Tim Keller: How Gospel-Shaped Ministry Looks

Tim Keller : Don read from First Corinthians 15 to say, here’s what the gospel is. I’m here to try to talk to you about what does ministry shaped by the gospel, profoundly shaped by the gospel, look like? First Peter. Peter was not writing to the same situation. Paul was writing to with the Corinthians. Paul was writing into a situation where there was doctrinal fraction, fractiousness and divisions and party spirit and so on. And of course, the Peter, as you know, was speaking to a persecuted church, and a church was which was both passively and actively persecuted, actively persecuted and also passively. They were actually being beset by a culture around them they weren’t sure how to relate to with very different values. And so, of course, you can ever divide doctrinal from practical issues and and however, I would say that Peter is less interested than Paul in Corinthians to expound the content of the gospel as to constantly refer to its features, but to show how that should shape the way in which we live, and how the way it should shape our ministry and and how the church should operate As a community. And so when I was looking through First Peter one and two, I looked for seven. I found seven features that I think Peter uses to describe the gospel that then he boots off of during the rest of the Epistle to use to say, if that’s the case, then here’s the implication for ministry. I read Don’s I knew. I knew about Don’s talk before I was putting my own talk together. So there’s resonant everything in these seven points are going to be have already been explicated by Don I’m just simply going to draw out the ministry implications. But I’m going to read a nice, long section too. I’d like to read first Peter one to 12, and then I’ll jump and read first Peter 122 to 212, pretty long, but I think chapters one and two are remarkable at giving you all the features of the gospel and then thinking, and then helping us understand its ministry implications. So we start Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to God’s elect strangers in the world scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus, Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for you who, through faith, are shielded by God’s power until the coming salvation of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes, even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him, now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Considering this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, even angels long to look into these things. Verse 22 now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth, so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another, deeply from the heart, for you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God. For all men are like grass, and their glory is like the towers of the flowers of the field, and The grass withers, and the flowers fall. But the word of the Lord stands forever, and this is the word good news that was preached to you. Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander, every kind like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good as you come to him, the living stone, rejected by men, but chosen by God and precious to him, you. Also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture, it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Now to you who believe this same this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the Capstone and a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. This is the word of the Lord. Now I hate to go. I hate to do the what I’m about to do, which is a flyover there these verses. I hate to go buy some of these verses, these verses. Verses are deep wells as we know. I know a number. I know at least three or four men of God who have probably based their entire lives on one or two of these verses. As I went by, I thought of Ed Clowney and to verse nine and so forth. Nevertheless, we’re here for an overview, and therefore I would suggest to you that that Peter shows us in these two chapters, that there are seven features of the Gospel we have to tease out into ministry. Here they are. I’ll say them again so you can write them down, but I mean, in other words, as they go along, I’ll say them so you can get them. But the gospel is historical, doxological, christocentrical, personal, cultural, to quote Don Carson, massively transformational and wonderful. Those seven, each one has a ministry implication, which I believe will take us about six minutes each, or something like that. So the gospel is historical. Now you see this, of course, with the fact that the word good news, the word gospel, shows up twice, and Gospel means good news. And then you even see it spelled out a little bit when it says, we’re born again into a living hope through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why? Why do we say the gospel is good news? Some years ago, I heard a tape series, I’m sure was never put into print by David Martyn Lloyd Jones, an evening tape series, an evening sermon series on First Corinthians 15. And he made a distinction, extremely clarifying, very much in line with what Don has already told us about the how the gospel is based on historical events in a way that other religions just aren’t. He said there’s a big difference between advice and news. The gospel, he would say, is good news, not good advice. And here’s what he said about that. He said advice is counsel about something to do, and it hasn’t happened yet, but you can do it. He says, news is a report about something that has happened yet you can’t do anything about it’s been done for you, and all you can do is respond to it. So he says, now think this out, here’s a king, and he goes into a battle against an invading army to defend his his his land. If the king defeats the invading army, he sends back to the capital city messengers. Angeloi, very happy. Angelo, okay. He sends back. He sends back good newsers, and what they come back with is a report. They come back and they say, it has been defeated. It’s all happened. It’s all been done. And therefore, respond with joy and now go about your lives, conduct your lives in this peace which has been achieved for you. But if he doesn’t defeat the invading army, if the invading army breaks through, the king sends back military advisors and says, over here, and you know, marksman over here and the horsemen over here, and fight for we’re gonna have to fight for our lives. Dr Lord Jones said, every other religion sends military advisors to people. Every other religion says, you know, if you want your salvation, you’re gonna have to fight for your

Tim Keller

life. Every every other religion is sending advice and saying, here are the rights, and here’s the rituals, and here’s the transformations of consciousness, and here’s the you know, here are the laws and the regulations, and here’s all the things. If you know, earthen works over here, you know, marksman over here, horsemen over here, gonna fight for your life, but we send. And heralds, we send messengers, not military advisors. And isn’t that clarifying? It’s just incredibly clarifying. And it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do about it, my goodness. I mean, there’s all kinds. Both messengers and military advisors get an enormous response, but one is a response of joy and one is a response of fear. And all other religions give advice, and they drive everything you’re doing on fear. And you know what, as you know when you hear the Gospel, when you hear a message that it’s all been done for you. It’s a historical event that’s happened. Your salvation has been accomplished for you. Okay? What do you want to do? You want to obey the 10 Commandments. You want to pray. You want to please the one who did this for you. If, on the other hand, you send a military advisor to say you’re gonna have to live a really, really good life if you’re gonna get to heaven, what do you do? You wanna pray. You wanna obey the 10 Commandments. Looks the same, doesn’t it, for two radically different reasons. One is joy, one is fear. And in the end, I mean in the long in the short run. In the short run, they look alike, but in the long run, over here is both burnout and self righteousness and and guilt and all sorts of problems. Isn’t that fascinating? Now, having said that, what’s the ministry implication? Okay, the ministry implication is this the significance of declarative preaching, the significance of proclamatory proclamation, declarative preaching is irreplaceably Central. The gospel ministry, declarative preaching is irreplaceably Central. Why? If, basically, we were sending people how to if we were saying, Here’s how to live in the right way, if that’s the primary message, I’m not sure words are always necessarily the best thing to send. You know, you want to send a model if I was preaching, if I was teaching, I never have an advanced seminar on preaching. I would make everybody read CS Lewis’s studies and words. It’s amazing, if you because we’re wordsmiths, and he shows you how important it is to craft your words properly. The last chapter is called at the fringe of language, and he says, language can’t do everything. And one of the things he says is language cannot actually describe complex operations. He says, for example, don’t ask somebody, please tell me how to tie a tie. Now you just show them. You know, if you listen to somebody describe how to tie a tie, you’ll be totally lost. On the other hand, when it comes to describing how did to explain to somebody that Joshua Chamberlain, without ammunition, charged down a little round top in an incredible, risky adventure at the height of the Battle of the Battle of Gettysburg, and as a result, changed the course of history. You don’t show people that necessarily. You tell them that you this is something that happened. You describe it. You tell them that if you’re going to give them how to very often, what you want is modeling and dialog and action, reflection and so forth. Therefore, if you believe that the gospel is good news, preaching, declarative, preaching, verbally proclaiming, will always be irreplaceably central to what we do. And if you really think that basically, the gospel is good advice on how to live a life that sort of changes people and connects to God. If you’ve really lost your grip on the grace, I think preaching then becomes one of you know, dialog would be all right, or stories and reflection and modeling that’s more important. In other words, you really would believe then what some people quip, proclaim the gospel. Use words, if necessary. You’ve probably heard that, and that shows, I think, that they don’t quite understand what the gospel is about. Point two, the gospel is doxological. The purpose of the gospel is not merely forgiveness of individuals, but to bring people to full flourishing through glorious worship. Now, where do you see that Karen jobs, in her commentary on First Peter, points out what I guess almost any commentator would point out, but I like the way she titled it, chapter one, verse three, all the way down to verse 12, is one sentence in Greek, but she points out, therefore, that that there’s a main clause and everything else in that paragraph are subordinate clauses to the main clause. And what’s the main clause? Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Now she entitles that section. That’s what I liked about it. She says she entitled it this doxology as the basis for the entire Christian life, because everything in there, even the new birth, is to the praise of the glory of God. Now, why is that so important? Here’s why it’s so important. One of the life changing things, life changing, especially ministry changing experiences of mine was to read Martin Luther catechism some years ago. And. The larger catechism, he lays out his understanding of the 10 Commandments. And when he gets to the first commandment, he basically says this. He says the first commandment is first because he thinks all the other commandments are, in a sense, are based on it. Or another way to put it is that if you break any of the commandments two through 10, it’s because you’ve already broken or you are in the process of breaking commandment one. So Martin Luther says you don’t you don’t lie, unless you’ve actually think about this, you don’t lie, which, of course, is a breaking of the commandment, unless you’ve already made something more than God, your your functional savior, your functional your greatest joy. I mean, why do you lie? You lie because you’re either because the approval of other people is more important to you than God’s or the the what other people money is more important than the security you have in God. So you wouldn’t lie unless you were already first making something more important in your life than God, something more important and more fundamental to your meaning in life, or to your happiness, to your joy. And then Luther went one step further and said, The underneath every sin is idolatry in general. And underneath idolatry in general is always some form of works righteousness in particular, some kind of self salvation project, because whenever you make something more important to God, that thing is essentially a savior of yours. So he says, Get this. Martin Luther says, the first commandment is, you’ve got to believe the gospel. You can’t look to anything else as your justification. He says, the first commandment, leave it to Martin Luther to do that, of course, but he says the first commandment is, you’ve got to believe the gospel, and you can’t look to anything else in your justification. And that is the basis for all the other sins and things that happen to go wrong in your life. He’d go so far, even though he wouldn’t put it, you know, he couldn’t have done it, but he would today, if he was here underneath everything from eating disorders to racism. Is a is a self salvation project, a failure to believe the gospel, and some form of idolatry. You’ve either made an idol with thinness, and that’s how I’m really going to be happy in life, or you made an you made an idol of your of your race and your blood. This is how I feel better, good about myself. Is that I feel better than those, those people or that race over there. And if that’s the case, if that’s the case, idolatry, worshiping, functionally worshiping. You say, I believe in God, I believe in this, I believe in that, but your heart’s imagination is captured. Your heart is essentially adoring and doting on something more than God, then the only way anybody ever gets changed is through worship. Some years ago, keep watching. I got to make sure each of these I don’t go too long on it, but some years ago, you’ll love this one, by the way, I remember I was, they always do I was, I was many years ago, because I was talking to a young woman, really a 15 year old girl in my church in Virginia youth group, and she was really struggling. And I remember this, she sat down at one point and she said this, if she was really upset, she was really depressed, and I was trying to comfort her with, you know, as a minister does, and she says, Look, I understand this. She says, I’m a Christian. She says, I’m I’m clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I have a guaranteed place for my for me in heaven and new heavens and new earth. You know, I’m the delight of the father. But she says, you know, what good is that when the boys at high school just won’t even look at you? What she said? She was absolutely honest. She says, it doesn’t comfort me. Now I don’t use Oh, was she even a Christian? Of course, she was a Christian. As far as I can tell. If I look back on it, she looks back on it, there have been changes. Here’s the point. Boys was on video, but God was on audio. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a video and audio happening at the same time. You know which one wins, right now, the fact is that we have a subscription up here. I believe in Gospel. I believe in Jesus. I believe that Jesus died for me, and that sort of thing. You know, Jonathan Edwards would say,

Tim Keller

basically, if you say, I know that Jesus died for my sins, and though he was rich, he became poor, that through his poverty, we might become rich. And therefore I should be generous to others, but I’m not being generous for others. The answer is, Not try harder. The answer is, you’re not worshiping Jesus Christ. You say you believe that he did that. You don’t really believe it. It’s on audio, not on video. You’ve got to worship. You’ve got to get a sense on the of the on the heart of what happened. And this is, of course, where you’re getting Edwards. This is, this is where Edwards is so important. And therefore from, here’s my ministry implication. I get this right from Edwards. And I’ll read you a couple of quotes. Jonathan Edwards would say that the ultimate purpose of preaching is not just to make the truth. Clear. But to make it real, of course, for it to be real, it’s got to be clear. If they’re confused, you know, sorry, no worship, nothing happens. But you can’t stop there. And we are, I think, in a especially in perhaps circles that many of you work in, because we’re so afraid of the spirit of the age. We’re so afraid of subjectivism, and we believe in objective truth, therefore our expository messages, I think, are probably too cognitive. You know, the first listen, Jonathan Edwards did not tell stories, and he was incredibly rational, but he was also unbelievably vivid. He was incredibly logical and precise and clear, because he knew that unless the truth is clear, it’ll never be real. It’s got to be crystal clear. It’s got to be amazingly clear, but it also has to be vivid. And I don’t think this is going to be very easy. I see the narrative preaching approach you tell stories and that works kind of superficially on people’s emotions, and you have a kind of expository message approach that I think tends to be more of a Bible Commentary and works more on the head. But the heart is not the emotions, but it’s certainly not just the intellect. The heart is the core commitments of the life. What captures the imagination, and therefore, the preaching has to be gripping. And I don’t think that I happen to know by the way, that doesn’t happen by raising your voice only that doesn’t make it more gripping. I just want you to know that I’ve tried I tried it for at least three years, and it just didn’t happen. So now listen, no, you see, actually, what I love about Edwards is how incredibly rational he is and logical, incredibly persuasive he is, and yet, the same time, the images you know, you go into his sermons and there’s sun, there’s moon, there’s stars, there’s mountains, there’s dandelions, there’s, you know, it’s just astounding. And the reason he understood that is, if you just tell stories that tweak the emotions, it’s like putting dynamite on the face of the rock and you it blows up, and it just shears off the face and doesn’t really change the life. On the other hand, if you sort of bore down into it with the truth all the way through, that doesn’t change the heart. But if you bore down with the truth and put dynamite in there, if you are able to preach Christ vividly, and if you’re able to preach the truth practically, and you’re able to preach it out of obviously change life and heart yourself, which isn’t the easiest thing by any means to maintain, then that when there’s an explosion, then it really changes people’s lives. I just don’t think we’re we’ve got the right end of the stick in general, either in the movement of people who are working toward telling stories because they want to get people emotionally or working toward giving people the truth because they want to, you know, be sure people have are doctrinally sound. The doctor, David Martin Lloyd Jones and boy, he was not a touchy feely type. This is what he says based on what Lloyd based on his understanding of what Edwards taught. He says the first and primary object of preaching is not to give information. It is, as Jonathan Edwards says, to produce an impression. This is the doctor. Now, it is the impression at the time that matters even more than what you can remember. Subsequently, Edwards, in my opinion, has the true notion of preaching. It is not primarily to impart information, and while you’re writing your notes, you may be missing something of the impact of the Spirit. As we as preachers, we must not forget this. We should tell our people to read books themselves at home and take their notes on the books at home. The business of preaching is to make such knowledge live. Now, by the way, I don’t mind if people are taking notes in the first part of my sermon, but if they’re still taking notes at the end of my sermon, I don’t think I made it I don’t think I made it home. And here’s what one more thing. Thomas Chalmers puts it like this. This this is the reason why it’s so crucial to get to people’s hearts. You know, I’ll take this because it’s so important. This is his famous sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection. He says, It is He says, It is seldom that any of our bad habits or flaws disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning or by the force of mental determination. What cannot be destroyed, however may be dispossessed. One taste may be made to give way to another and to lose its power entirely as the rating affection in the mind. Now here’s the example. A youth may cease to idolize sensual pleasure, but it’s because the idol of wealth, desire to make money has gotten the ascendancy. So he becomes disciplined, but the love of money might actually cease to have mastery over his heart if it is drawn more to ideology and politics. Now he is lorded over by a love of power and of moral superior, superiority instead of wealth. But there is not one of these transformations in which the heart is left without an object, the human heart’s desire for one particular object is conquered, but its desire to have some ultimate object of adoration is unconquerable. The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Thus it is not enough to hold this is terrific. Thus it is not enough to hold out to the world. World the mirror of its own imperfections, is not enough to come forth with a demonstration of the evanescent character of their enjoyments. It’s not enough to simply speak to the conscience to speak of its Follies. Rather, you must seek, as a preacher, every legitimate method of finding access to the heart for the love of Him who is greater than the world.

Tim Keller

Point three, the gospel is Christo centrical. Now, you know, as Don pointed out, in a certain sense, the gospel is just Jesus.

Tim Keller

What is the gospel? It’s, it’s, it’s what, who Jesus is and what he did for us. The gospel is Jesus. And of course, you see this in first Peter 110 where even talks about, it says, Concerning the salvation, we’ll get back to this again, concerning the salvation. The prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest of care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ, in them was pointing when the Spirit predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Now what’s intriguing to me is this, when you read in Luke and Acts, how Jesus, in those 40 days, got his disciples together, 40 days before He ascended, after he resurrected, was raised. What was he doing? At least a few I’m sure he was doing more than what we’re told. But in Luke chapter 24 from what I can tell, he was giving them a hermeneutic seminar. This gives a number of New Testament professors a great deal of hope that if even Jesus felt that running an advanced seminar in hermeneutics was a good idea in those 40 days, maybe it’s a good idea to be doing it too. But basically he was saying everything in the Old Testament is about me. That’s what he was doing. That’s what he says in Luke chapter 24 he says it to colopus and Cleopas and the other disciple, the name of disciple on the road to Emmaus. He says it to them in the upper room. He says, The reason you didn’t understand what I was about was you didn’t realize that everything in the prophets and the Psalms and the law was pointing to me. It’s intriguing. We see that in Luke, it’s intriguing that here in Peter, you’ve got an echo of that. Peter was in on that seminar, and here’s Peter saying Concerning this salvation. That is the salvation of the gospel of Christ. The Prophets had the Holy Spirit in them, pointing toward Jesus. It’s an echo of what happened there. Peter saying what Jesus said. And that is everything, every, every text in the in the Old Testament points to Jesus. Now my ministry implication is this, the basic subject of every sermon ought to be Jesus. Doesn’t matter what passage doesn’t matter what the Old or New Testament. It’s got to be about Jesus. And by the way, before you say, Oh, so this is about our Old Testament. Hermeneutics, no, my friend Sinclair Ferguson said, most evangelical ministers don’t preach Christ. Not only don’t they preach Christ in the Old Testament, but most of them don’t preach Christ in the New Testament. I’ll get you back to that in a second. I know this is something of an intramural debate, and I’ve got to be careful here. I don’t want to be a party guy. I want to say I follow chapel. I follow Goldsworthy. And you know, there are people who say, You preach everything in the Bible pointing to Jesus, and there are other good men who just don’t think that’s right, and that you shouldn’t preach Christ from Jacob wrestling with God, and you should preach about wrestling with God in prayer or suffering or Something like that. Honestly, listen, I mean, I believe that those good and sincere men are wrong on the basis of reading the Bible and understanding hermeneutics and so on. But part of this goes back to I remember some years ago when I sat down with my wife. You know what it’s like on the way home after the sermon. You know, first you’re hoping she’ll say great sermon, honey, and then she has, then she doesn’t say anything. So you fear the worst. And and I remember one day we really got into it, and I said, Well, let me ask you a question, How often do you think it was a great sermon? I mean, how many, you know? How many weeks out of the month? And she said, No more than one. One in four or five, is what she said. So, so we sat down, and at one point, here’s what she said. I mean, you know, in general, it’s been a pretty long time. But she said, she says, you know, for a good part of your sermon, in fact, all your sermons are great. They’re rational, they’re they’re they’re biblical, they’re exegetical, and they show me how I should live, and they show me what the what I should believe. But she says, Every so often, suddenly at the end, Jesus shows up. And when Jesus shows up, suddenly, it stops being a lecture and becomes a sermon to me. And she says, because when you say, this is what you ought to do, this is what you ought to do, this is what you ought to do. She says, I know. I know. Okay, now I’m a little clearer on it. I’m a little more guilty about it. Good. That’s fine. I. Yeah, but she says sometimes you get to the place where you say, this is what you ought to do, but you really probably can’t do it. Oh, but there’s one who did and because he did it on our behalf and in our place, if we believe in him, we’ll begin to be able to do it too, you see, all but only to the degree that we understand what he did for us. And she says, you know, that’s different. She says, the one time out of four or five, your lecture becomes a sermon when Jesus shows up, I want to do that. I have hope. I have hope, and I begin to see how I can do it. And I didn’t really understand. But basically, even I want to, but now I do. And here’s the thing, your preaching will never be doxological, and it won’t even be central unless it’s Christocentric. Here’s why, if you tell people, they need to be generous, and why aren’t you being more generous? I happen to know you’re not being generous. I mean, I’ve got, you know, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether people are you know how lust in their hearts is doing from week to week, but you do know about their generosity from week to week. But under why aren’t people generous? Is I just being sinners? Let’s go back to Martin Luther. Let’s go back to the Catechism. If you’re not being generous, then you there’s something else going on there is there not you are you’re saying your status or your security, which is based on money, is way is very important to you, or you need to be able to buy certain clothes and move in certain circles and go certain places, human approval, security. There’s, there’s idols underneath the lack of generosity. The money is more than just money. It’s security, it’s significance, it’s status, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s more than you’ve got to do something to make that money just money, then they’ll give it away. How do you do that? You have to show Jesus Christ is their true wealth. You have to show them what their idols are. You got to get to Jesus. And as a result, if you don’t, if you don’t get there, you are going to find that you’re just wailing on people’s wills. You know, you’re beating on their, on their on their will. Says Sinclair Ferguson wrote a book that is almost impossible to find because it was put out as a little pamphlet by the proc trust in the UK. But the name of it is preaching Christ from the Old Testament. And this is what he says. He says, what I just said a minute ago, that he says, Most preachers not only don’t preach Christ from the New Old Testament, but they don’t preach it from the New Testament. And he says, quote, The preacher has looked into the text even in the New Testament, principally to find himself and his congregation, not to find Christ. Says, and you can even do that in the New Testament, even in the Gospels. He says, The Sermon therefore is consequently about the people in the gospels instead of about the Christ. Who is that gospel? The more fundamental issue is this question, what is the Bible really about? Is the Bible basically about me and what I must do, or is it basically about Jesus? And what he has done is the Bible basically about the objective and the indicative, you know. And then here’s a, here’s a, for example. That’s why he says you do have to be careful. Hermeneutics is important. You can’t just just, you know, you can’t just find Jesus in every little, you know, twig and you there needs to be a way in which you are following the trajectory of the text. No matter what that text is to Jesus, you have to show how, how Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that particular the trajectory of the text. You’ve got to be responsible. And yet, it’s it. It’s as Sinclair says, it’s more than an instant. It’s more like an instinct. It’s not so much. Just write hermeneutical principles. It’s an instinct. Do you believe the Bible is basically about you, or basically about him? Is David and Goliath basically about you, and how you can be like David and Goliath, or basically about him, the one who really took on the mate, the only giants that can really kill us, you see, and so his victory is imputed to us. Who’s it really about that’s the fundamental question. And when that happens, then you start to read the Bible. New You know, Jesus is the true and better Adam, who passed the test in the garden, his garden a much tougher garden, and whose obedience is imputed to us, Jesus is the true and better able, who, though innocently slain, has blood that cries out not for our condemnation, but for our acquittal. Jesus is the true and better, Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go into the work into the void, not knowing whether he went. Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the Mount, but was truly sacrificed for us all while God said to Abraham, now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me. Now we at the foot of the cross, can say to God, now we know that you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me.

Tim Keller

Jesus is the true and better Jacob who. Wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserve so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace that wake us up and discipline us. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who is at the right hand of the king and forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses, who stands in the gap between the people in the Lord and who mediates a new covenant. Jesus is the true and better rock of Moses, who struck with the rod of God’s justice now gives us water in the desert. Jesus is the true and better job. He’s a truly innocent sufferer who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends. Is that a type? See, that’s not typology. It’s an instinct. Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk losing an earthly Palace, but lost the ultimate heavenly. One, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life, who didn’t just say, If I perish, I perishes. When I perish, I’ll perish for them to save my people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so we could be brought in. He’s, he’s the real Passover lamb. He’s, he’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true Lamb, the true light, the true bread. The Bible is not about you. And that’s, that’s an instinct. And until that shows up in your sermons, it’ll be lectures, not sermons. Won’t be Dox. Logic won’t be logic won’t be central. Point three, four, excuse me, the gospel is personal and individual. Now this is obviously I’m just my next few points. I will shear down in time. Don actually already said this in first Peter one and two, we see a lot of reference to the new birth, the new birth and that, what does the new birth means? Think about the metaphor of the birth. It’s really you can’t make yourself a Christian, you can make yourself a Buddhist. You can make yourself a Muslim. This is another thing a doctor used to say in his evening messages, you can make yourself a Muslim or a Buddhist. You can make yourself an atheist, but you can’t make yourself a Christian. Christianity. To become a Christian, you gotta be converted. Notice, it’s a passive you don’t convert yourself. You’re converted. Something happens to you through faith. You’re born again. You’re confronted with your sin against a jealous and holy God, and you see the provision. Now that’s individual conversion. This is really important at this moment in our lives as Christians, especially North America. But I’m sure other places as well, there is a there’s an erosion of confidence in that thing I just said, which is the idea that we have sinned against the holy, jealous God. The wrath of God has to be satisfied as we sung about it, Jesus Christ has stood in our place substitutionary atonement, and when we believe in that and his both his obedience and his suffering are imputed to us. I’ll get to that in a second. I mean, all that old historic gospel is to some degree in disrepute right now. A lot of people saying we got to move away from it. Why? Well, background, J packer, in his little chapter on Grace, in knowing God, said there’s two things you’ve got to know in order to really understand the concept of grace. Grace really isn’t the opposite of law. He would say you’ve got to understand two things to understand grace. First of all, you have to understand how lost you are, how bad you are, how dire your condition is, how big the debt is. You’ve got to understand that. Dr Wood Jones, again, used to say, I’m I learned how to evangelize in preaching by listening to about two or 300 of his evening sermon tapes from the 50s. And they they were, they were evangelistic sermons. And Dr Lloyd Jones used to say, if, if I, if you came to see me and said, Hey, I was at your house the other day and a bill came due, and you weren’t there and I paid it. Dr Lloyd Jones says I really wouldn’t know quite how to respond. I need to know something about how big that bill was. Was it a package with postage due and you spent another couple bucks? I could say, well, thank you very much. That was very kind of you. What if it’s that thing I was afraid of getting from the IRS, you know, saying, Here’s how many hundreds of $1,000 in back taxes and you paid that. I need it. He says, until I know whether to say thank you, or they get down on my hands and knees and kiss his feet and and I don’t know how to respond to him. I don’t know how to happy to I don’t know how happy to be. I don’t know how how to respond to Him, until I know how big that that was. Now, if somebody says, I believe Jesus died for me. He shed His blood for me, and I’ve given my life to Christ. I accepted him, I walked forward, I invited him into my life. And you don’t see any change in that person’s life. You don’t see identity shifting, behavior, transforming joy. Then what’s the problem? People say easy believe ism. What’s easy believe ism? Well, the idea that you’re just saved by grace. Wait a minute. Yeah. The problem is, this person clearly does have have any idea the size of the debt, and therefore the size of the payment just has no idea of it. Couldn’t have any idea of it. Jim Packer used to say, if to understand grace, and for grace to be transforming, first, you have to understand the debt. The second thing, you have to understand have to understand, besides the size of the debt, is the magnitude of the provision. There are people who do understand that they’re pretty bad. They they do understand how flawed they are. They do understand how far short they fall, but they aren’t convinced of the magnitude and the sufficiency and the freeness and the fullness of the provision. They may only believe. They may only believe that Jesus died the death we should have died, and and maybe they don’t also believe Jesus also lived the life we should have lived. See, if you only believe Jesus died the death we should have died. That is, He died for our sins. He paid our penalty. That sort of leaves you on your own. It clears the deck. It puts you in a right relationship with God. But now I’m gonna have to live a pretty good life. If I’m gonna stay in that relationship, I better live a pretty good life. And therefore, in a certain sense, I’m still maintaining my salvation by works and you’re and that there’s no joy in that. There’s no life transforming joy in that, there’s no identity shifting behavior transforming joy in that. But if you realize he lived the life you should have lived and died to death, you should have died that not only were my sins put upon him, but his perfect righteousness and record was put on me. So there’s no condemnation. There can’t be a condemnation for those who are in Christ, Jesus, see when you understand both those things, now, suddenly, explosion. There will be an explosion. There is an explosion. Now what we have today is people who say, I see easy believe ism and these are the folks who don’t understand the size of the debt. And they say, Sure, they have their BORN AGAIN certificate. They haven’t changed their lives a bit. And then you also see Pharisees. They also see people who are really under the burden of guilt, and as a result, they’re withdrawn and they’re hostile and they’re moralistic, they’re legalistic. And we look at these two groups of people in the evangelical worlds, filled with them, filled with them, both easy believe ism really deadly. The whole cost of discipleship book by Bonhoeffer explains why easy believe ism was the reason Nazism could come into power. That’s pretty dangerous. But on the other hand, you’ve got the so you’ve got the people who don’t understand the provision, and so they’re Pharisees and they’re legal and they’re morals, and people who don’t understand the debt and the size of the payment and the size of the magnitude of their situation. Why? Why the easy believe ism why the moralism? Because they don’t understand the gospel, the old gospel, the historic gospel, the gospel of salvation by grace, alone, through faith alone, through the work of Jesus, Christ alone, double imputation, substitution, atonement, they don’t get it. Ah. So what’s the solution to all the easy believeism? Why is it we don’t have people living lives they ought to live? Why do we see people over here, culturally withdrawn and being real, negative and narrow? The solution is, let’s change the gospel. No, but that’s what’s happening. And almost every month in evangelical publications, and you know the publishing houses, you’ll see people say the gospel is no longer you’re saved through the blood atonement of Jesus, Christ, appeasing the wrath of God. The Gospel is just the kingdom. The Gospel is God is renewing the world, and he’s going to re weave the world in peace and justice. And now you need to join this community and be agents for peace and justice. You need to change your life. You need to be a disciple. It’s both faith and obedience. That’s, that’s what, that’s what connects you to God. I can’t imagine with that gospel, anybody’s ever going to write a hymn that goes like this, my chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee. It’s just not going to happen. It’s actually another kind of legalism. The problem The Gospel is individualistic. It is. It does say you’re an individual sinner. You’ve opposed a holy God, you’ve personally offended him. Here’s the provision for it. However, having said that point five, gospel is cultural. Now what I mean by cultural? I’ll tell you right off the bat, the Gospel creates a culture. It’s called the church. It’s not just an aggregation of saved individuals, it’s a culture. The Gospel is so different in what it says about God, about you, about your standing with God. It’s just so radically different. It is. It’s so identity transformative, transforming every other religion, every other every other system, basically motivates you through fear and pride to do the right thing, and only the gospel motivates you through the joy, the fear and trembling joy, you know, the fear of God, Joy. But so but that doesn’t mean that now we’re a bunch of saved individuals, meaning we all have this, you know, we have, you know, wonderful internal fulfillment. It means that when we get together, we want to do everything differently. We will do everything differently. The gospel is massively transformational, and it creates a counter culture. But it also, it also

Tim Keller

makes us as people. Relate to the culture around us. And this comes out especially in first Peter two. I’m going to be brief on this, but it’s crucial the people who those of us who do believe in that individual gospel, often miss the communal aspects of the gospel. And in first Peter 212, it says live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of wrongdoing, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. But right before it says, Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers. That’s actually how the whole book was. Was produced in chapter one one. It says, chapter one, verse one, Peter and apostle Jesus Christ, the Gods elect strangers in the world. There’s been a lot of discussion about this. Pretty much consensus, the word there for strangers or aliens or sojourners or exiles, means not a tourist who’s just passing through the world briefly, but not a citizen of the world, either, somebody who’s going to be there a long time. And yet, your citizenship, your values belong to somewhere else. Peter makes amazing an amazingly balanced statement, and we have to understand this, the gospel I believe, is radical in that, because it the nature of the gospel, on the one hand, does say to legalists who are afraid of being polluted by the culture and are afraid of being have a tendency to need to bolster their fragile sense of righteousness because they’re not right in Christ by feeling superior to the sinners around them. The Gospel says the legalists who are withdrawing from the culture you need to engage. On the other hand, the Gospel says to the secular, to the irreligious, to the liberal Christian who’s over accommodating and saying, Well, we really can’t believe in sin because that affects that offends people. Really can’t believe in the holiness of God and hell, because that offends people. The Gospel says that there’s dangers on both sides, cultural accommodation, cultural withdrawal. Most of us as Christians today think all the dangers. On one side, we tend to get together, and people in groups of people say all the main danger, the main danger is cultural accommodation. On the other side, there’s there’s Christians that get together. So the main danger is cultural isolation and irrelevance. According to that verse, it doesn’t say, sometimes you’ll be persecuted, and other times, everybody will see your good deeds and glorify God. It doesn’t say it doesn’t say that. It says they will both be happening together. People who withdraw from the world and just hate the world. Nobody sees your good deeds. They don’t. They don’t glorify God. You’re not involved with caring for the poor. You’re not engaged, on the other hand, people who accommodate the culture are never persecuted. How do we know the radical gospel is turning us into a counterculture for the common good, a counter culture that’s very distinct, very different from from the society around us. But who shows the society? We love them. We care about them. We love our enemies, just like because we die, we’re saved by a man who died loving his enemies. And therefore this balance is awfully hard to maintain. Jeremiah 29 the exiles, some of them, wanted to stay outside of Babylon and stay pure. The Babylonians wanted to come into Babylon and lose their cultural identity. But God told them through Jeremiah and Jeremiah 29 I want you to do the hardest thing possible. I don’t want you to stay out and be different. I don’t want you to go in and become like them. I want you to go deeply in and stay very different. And that’s exactly what First Peter is talking about. He calls them exiles. He knows that our relationship to the culture around here has to be the same relationship as the Jews, the Jewish exiles in Babylon, we need to seek the welfare of the city. We need to care about that. We need to follow in the footsteps of the one who served his enemies and forgave his enemies and died for his enemies at the same time, we’ve got to be telling people they’re going to hell. Now, you know, I honestly, generally speaking, and it’s certainly not true of everybody. But by and large, the people who are want to be prophetic don’t want to be priestly. The people who want to talk about, hey, you’re going to hell, really do not just sacrificially pour themselves out for their neighbors and say, we’re going to love you and we’re going to serve you, whether you believe like we do or not. And the people who are serving like that are afraid of talking about things like hell and wrath. I don’t know whether we can become a movement of people who understand what First Peter saying that we the gospel creates a counterculture, but a culture that engages the church, that this the community around us, at the expense of persecution, but on the other hand, at the with effectiveness Always, always. One of the things that I found interesting about that particular verse is in New York if you just live the Christian life, New Yorkers love what the Bible says about reconciliation, forgiveness and caring about the poor, and they hate what it says about sex and gender and family going to the Middle East. Yes, they love what the Bible says about sex and gender and family and the idea of forgiving people 70 times seven turn the other cheek. That’s ridiculous. I think what First Peter 212 is trying to say that in every single culture, if you actually live distinctively in an engaged way, you will get persecution and you will get approval. It’ll always be different depending on the culture. You will attract people, you will influence people. You’ll be salt and light at the same time. You’ll get punched in the mouth. And if you’re not getting if you’re only getting punched in the mouth, by the way, or you’re only getting praised, you’re not living this gospel life, because either you’re falling into legalism and withdrawal, you’re falling into accommodation, I’m going to have to jump. In a sense, I said the gospel is massively transformational. I’m just trying to say the gospel creates a worldview. The gospel is the basis for a worldview that actually touches every area of life, the way you do business, the way you do art, the way the way you conduct your family life. Enough for that time is getting pretty close to the end. Let me just say what I mean by the gospel is wonderful. First Peter 112, it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit from heaven, into which things, even angels, long to look I’ve been thinking about that verse for about 20 years now. Let’s think about this for a second. Everybody angels are probably very smart people. You know, in some ways, I hope nobody thinks. You don’t laugh at me when I say one of the things I always thought was interesting about the Tolkien mythology is you’ve got elves and you’ve got humans, and the humans and elves are a lot alike. The elves just don’t they don’t die. I always thought it was interesting how, you know how Arwen and Aragorn are saying, Who’s going to ride Frodo to safety? And remember, Arwen says to Aragorn, I’m the better writer. And you want to say, yes, she’s 4000 years old. Of course, she’s going to have better she’s going to have a lot more practice. Angels are like us, except they don’t die. So they know a lot. They know a whole lot. They know you’d think that they never get tired of looking into the gospel. In fact, even angels long to look. You know what that word is? Long? It’s epithelium. It’s the word that’s often translated lust. Angels love looking into the gospel. They never get tired of it. So what does that mean? It means gospel ministry is endlessly creative. It I don’t know. It means it’s ever new. It means that you can preach the gospel and you never have to be afraid of boring people. I don’t know quite what it means. I’m still thinking about it. I probably should have waited till I figured out what it really meant before I preached on it, I suppose. But isn’t that amazing? That is amazing. The gospel is not the ABCs of Christianity. Is the A to Z. It’s not just the elementary introductory truths. And then we get past that. It’s, it’s, it’s a The Gospel is what drives everything that we do. The gospel is the solution to pretty much every problem. The Gospel is the is what the the every theological category should really be expounding when we do our systematic theology should be very much at the heart of everything. Even angels want to look into it, then you should. Let’s pray Our Father, we thank you for the these, these few thoughts about how the gospel, understanding the biblical gospel, how that should shape the way in which we do things, how we preach, how we evangelize, how we relate to the culture around us. These are just the beginnings of the sketch. We pray Lord, that You would help us as a body of friends and a community of Christians, brothers and sisters. We pray that You would help us be wise about how we can let the gospel shape us and we can be engaged with our culture, rather than having the culture shape us and affect how we read the gospel. We want, therefore, to be gospel shaped people now. We don’t want to simply pick up the methods of gospel shaped people in the past, because we know that they wouldn’t many of them won’t be relevant. We ask, though, that you would help us be gospel shaped people now, because we believe it would glorify You help us to look into the gospel over and over again until we see what we need to see, till we see what we need to see, what you want us to see. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.