says, if you disobey me, you will flee though no one pursues. And my word, look how nuanced this is. It's talking about conscience. It's talking about guilt. It's talking about what can go wrong inside in your spirit, in your emotions. What can go wrong inside if you know that you're not living right. If you know you're not living up to standards, if you feel guilt, if you feel shame, if you feel like a failure in any way, but look how nuanced it is. It doesn't say you flee when someone pursues, you flee when no one pursues.

Guilt just generalizes. A sense that there's something wrong with you just generalizes. So you not only feel guilty for some things you ought to feel guilty for, but you also can't help then feeling guilty for all kinds of things you shouldn't feel guilty for. So someone criticizes you and you feel assaulted, attacked. Bad conscience. You make a little failure and you feel like a total failure. Bad conscience. There's a moral aspect. There's a conscience aspect. Okay, and that's not all. You see, this can be a medical aspect or physical. There can be a

emotional aspect or relational. There can be a conscience or moral aspect. And you realize how wrong it would be if you treat a crushed spirit that's basically a physical problem as a moral problem or not look at all these matters, but let's keep going. Then third, fourthly, there's an existential aspect. Yeah. Go to the fourth proverb down. Even in laughter, the heart is sad and the end of joy is grief. Now when you first read that, you know what you're automatically doing? You say, oh, I think I know what that's talking about and you're relativizing it. You're saying sometimes some people are laughing and they're having fun, but down deep they're still sad. They're putting on a happy face. They're trying to forget their troubles, but though they are laughing down deep, they're sad and though they have

they're trying to be happy in the end, they're still grieving. But that doesn't, it doesn't say, does it? Some people in laughter, the heart is sad, it's an absolute statement. And what amazed me was that every single Hebrew commentator, I mean every Hebrew scholar that was, that I looked at about this verse says, we mustn't relativize it. We must realize what a profound thing it's saying. This is true of everybody. Everybody. Why? Do you not realize that there's an existential angst that comes down deep, thunder, everything? Everybody knows that all parties eventually are going to be over, that all joy really does end in grief. You say, what are you talking about? Well, let me just give you some examples. Here's the happy family sitting around the dining room

table. And the simple reality is that one of those people is eventually going to see every other member dead. Death ends everything. Everything your heart wants out of life eventually will be taken away from you. Your health will be taken away from you. Your health will be taken away from you. If you don't die a tragic young death, eventually your health will be taken away from you. Your loved ones will be taken away from you. Everything will be taken away from you. Everything. It'll all be gone. And some of you are saying, gee, I'm so glad I came tonight. This is a wonderful... I guess that's right. I guess that's true, but I mean, do you have to tell me about it? Do we have to think about it?

Guess what? Try not to think about it. And this is saying down deep you know about it. That there is a ground note of sadness that you cannot overcome. I mean, New York is filled with people who say, well, you know, I don't believe I was created. I believe I'm here by accident. And I believe when you're dead, that's it. You're rot, that's it. You're gone. And I understand that. But you know, that point is, have fun while you're here. Wait a minute. If your origin is insignificant, and your destiny is insignificant, which means some day not only nobody will even remember anything you ever did.

If your origin is insignificant and your destiny is insignificant, have the guts to admit your life is insignificant. And what that means is unless you have some way of dealing philosophically with this, unless you have some way of ascribing meaning to the daily things that you do, which is really pretty hard. You're going to have this ground note of sadness that underneath all your laughter, you're going to be sad, because you know that all joy eventually ends in grief. Now, I'm not exaggerating. Do you see what's happening now? This is a philosophical problem, and a lot of people have it. In fact, we all have it until somebody

helps us deal with death. If you're not able to deal with the idea of death, if you're not able to overcome your fear of it, if you're not able to find some way in light of death that you can ascribe meaning to the things you're doing now, today, do you see there's a medical possibility for a crushed spirit, there's an emotional, a relational, a moral, an existential, a philosophical. You see how, and you see, by the way, doctors don't want to think about philosophy, and friends don't want to think about medicine.

They're just going to love you. And Christians, you know, what Christians do, are we churning everything into moral, hmm? We say, oh, you're downcast, you're down? Well, have you claimed all the promises? Have you confessed all no sin? Are you having your quiet time? Are you praying? Are you thanking God? You know, have you, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, uh, have you, And of course the people who think we're just a body, what do they say? It's all the physical, and that's not all. There's a physical aspect, but not only a physical aspect. There's an emotional aspect. There is a moral aspect.

There's an existential aspect. And finally, there's a faith aspect. Oh yeah, and here's what I mean. Look at about halfway down, a little more than halfway down. This is chapter 14, pardon me, chapter 15, verse 13. A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. Heartache crushes the spirit. Now a lot of people would say, well, wait a minute, I thought the heart, the spirit, pretty much the same thing. Well, in English, heart means emotions versus head, which means the reason. And so that's why we would say, you know, the spirit which seems to be emotional passion and the heart wouldn't it be the same thing?

No. In the Bible, the heart means something quite a bit more than that. The heart is your core commitments, The things you most fundamentally trust, the things you most fundamentally love, the things you most fundamentally are living for, the things you most fundamentally hope in. That's why the second, we'll get back to this in a minute, the second proverb says, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but longing fulfilled as a tree of life. And that word longing means a desire from the depths of your personality. Now when your heart has been set on something, and it's got to be set on something, you've got to set your heart on something as your ultimate hope, your ultimate trust. The thing you're looking for to really make yourself happy, really make yourself feel significant.

The thing you say, if I have that, then my life means something. Then I know I'm somebody. Then I know I'm all right. And you've got to put your heart on something because we are, that's the kind of beings we are. And this is telling you that if you put your heart on something in the most fundamental way, and any problem happens to it. Anything threatens it. In any way, it's deferred. You won't even want to live. You'll be crushed in spirit.

So, for example, if you're dating somebody and you're starting to really love them, and then they break up with you, you break up. Now that's going to create sorrow. It's going to create great sorrow. But if romance, having somebody love you is the ultimate hope of your life, if you really do believe down deep what the righteous brothers said years ago, you're nobody, you know, without you baby, what good am I? Okay? There's another one, you're nobody unless somebody loves you. Now listen, if you really look at somebody else and say, you're my fundamental hope, you're the thing that really makes me know that I'm okay, you break up with that person, you won't even

want to live. You see, heartache creates a crushed spirit. A bad conscience creates a crushed spirit. Existential aunts creates a crushed spirit. Now look at this, look at this. Go into Barnes & Noble and you'll never find a book that will tell you how complicated you really are. Every book on emotional health, every book on counseling, every book is going to reduce you. It's going to simplify you because you see some people think that you're basically a body. That's basically what you are. They don't believe in a soul. So let's deal with it physically. And some people are going to say, you're really your emotions. Your deepest feelings is the real you.

Not your conscience, not your beliefs, your emotions. So we just have to non-judgmentally support people to just follow their feelings. Other people are good, but you're not just a body, you're not just your emotions, you're not just your conscience, you're not just a will, you're not just your thinking. And of course you have objects relations and you have cognitive therapy and you've got psychoanalysis and every one of them does something the Bible won't do. Because you are not mainly a body or mainly your emotions or mainly your conscience or mainly any of these things. You are a man or a woman in the image of God. And God's image is stamped on absolutely every aspect of your being. And unless you're living with every aspect of your being before God, you are going to have despondency,

you are going to have out of control emotions, you're going to have despair, you're going to have a crushed spirit that you will not be able to remedy. And you'll get the books and you'll go and listen to people who tell you the way to emotional health and they'll always be too simple, they'll always be foolish. When I read the books, I want to say, compared to the Bible, I want to look at those books and I want to say what Hamlet said to his friend Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in her ratio. There are more things in heaven and earth, her ratio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

In the midst of life's uncertainties, where do you turn for wisdom? The Book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom to help guide us in all aspects of life. In Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional book, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, you'll get a fresh, inspiring view of God's wisdom each day of the year from the Book of Proverbs. This devotional book will help you unlock

the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guide you toward a new understanding of what it means to live the Christian life. This resource is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel and Life share Christ's love with more people. You can request your copy of God's wisdom for navigating life when you give today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now you're not going to be wise unless you see the priority of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life. Now thirdly and briefly,

you also have to see the solitude of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life. Now thirdly and briefly, you also have to see the solitude of the inner life. If you take a look at the third down proverb, very interesting proverb, each heart knows its own bitterness and no one can share its joy. What in the world does that mean? You say, well, I got friends, they can share my joy. I've got people who understand me. Hey, you know what this is saying? Again, don't relativize this. Here's what this is saying. Your insides, your, the movements and motions of your heart are so complex and they're so inward and they're so hidden that there's an irreducible unavoidable solitude about human existence Nobody will ever completely understand you

Nobody you know what they're gonna do they're gonna do the same thing to you that you're doing to them He's you're gonna think you understand them you're gonna put them in a category So oh, it's just like what what to me, or it's just like what happened to so and so. No. This is saying that you are so unique, and you are so hidden, and you're so inward that nobody in the end, in the final analysis, will ever really understand you. You're going to have to basically go through life alone. Nobody can completely, even the people closest to you, very often just will not understand you. And you can sense that. And it's horribly disappointing, but this is saying, get over that. Don't be shocked at being misunderstood. And especially in light of the fact that look at the third proverb from the bottom, it says,

all a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord. Do you know what that's saying? You don't even understand yourself. You have absolutely no idea what's all down there. You have a better idea than anybody else, but nothing compared to what God can see. Nothing. You are alone. There is nobody, no human being, that can walk with you everywhere you go. There's no human being who can help you interpret really everything you're going through. But you know what this means? Here's what it means. Listen carefully. If God is only somebody you believe in, if he's an abstraction, or maybe he's somebody you don't believe in at all, but if God's not a friend, if God isn't someone you know personally, if God isn't someone you have a personal relationship with,

if you don't have sometimes a sense of God really with you, putting His love and His truth palpably on your heart, if you don't have an intimate personal relationship with God, you are utterly alone in the world. You are absolutely alone in the world and human beings can't live in that kind of isolation. They can not. He's the only one that can walk with you through every dark valley. He's the only one who can understand. He's the only one. If you don't have him, and I don't see it's not good enough to be good or moral or even to believe in God in some general way. If you don't have him as a personal friend, if you don't have an intimate personal relationship, a sense of real dealing with him, you are utterly

alone. All right. So finally, okay, well what happens then? If you've got a crushed spirit, what do we do? And you see, I've actually set up on purpose how hard it is to heal a crushed spirit. And here's the reason why. We just said we need a word from outside, a kind word. We can't heal ourselves. We need someone from outside to come in with love. And yet we also just said nobody really understands you.

We said we've got a conscience. And years and years and years of therapy, you can go to therapy for 30 or 40 years, I know people have, some of you have, and have been told almost every week, stop feeling guilty about everything, stop feeling guilty about everything, don't let them put that guilt trip on you. You don't have to feel guilty. Don't feel guilty. And guess what?

Thirty, forty years and you still do. Because you see, even when no one's pursuing you, Flea, there is something indelible about a sense that I'm just not right. I'm not living up. I'm not doing what I ought to do. What are you going to do about that? What are you going to do about existential angst in the face of death? And how in the world are you going to stop your heart from putting its ultimate trust

and ultimate hope in things that you can lose? Well, here's the answer. The secret is the tree of life. The Tree of Life. What do I mean by the secret being the Tree of Life? Well, the Tree of Life, which is mentioned twice here, actually three times in Proverbs, is a... It's an interesting reference because the Bible talks about the Tree of Life in Genesis, and the Bible talks about the Tree of Life in Revelation. But there's nowhere else in all the Bible where it's discussed except in the book of Proverbs. Through wisdom, the book of Proverbs says, you can actually get a taste of it. If you go back to Genesis,

the tree of life was in the middle of the Garden of Eden, paradise. And what is what does a tree of life mean? What does it what does it represent? It represents not just endless life, eternal life being endless. It represents fullness of life. Absolute satiation of the deepest desires. You've got creative desires to accomplish things. You've got aesthetic desires for beauty. You've got romantic and relational desires for love. You've got romantic and relational desires for love. You've got epistemic desires for knowledge. And the Tree of Life represents absolute satiation a million times over, a million times magnified of the greatest amount you could think you could want. And that's the Tree of Life.

But the book of Genesis also tells us that we lost it. We lost it. The end of Genesis chapter 3 says, and there was a flaming sword that turns and sweeps back and forth, keeping us from the tree of life, because when we turned to be our own masters, to be our own saviors, to be our own lords, and when we decided we want to be in charge of our own lives, we lost the tree of life. Now what does that mean? Here's what it means. And what is this saying here? Look, second proverb, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but longing fulfilled is a tree of life. It's be possible to read this as just saying hope deferred makes the heart sick. Okay, when you really have your heart set on something,

it's a disappointment, but it's talking about something different. What it's really saying is, our deepest longings, the things we put our hearts on to fulfill our deepest longings, will never fulfill them. Because what we're really looking for in everything we do is the tree of life. In other words, when you get into your career and you get so excited about the new career, when you get a new boyfriend or girlfriend, when you get into a new

relationship, when you go on a vacation, when you travel someplace you've never been, there's always something, it promises something that it can never actually deliver. Why? One commentator says, this tree of life image in the Bible is not simply referring to eternal life. One Hebrew commentator posted like this, in the Bible the tree of life is an image of immortal eternal life, but also it's an image of irretrievable loss. It's an image of cosmic nostalgia, a longing for something we remember yet we've never had. In all of the music you go to to kind of give yourself a high, you're actually looking for a song that you remember but you never heard. What you're looking for in love is you're not look you're looking for arms that you remember but you never really had.

That's what the Bible is saying. That's what the tree of life is. And unless you understand that, that what you're looking for and everything you're looking for is the tree of life, you're not going to be wise. Of course, there's nobody who's put it like Lewis who says most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. I'm not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on.

I'm speaking of the best possible ones. There's always something we grasp that. In that first moment of longing that just fades away in the reality, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in which, in the universe from which we now feel cut off, our longing to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fantasy, but the truest index of our real situation. Now once you get a little older and some of you look like you've got a ways to go, some of you look like you don't, you start to realize that every single thing you looked for to give you a certain satisfaction it never really delivers and there are several

things you can start doing. One is you can be really stupid and you say I need a new city, I need a new job, I need a new wife, I need a new husband, I need a new lover, I need a new city, I need a new place to go. And you're just constantly changing all the time. Or you can just get mad at yourself and blame it on yourself. Your failure. It's something wrong with you. Or you can just get cynical and say, you know that the New Testament continually says that Jesus died on a tree? Yeah, in the book of Acts in 1 Peter 2 and Galatians 3, they hung him on a tree. He was nailed to a tree. He died on a tree. Ever wondered about that? Have you said that's kind of an exaggeration? It was a cross. I mean, obviously there was a big trunk and...but it wasn't really a tree, was it? Why do they say a tree? Oh, it's so significant and I'll tell you why.

The Garden of Eden, God comes to Adam and even says, obey me about the tree. Don't eat it. And you will live. And he didn't. Centuries later, Jesus comes into a garden, garden of Gethsemane. And God comes to Jesus and says, obey me about the tree. And he did. But look at the difference. You see to the first Adam God said obey me about the tree and you will live. But the second Adam God says if you obey me and go to the tree and do go to the cross and do what I'm asking you to do,

you will be crushed. Oh, crushed. Crushed in spirit be crushed. Oh, crushed. Crushed in spirit. Crushed in body. Crushed eternally. And he did it. You know, in Psalms 22, which he quotes from the cross, my God, my God, why is that verse saying to me, there's a place in verse 14 where it says, my heart has turned to wax, it melts away within me. There's a crushed spirit. Jesus lost his ultimate hope. He put all of his hope in his father, and the only person in the history of the world who put his ultimate hope in his father, the father,

the father, and he lost the father eternally on the cross. He was crushed in spirit. He was infinitely crushed. He went through all that agony. Why? For us to pay the penalty. And George Herbert, the great poet, puts it perfectly, sums up the whole Bible in one stanza in that great poem, The Sacrifice, in which he depicts Jesus speaking from the

cross. And there's that one stanza where Jesus says, all ye who pass by behold and see, man stole the fruit. Now I must climb the tree. A tree of life for all, but only me. See, the cross was a tree of death, But because he climbed the tree of death, we have the tree of life. Or actually, he turned the tree of death, and the cross was a tree of death to him, and therefore was a tree of life for all of us. Now, to the degree you let that melt your heart, to the degree you see what he did for you, to the degree you rejoice in that, to the degree you orient your heart toward that and just melts you at the thought of that love. To that degree you will experience what Tolkien calls joy beyond the walls of

the world. More poignant than grief. There's a joy. It's the foretaste of the Tree of Life. And listen, when you take the Gospel, and that's what that is, and you start to use it on your spirit, that's what you finally need. That's the ultimate kind word. It's the ultimate good word. And we just said, you need isolation. I mean, you need to get rid of your isolation. You need emotional connection. And yet nobody understands you. The only eyes in the universe who can see to the bottom, love you to the skies. Use that on your motion. Use that on your relational aspect. Use that on your conscience. Your conscience. You know, this last verse I was looking at a minute ago, how old Harris I think it was, he was an old

Welsh preacher 200 years ago, when he was a young man, he wasn't a Christian yet he was like 14 or 15. His aunt was dying and there was a the family was all gathered around her and back in those days they're waiting for her to die and it looked like she was dead and they said I think she's gone I think she's gone poor aunt so-and-so poor aunt so-and-so and she opened her eyes and she looked up and she said who calls me poor she says am rich, and I will stand before him as bold as a lion. And then she died. And it had a big impact on Howell Harris, who later on wrote,

wrote a hymn, I think, that went like this. Well made the accuser roar of sins that I have done. I know them all and thousands more. Jehovah, noeth, none. Come on. He took the tree of death so you could have the tree of life. Use that on your motion. Use that on your conscience. Use that on your existential angst. That'll get rid of your fear of death. But most of all use it on the hope of your heart, so that love the people you love and love the things you love, but through them realize the ultimate song, the ultimate beauty, the ultimate arms, the ultimate tree of life that

you're going to have. Now am I going to say, am I saying to you, okay, you really don't need people now. You just need God. You just need this, take this tape home, take this CD home and listen to it. You know, just me and God in my Bible and I'll be able to overcome all my depression. No, that's not what I'm saying. I mean, that's way too simplistic. And besides that, do you know how hard it is to get the gospel deep down inside every aspect of your being? Do you realize how long it takes? Do you realize how almost always you need somebody to tell it to you over and over and over again? Oh man, you need friends, you need counselors. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it like this. He says, it is possible

that a person may by God's grace break through to certainty, new life, the cross, and fellowship without the benefit of confessing to a brother or sister. It is possible that a person may never know what it is to doubt his own forgiveness in Christ. But most of us cannot make that assertion. When the confession of sin, when opening up the heart, is made in the presence of a Christian brother or sister, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned The sinner surrenders he gives his heart to God and finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus and his brother The expressed acknowledged sin has lost all its power

It's been revealed and judged as sin and as the open confession of my heart to a brother or sister insures against self-deception So to the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to me only when it is spoken by a brother or sister in the name of God. Put your hope in him. Take hold of the gospel. Work it into one another's lives, not just into your own life. And you will know power in your inmost being. Let us pray. Father, we ask that you would help us now as we come to your table. Really taste the tree of life.

We know that the sacrament can be a foretaste of that. And we pray that you would nourish us and feed us in our hearts through our faith in you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover this podcast. This month's sermons were recorded in 2004. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.