Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): What kind of relationship does God actually want to have with us? The Bible uses many images to describe how God relates to us: as a father, a friend, a spouse, and a king. Today Tim Keller takes a closer look at one of these dimensions of God and how it helps us see the depths of His grace and love more clearly.

Tim Keller: We're doing a series on who God is and we're looking at some pretty usually long passages from the Hebrew scriptures, the older testament. We're going to look at Ezekiel 16. This is actually a very gripping parable of the relationship of God to His people. And there's four acts to it. It's almost like a drama.

And we're going to read these four acts, parts of the passage, parts of the chapter. I have to apologize because actually it was my fault, I left out verse 59. It's not printed, but when I get to verse 59, I'm going to read it even though it's not printed.

Ezekiel 16, first act, verse 3 to 10. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem. Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean. Nor were you rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloths.

No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born, you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood. And as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, "Live."

I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare. Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.

I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointment on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments.

Act two, verses 15 to 22. But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places where you carried on your prostitution. Such things should not happen nor should they ever occur.

You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them. And you took your embroidered clothes to put them on and offered my oil and incense before them. Also the food I provided for you, the fine flour, the olive oil and honey I gave you to eat, you offered as fragrant incense before them.

That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord. And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols. In all your detestable practices and your prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare, kicking in your blood.

Act three, verse 39 to 42. Then I will hand you over to your lovers and they will tear down your mounds and destroy your lofty shrines. They will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you naked and bare. They will bring a mob against you who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords.

They will burn down your houses and inflict punishment on you in the sight of many women. I will put a stop to your prostitution and you will no longer pay your lovers. Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you. I will be calm and no longer angry.

Act four, verse 59 to 63. This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.

Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters but not on the basis of my covenant with you. So I will establish my covenant with you and you will know that I am the Lord.

Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord. This is the end of God's word.

We're looking every week at another one of the images that God gives us to describe who He is. We've said that most people, we all do, tend to have a one-dimensional view of God. We like to think of him as this rather than that. But the Bible says he's as much a friend as a king. He is as much a tender father as a judge.

And if you take any one of the images that God gives us in the Bible, take any one of these images and lift it up to the exclusion of the others or even heavily in favor to favor it over the others, you come up with a one-dimensional God and not a real God because real persons are complex. And you won't have personal engagement.

And therefore in a sense we're saying unless you understand God as all of these, you don't really know who he is. So we're looking at God as father and as friend and today as lover and next time as king. And this in some ways is the most astonishing of all the claims. God comes and says he wants a spousal relationship with his people.

He comes and says, "I want to be spouse and lover to the people I relate to." And let's look at this astounding—in some ways it is the most astounding and it's the most graphic and it's the most gripping and in some ways the most wrenching of all the pictures we have that God gives us to tell us who he is.

And let's take a look at these four acts under three headings. We see here God the smitten lover, then secondly God the wounded lover, and then lastly God the faithful lover. And as smitten lover, we see what he wants for us. And as wounded lover, we see him tell us what's wrong with us. And as faithful lover, he shows us how he's fixing us.

First of all, the smitten lover, which we see in the first act. The first thing that happens when the curtain goes up, as it were, is what? On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, you were not washed with water, rather you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

Now what we have here is a newborn baby girl thrown out into the field to die of exposure. Why? Well, this was not only common then, but it's common actually in numbers of places in the world now. In a culture, in those places back then, when the status of women was so low, daughters were just not very profitable to have.

Sons could get into places of influence and power and help the family. Daughters were not very profitable. This happened a lot. We have a very chilling archaeological find somewhere in Alexandria, Egypt from this time. They dug up an inscription and it's interesting, it was a letter. They dug up a letter from an Alexandrian businessman to his pregnant wife when he was away from her on business.

And what's so chilling about it is it's just a mundane list of things. He's talking to her about this and that and don't forget this and that, and then suddenly, right in the middle of the letter, this is what he says. It's chilling because it's so mundane. Very casually he says, "Oh yes, and don't forget, if it's a girl, throw it out."

So this happened all the time. But God comes into the field and he sees her and says, "Live." And he supports her. Now, the first thing that the listeners of this would have said is what an incredible act of grace. This isn't a very profitable thing. She's abandoned. You see, a poor investment to raise her up and support her.

I mean, there's no—she has no family that you can get connected to now. She has no dowry, you see. So the first statement, the first thing that a listener would look at this is for God to come into the field and take an abandoned girl child and say live and give her a place to live and support her and so on would be an incredible act of grace.

But here's the second shock. If this really happened and suddenly she was brought onto the estate, you know what would have been said to her every day of her life, over and over and over again by the people of that time? They would have said, "You know, you're really lucky. You are lucky, young lady. You're scum. You're lucky, you should just thank your lucky stars that your master brought you in and let you live as a servant."

But that's not what happens. See, everybody would say, "Wow, it's incredible that God would bring her in. She ought to thank her lucky stars." But in verse 8 and 9, what does it say? "I passed by and I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you." What is that?

Well, there's actually a longer version of this same parable in the book of Hosea. The book of Hosea actually does it even longer. And in there, this is what God says when he comes to her. He says in Hosea chapter 2 verse 14, "I am now going to allure her, I'm going to speak tenderly to her." And then verse 16, listen, "In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. You will no longer call me my master."

"For I will betroth you to me forever." Now here's what's going on. Not master, but husband. Here is a picture of God saving this person by grace and then coming and saying three things. I'll put it this way: I don't want you simply as a remote inferior, I want you as a life partner. I don't want you simply to give me dutiful, even grateful service, I want your intimate love.

I don't want you as a scullery maid, I want you as my bride. And so what we have here is now, oh my. Remember what I said in the very beginning, we cannot pit these images off against each other. Though dare I say it this way, the one down on his knees before us is the high and lofty one. This is not like a human suitor coming and making a proposal.

This is the high and lofty one. This is the majestic one. And yet, so you can't pit these things against each other. You can't say, "Well, we're equals." No, and yet this is God. Yet he dares even metaphorically use this kind of image. He says, "I don't want you just to be my servants." What he's saying here is, "I have saved you by grace, but I am not satisfied with relating to you as a king relates to subjects or as a shepherd relates to sheep or even as a friend relates to a friend.

I want to relate to you as a spouse. I want to relate to you as a husband to a wife. I don't want you as my maid, I want you as my bride. You will not call me master but husband." Now what is going on? No wonder the wonder. There are numbers of places, especially in the prophets, where this is brought up.

And everywhere this very idea is brought up, that God says, "I'm not satisfied with relating to you as a king to subjects, I want you as my bride, I want you as my spouse, I want you as my lover." This is astounding. I mean even friend, we talked about this last week. Isn't it amazing? And we said we don't really know of any other religion that dares to talk about God as your friend because a friend opens the mind and opens the heart.

Friends open their minds to each other. Friends open their hearts to each other. But lovers give their hearts to each other. And God dares to use this image. God dares. No wonder, for example, in Isaiah 54, this is the same thing. Isaiah 54, listen to this. "Sing! Burst into song, shout for joy! Do not be afraid, do not fear disgrace, for your maker is your husband. The Lord Almighty is his name."

Isaiah 62, "No longer will they call you deserted, for as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, says the Lord, so will I rejoice over you." The one to whom all the stars in the galaxies are as a piece of lint gets down on his knees and says, "Will you be my spouse?"

Now what does this mean? I don't know. But I'm not done so I've got to give it a shot. It means this is what God wants for us. He wants this kind of relationship with us and this is an astounding thing. Let me just suggest three things that are unique about this relationship over a friend relationship, over a parent relationship, over certainly a king-subject relationship that we wouldn't know about if God didn't have the audacity to use this image.

But here's what they are. First of all, he is calling us into an exclusive relationship. See, parents can have multiple children and friends can have multiple friends, but the Bible says and most people agree by common sense that it's a matter of sheer justice and it's a matter of emotional necessity, you can only have one spouse.

And counselors will tell you that unless the marriage relationship is the supreme relationship, unless your marriage comes before your work, unless your marriage even comes before your children, unless your marriage comes before everything else, your marriage is on its way into erosion. And therefore the first thing that God is saying to you here is this: you must love me not as one thing among many.

I must not be just one subject among many things in your life. I have to be the supreme thing in your life. You must love me more than you love your family. You must love me more than you love your parents. You must love me more than you love your children. You must love me more than you love your spouse, your human spouse. You must love me more than you love your job. I have to be the supreme thing in your life. That's the first thing he's inviting.

Secondly, it's not only an exclusive relationship, but it's a comprehensive relationship. You know, you can have a pretty good friendship, even a close friendship, and it not completely affect everything else in your life. But one of the things you learn the very day after you get married is you wake up and you realize if you're not going to come straight home from work, you've got to report.

Or maybe you don't realize it and you just do it and then you realize I'm not an independent person anymore. And when God calls us into a spousal relationship, he is saying that there is no part of your life that must not relate to me. Every single part of your life, every area of your life has got to be brought in line with me.

So it's not only he's inviting you to an exclusive relationship and a comprehensive relationship in a way that you wouldn't know from any other image. Now this last one, I don't have a good word for it. I apologize. But as soon as I start talking to you about it, you'll know what I mean. There is the engine, the basis of a spousal relationship unlike any other relationship, is a kind of aesthetic delight in one another.

An aesthetic delight. What do I mean by that? Well, you must mutually find each other beautiful. Those people who have been able to not only maintain a marriage over the decades but a lover marriage over the decades, in other words, people who after 20, 30, 40 years of marriage are not just still spouses but lovers, well they've learned something.

They know that because of our human frailty, in the very beginning, in order to develop that relationship, we needed the training wheels, we needed the crutch of youthful physical beauty. That person needed to look good. But one of the things you learn over the years is that as time goes on, you start to be able to find the beauty of the person's heart, the person's character, yes for lack of a better term, the person's soul.

And it begins to delight you so much that when aging starts to take away that physical beauty, it does not impede your view. And therefore what are we saying? This is something we all know. Spousal love depends on a mutual joy and delight in the excellencies of the other. It's an aesthetic thing.

You need to look and you just need to exalt in the beauties and the excellencies of the other person. This is different than any of the other relationships. It is very, very different. And you both need—and you see it right here in the text. In other words, in a marriage you both need to not only say but to absolutely get your life out of saying to one another, "You are the most beautiful of jewels."

Do you see God saying that? He's not just talking about the fact, "Oh by the way, you know, you're pretty good-looking." "You are the most beautiful." He is enjoying. And therefore what does this mean to our relationship with God? Okay, let me get at this. If you know God as a father only, your prayer life will be filled with petition. Give me, give me, give me, Dad. I got things, you know, keys to the car, money. Okay.

If your understanding of God goes a little bit beyond that to friend, your prayer life will go beyond petition to the relief of confession, of admitting your faults, admitting your weaknesses, you know just letting your hair down. Okay, we talked about that last week.

But if you ever get to the place where you come to hear the call, the invitation into God as your lover, your prayer life will be shot through, your whole life will be shot through with adoration. It'll be the main engine of your life. It'll be the main engine in two ways because you see a lover relationship, a spousal relationship means there's mutual joy in the beauty of the other.

It means not only on the one hand do you find—as Jonathan Edwards said, religious people find God useful, but Christians find him beautiful for who he is in himself. That's the difference between being religious, just using God, and actually being in a lover relationship with God. It means on the one hand your life is filled with praise and adoration. Not only your prayer life but your whole life.

But on the other hand, you're living out of the inner joy and ecstasy of knowing that he's looking at you like this. When God says, "I am the groom and you are the bride," he dares to say, "I'm as ravished with you as that groom is when he sees the bride turn the corner and come right toward him." And to live a life knowing that.

Not just knowing, "Well, if I really try hard and if I really live a good life, maybe God will answer my prayers, maybe God will take me to church." That's not what this is. "Maybe God will take me to heaven, maybe God will do good things, I'll go to church and I'll do this and I'll do that." That's not what this is. Mutual joy in the excellencies of the other. Mutual adoration. Not only knowing, not only moved by his beauty but knowing he's moved by yours.

And therefore, to have this kind of relationship takes what? Number one, it takes a theology that makes it credible to believe that God is ravished with our beauty. When I say that, you know what I'm saying. I'm going to give it to the rest of this sermon. You need the theology, you need to believe certain things that make it credible. This is nice to talk about.

But a lot of the people in this room do not have a theology that makes it possible or credible to believe this. You might be moved for a minute, but if you don't get a belief structure about your own nature and about God's nature and about the nature of the world, you might be moved for a minute, you walk out there and you'll never be able to get it back.

You'll get a feeling, but you won't actually—you don't have a theology that makes it credible for you to believe day in and day out that God finds you ravishingly beautiful. And then secondly, you need to learn the existential skills of living in light of knowing you're his delight. And that's what he wants for you. Nothing less.

He's the smitten lover. I dared to call him a smitten lover. Look at him saying, "You are the most beautiful of jewels." I mean he's doing it on purpose. It's voluntary that he's given us his heart, but he has. And he says, "I want you to give now me yours."

Secondly, not only do we learn an amazing amount about what God wants for us by seeing him in act one as the smitten lover, but secondly we learn all about what's really fundamentally wrong with us by looking at acts two and three and seeing him as the wounded lover. Now what do we see in acts two and three?

I wish I had time. I cannot do details. The main thing you see first of all in act two is that every gift the bride received—children, beauty itself, the jewelry, the garments, every single thing she is now using to look gorgeous and to attract other lovers. And she's giving these things that God gave her to other lovers and other gods. And she's increasingly doing it.

You see at verse 15 it says, "You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by." And I didn't print it, but when you get down to verse 25, there's a very awful verse where he says, "You set up in every public square and you spread your legs," is what it says, "for anyone who came by." And this is addiction. It's very graphic. It's incredibly unpleasant. But we're talking about sexual addiction is the picture.

Guest (Female): Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In *The Meaning of Marriage*, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage. Whether you're single, considering marriage, or have been married for a long time, *The Meaning of Marriage* will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. *The Meaning of Marriage* is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. To request your copy today, go to gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: And then in act three it says your lovers, your gods, show up and they hack you to pieces. Now why? You know, this is vengefulness by the way. What's actually happened here is Ezekiel is prophesying to people after Jerusalem has been sacked and after the people have been taken away.

See, the fact is that historically speaking—we're going to apply it to ourselves, but historically speaking—Israel mixed in the worship of God with the worship of the gods of other nations. And what God is saying is you'll give yourself to those gods of other nations but then those nations and those gods in a sense will show up—and they did. They'll enslave you, they'll stone you, they'll hack you to pieces, they'll carry off in slavery and that's what happened.

Now what is God saying here? What do we learn here? Postmodern people have a lot of trouble with the idea of sin. They don't like the word, they don't like the concept. And yet we all know there is such a thing as evil. We know there's things that are wrong with us. We know there's things that are wrong with our society.

And as a result there are just tons of very scholarly books being written all the time now, many of them really, saying we've got to find a way for society to get a grip on this. Where can we get a concept of sin and wrong that's coherent to us? Postmodern people have trouble with the idea of an absolute moral law because they've seen historically how whenever somebody holds up an absolute moral law as a standard for sin and righteousness, how often that has been used as a way of oppressing people or getting power for their particular group or class.

The ones who are proclaiming it are trying to get on top. And so there's a fear of all that. Well, I'm not going to argue about that. Next week we're going to talk about God as king, we're going to talk about questions about that. But I would like to suggest that in this picture of God as a lover we have a compelling understanding, a radical new perspective by the Bible on what sin is.

The Bible gives us a definition of sin here that I think is actually very graspable by postmodern people. And you know what it is? I'll put it to you three ways and then I'll elaborate just a little bit. What this is saying is sin is not so much doing bad things but it's worshipping good but wrong things. Sin is not so much breaking God's rules, sin is breaking God's heart.

Sin is not so much or not only a violation of the power of God and the majesty of God, it's a violation and an abuse of the vulnerability of God and the openness of God. And until you see sin as not primarily breaking his rules as much as breaking his heart, you don't get it. You don't understand sin.

Look carefully. Number one, with this perspective, what's the essence of sin according to this? You notice how back and forth it goes between adultery, the image of adultery and the image of idolatry. Why? Why does it go back and forth between the image of adultery and image of idolatry? Because it's saying it's the same thing.

Or put it this way: every human being, every human being needs to feel desirable at a spiritual level. What will make me lovable? What will make me desirable? What will make people want me? Every human being's after that, every human being's looking for that. And what this text is telling us is whatever that thing is—it might be your—what are you going to look to for that?

Are you going to look to your financial success? Are you going to look at your talent? Are you going to look at a nice family? Are you going to look to social power or peer approval or economic success? What are you going to look to? Everybody looks to something. Everybody. Everybody says if I have that then I know I'm desirable. If I have achieved that, if I have that, if I have received that, if I have that, then I know I'm desirable.

This text is saying that at the spiritual level, whatever you're doing that, whatever you're looking to for that, you have got into bed with. See, sexual love is considerably more intense and obsessional than friend love or parent love, right? And what we're being told here is this: anything you look to besides God as your source of desirability, anything you look to as your real meaning in life, anything you look to to make you desirable that's more important than God becomes your lover god, becomes an alternate god and you become a love slave to it and you are fatally attracted to it.

This imagery is raw. This image is amazing. And yet what that means, what does that mean? It means this is a much more profound understanding of sin. Look at for example, look at the rule: do not lie, do not bear false witness, do not lie. Now if you break the rule you've broken a rule. But why do you ever break the rule?

Why do you ever lie? Think about the last time you did. Shouldn't be too hard. You lie because at that minute there is something you're in bed with. There is either human approval or the need for a good job, there's something more important to you than God, there's something that you've got to have to feel desirable.

And therefore what this is telling us is the essence of sin is not breaking the rules. The essence of sin is always spiritual adultery. That at the deepest level there is a need you've got that is actually analogous to the sexual need in the physical realm. There is a need to get in bed with someone, there is a need to say if I have you then I'm attractive, then I'm beautiful, then I know I'm worth something.

And God says anything more important to me in your life has become your lover god. You are a love slave to it. You're attracted to it. Well, what's wrong with that? Two things. Number one, you've broken God's heart. You haven't just broken his rules, you've broken his heart.

One of the commentators I read on this said when he reads verse 3 to 10 he can't help but remember something that years ago, when he was a pastor, years ago a man came to him and said he wanted to come to counsel. And he sat down and he opened a book and it was a picture album. He says, "My wife has left me," and he opened up the album and showed all the pictures of his wedding day. And he just wept and wept and wept.

And the commentator says, "I cannot read verses 3 to 10 without feeling, without believing, without sensing that that's what God is doing." He's getting out his album. He's looking at what he's done for us. He's looking at how much he loves us. He's looking how he has made himself vulnerable to us. He's looking how he's opened his heart to us.

And in a certain sense, what would it be like? I guess I'll use the—it's hard to go back and forth on this a little bit, but men, what would it be like to see her in the dress you gave her, in the necklace you gave her doing all that with somebody else? And God says imagine what that's like, imagine what that's like and then you even begin to have some idea about how I feel about sin.

I am not just a peeved king. I am not just an irritable teacher. I am not just even a humiliated father. I'm a wounded lover. And until you understand that, you have no idea what sin is about. But here's the worst thing. The lovers show up and hack her to pieces.

And is this just some kind of—it'd be fairly easy to read this and say oh this is the old vengeful double standard, you know if a woman back in those days committed adultery they killed—no, don't forget historically what is God saying? God is saying if you worship any other god—and they did—if you worship other gods of other nations they will never forgive you.

There's a lot of people in this room who so far think I'm exaggerating. You say, "Well, I know it's pretty important to me that I got into the school I'm in. I got into a really good school. I know it's important to me that my wife looks or my husband looks as good as he or she does. I know my children—I know these things are important to me but you know wait a minute here, they're not my gods for crying out loud. They're not my idols. They're not—I mean, you won't know until you fail them."

You won't know until your looks start to go that your physical beauty is an idol. But you'll start to get despondent, you'll start to get anxious. Why? It's because it's your god showing up to hack you to pieces. Your god will say, "You're ugly. You're ugly." Or until you find out that you're just not getting ahead and there's a whole lot of other people who are really your age who are moving up the ladder a lot faster and next thing you know you start to get despondent, you start to get empty, you start to get maybe really depressed even.

And deep inside there's a voice saying you should be further ahead than you are right now. At the bottom of every anxiety attack, at the bottom of all that despondency, at the bottom of all those things, you know what those things are? That's your gods showing up to hack you to pieces because they're not your true lovers. Until you understand sin like this, until you understand that sin is breaking not so much the rules of God but the heart of God, that sin is not so much doing bad things but worshipping and getting into bed with good but wrong things, you're going to be wondering why is my life going the way it's going? But this explains it. This explains what's wrong with you.

And then lastly, not only do we learn here by seeing God as the smitten lover what he wants for us and seeing God as a wounded lover what's wrong with us, but last of all by seeing God in this very last part as the faithful lover, we see how what's wrong with us can be fixed. Now somebody see, if you're a thoughtful listener—and you know there's a great thing about New York, an awful lot of you are very, very intelligent, thoughtful and you listen carefully. Unfortunately for me sometimes and I find out that I should have said that a little differently.

But therefore you keep me on my toes. And those of you who are out there like that are thinking like this: Where did God make himself vulnerable to us? I mean this sounds really moving but like where did that happen? Or if you go back to the first point, you might be thinking if there is a God, we're just little lint dust specks here. How in the world could he ever be ravished with our beauty? How could that be possible?

Well, the answer is right here. I read you—sorry I didn't print it. Verse 59 says, as we read before, verse 59 says I will deal with you as you deserve. And then verse 60 says yet I will remember the covenant I made with you. Now right away we're splattered up against the narrative tension that propels virtually every part of the Hebrew scriptures.

You know what the narrative tension is? Over and over and over again you see God on the one hand saying things that sound unconditional and on the other hand things that sound conditional. What is what you deserve? If you break the covenant what's what you deserve? What is it? Common sense and the Bible tells you.

If you break the covenant, if you reject, you're rejected. If you leave the covenant you're left, right? That's common sense. And over and over the Bible says—I mean over and over God says if you do this, if you turn from me I will turn from you. Lots and lots of conditional statements. He says if you're faithful to me I'll be faithful to you. If you turn from me I'll turn from you because he's a holy God and he's a majestic God and he's a just God.

And yet then sometimes he turns right around and says I'll never leave you. I'll never let you go. And sometimes the two are so juxtaposed against each other that you say how is this possible? Well, the answer to how he can say both 59 and 60, that both I will rain down justice on what you've done and at the same time I will never let you go, is verse 63: On the day I make atonement for you.

Where does he make atonement? By the way, in New York you should all know that word. New York City you know it, it's the word *Kippur*. This is the *Yom Kippur*. He says on the Day of Atonement. Well now, wait a minute. What—and that word atonement is a very helpful word to us in English under the circumstances in this context because what does atonement mean? Pull it apart: at-one-ment. How is he going to make us one?

Only if you understand all the sweep of this incredible biblical theme of God as our spouse in the Bible can you understand what happened in John chapter 2 at that wedding feast at Cana. And only if you understand John chapter 2, the wedding feast at Cana, can you understand everything that God says here in all these incredible passages in the Old Testament about spousal love.

What happened there? Well some of you might remember Jesus Christ and his family were invited to a wedding. And Mary his mother discovered that the stupid young teenage couple had not gotten the right caterer or something and they had run out of wine. And she comes and she says they're out of wine.

And of course that's a disaster. No wine, no wedding. No wine, no joy. It's really, I mean, certainly especially in those days and even to some degree in this day, no wine, no wedding. Okay. And he looks at her—she says do something about it. And he looks at her and says, "Woman," snaps at her almost, "Woman, my hour is not yet come."

And every place in the book of John where Jesus uses the word *hour* or the narrator John uses the word *hour*, it means the hour of his death. So Mary has said get them wine for the wedding and Jesus says it's not my time to die yet. And is that a non-sequitur? Only if you don't understand this.

Jesus Christ is looking at his mother and saying, "Mom, like almost every 30-year-old single person I know, when I'm at somebody's wedding reception, I'm sitting around thinking about what my wedding's going to be like. But I know something that other people don't know. If someday I'm going to provide wine for my wedding, if someday I am going to have my bride fall into my arms, if I'm going to have this joyful day, I've got to make atonement.

There's a barrier between me and human beings who have sinned. There's a barrier between the Father and human beings who have sinned. If I'm going to raise the cup of festal joy at my wedding feast I'm going to have to drink the cup of the divine wrath of God, the eternal justice of God. I'm going to have to go through my hour. The wine I'm going to have to provide if I'm ever going to have this spousal love with my bride, with my people, is the cup of my blood."

And only if you understand that does everything fall into place. You see that? Do you get that? Where? Where does God make himself vulnerable to us? Spouses make themselves vulnerable, spouses open their hearts, spouses strip naked. And on the cross he was stripped naked. On the cross his heart literally burst for us. Literally.

And if you want to see the other lovers, the other lovers come and hack you to pieces if you don't follow them and if you don't satisfy them but this is a lover who comes and is hacked to pieces for you. Other lovers, we read about it, they come and they strip you naked and bare. This lover was stripped naked and bare.

This lover became ugly so we could be seen as beautiful. He took it all. He took it all. And I don't know about you, but unless you believe in Jesus dying on the cross in our place, all this stuff about beauty is just smoke. I'll just let me be honest about it. When I read these passages in the Bible that talk about the glory of God and the effulgence of God and the angels smoking in his presence and they can't see and the radiance and all that, I go wow.

When I see the idea of Jesus Christ dying on the cross crushed as our true lover, as Saint Paul said, husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her that he could present her radiant and sparkling and beautiful. When I see Jesus Christ doing that, then he looks beautiful to me.

Then my heart starts to make me feel wait a minute, I would like to please this one just for who he is. And only if you see him dying for us in our place, only if you believe in something like what 2 Corinthians 5:21 says which is God made him sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Our sins are put on him, his account. His righteousness is transferred to us so we look beautiful in the sight of God. Our wedding dress.

I love to say it and a lot of you like it when I do say it. No matter what a woman looks like in reality, in a wedding dress she's gorgeous. And no matter what you're like in reality, no matter what you've done—I don't care whether you've been a hitman for the mob—if Jesus Christ dies for you, if Jesus Christ has given his life for you, that means that you're clothed in his righteousness in the sight of God and he finds you as ravishing as the groom does when the bride turns the corner and comes on after him.

How could that be? Only if there's a Jesus. Only if he died. Only if he made *Kippur*. Only if he made atonement. Now do you believe that? If you do, let me quickly suggest a couple things. This radicalizes everything to me. Can I just tell you what it does? If you start to live this way—I'm just going to be real quick. Number one, it puts marital failure in its place.

Are there not people in this room who have had people walk out on them? Are there not people in this room who have experienced marital failure and how do you feel? You feel like there's something wrong with me, I'm dirty, I'm ugly maybe, maybe. Or maybe you don't really say that to yourself but underneath real deep down it's still bothering you. God understands marital failure. God's been through marital failure. In fact if you don't understand that you don't understand sin.

If you've been through it then you have to realize that God understands and maybe you even understand something about the heart of God the rest of us don't. Instead of you being somehow kind of sub-Christians, maybe you've got a leg up on the rest of us. It puts marital failure in its place, number one.

Number two, it puts gender in its place. I'm going to say this carefully. The Bible calls all Christians sons of God, not just men but women, and calls all Christians brides of Christ, not just women but men. What does that mean? A lot of people get a little rankled at that, especially when they read in the Bible, Old New Testament.

They say, "Well back then women had an inferior social status." Right! And that's what gives these images such power because when you tell Christians in the cultural context where women didn't have power you're all sons of God, what is that saying? Women, head up! Confidence!

But when you tell all believers in a cultural situation where women did not have the power you're all brides, what is it saying? It's saying men, know your place. Have some humility. Listen, the Bible lifts up gender differences. The Bible agrees that there are such things as gender differences, absolutely. We can go to those places most of you don't like them and we could get there but I'm going to show you this is the place where Bible is also against gender rigidity.

It's against gender absolutism. It says to the macho guys you're a bride. It says to the sort of shrinking violet women you're a son. See, it relativizes gender. It puts gender in its place.

Thirdly, it puts sex in its place. One thing I did not do much of was show you how graphically sexual the Hebrew is and not only that, if you read any modern translation of Ezekiel 16 it'll never show it to you either. If you want to you can ask me about it afterwards. I'll put a paper bag over my head and I'll tell you what some of the words mean.

But if God is willing to use graphic sexual language in the way he looks at us, what he's saying is this: on the one hand sex in the biblical view has the loftiest possible conception. God is saying, "I put sex into your lives to give you just some iota of idea of the incredible closure, incredible unity, incredible joy, incredible exuberance that's going to be to have oneness with me." Sex is a pointer to the glory that's to come.

And yet at the same time it's also saying don't make sex into an idol because nothing on earth is ever really completely going to be able to satisfy that. And don't make marriage an idol. Those of you who aren't married who say, "Well, how will I ever be like a whole person?" The Bible is continually saying—well Jesus wasn't married. Why? Because we were enough.

And if you're not married Jesus will be enough. And not only that, if you are married and you don't realize that this is the ultimate lover, the ultimate spouse, the only one that will ever really give you what you need, you're going to kill the spouse you've got trying to get out of him or her what only Jesus can give you.

And lastly, it puts prayer in its place. Prayer. Let's move beyond father love to friend love. Let's move beyond friend love to spousal love. Huh? You know that song? "I will arise and go to Jesus. He will take me in his arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, ah, there are ten thousand charms." Do you know that? Do you realize it's available?

He's not going to wait for heaven to start pouring his love into your life if you go to him now. John Donne says all your problems come, all of your addictions come, all your problems come from this. He says, "Take me to you, O Lord, imprison me; for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me." John Donne wasn't afraid to say that. Don't you be afraid to say it or expect it or seek it.

Let us pray. We ask Father that you would show us what it means to know you as spouse, know you as lover. We pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelinlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.