Gospel in Life

Guest (Male): Welcome to Gospel in Life. We live in a culture that encourages us to focus on ourselves, our needs, our goals, our fulfillment. But what if our lives only made sense when we see them as part of a much bigger story?

Guest (Female): This summer, we’re featuring one of Tim Keller’s longer sermon series in which he teaches about the core truths of the Christian faith and the big picture of God’s ultimate plan of salvation for humanity, revealing how we can find real meaning, growth, and change in Christ.

Guest (Male): As usual, we’re going to be reading from Ephesians, chapter 1. And I’m going to read just verses 9 to 12 of chapter 1. Ephesians 1, verses 9 to 12: "And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with his purpose, the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory."

Tim Keller: Ephesians 1, we said, is a kind of inventory of everything we have in Jesus Christ. I don’t know if any of you... most of you are not old enough to watch cartoons. And as a result, you might not know or remember much about Scrooge McDuck. But remember what Scrooge McDuck used to do? He still does it. But I must admit that it’s a little bit anachronistic now that we have computers.

Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character who’s very wealthy. And what he does is he’s got a money bin. Remember that? And he goes into the money bin and he’s constantly counting his money. He dives in. He puts on his bathing cap and he puts on his trunks. And he sometimes goes to a diving board and he dives into his money. And he just swims around in the money, and he counts the money, and he rubs the money on himself. And he revels in the money, and he says, "I’m rich! I’m rich! And I love it!"

Ever heard of that guy? He’s still on DuckTales. You can catch him on weekday afternoons at four. Now, the important thing is to realize that that’s what Paul’s doing in this chapter. He’s taking everything you have in Christ, and he’s reveling in it. Where did Paul get his fortitude? Where did he get his endurance? Where did he get his stamina? Where did he get his vision?

He got it by taking inventory on what he had in Christ. He dives in. He bathes in it. He counts it. He revels in it. He says, "I’m rich! I’m rich! And I love it!" Only he does it with his Christianity. That’s really a secret to his power. It’s really a secret to his greatness and his stamina.

Now, we said in the very first part of this chapter, verses 3 through 8, he’s talking mostly about what we have in Christ. We have God as our Father. We’re adopted. We’re brought into the family. We talked about that.

Now for the last couple of weeks, and tonight for the last time, we see that the next section, verses 9 to 12, tells us that as Christians, we not only get God as our Father, we also get him as our King. He’s a King with a plan. And verses 10, 11, and 12, each of them tells us something else about this plan.

We read, "He has made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ."

Now, he says there’s this mystery that God has revealed. He has a plan that he’s working out that will come to fulfillment when the times are fulfilled, which means it’s a plan for history. On the last day, when history has reached its climax, we will find that everything had been working out according to that plan. That plan comes to fulfillment on the last day of history because everything in history has been leading up to it.

We’re told that God has this plan. So as Christians, we know things aren’t happening randomly, that there’s a purpose for things, that history makes sense, or will make sense eventually, that there’s a direction. And then in verse 11, we’re told the nature of that plan. And remember what we said? First of all, the plan was to reunite all things. It says down here to bring all things in heaven and on earth together, and we said in the Greek, it really means to re-bring together, to reunite.

God knows what you know. If you’ve ever been to the funeral of a child, have you ever been to an infant’s funeral where the little casket looks like a picnic cooler? Have you ever been in the presence of a marriage that broke into pieces? Have you ever been on a battle zone, in a war where people were killing each other? If you see that, you know intuitively that things break apart in this world. Everything goes to pieces.

And when you see people die, and when you see marriages disintegrate, and when you see people killing one another, when you see all the divisions, you say, "I know the world was not built for this. I know this wasn’t the original design. It couldn’t be." Everything comes apart. Everything unravels. Everything falls into pieces. Everything disintegrates. And this isn’t right. And God knows that. And we’re told here he’s going to reunite all things, which simply means that the decay of all things will be gone.

In other words, God says, "I have a plan to destroy destruction. I have a plan to kill death. I have a plan to disintegrate disintegration. I am going to make everything coherent again, everything whole. I am going to heal the universe." How is he going to do that? The last part of the verse says, by reuniting everything under the headship of Christ.

Now, this is a stupendous claim, and we looked at that too. It’s stupendous because what he says is the reason things do not cohere, the reason things disintegrate, is because Christ isn’t Head or Lord of that thing, of that institution, of that relationship. You know, it says in Hebrews 1:3, in Christ all things hold together.

And so what Paul is saying here is the same thing, that as Christ spreads out his rule, as people and as hearts and as bodies and as individuals, bit by bit by bit, come more under the headship of Christ, everything will cohere. Everything falls apart until it comes under Jesus and Jesus becomes the Master of it.

And eventually, he will be the total Master of everything and there won’t be any rebellion, every bit of rebellion will be put down. And then everything will be united, and there will be no more disintegration. I was talking to a man this summer who’s in his 70s. He’s retired and for many, many years, he was a very high-ranking official in a major US corporation.

He told me something extremely interesting, something that distressed him. And he said, because of his position, he was the one who came to know and usually had to deal with what he called major defalcations. I said, "What’s a defalcation?" He said, "That’s where some employee is ripping the company off at more than $10,000."

In other words, either they’re embezzling or some shipping clerk is writing out that they received things that really were never received and he’s just simply putting it in his bank account. In other words, when someone is ripping off or shamming us or fraudulently, in some way, ripping the company off at more than $10,000 or more. He says, "I would come and we’d have to deal with it and go to court and so forth."

And I said, "Well, how often did that happen?" And he said, "For the last 10 years, it happened on the average three times a month. Every month, 36 times a year." And he says, "Those are the ones we caught. Millions and millions of dollars." And he said, "When I was starting off with the firm, it didn’t happen that much. But the longer he was there and as time went on, there was more and more and more."

And he shared... this particular gentleman does not have the same belief system I do. And so he was sharing with me, and he says, "What I don’t understand is that as time went on, I got to know a lot of these people. I prosecuted a lot of these people." He said, "I don’t know what got into them."

Generally, they were not people who were destitute. Generally, they were not the kind of people you would think. But more and more and more, as time went on, we would have dozens and dozens, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars every year routinely being taken or stolen by company employees. And this is just the ones that we caught.

And he says, "It gets worse and worse." And he says, "What in the world would lead people to do that and why is it getting worse?" And he says, "We can’t have a corporation... you have no idea how bad this sort of thing, the dishonesty and the lack of integrity and all that... you have no idea what it’s doing to companies and all the corporations I know."

He says, "Eventually, there’s going to be a breakdown. We can’t function like this." And he says, "I don’t know what to do about it." Then I told him something I’d been reading that summer. I’d been reading about the history of great awakenings which more and more historians are studying.

And for example, in... I was telling him that in the British Isles, there was a great awakening that happened roughly every 50 years for a couple of centuries. A great awakening means suddenly there was tremendous intellectual and religious interest in the gospel. And revivals would sweep through sections of the British Isles.

It happened in the early 1800s. It happened again in the late 1850s. It happened again in the early 1900s. I think I’ve mentioned this before. For example, Northern Ireland had 300,000 people living in it. From 1857 to 1859, 100,000 of those 300,000 people were converted and joined the church.

Now, I said, one of the most interesting things that happened whenever there was widespread revival and people came to Christ and the churches filled up and all that, all the mines and the mining companies and the factories and the manufacturing companies always had to rebuild and build sheds and storehouses and barns because all the employees would start bringing back the tools and the stuff that they had been stealing over the years.

He says, for example, there was one little town in Wales that was a mining town, and the mining company had one fairly large storage facility for tools and for equipment and so on. And when the revival swept through and half the town were converted and people started coming into the church and all that, they had to build three of those facilities to deal with all the returned goods.

And the man that I was talking with, as I was recounting a lot of these things, and as I was recounting how things changed and how, for example, the class divisions changed and how workers and miners instead of being at each other's throats would have Bible studies together in the mines.

I recounted a book I read not at all by an evangelical believer-type person, but a historian who simply said the reason that the class struggle in France turned to bloodshed at the end of the 18th century where the poor rose up and just chopped off the heads of so many people and why under almost the same conditions, the class struggle in England turned to democratic resolutions was because in the earlier part of the 18th century, massive numbers of people were converted through the Great Awakening.

And I was talking to this gentleman about all this, and he looked at me and he said... and I have spoken to him before about Christianity, and we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. But this got his attention. He says, "These are documented facts?" I said, "Yes." He says, "That’s incredible to me. What would lead people to do that? What was that?"

And I said, "That was social healing. The fabric of society that under the influence of selfishness and pride and hatred and bitterness and rivalry and corruption and graft and dishonesty was actually falling apart. The economic relationships and the racial relationships and the class relationships, all these things were falling apart." I said, "When the gospel began to run through those towns like lightning, there was social healing."

There was racial reconciliation. There was class reconciliation. There was economic healing. Those towns always prospered. Sociologists still study that. They call it the Protestant Ethic. That when half the town would be converted, in so many many cases, what would happen was prosperity would begin to happen, there was almost always some kind of economic renaissance that would happen.

And he listened to me and he says, "That’s amazing." Well, see, that is exactly what verse 10 is all about. God says that if things come in under the headship of Christ, they get reunited. They get healed. They become whole. That’s true psychologically and politically and socially. It’s true spiritually and in every way.

And eventually, more and more Christ’s Kingdom is going to move through the earth until history, when it ends, all opposition to his rule will be put down and he will be all in all. And everything will be reunited, and suffering and tears and every division and every bit of brokenness will be eliminated.

That is what God is planning for. That, when you become a Christian, is what you sign up for. You become part of his company. You become one of his agents. You become part of his army to spread that. So don’t you see the first half of the chapter talks about all the great things that God is doing for you. The second half of the chapter shows you the great plan that he has enlisted you to be part of.

Guest (Female): Do you struggle to find the words to share your faith effectively with others? Most Christians, pastors included, have moments where we have trouble articulating what we believe and why our faith matters. In his book, *Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism*, Tim Keller shows how to communicate the Christian message in a way that’s clear, compassionate, and accessible, whether you’re speaking to a group or having a casual conversation with a friend.

Guest (Male): Drawing from his decades of experience connecting the gospel to real-life circumstances, Dr. Keller shows how the gospel message can speak even to the most skeptical or spiritually curious people. During the month of July, we’ll send you a copy of *Preaching* as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That’s gospelinlife.com/give. Now, here’s Dr. Keller with the rest of today’s teaching.

Tim Keller: But now, the last thing he says in this wonderful little piece of... this wonderful little section, verses 9, 10, and 11 here, is the power with which he works this out. And I’m going to actually read you because I wrote this out because it’s such an important subject and so easily misunderstood and so talked about and discussed with imbalances. You need to have a balanced understanding and view of it, that I’ve written some of these things out.

Verse 11 says the reason God can bring all of these things to fruition is because he is working every bit of history out. He is controlling every event in history, every circumstance in history, every moment in history, and working everything out in history according to his plan.

This is telling us the reason God can accomplish this great Kingdom healing of the universe is because he is working everything out in history according to his plan. See what verse 11 says? A lot of us writhe out from underneath the consequences of it, but I’d like to show you what the implications of this verse are. They’re wonderful and terrible like every great truth.

"In him we were chosen, having been predestined according to the plan..." now here’s the plan, see, "...of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." How do you and I know that God is going to reunite everything and heal everything under the headship of Christ?

Because God is Lord of history. He’s not just King of your life. He’s not just King of your heart. He’s King of history and every circumstance. And in a very bald and very blanket statement, a blunt statement, a categorical statement, an all-encompassing statement, he says he works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

He works out what? Everything. All things. Everything that happens happens in accord with, or conformity with... in the old King James Bible, it says he worketh together all things according to his plan. The word "according" has the word "cord" in it. C-O-R-D. What’s a cord? A cord is something you bind something to.

If I bind the microphone to my arm with a cord, then anywhere my arm goes, the microphone goes. If my arm goes two inches, the microphone goes two inches, and so forth. History is bound up with God’s plan. Nothing can happen that is not part of his plan. He worketh all things according to his plan. Now, what does that mean? What are the implications of it? They’re vast and they’re practical and I’ve written a couple of them down just so I can say them carefully so that you understand the balance.

First of all, the Bible teaches this: that God’s plan is the ultimate cause of anything and everything that happens. And then people say, "What? Everything and anything?" It says he worketh together all things. For example, the Bible says there are no accidents. Exodus 21:13 has a frightening statement. In Exodus 21:13, it’s talking to a man who has accidentally killed someone else.

And in the Old Testament, God set up cities of refuge so that if you killed somebody accidentally, for you to be safe from the rest of the family of the person you killed, you could flee to a city of refuge where you were safe until trial. It was a way to make sure that justice was done in an orderly way in Israel. It’s a wonderful thing. But that’s not what I’m talking about exactly.

I want to quote you the verse, though. In Exodus 21:13, it says, if you did not intentionally kill the man, but rather God delivered him into your hand, then you can flee to the city of refuge. Did you hear that? If you didn’t intentionally kill the man, then you’d say, "Well, why didn’t God say if you didn’t intentionally kill the man but it was an accident? Then you can go to the city of refuge and be safe till your trial."

That’s not what it said. It says if you didn’t intentionally kill your man but it was God delivered him into your hand, which means if you accidentally killed somebody, it was part of God’s plan. Or Proverbs 16:33 says, "The lot..." now, what’s a lot? A lot is like flipping a coin. "The lot is cast into the lap," you flip the coin, but then this Proverbs 16:33 says, "but the whole disposing thereof is from the Lord."

There are no accidents. There is no chance. You flip a coin, it comes up heads, that was part of God’s plan. The whole disposing thereof. Which means his plan includes big things and little things. Everything is worked out according to his will. Not major things. Not large events. Not three or four major events that happened this week. But everything is worked out according to his will. Nothing that happens is not part of his plan.

Okay? Second implication. Now, I’m going to give you the strongest ones first so you can sort of squirm, okay? The second one: God’s plan, we said, is the only ultimate cause of everything that comes to pass. But secondly, God’s plan includes evil as well as good deeds and events. God’s plan includes evil as well as good deeds and events.

This is saying that everything that happens, even the worst things, God is working out in his plan. Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good to them that love God. It doesn’t say some things. It says all things. Let me read you a couple of other passages that are astonishing. This means that God refuses to ever allow evil to be senseless.

Doesn’t the Bible say God hates to see someone suffer? Doesn’t the Bible say that with all your distress he is distressed? Well then, why does evil take part? Why is evil part of God’s plan? Why is it that no evil thing happens except it’s part of God’s plan? Because God is overruling evil. When it says he works out everything, that means even evil. He’s got his hands on evil and he will not let the evil do anything but further his plan.

There are some strong statements about it. For example, in Amos chapter 3, verse 6, it says, "Whenever evil befalls a city, has not the Lord caused it?" Whenever evil befalls a city, has not the Lord caused it? Then Matthew 10:29. Now, people love to quote this verse as if it’s a sweet, kind of comforting verse. It’s not at all. Matthew 10:29 says, "Yet not even a sparrow falls to the ground except by the Father’s will."

You know the song, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow"? That’s a wonderful sentiment and the song is all about how God has his eye on the sparrow and I know he cares for me. The verse is not saying anything like that. It says if the sparrow, the little sparrow, falls out of the nest and plunks down right on its head, it was part of God’s plan. How comforting. Why are we singing about this?

It doesn’t say his eye is on the sparrow. It says not a sparrow falls to the ground except by the Father’s will. It says in Isaiah 45, it says, "I am the Lord and there is no other. I bring prosperity and I create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things." Well, somebody says, "But I thought God loves us and he only wants the best for us." Of course.

Don’t forget what we said before. This King... we said this last week... this King is also a Father. Fathers are continually allowing and even bringing into the lives of their children things that the children think are painful, that the children think are ridiculous, that the children think are senseless.

This verse says that though God hates evil and God hates the suffering and he didn’t design the world that way... verse 10 says he designed the world to be whole, not to have any brokenness in it at all. But the brokenness will not thwart his will. And so the brokenness is being overruled by him. It’s being controlled by him. It’s being mastered by him.

Here are two verses about that. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph, who had been sold into slavery by his brothers. His brothers were trying to get rid of him. His brothers were trying to destroy him. His brothers were trying to kill him, and they sold him into slavery in Egypt. Yet he ascended to be the Prime Minister.

At the end here at the end of his life, he gets all of his friends together, his brothers together, and he says, "You intended it for evil, but God meant it for good." Their evil was overruled. Well, by Genesis 50:20, you can say, "Okay, now that I know why God allowed that awful, horrible, disastrous thing to happen, now I can say, 'Okay, God, that’s fine.'"

But the real problem is the terrible, awful, disastrous things that are happening to me. Since I cannot know the end, since I cannot see it, therefore I have a right to be bitter and angry and to refuse to believe that there’s any sense to it at all. The Bible continually says no, he’s working together all things to the counsel of his will to unite all things in him. He is going to overrule the evil. But it’s there as part of his plan.

God never looks at the evil that happens in your life and says, "Whoops." God never looks and says, "Now what do I do?" Here’s one of the great verses on this subject. Psalm 76, verse 10. "Surely," this is the verse, "Surely you make, O Lord, the wrath of men to praise you, and with the remainder of wrath you arm yourself."

Now that is one of the wildest verses in the Bible. You make the wrath of men to praise you, and with the remainder of wrath you arm yourself. The wrath of men, the anger, the evil, the violence, the disaster. What does God do? He weaves it into his plan. He’s not the author of evil. The Bible says God cannot create evil. It’s not the same thing as allowing a disaster.

The brokenness, the sin, the evil, the violence. Those things are things that God overrules. They’re part of his plan. Nothing happens that’s senseless because he will ultimately conquer evil, and he’s conquering it now by mastering it and working it out into his plan.

Okay, so the two things I said. I’ve come to the third thing. First, God’s plan or decree is the only and ultimate cause of everything that comes to pass. Secondly, God’s plan includes evil deeds, it includes evil events, as well as good. But thirdly, God’s plan never destroys the reality of your choices or your responsibility.

Some people say, "Well, if it’s all fixed, then it doesn’t really matter what I do." Sure, okay. That’s real practical. For example, do you believe that your days are numbered? Well, maybe today’s the day I should starve to death. I might just starve. Maybe today’s the day I’m going to starve today, so why should I eat? I don’t know if I should eat.

Of course that’s silly, because the Bible tells us that God always works out our destiny and our plan, not in spite of our choices but through our choices. The reality of our choices is always real. The reality of our responsibility is always real, and yet God is always working the situation so that everything works out according to his plan.

How could he do that? Well, he’s God for goodness’ sakes. Look, to a small degree, you can do it yourself. Have you ever tried to convince somebody who was going off in this direction? And you talk with them and you reason with them and you convince them and they say, "You’re right," and they go in this direction. You’ve affected that person. You’ve affected what’s going to happen.

And yet that person still is completely responsible. You didn’t manipulate them. You didn’t force them. It was a free choice, and yet somehow you affected them and yet at the same time kept their freedom of choice intact. Now that’s a very limited thing, it’s a partial thing, but even if we can see on the human level how that’s possible, surely God, God must know how to do it. And he does it.

For example, that’s the reason why this wonderful, wonderful doctrine, as I’ll show you here just in a second as we wind up... this wonderful doctrine shows that though all things are working together for good, you have more incentive than ever to be responsible, to work hard, to make decent choices. Let me give you a couple of examples of how these things work out.

In Acts chapter 27, there’s this tremendous place where Paul says... Paul’s in a storm and he’s on a ship. He’s a prisoner and he’s being taken to Rome and he’s on a ship and there are sailors and there are soldiers. And right before the storm, he prophesies when he’s on the boat that there will be a storm and it will be terrible and everybody will fear for their lives, but not a single life will be lost.

That’s in chapter 27, verse 22. He says, "There shall be no loss of any one’s life among you. We’ll lose the ship but not a single person will be lost." That’s a prophecy. And I think you know from the Bible that if any prophecy doesn’t come true, that means the prophet has not really spoken from God. Therefore, that prophecy is true. It’s Paul’s. It has to come true.

However, during the storm, when the ship is about to sink, everybody says, "Let’s get in the lifeboats." And Paul says in verse 31, "Unless you stay in the ship, you won’t be saved." Well, now, some of you are out there saying, "That doesn’t make sense. If it was already certain that everyone would be saved, why in the world would Paul say you’ve got to stay in the ship?"

Why doesn’t Paul say, "It doesn’t matter what you do. Why don’t you guys go do the backstroke out there?" Doesn’t really matter because since I was told by God that every single person on this ship is going to be saved, therefore it doesn’t really matter what you do. Go ahead, be irresponsible. Be stupid. It doesn’t matter, you’re going to be saved.

He doesn’t do that. He says, "If you don’t act responsibly, if you don’t stay together, if you refuse to panic, you will be lost." How can he say that? Because you see, the Christian understanding of God’s relationship to history is unique. Every other religion either falls into fatalism and determinism that says everything that happens is fixed regardless of what you do.

Or another side that says God’s not really in charge of things, it’s really up to you. How history goes all depends on the choices you make. And Christianity says history is completely, completely under the control of God, and yet your choices count. Your choices are related to your destiny. God is setting your history through your choices, not in spite of your choices, in some mysterious and wonderful way.

Now, to conclude, what does that mean? Let me tell you what it would mean. I want you to know that personally this teaching... unless you’re a very... if you’re a thoughtful person, this teaching is absolutely necessary for your sanity, for your mental health. Sure.

If you stop and think about it, if God is really in charge of all things but our choices don’t count, then you’re going to be totally passive and cynical. It doesn’t matter, everything is fixed. You see, if what’s going to be is going to be, it doesn’t matter whether I get in the lifeboat or not. It doesn’t make any difference.

On the other hand, if you don’t believe God’s sovereign, if you don’t believe God’s in complete control and masters history, and you’re a thoughtful person, you will go crazy. See, let me ask you a question. If you’re hearing me tonight saying, "Boy, he’s awfully extreme. This idea that everything is part of God’s plan, that he’s mastering everything, that not even the smallest thing, not even a leaf falls off the tree except by the Father’s plan, not even a coin flip is happening except by the Father’s plan. That’s extreme. I don’t believe in that sort of thing."

Okay? You don’t. That’s fine. You have a right to believe. But why in the world aren’t you sweating? Why in the world are you sane? Why in the world are you able to go through life basically being a fairly secure and happy person? Well, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re thoughtful and you’re consistent with your understanding and you really are going berserk.

How on earth could you live knowing that your history is really resting on your wisdom? You know the thing I like to say often, it still is very effective to me: when you think of yourself 10 years ago and you think of the choices you made, you realize what a fool you were. What a total fool you were. How you were doing things blindly. And you look back and you say, "It’s incredible that I didn’t screw my life up worse than I did."

Well, the fact is that today you’re going to look as much like a fool 10 years from now as you do your 10-year-ago self looks to you now. You ought to realize that you’re a fool today. You ought to realize that 10 years from now, you’re going to look back and say, "I cannot believe that I didn’t mess my life up worse."

If you really think that God is not in charge, then you shouldn’t make a move. You should be petrified. This is the only possible way to realize that God is in charge and I can’t really muck my life up. And yet my choices are important. They have consequences. I need to be responsible. The things that I do really are connected to my destiny.

I want to be responsible before God. This is the only, only, only particular view of the relationship of God to history that both gives you the incentive to work and to pray and at the same time gives you the ability to rest and relax. It’s the only one. I’d like you to think about it and like you to consider it.

And one last thing... oh, because Jeff gave me a deadline. We’re going to go to the Lord’s Supper and that’s important, we can’t squeeze it out. I want you to know in my own personal history, it was this doctrine that showed me how much I hated God, even after I became a Christian.

You know, the Bible says in Romans 8 and Romans 5 that before we come to Christ, we hate God. We hate the idea that he really controls our lives. The Bible says in Genesis 3 that sin essentially is trying to be as God. Remember the serpent comes to Adam and Eve and says, "You will be as God." And that’s what they wanted. They wanted to be in charge.

You know what it means to want to be God and to want to get God out of your life? It means that you want to make the blueprint for history. You want to make the blueprint for history and you do not want to have to rely on God’s wisdom. Think, for example, let me give you a rather common example.

You figure by 24 I’ll be married. You figure by the time I’m 30 I’ll be a partner. You figure by the time I’m 35 I should know what career I want. You know, you’ve had all this worked out and now you’re 24 and now you’re 30 and now you’re 35 and these things aren’t coming true. Your blueprint’s not working out. You know why you’re so upset? Because you have to rely on God’s plan instead of yours, and you hate it.

You don’t want him to be God. You don’t want him to be King. You want him to be a President so you can vote him out of office if he raises taxes. And it wasn’t until... I mean, my old pastor in Philadelphia, Jack Miller, said this was after he was a Christian.

One day he was reading a book on this whole idea about God being in complete charge, and he hated the book. And suddenly he said out loud, "Who does he think he is?" And he said suddenly I thought I heard a thought that came through very loud and clear: "I’m God, who do you think you are?"

You see, if you hate the doctrine, it may help you to see that what it comes right down to, the reason we hate the idea is because we want to be our own God and we don’t like having to depend on his wisdom. We’ve depended on our wisdom. Who really is God in your life?

A lot of us think that obedience is the one main place where we decide who’s God. You know, God says don’t commit adultery, I’d like to commit adultery, but I won’t because God said, so I’m letting him be God. So obedience is one of the areas. But submission, submission to your history that God sends you is the other area.

And when you rant and rave and you say I can’t see what good God is bringing out of this, what you’re really saying is I refuse to rely on his wisdom, I want to rely on my own. "Who does he think he is?" "I’m God, who do you think you are?" The presumption behind your anger is that your perspective is not distorted.

The presumption behind your anger is that you deserve to be in charge of your life. The presumption behind your anger is you think that your perspective is the valid one. Take off this incredible burden. It’s going to crush you. It’s going to make you bitter. Let him be God. Relax. He works all things together according to the counsel of his will. Let’s pray.

Now, Father, as we go to you in the Lord’s Supper, we want to put ourselves in your hands and see we don’t like to depend on your forgiveness, we try to be our own savior. And we don’t like to depend on your wisdom, we try to be our own lord of history.

We want to let you be Lord of history and, oh Father, how much that will help us to relax. We want to let you be our savior. Oh Father, how that’ll help us to relax. It’s not our performance and it’s not our wisdom, but it’s your performance, O Lord Jesus, and it’s your wisdom, O Lord Jesus. Help us to rely on that we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you’d like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ’s love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com/partner.

Guest (Female): Today’s sermon was recorded in 1992. 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.