Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Your Own Grace

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

How did Jonah, who was in utter despair, fear, and rebellion, come to be in a position of triumphant faith by the end of his prayer? Faith is not a talent. Faith is being controlled by the promises of God instead of your own impressions. If we look at the phenomenon of Jonah’s prayer itself, we will find how we too can respond to any situation in faith and come up through the waves and breakers onto dry land. Jonah exercised his faith in three stages: 1) he calls, 2) he remembers, and 3) he commits or sacrifices.   This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 19, 1990. Series: Jonah. Scripture: Jonah 2:1-10. 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. The book of Jonah can appear at first glance like a simple fable with an implausible high point. A great fish swallows a rebellious prophet. But the story is about so much more. It touches on racial prejudice, toxic nationalism, and the struggles believers have when it comes to obeying and trusting God. Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller continues exploring the fascinating story of Jonah,

the prodigal prophet. chapter 2 again. And we will read again as last week, verses 1 through 10. Book of Jonah, chapter 2 to the Lord his God. He said, In my distress I called to the Lord and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help. And you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep

surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever, but you brought my life up from the pit, oh Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving,

will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." This is God's Word. This summer we're studying the book of Jonah. We've seen that Jonah was called to preach in the great city of Nineveh, that he refused and fled from God, that God sent a storm to reclaim him, that the storm made things such that Jonah was thrown over the side of the boat into the ocean. There he was swallowed by a great fish. And the result is in the belly

of the deep Jonah prays a prayer of faith and he grasps the grace of God. Now last week we looked at this chapter and this week we're looking at the chapter. And last week we looked at the subject of the prayer and the subject of the prayer was the grace of God and we talked about that and we won't get back necessarily into that now. We talked last week how, in a practical sense, what it means to grasp the grace of God. But that was the subject of the prayer.

This week, we looked not so much as the subject of the prayer or the topic of the prayer, but the phenomenon of the prayer or the topic of the prayer, but the phenomenon of the prayer itself. How did Jonah, who is in this condition of utter despair, of cowering fear and of rebellion, how did he come from that position to be in a position, a posture of triumphant faith, by the end of the prayer. How did he do that? Here is a man who is literally at the bottom, literally at the bottom. In fact, every verse in the prayer makes reference to how deep he is, how deep he is in his problem. You see, he starts off talking about the fact that he's in the deep. He says, from the depths of the grave I call to you, you hurled me into the deep. I said, I've been banished from your sight. The engulfing waters threatened me.

The deep surrounded me. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. My life was ebbing away. Now, when you listen to that, and when you let those ideas and those images flow over you, you think about what it's like to know that you're drowning. In my case, because I saw the movie some time ago, The Abyss, if anybody saw that, you immediately identify Jonah's language with the terror and the alienation of knowing that you are dying far away from the place where you need to be in order to live. Buried. Now, the terror of being underwater is vivid and yet Jonah is representing something that

we all have experienced. A spiritual condition. A spiritual condition of being at the bottom. A condition of being buried, feeling buried. Buried deep. Deep from what? Some of you are in this situation right now. Deep, buried far away from what you aspire to,

where you need to be. And it seems like there's no way I can get there. We know what that's like. Jonah was in that condition, and yet before our very eyes we see Jonah beginning to rise, defying gravity. You see, in the early stages of the prayer, he's talking about being in the deep all the time, but as the prayer goes on, in verse 6, he says, "'But you have brought my life up out of the pit.'" Why?

Because in verse 7, "'My prayer rose to you.'" And by verse 8 and 9, there you see Jonah literally buoyant. Buoyant with joy and resolve. He's rising. Now, how could that happen? Some of us would like to say, "'How can that happen?''

And the answer is, the thing that enabled him to defy the gravity of his own condition and of his emotions was faith. Faith rising, it rose up and it brought with it Jonah's heart. Now somebody looks at that and says, I'd love to have that kind of faith. Some of you may say, I wish I could believe in God like that. And some of you say, well, I believe in God, but I wish my faith could pull me up out of the depths like that.

And such comments betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what faith is. Do you think faith is like an athletic gift or a musical talent? Do you look at faith the way you look at a man that can sing wonderfully? I wish I could sing like him, but I can't. Or a woman who can run, I wish I could run as fast as she does, but I can't. Do you think it's like that? You're wrong. Faith is not a talent. Faith is being controlled by the promises of God instead of your own impressions. Faith is being controlled by the promises of God instead of your own impressions. Faith is being controlled by the promises of God rather than your own impressions. And if we read what Jonah has done,

if we look at the phenomenon of the prayer itself, we will find how we too, like Jonah, can respond to any situation in faith and come up through the waves and breakers on a dry land. If we look at Jonah, we'll see that his faith that he exercised was done in stages, three stages. First he calls, then he remembers, gazes, looks, ponders. First he calls, then he remembers or thinks, as we'll see, and finally he commits or sacrifices. In the beginning he said, I

called to you, I called to you, I called to you. Then he says, I'm looking at the temple and I'm remembering who you are. Then finally, I sacrifice and I commit myself to you. So there it is, calling, remembering, sacrificing. Let's look at those three. Let's look at the first one. Calling. You see in the very beginning? I called to Him. Right in the very, very beginning. It says it twice. From the depths of the grave I called for help. In my distress I called to the Lord. What's the first step of faith? Here it is. You yell. You yell. But you yell to God. It's not, the first step of faith is not to say, I wonder if there is a God. That's not the first step of faith. I'm sorry, it's not. The first step of faith is to say, oh God, are you there? Show me and show me your glory.

You see, the first step of faith is a step. You have to do something. You have to seek. You have to seek Him. You have to look for Him. You have to talk to Him. You have to make a choice and reach out to Him. Now, some people say, wait a minute, that doesn't quite make sense. That sounds like you need faith in order to do it.

I don't even know if I believe, somebody may say. And God enough to talk to Him and say, I need to help you, you need to help me find you. It sounds like you're saying it takes faith to have faith. I don't think that's necessarily so. Listen, to seek God means all you have to do is to doubt your doubts. Now, this is very important. Will you hear this? To seek God, all you have to do,

and this is something that anybody can do, is to doubt your doubts. Look, you have doubts, so how do you start to think about things? This is how you should start to think about things if you want to find faith. You have doubts, but you say, now wait. You know, over the history of the world, some of the greatest minds and hearts in history have embraced the Christian faith as utterly true.

Not only that, but even today, after 500 years, finally, philosophy and science is beginning to come to a consensus and say, we, our disciplines cannot account for where the universe came from. But more than that, if you want to doubt your doubts, you've got to look at the faith and you have to say, if this is true, I won't want to believe it. If it's true that the God of the Bible is real, if it's true that He is an absolute Lord and He demands complete obedience, if it's true that I'm sinful and that I don't want to give obedience to Him and that I want to find all kinds of excuses for getting out from under His obedience, if the Bible is true, if the Christian faith is true, I'll have

all kinds of bad motives for disbelieving it. And therefore, the fact that I disbelieve it, I shouldn't trust. Look, how does faith start? It starts by doubting yourself and doubting your doubts enough to seek Him. And anybody can do that. And you must do that. It's useless to sit around and say, Ah yes, I'm down and I wish I believed in God, but I don't. If you wait for faith to just spring up, if you wait for faith to come in from heaven like a lightning bolt, you will wait in vain. Listen, you must doubt your doubts enough to seek Him. The Bible says it all over the place.

It says, seek Him while you may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. It says in Jeremiah, you will seek Me and find Me if you seek Me with all of your heart. It says, seeking ye will find. You've seen that. Some of you will doubt anything but your doubts. Some of you will doubt anything but your doubts. And is that fair?

Why should your mistrust and your cynicism be exempt from doubt, or put it another way, why should you be cynical and suspicious about everything except your cynicism and your suspicion? Does that make any sense? Until you are willing to see, the only honest thing to do is to doubt your doubts. You cannot enter into the first step of faith. And the first step of faith is to yell. Is to yell to God, say,

Show me your glory. And by the way, we have to move on, but something else. Those of you who say, Well, I have a settled faith in God, I believe in God. You can still learn an awful lot from Jonah. Jonah says, I called to him in my distress. Now, Jonah's like Job. When you read the book of Job, you'll see that after chapters and chapters of Job ranting

and raving, cursing the day he was born, questioning God's wisdom and His power, when you get to the end of the book after Job does all that, God comes and He commends Job for his faith. And if you've ever read the book of Job through, you've heard me say this some of you before, I'm still amazed at it. When you read the book of Job all the way through and you get to that commendation at the end, you say, wait a minute, I don't get it. Job has done everything wrong, and the answer is, Job has done everything wrong but one thing. He ranted and he raved and he cursed the day of his birth and he questioned God and all that was wrong, but he did it in the presence of God. He did it praying.

He did everything wrong but one, he didn't stop praying. He didn't stop calling on God in his distress. As mad as Job got, as confused as Job got, Job never said, God, this is my final transmission. And therefore the way back to faith is the same as the first step to faith. And that is you call. Some of you may be right now wrestling because you're down in the deep. You're believers in your wrestling and you may think that you're wrestling with God but you know you can go a long time

when you're suffering in wrestling and suddenly realize that you haven't been talking to him. You have not been dealing with him face to face like Job. You have not been calling to him in your distress. You've been worrying in his direction. But that's not the same thing. If you are receiving no benefits from approaching the throne of grace, I can assure you, you will get no benefits if you stay away. You yell. First step. You yell. I know we can all do that. Second step. He begins to think. Now, if you read the section here after verse four and so on, you'll see that twice the word look comes up. In the beginning he's saying, I call, I call.

In the middle he starts to say, I look, I look, and I remember you. Now, those words all mean to gaze. When he says, I look to the temple, it doesn't mean he's just looking in the direction. He says, I'm thinking, I'm pondering. I remembered you, I am pondering, I am thinking. And now he begins to think. What he thinks about and what he mentions twice in verse four and seven, something we touched on last week but now we have to look at, is he gets his faith shored up and it begins to develop because he is looking to the temple. By looking to the temple what he is doing is he is thinking about the gospel because the temple is a visual aid of salvation.

The temple is a picture. It's a concrete picture of how God is going to reconcile us to himself, and how God wants to know and love us. The temple gives us a picture of the Gospel, and by that I mean it breaks the Gospel down and shows us both the good news and the bad news. Pictorially, it shows us the good news and the bad news. Let's do the bad news first. That's the way the Gospel always goes anyway. The bad news. Jonah is building up his faith by looking at the Gospel, pondering it.

First of all, here's what the bad news is. The bad news has to do with the law. Here's the temple, and the center of the temple is the Holy of Holies. And in the center of the Holy of Holies is this wooden box called the Ark of the Covenant. And in the center of the wooden box is the two tables of the Ten Commandments that Moses brings down, brought down from Mount Sinai. Now what is in that box? What is in the box is the Law of God. And you want a definition? Here's a definition of the Law of God. The Law of God is the law of God. And you want a definition? Here's a definition of the law of God. The law of God is an outline of God's character that calls us

to build our lives on the model of His greatness. Say it again. The law of God is, it's an outline of the character of God that calls us to build our lives on the model of His greatness. Nobody in their right minds will deny that the law requires anything but that which we in our deepest heart of hearts want to be, because the character of God that is revealed in the Ten Commandments is a character of compassion and of integrity and of courage and of purity and of self-sacrifice and of generosity and all those things. That is the character of

God and the law of God calls us and requires us to build our lives on the model of His greatness. But notice where the law of God is. It's in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies and God says, I live in the Holy of Holies and if you want to talk to me, I will talk to you over the Ark. And you know what he's saying there? He is saying, I will only relate to you over the law. If we want to have a relationship, God says this all through the Bible, but it's pictorially shown right here in the temple. If you want to relate to me, we can only do so if you live in accord

with the law. 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. That's GospelInLife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. Now that's a hard thing for a lot of people to swallow, and yet everywhere, naturally,

we see it. Let me give you an example. A conductor comes before his symphony. All the instrumentalists have the score. The conductor begins to conduct. They begin to play. Unfortunately, there's one instrumentalist who though everyone else is playing the Eroica, is playing way down upon the Suwannee River. What is the relationship between the conductor and the instrumentalist? Well, the conductor may not, though this is pretty unusual, right musicians, the conductor will not, doesn't necessarily have to have any personal animosity or hostility toward that instrumentalist,

though we know probably what will happen. He doesn't have to. The conductor, though, has to come and say, unless you obey the score, we cannot have any kind of working relationship. And if the instrumentalist says, well, how rigid of you! What makes you say that I have got to follow this score and obey this score exactly? I'm an artist! You know, I need to express what I've got here in my heart.

And the conductor would have to go at it like this. The conductor would have to say, I'm sorry. I have no personal animosity, but you know what? This is the nature of music. Unless we all obey the score, there will be no beauty. There will be nothing but ugliness. Now this means that the conductor and the musician and the instrumentalist must meet over the score.

And if they don't, they may not have any personal animosity, but they have no fellowship. The fellowship is broken. The working relationship is gone. There is no beauty that's going to be created there. Now, the Bible is saying simply the same thing. God says, if you are going to have a relationship with me, you must be fulfilling the law. I'm holy, you must be holy. That's the only way that beauty can come out. There's a sense in which the conductor would have to call the instrumentalist to repentance,

and you know what the repentance is? The repentance is not that the musician is being a musician, but that the musician has to repent of wanting to be the conductor. The musician has to see that he or she is an instrumentalist. And until he or she recognizes that, repentance submits the score. There can be no beauty.

That is the nature of music. And the same way God looks at Moses, when Moses says, show me your glory, and he says, no my friend, I'm holy, you are sinful. And if holy God is to dwell with sinful man, someone has got to deal with the law. Without obedience, there's no beauty. And that means every human being has got to deal with that law. Now here's the problem. That's the bad news. And the bad news is that it's possible to fulfill a score of music. It's possible to play the score of music perfectly.

But it's not possible to fulfill the law of God. We all know that inherently. No one can be like the law of God says the human being should be. We all aspire to it. We all say, of course, that's the way we ought to be, but we can't. The good news, though, is this. The temple shows us the good news. Over the Ark of the Covenant, over the law, is a golden slab we mentioned last week, and that slab was called the hilastrium in Greek, the place of propitiation in lofty English, the mercy seat. Propitiation literally means, and that's what that slab said, propitiation literally means to turn aside the wrath of somebody through a

payment. Now, before you think, when you think of wrath, you're thinking of crankiness. You're thinking of your wrath. You're thinking of my wrath. Let's not for a moment. But think of it more like this. The wrath of God is His settled opposition on the basis of a breach of the law of God, on the breach of justice. Therefore, it would be more like this. Your electric company sends you a notice that says, you're going to be cut off. Why? You haven't paid your bill in so many months. At that point, your electric company has...you're experiencing its wrath. It may not have any personal animosity, but what it's doing is it's giving you settled opposition on the basis of your disobedience. And if someone comes along and pays the bill, it turns aside the wrath, it turns aside the

opposition of the electric company, and the lights go on. The temple tells us that at this place, over the law, where God says, I will meet you, God allows a golden slab to be placed. And once a year, on the Day of Atonement, on the Yom Kippur, a sacrificed substitute animal was slain and the blood was sprinkled over there. And the temple therefore says, God will accept the fulfillment of the law through the payment of a substitute. Now, we talked about that last week and we talked about the grace of God, but we have to see here

that when Jonah looked to the temple, what he was actually looking to without knowing it was Jesus Christ, because it says in Romans 3.25, God the Father emptied the treasury of heaven of its greatest treasure, Jesus Christ, and put Him forth to be, it says in Romans 3.25, a propitiation. The same word that is used to describe the mercy seat. Jesus is the mercy seat. Jesus is the substitute. Jesus is the good news. And for us to look at the temple, we do it differently than Jonah did. To look to the temple means to look at the one who said, destroy this temple and I will build it up in three days. It says in John 2 that Jesus Christ said that and he was referring

to himself. He's the temple. You know why? He's the good and the bad news. In his life, you see the law, you see God's greatness embodied, you see what you're required to be. But in his death, you see the sacrifice that satisfied the law. And on the day that you see that, as you ponder it, as you think of it, as you work it out, you come to faith. What is this telling us about faith? That's what Jonah did.

Jonah looked to the temple. For us to look to the temple is to look at Jesus and to see the law and what it requires and the sacrifice, the propitiation, the mercy seat, and how the law was fulfilled. And anybody who comes to Jesus, pardon me, comes to the Father over Jesus, over the slab, can meet God over the law. Do you hear that? Anybody that comes to the Father in Jesus' name, trusting in what Jesus did, can talk to God, because God says, I'll meet you over the ark. I'll meet you there. You don't have to be afraid of the law if Jesus is your Savior. He covers the sins.

Mary the prostitute, Paul the murderer, they came, they looked to the temple, they came to God over the mercy seat and they were accepted with open arms. That's what Jonah did, that's what you do. Now what does this tell us about faith, this second stage. It tells us two things. Faith is talking to yourself and faith is thinking. Look, number one, faith is not automatic. Many, many people believe that if you have faith that whenever you get in trouble, whenever doubts come in, whenever you get into a dark time, faith just comes on like a thermostat. You know how thermostats cut

the furnace on? You know, if the temperature gets down low enough, the thermostat kicks on, whoosh, and on goes the furnace. And a lot of us think that's how faith is supposed to work. Faith is getting a hold of the truth, looking at the gospel, looking at the facts, looking at the coherence of Christian truth, and beginning to work it in and act on it. Jonah says, I feel I'm banished from your sight, yet I will look to your holy temple. What is he doing there? Last week we talked about what that meant, but let's not look at the subject, let's look at the methodology. I feel banished from your sight like some of you do today, Yet I will look to the Holy Temple."

What is Jonah doing? He is saying, I feel totally abandoned by God. So what if I feel that way? Look at the temple. Why did God build that except that He forgives sins? All right, I'll act on that. What is Jonah doing? He's talking to himself.

He's thinking it out. He's saying, I'm not going to go on the basis of appearances or on the basis of my feelings or on the basis of my mood. I'm going to take the truth and I'm going to work it out. That's faith. Psalm 42, the psalmist says, Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God. I will praise him again. What's the psalmist doing? He is not listening to his heart, he is talking to his heart. And that's the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith is talking to your heart, telling it the truth. Doubt is listening to your heart and listening to everything it says. Some of you are like the children of Israel. You come into a wilderness and the children of Israel looked around and

they said, God has brought us into this wilderness to die here. And some of you are in that condition today. You're in a wilderness and your heart is saying, your heart is talking. And it's saying, you brought me into the wilderness to die here. Now what are you going to do? You have a choice. You can do what Jonah did. You can look to the temple.

You can say, hey, I happen to know that God doesn't do that. Or else you can talk to your heart or you can listen to it. It's your choice. And faith is not just talking to yourself. Faith is thinking. Some people think that faith means not thinking, just believing. There are a lot of cult groups that say faith is a doubtless state of complacency. Well, there's no doubts. That's not true. Jesus Christ says,

have no anxiety about anything but consider. And what he means is, if you're anxious, if you're full of doubts, it's because you're not thinking, you're not considering. That's what Jonah does. Jonah sits down and goes through it like this. He says, you're not considering. That's what Jonah does. Jonah sits down and goes through it like this. He says, I feel banished. I feel like I'm being cut off.

I feel like my life is at an end, but wait a minute. I know, I know that God built the temple. I know that He is willing to do anything to forgive me. And I'm going to operate on the basis of that. I know at a tremendous cost. I'm a child of His and I'm an heir of the eternal kingdom. All right, I need to remind myself of that. I need to remember that. I need to talk to myself about that. In the original Star Trek pilot, a bunch of alien villains have this power over the good

guys. They can control their minds so that where there actually are doors, the good guys, they can control their minds so that where there actually are doors the good guys see walls, and where there are actually walls the good guys see doors. And you know, at first that's pretty hard, until they figure out what the good guys feel like what the alien villains are doing, and then they realize, I've got to go on my memory and I've got to follow what I remember the house plan of this building is and not go on the basis of appearances. That's faith. And let me tell you, it's not that easy to walk into a wall. Telling your moods where to get off. Building a truth-centered life. Faith is not an absence of thinking. My friends, faith is thinking in the highest way. Faith is looking at all the facts at once.

Now last, faith starts with yelling. It proceeds with thinking, pondering, intense mental activity, arguing with yourself, reminding yourself of all the facts. But lastly, you see what he says at the end? He says, I will sacrifice to you, I will pay vows to you. You see where he's gone? He's gone from calling to thinking and now finally to committing. To commit means he is not out of the fish. He is not out of the deep. Then how can he say, I'm going to do all kinds of great things for you?

What he's saying is, Lord God, no matter what comes, it doesn't matter. I give you everything. I put on the altar everything that I have and that I am. I'm willing to go to Nineveh. I'm willing to do anything you want. I commit myself to you. Salvation is of the Lord." And here you see what you realize has to be done in the end. There's two ways that you can grow in your faith.

One is to study and the other is to commit. If you, for example, have to have some kind of minor surgery, and you're scared to do it, and you know you should go to a certain doctor, how do you get faith enough to go to the doctor? You talk to the doctor on the phone, you talk to friends who have gone to him, you talk to people who have been through the surgery, you study it, and the more you study it, the more your faith grows. That's thinking. But then on the day that you have to go, and you walk up those steps, and you look into the rooms on the way to the doctor's office and you see knives everywhere. What are you going to do at that point?

At that point you might turn around and vamoose. Why? Because you lost faith. Yes, why? Because you got new information that contradicted the information you had before? No. You stop acting in faith when you forget the facts and you just start to react. And if you're willing to commit and to ditch your fears and to walk in and sit down and start to let the man do his job, the more you give yourself to him, the easier it's going to be to say, hey, this is a trustworthy person, and the more your faith is going to grow. It doesn't just grow through knowledge, it grows through commitment. And in the end, what faith actually is, is an ongoing process of preaching the Gospel

to yourself, always looking to His holy temple. Are you worried today that really things are out of control? You know what it means to look to your holy temple? It means to go to him and say, look, my world looks like it's out of control, but you're my father. And if I'm really accepted completely freely by grace because of the substitute, Jesus Christ,

then I know my father's in charge of this and I'm not going to act like an orphan. When I sit around scared because I'm afraid that the world is out of control, then I'm acting like an orphan. When I sit around scared because I'm afraid that the world is out of control, then I'm acting like an orphan and I'm forgetting that He's my Father and I'm not looking to the temple and you preach the gospel to yourself. If you preach the gospel to yourself, if we become a community of people that do that, looking to His holy temple, we'll become a healing community. I mean a healing community. You know why?

People will be able to come in here and we'll find a unique group of folks. Apart from the Gospel, you can either be ethical or you can be compassionate, but you can never be both. You see, apart from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there's ethical people and they say, hey, I've pulled myself together, I've done a pretty good job, and they're really very unapproachable and rather hard on people. They say, pull yourself together, I did. Or else you have compassionate people. These are people who have relativized standards. They say, it doesn't matter what, nobody knows what's true, let's accept everybody, it really doesn't matter what those ethical standards are, and they're very kind and approachable.

Paul though, uses the gospel on people constantly, and he says if you're constantly teaching yourself the gospel, you will become the most approachable of people. So for example, Paul says in 1st Corinthians 4, when the people were arguing with each other inside the church, in 1st Corinthians 4, he says, inside the church. In 1 Corinthians 4, he says, he writes to them, if I can find it for a moment, and he says, why are you boasting as if what you have isn't a gift? He says, why is there fighting about you and around you and among you? Why do you act as if everything you have is not a gift? He says, think of the gospel. Yes, you're

growing. Yes, you're becoming more ethical. You're growing in compassion and integrity and courage, in patience, in purity, in generosity. But, it's all a gift. And that means, my dear friends, there should be no pride among you. You should be ethical with high standards and yet infinitely compassionate and patient because you know that if you're growing it's because of a gift. Paul says, preach the gospel to yourselves. It gets rid of pride on the one hand but it also gets rid of laxity on the other. The most ethical and the most compassionate people of all. If we preach the Gospel to ourselves, we will become a healing community. It says in Ephesians 5, it says in Colossians 3, we should be constantly singing songs of

salvation to our own hearts and to one another. Now my question is today, are you singing to your heart or are you listening to your heart? Doubt your doubts. Lift up your hearts. Friends, some of you are at the bottom, all the way down, and like Jonah, you've got to start calling when you haven't been praying. Isn't that true? Secondly, you've got to start thinking out the Gospel, and don't wait around for something to zap you. You have to start saying, I am not looking at the truth. I'm not doing the intense mental reasoning and thinking I've got to do in order to build up my faith. And finally, you've got to do what Jonah says.

Do not, don't you dare wait and say, Lord, if you vomit me out into dry land, I'll be happy to do anything you ask. But while you're still in the belly, you say, my vows I will repay, salvation is of the Lord. Maybe somebody here who's ready to say, I'd like to give myself to you, but I don't know that you're there. Doubt your doubts. And go to him and say, Lord, show me Your glory. Let's pray.

Our Father, we ask now simply that You would help us to conclude our service by pondering how we can respond, as Jonah did, to the situations we're in by faith, and to come through waves and breakers onto dry land. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you found today's teaching helpful and something you'd like more people to hear, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the hope and joy of Christ's love. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner to learn more.

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.