Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Many people say that what matters most is simply living a good and loving life, but the Bible says something very different—that the way we live flows directly from our beliefs about God. This summer and through the end of September, we're going through one of Tim Keller's most extensive sermon series in which he teaches from the first three chapters of Ephesians, looking at how the Bible's central truths about salvation and grace will shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life.

Tim Keller: This is actually Paul's prayer, and we started looking at it last week. Let me read it to you. Let me read it first. For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.

Tonight, what I'd like to do is depart a little bit from my ordinary style. The ordinary style, I think, is to take a point or two and say it over and over and over again very emphatically. Instead, I'd like to actually run through here and make many points, and therefore, in a more calm and necessarily less emphatic way in order to cover the material, give you more of an inventory of what Paul's praying for here.

The main reason is this. It was just occurring to me this week a couple of times. Children, when you look at children who are transparent, they can't hide what they are. When you look at children, one of the things that has impressed me, having to raise some, has been that they are bottomless pits when it comes to love. They are bottomless pits. It doesn't matter how much you throw in there; they need and they want more.

They seem to have an absolutely insatiable desire to be told that they're loved, to be assured that they're loved, to receive evidence that they're loved. There doesn't seem to be enough for them. They're never quite satisfied. They'll just take it and they'll take and they'll take. They seem that hungry for it. They seem that needy. They'll just die without it. If you haven't expressed it in at least an hour, you're abusing them.

A lot of research shows, by the way, that's true. I look at them and I say, now, is it just that I used to be like that and I'm not anymore, or am I just a lot cooler about showing it? I think I'm still like that, and I think you are too. I think it's just as children you're so transparent that it's so obvious. Those of us who grow to adulthood who don't know how to hide how needy we are for love are considered social misfits. You have trouble making friends because you're honest; you're open. You haven't learned what are the supposedly adult skills of hiding that kind of thing, of playing it cool.

But when I look at them and I look at us and I look at myself, I say we're still like that. We are bottomless pits when it comes to needing affirmation and assurance and love. It is astonishing. Who else? Why do we need it like that? Well, that's the way we are. When you read one of these prayers and when you see the things that are promised here, there's almost a sense in which it's too much to take in.

I'm going to try my best, in a matter-of-fact way, to move through a whole pile of them just to show you what Peter calls in his second epistle in the first chapter. He talks about the great and precious promises that He bestows on us. That's what you've got here. They're even for those of you who know that you're just like my own children, those of you who know just how much of a black hole you are when it comes to love.

You'll take the whole universe in and it doesn't seem to be able to fill you up. Well, this is more than the universe. This is the uncreated God Himself. Look at what He promises. Look what He shows. Look what He actually offers. Look what He invites you to take. It is nothing less than astonishing. I'm going to try to stay calm just because after a while, you start to get numbed to somebody saying, "Look, look, look!" I don't want to do that to you, but I do want you to look.

Don't forget first of all here, he has prayed not for the thing he wants for us. Remembering that this is not a letter just to the Ephesians—we've said this a number of times, this was probably a circular letter he probably sent out to a whole lot of different churches, therefore he's really praying for us—what he asks for us above everything else is knowledge.

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. Now, you've got to imagine all of the problems that these people would have been suffering that Paul was writing to and that he was praying for. Just think of them.

Think of how serious they are. Economic problems, physical problems, social problems, and relational problems. Paul has the audacity to only pray for one thing: that you might know Him better. You might say that that's one of the themes, perhaps, of the fall, especially in our morning services where we're looking through the attributes of God and so on.

But Paul says here, what I want you to realize, an experienced Christian stands in front of every event in his or her life and says, "I do not know the specific reasons for this, but I know the general reason that this is in my life. The basic business of life is to know God better. The basic and most foundational purpose for every event and situation and problem in my life is that I might know Him better."

The reason for this problem, the reason for this tragedy, the reason for this joy, the reason for this... I have to look beyond this and see the reason for this is that I might know Him better. In the Reformation, during the Reformation and right after it, the old Protestant theologians used to always say there were two kinds of knowledge, and they used all sorts of quaint old English terms.

They used to say there's natural knowledge and spiritual knowledge, or they would say there's speculative knowledge and experimental knowledge. Speculative knowledge is what you learn in a classroom; experimental knowledge is what you learn when you actually put it to practice in the lab. The demons, James says, believe and tremble, but they don't know God. It's possible to have a great intellectual knowledge but not to have the spiritual knowledge, and that is obviously what Paul is talking about.

Heart knowledge, the Bible talks about it, and that is the thing that Paul prays for. The bottom line: every other problem that you have can be seen as a failure to internalize spiritually an attribute of God. That's what Paul's saying here. All of this comes down to: I pray for the one thing you need more than anything else, to know Him better.

Do you hear what I mean? He is saying that though you may think you need other things besides to know Him better, Paul says the most profound and foundational thing you need is to know Him better. Every problem you have, every problem possible, can be analyzed and understood as a failure to internalize one of the attributes of God. Worry could be the failure to internalize His wisdom. You know He's wise, but you don't know enough.

You need to know Him as wise better. You don't know His wisdom well enough to get over your worry. Or your guilt. You don't know His mercy well enough to get over your guilt. Or your fear, or your bitterness, or whatever. Paul will not say, "I pray, Lord, for healing. I pray, Lord, for power. I pray, Lord, for cleansing. I pray, Lord, for forgiveness. I pray, Lord, for peace." He's not praying for any of those things. Why? Because he's praying for all of them when he says one thing: "I pray that you'll know Him better."

Friends and neighbors and relatives and enemies, I say to you that you need to realize tonight that that's the main problem of your life. If that's true, you need to start to organize your time as if it is. You need to get to the business of life, to know Him better. However, he then goes on and says to know Him better, but in particular, he prays that they will know three things better. Now, we don't know why he prays for these particular three things.

He might have known something about the people he was writing to, but here they are. In the Greek, each one of them starts with the word "what". Paul's sentences are so long and so compound that in order to make it clearer to read, the translators have to break his sentence into smaller parts. However, I'd like to show you—I usually don't do this, I hope nobody's confused by this—that the translation I think, in order to break it into parts, is misleading at places.

The translation I just read from, which many of you own, is the New International Version. I think it's not a particularly helpful translation of this passage, and I'll show you why. He's actually in the Greek praying that they might know three things, that the eyes of their heart might be enlightened to three things. One is: I pray that you will know what is the hope of His calling, and what is the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is His incomparably great power.

Those are the three things. I want you to know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and the incomparably great power to us who believe. Let's just look at those three things tonight. These are three things that Paul wants you to know. He says your problems tonight are largely due to the fact you don't know these things. You might know something about them; you might even intellectually understand them, but you don't really know them. They're not vivid to you. They don't smite you in the soul.

Now, the first one. What is the hope of His calling? You notice that in the translation, if you've got the thing in front of you, it actually says the translation is, "I pray the eyes of your heart would be enlightened that you might know the hope to which He has called you." Now, that's their interpretation, but actually literally, what Paul said is "the hope of His calling". I think that's actually a little bit misleading because what they are assuming is that Paul is saying, "I want you to know the hope of your calling. I want you to know the hope to which you have been called, your calling."

But I believe, from what I can tell, Paul is actually saying, "I want you to get the hope of His calling." His calling would mean not so much what we are being called to do, but what He has done to us when He called us. Let me explain. A call is always an interruption, an intervention, trying to get someone's attention. If you're facing me and we're talking, I don't have to suddenly call you. If I'm talking to John or I'm talking to Mike and we're talking, I don't all of a sudden say, "Mike!" Because Michael will say, "What? Is there a spider falling on me? Is the house on fire?"

I say, "No, I just thought I'd call you." Well, you don't call somebody who's already paying attention to you. You call people who are not paying attention, who are not hearing you, and who are not seeing you. I call across the room if somebody does not see me or hear me or know that I want to say something. I call you up on the phone if you don't know—and you probably don't unless you have ESP—that I want to say something to you or talk to you.

The Bible says in the very same way, the only reason that you believe today is because He's called you. If you believe, it's because He called you up. When I say something to you, when I appeal to you, when I seek to tell you and offer to you the glories of Christ, my words, whether they're spoken or whether they're written or whether on tape or something like that, in and of themselves have absolutely no power to really wake you up.

However, the Holy Spirit is sort of like the phone. If I'm in my apartment and you're in your apartment and I say, "Mike, John," if you're across town, you're not going to hear me. My voice cannot reach you. It doesn't have the ability to reach you. But if I get on the phone and I dial you up, what happens is the beep or the ring of the phone—do any phones ring, by the way, anymore?

When was the last time you heard a phone ring? Well, when the phone beeps, when the phone puts out its beacon or whatever it does there, it gets your attention. You lift it up, and the phone has brought my words to you. In the same way, the Bible says He calls you. He gets your attention. He breaks in. He intervenes. You are not seeing Him and you are not hearing Him, no matter how many times you go to hear a sermon, no matter how many times you've gone to church, no matter how many times you've read a book, until He calls you.

And until, in a sense, the words of the book or the words that you're reading or the words that you're hearing are sent to you via the phone of the Holy Spirit. That is His calling. What is His calling? You read about it other places. Galatians 1:15 and 16, Paul says, "He who set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace was pleased to reveal His Son to me." You hear that? Because He called me, He showed me His Son.

Or in 1 Corinthians 1, listen: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jew and Gentile, He is Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Pretty strong statement. He says the doctrine of Christ, the gospel of Christ, is foolishness to both Greeks and Jews, both Jews and Gentiles. But to Jews and Gentiles who are called, the gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What makes a difference? It's the call.

Now, what they're asking for is that you know the hope of your calling. What is the hope of your calling? Well, the hope of your calling is this: it's the assurance that you've been called. It's the knowledge that you've been called. I like this way of thinking. Paul is saying that there is nothing more important than for you to get the hope that comes from knowing you've been called.

What is the hope of your calling? It's the assurance that you're called. J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, put it this way: he said assurance of your salvation makes you as bold as a roaring lion and as light as a soaring bird. Your assurance of your salvation is the conviction that the great disease has been healed, which is sin; the great debt has been paid, which is sin; the great problem, which is sin, has been solved; and all other problems and all other diseases and all other debts are flea bites by comparison.

Don't you see that somebody who knows that and is assured of that... the word "hope" in the Bible is the word assurance or certainty. What Paul is saying is you get that hope not by looking at yourself, but at His calling. Without mentioning any names, I know that some years ago I went to a seminar when I was a young Christian in which the minister—it was a Christian seminar on Christian living—said, "A lot of you have trouble really being assured that you are Christians, really being assured that your sins are forgiven, really being assured that God loves you and cares for you. Well," he says, "here's how I suggest you get your assurance. What you do is you sit down, go someplace and sit down, out probably outside, and say, 'Lord, if I never received you as Savior and Lord before, I do it now. If I've never given you my heart, I do it now.'"

Then, he says, "at that spot, drive a stake into the ground and either put on it or carve on it or write on it the date that you really gave yourself to Christ and you really surrendered your heart. So anytime that you worry about 'I wonder if I'm a Christian, I wonder if God really loves me,' you walk out and you look at that stake and you see that and you'll say, 'Yes, I gave myself to Christ right here.'"

Now, I never tried that. However, I think that is very wrongheaded and it's exactly the opposite of this. What he's saying is, if you want to know God loves you, look at what you've done. Remember what you've done. Take pride in what you've done. Well, you know, I'm the kind of person, and I know a lot of you are, that I would always say that would be of no assurance to me because I would say how do I know I surrendered myself that day?

If I surrendered myself that day, why did I do what I did the next day? Why did I do the thing that I just did yesterday? That doesn't help me a bit. Well, what Paul is saying here is if you want hope, if you want assurance, if you want to know that you're loved, realize that your salvation is due to His calling. Don't look at yourself; look at Him. Do you believe today?

Do you even want to believe? Are you even struggling to believe? Are you even upset because you don't believe? The Bible says that that has got to be the work of God in you. The only way you can believe, the only way you can want to believe, the only way you can seek to seek is if He's been working on you on the inside.

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jew and Gentile, Christ the power and Christ the wisdom of God. When you think about the gospel tonight and you say, "I don't know if I'm loved, I don't know if God's really working in my life," I have a question for you. Do you think the gospel is nonsense?

Do you think it's absolute foolishness? Are you unhappy over the fact that you don't believe like you'd like to? Do you want to believe? Even that proves that God is working in your life. You are not capable of that unless He's been calling and working. How you get hope? You don't look at the stake. You don't look at what you've done. You look at what He's done.

You look at how free the grace is. You look at how He comes into you and opens your heart when you're not even seeking for Him. What does He say? "I have been found by those who did not seek Me." Have you found Him? You didn't seek Him; He sought you. He opened your heart; He called you. And that's where you get your hope. And as long as you say, "Oh, I don't like that whole idea. I believe I'm a Christian because I sought Him and I put a stake in the ground there, and that's how I know that I sought Him," I say to you, you will get your assurance and you will feel loved if you realize you're a Christian because He sought you.

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.

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.

That's the hope of His calling, which is obscured by the translation, unfortunately. Secondly, he also wants you to know what is the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. His riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. Here we go again. Just one amazing thing after another. In this case, it's a little bit difficult to know exactly whether he means His inheritance in us or our inheritance in Him.

Remember what we mentioned two or three weeks ago? I think these are all wrapped up, so let's just mention them again. It says in verse 13, "We are His possession." We are His possession. It's a Greek word that means portion, and your portion was what you got from your father when he died and it was the part of the wealth that you got from your father's estate.

In those days, since there wasn't much change or upward mobility or downward mobility and so forth—it wasn't a very capitalistic society, it was much more of a hierarchical tribal society—that once you got your portion, that really was your wealth and that determined your lot in life. And we said that the amazing statement of the Bible is that we are His portion. That means we are His wealth, we are His treasure, we are His inheritance. When He looks at us, He feels wealthy. Remember that?

It's also true that we are His inheritance, but He is our inheritance. We know that in the future, what we've got waiting for us is glory; we're going to rule and reign with Him. Now, which is it? Probably it's both. Paul wants you to know in your heart the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. The fact is that when we get together, we're going to be wealthy.

Now, we can read it two ways. First of all, this means what Paul wants you to do is he wants you to know that you are a precious jewel in the sight of God. You know the place where in the Old Testament where it describes the garments of the priests? The high priest, when he walked back into the Holy of Holies before the Shekinah glory of God, wore an ephod. That was a breastplate, and he put it over his chest, over his heart. And on there were 12 jewels, and each jewel had on it the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

That was to be a picture of how Jesus Christ approaches the Father. He doesn't approach the Father empty-handed. Every one of His children is a precious—every one of us, we are—you are if you're His child. There is when God looks at you, He sees a precious jewel over the heart of Christ. Christ comes in there bearing us before the Father. When the Father looks at us, He sees an absolute beauty. He sees something absolutely exquisite.

What it means, then, to know this is to live as if you're loved. Remember how I said one of the problems in the very beginning, I said one of the problems with children is they just never ever seem really to be sure? It seems like, well, I know you told me you loved me 10 minutes ago, I know you showed me, I know you hugged me, I know you gave me something I asked for, but what have you done for me lately?

In this case, what you've got is something beyond that. You must realize by taking this truth in what it means to be loved. What it means to be loved. Two weeks, three weeks ago, I don't remember when it was, we preached in the morning service on idols. I recently was talking to one of my children about this. He was saying, "I get too scared before my tests. I get really scared about my tests."

And we sat down and thought about it, and essentially what he realized was this: that when he takes a test, academic excellence had become an idol for him. And the idol was saying, "If you do well in high school, especially this high school, you'll get into a great college, then you'll get into a great grad school, then you'll get into a great job, then you'll get into a great life. If you do well on this biology test, you're set."

Or put it another way: if you do well on this biology test, everything will be taken care of. You will be taken care of. Now see, we want someone to take care of us. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. We want people to take care of us; we all do. And so what happens is he is absolutely paralyzed before the test because he's hearing a voice like that. Not literally, I haven't taken him to a psychiatrist, but you know what I'm saying.

We're talking about the spiritual level. At the spiritual level, he's saying the only reason that you tremble before something like this is because you think if I get this, then I'll be taken care of. But what does he have to say to himself? What do you have to say to yourself about the things that you're most afraid of? You have to say, even if I get this, this will not take care of me. If I get this, I will still not be taken care of.

I am already taken care of. I'm already loved. You have to take that in. I am His inheritance. He is my inheritance. I'm rich in Him. He's rich in me. That's a shock. He looks at me and He feels like that, and therefore when I look at Him, I feel like that. I'm taken care of. This thing cannot jerk me around like that. What does it mean? I'll tell you. When you get scared, you're forgetting the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

I'll tell you another thing: when you're disobeying, when you disobey, you're doing the same thing. Not only when you're scared, but when you disobey. What do you mean? Well, put it this way. Do you remember the story of Esau? Esau came back from being out on a hunting trip. He was the oldest of the two—he was a twin, but he came out first. I always thought this was very unfair.

He and Jacob were twins, you know, but he came out first. He happened to be the one that came out first, so he gets the birthright. He's the oldest son. He gets the money; he gets the blessing of the oldest son. In that patriarchal and hierarchical society, very unfair that, but it makes for a great story. And in comes Esau and he's very, very hungry and he feels like he's ready to die.

And he smells some great pottage which Jacob is cooking, his younger brother. And he says, "I've got to have that or I'm going to starve." Very impulsive man, Esau the hairy, the red. And he looks at Jacob, and Jacob says, "What's it worth to you?" He says, "Let me have your birthright. Let me have the place of the first son." Esau, the absolute fool—and of course he's vilified for it throughout all of biblical history—he says, "Well, what good is it to have the birthright? What good is it to have the eldest son's portion of the father's inheritance when I'm going to die anyway from starvation?" And so Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.

Now, to a very great extent and in a very real sense, when you disobey God, you're doing the same thing. Do you know how many places there are where Jesus says things like this? He says, don't invite people into your home who then can invite you into their home, because if you do something and then you get a reward in this life, you'll never get a reward from Me later. You ever wonder what that sort of thing means?

Here's what it means: what he means is if you obey Him, it'll cost you. If you obey Him, you will tithe, for example. It's a very hard thing for new Christians to do, but eventually the scriptures say you should give away 10 percent of your wealth every year to what? To good causes, to the church, to the poor, to charitable organizations, to ministry organizations. Yes, you should. That's going to cost you. You're going to have to give up some things.

If you stay sexually pure according to the Ten Commandments, it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you a lot of thrills, it's going to cost you fun, it's going to cost you some relationships. If you're honest, it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you some jobs, it's going to cost you some friends. It's going to cost you a lot, a whole lot. And when you're standing before one of those forks in the road where you can either be honest or you can be pure, you can be generous, you can be what God wants you to be, or you can go over here and immediately you get instant gratification.

You're like Esau. You're looking at it. And when you disobey, what you're really saying is, well, what good is the birthright when I'm going to starve? If you think of what your birthright is, it's the glorious inheritance in the saints. When God looks at you and says, yes, obey Me, it's going to cost you, but wait until you see what I'm going to put back in. What you lose for obeying Me is nothing compared to what I'm going to give you for obeying Me eventually.

That's got to be what Jesus means when He says if you do this and this and this, I say to you, you have your reward. If you decide, as I said this this morning, didn't I? If God is your trust, God will be your reward. And if you are your own trust, you better get used to being your own reward, because that's all you're going to get. That's even true though for Christians.

I don't believe when a Christian sins that you're suddenly cut out of the will. No, no, you know better than that. It's not what it teaches. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you what you're doing. You're cutting your trust fund check for the day. What you're doing is you're cutting yourself off from Him. When you think of your glorious inheritance in the saints, you'll be able to obey. And when you think of your glorious inheritance in the saints, you'll be able to have courage.

If you act loved, you'll be able to obey. If you act loved, if you know you're loved, you'll be able to face things. Courage is seeing the unseen. Courage is always acting in accordance with what you don't see in the face of what you do. Know His glorious inheritance, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

And lastly, the third thing: the power to us. Again, the translation is actually a bit misleading. In fact, it's very misleading. This is one sentence, and you see what it says here is: I want you to know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. No, that's not right.

Excuse me, not the NIV translation. Let me tell you literally what Paul says. He says, I want you to know His incomparably great power toward us who believe according to the operation of His mighty strength. What's that word "according to" mean? What is His incomparably great power toward us who believe according to the operation of His mighty strength? In order to try to break this down into two sentences, they left out something. They took the word "according to"—*kata*. They left the *kata* out. How dare they leave a *kata* out? And a *kata* is the Greek word for according to.

They got rid of the word according to and they just put in... they translated the word "like", and it messes it up, frankly. When you believe according to somebody, that means that what they have done has caused you to believe it. If I say, I believe according to the teaching of my biology teacher, what that means is my biology teacher has caused what I believe today.

The Gospel according to Luke means the gospel as a consequence of what Luke has said. And when it says, I want you to know His incomparably great power to us who believe according to the operation of His mighty strength, it means that the very first evidence of His power is the fact you believe. We already said that. If you believe today, it's because of His mighty power.

The longer I've been a believer—and I'm unfortunately for New York City, whenever we get together, I'm always one of the oldest Christians around. Unfortunately for me, in some ways for New York City, I haven't been a Christian that long—20 years—but sometimes I feel pretty long in the tooth around here. Let me tell you something: the longer I believe, the more I know it's a miracle that I do. If you don't know that it's a miracle that you do today, you still don't know your heart very well.

You're fairly young in the faith. If you believe, it is only because of the operation of His mighty strength. It's an absolute miracle that you believe, total miracle. And there should be a wonder about it in your life. Every time you believe, every time you find yourself believing, do you look at that and say, "It's a miracle!" Do you do that? Do you say, "It's amazing!" Do you do that?

Can you enjoy and even worship God just whenever you find yourself reciting the Apostles' Creed? Every week that we do the Apostles' Creed somewhere, do you just say, yeah, I believe in God, Father, believe in God... I mean, everybody... thousands of people for millions, everybody believes. When you believe it and you say, you know, I really believe this, do you look at yourself and say, "God, I praise You. I praise You that I believe this. This is only because of the operation of Your mighty strength." Do you do that?

You're missing a great opportunity. But not only that, it says, "which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead." And I think I'll stop at that point, but let me tell you what that means. Whenever Paul wants to explain the mighty power of God working in your life, he has used this illustration again and again. He says the power of God that is working in you was exhibited when God raised Christ from the dead.

Why would Paul use that for an illustration of power? Why not use a hurricane? Lately, did you see there's been more tornadoes down there in Florida now? You saw the devastation of Hurricane Andrew; you saw the devastation in Hawaii. One time in my life—and it was absolutely unforgettable—a tornado came within just a few yards of our home and went through the words behind our home in Virginia.

Never saw anything like it. It was like a lawnmower went through there. It sounded like it, and when you walked back there, there was a section of the woods, heavily wooded, probably about from that pillar to that pillar, in which all the trees had been uprooted, just like somebody went through with a lawnmower. And when you go to Psalm 29, you'll see where it says the Lord is Lord enthroned above the storm.

A nuclear warhead is nothing compared to the power of a hurricane, and yet the power of a hurricane is nothing compared to the power of God, says the psalmist. The psalmist is completely... the psalmist says God is completely enthroned over the hurricane. He has power over the hurricane. Why doesn't Paul use that? That's very impressive. You take a look at those pictures of Hurricane Andrew and then you look at Psalm 29 and it says why the power of the hurricane is a popgun compared to the power of God. That's very impressive.

But Paul won't use the hurricane; he'll use the resurrection of Christ, and here's why. Do you know why the hurricane is so powerful? Because it's got some of the power of death. Do you know why the tornado is so powerful? It's got some of the power of death. Death is the ultimate power in the universe. Death is the one thing that you can't stop. You're surrounded with death. Why am I losing my hair? It's death.

Why is it that us baby boomers recently have been looking at recent pictures of us and we say, oh my gosh, I look just like my father, my mother? I can't believe I'm aging. But we all are; we're all dying. We are knee-deep in death; we're surrounded in death. Everything is decaying; everything is wearing out; everything is wearing down; everything is disintegrating; everything is going away; everything.

There is nothing like death as powerful as death. Death is the ultimate enemy. And God, Paul says, has defeated death. And that is the power at work in you. How do you measure the power of God in you? In ounces? In pounds? Is that how you do it? In liters? You measure it in terms of resurrection. If you're a Christian, this means that the power of death in your life has been defeated.

It means the power of spiritual death has been reversed. What is death? Take a look at a physically dead thing. You'll see that it's going to pieces. That's why it's ugly. You'll see that it is not at all responsive to stimuli. You will see that it has absolutely no ability to exert any force or power. That's physical death.

Well, the spiritual death that was at work within us has been reversed now because God has moved in with His resurrection power. And even the physical death that you and I as Christians are going to experience is not really got any power over us because what happens the minute you die physically? The minute you die physically is you become more alive.

The minute a Christian meets death and death seems to be lopping off our head, what death has actually done is it's just taken in a sense the tippy top of the seed case off of us and now we blossom. It looks like he's destroyed us, but what he's actually done is he's finally made us alive for real. Death has absolutely no power over you at all, even the physical death that we have got to face is going to do nothing but bring us into the arms of the one who says, you're my treasure.

Death has nothing anymore that it can do to make us afraid. And listen, there's an awful lot of very good books by very good psychologists that say that the fear of death and the looming, towering shadow of death is the main problem that all people deal with. It's the main psychological fear. It's the main thing that people are driven by. It's the main thing that people are repressing.

There's some wonderful, wonderful and very insightful and biblically very, very sound, though not written from a biblical perspective, works on that very thing. And Paul says do you want to know the power that's within you? The power that's within you is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. The same power that took Jesus from the grave, where he broke the bands of death as if they were threads, is now at work in you so that everything about you is working backwards from death into life.

Do you live in holy consciousness of these things? Are these the things that you continually suck on to get the sweetness out of? To the degree that you understand these things—the hope of His calling, the glorious inheritance that you are to Him and He is to you, the richness of it, the incomparably great power in those of us who believe according to the operation of His mighty strength—the more you think about that, think of the honor of that. Think of the joy of that. Think of the miracle of that. Do you know the honor of being a Christian?

I see so many of you, I see so many of me, tossing and turning at bed at night because somebody slighted us. You know, we're clawing and scraping for esteem and respect and for love. And when someone rejects us or someone criticizes us, oh look how it throws us down. How dare we do that? Christian friends, we're going to be ruling and reigning with Christ three billion years from now. We won't even be able to remember by then what a president of the United States was. And there'll probably be a few of them among us, I hope, and there won't be any difference.

Listen, do you know the honor of it? This is what I pray for you tonight: that you might know Him better. It wouldn't be the end of your troubles, because we'll always have troubles, but it would be the end of your problems. It would be the end of your inability to address your troubles. This is what I pray for you: that you might know Him better. Let's pray.

Father, as we receive the offering now, we ask that You would help us to offer ourselves up this to You. Lord, since we see that to know You better is the main business of life, help us to now organize our priorities so that those of us who don't know You or don't know that we know You will move heaven and earth to come to know You, will do anything it takes to come to know You. And those of us who need to know You better, we're going to change our lives so that we make that the main business of our lives. We see that nothing else lasts; nothing else is of any value. We thank You for these great and precious promises, and we thank You in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. There you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel quarterly journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelinlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. 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.