Gospel in Life

Tim Keller: Welcome to Gospel and Life. Where do you turn for reassurance in a crisis? When life feels out of control, we can quickly discover that the things we turn to for our deepest security don't actually have the power to help us. Today, Tim Keller looks at the story of Jonah to explore how life storms reveal what we're really trusting in and how our fears are calmed when we look to Jesus who faced the ultimate storm on our behalf.

Guest (Female): The scripture reading can be found on page eight in the bulletin, reading from Jonah chapters one, I mean chapters two and three.

Guest (Female): From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said, in my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me.

Guest (Female): I said, I have been banished from your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, oh Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you to your holy temple.

Guest (Female): Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of Thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. The word of the Lord.

Tim Keller: We continue to see sort of the relevance of Jonah's situation in the story of Jonah to our own. Think about this. Jonah was a prophet and he was obviously he had a relationship with God. He was a preacher. He had a faith. He had an understanding of who God was and who he was and so on. And he was just fine. I mean, he was moving along in his world just fine and then his world changed.

Tim Keller: Because God came to him and said, now I want you to start, I now I, I call you into a new ministry, a new situation, I want you to go to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was the you know, it was the emerging world power. And it was a violent and ruthless and imperialistic nation. And it was as it were a clear and present danger to the very existence of Jonah's country.

Tim Keller: And God calls him to go minister in the capital city of Assyria. And to use the technical theological term, Jonah freaks. He freaks out. What happens is he he had a certain amount of confidence but the new danger was too much for the confidence he had in God and he had a certain amount of humility. But to be confronted with with the people that he despised and he disliked, he didn't want to spare them, he didn't want to warn them, he didn't want to deal with them.

Tim Keller: He had a certain amount of humility, but but when when brought in in the face of these people, he was filled with disdain and hatred and and and well and bias and bigotry. In other words, Jonah's spirituality, his level of spiritual functioning was fine for his old world, but not for the new world he found himself in. Fine for the old situation, but the new situation, it just collapsed.

Tim Keller: I suggest to you and I'll get back to this at the end to try to show exactly you know, be more detailed, that's a situation in which a lot of us are finding ourselves. An awful lot of people in the city of New York have been sort of rocked out of the out of the glitz and the business of New York City and they're starting to say, wait a minute.

Tim Keller: I need to move into a new level of spiritual functioning. I need I need to I need I need to get closer to God. I need to I need to find some new source of spiritual strength beyond what I've got right now because the level I've got now, the amount I've got right now, just isn't enough. Well, what's intriguing here is that Jonah does have a breakthrough.

Tim Keller: He runs away as we know. We saw this the last couple of weeks. He's he's thrown overboard. He's in a storm in a boat and he's thrown overboard and he sinks into the water and he's swallowed by a great fish. Now, one of the things I always thought was great about this story was you know, some some people it takes radical things to get you to just finally think.

Tim Keller: And you know, in a fish there's like nothing else to do. I mean, you know, nothing I mean, I don't think you could even move your hands probably. I mean, finally, Jonah, I mean a lot of us are just too busy to think. But Jonah learns Jonah is put in this situation. He begins to reflect and think and he begins to pray and as the prayer moves along, we see that he's he has a breakthrough.

Tim Keller: And he's moved to a new level because at the end of the passage that that Beth read you, at the end of this part, the same word comes to Jonah. The same situation comes back to him. I want you to go to Nineveh and this time he can do it. He's been moved to a new level. He's had a spiritual breakthrough, he's had a spiritual transformation. And now the new situation is something that he can handle.

Tim Keller: He can meet it. See? And that's where we a lot of us are. How do we move to the next level? What we're learning here through Jonah and looking at his prayer, is we're going to learn something about the the the key to spiritual transformation, then the method of spiritual transformation, the marks of spiritual transformation and the continual need for it. Okay?

Tim Keller: The key to it, the method, how it happens, method of it, the marks of it, how do you know if it's happening to you, and lastly, the continual need for it. First, what is the secret? What is the key to spiritual transformation? Well, if you look at the end of the prayer. See, at the very end of the prayer, he he breaks into a kind of exclamation.

Tim Keller: And it's when he gets to the end, when he gets to saying the things in verse eight and nine, that's when he's released. That's when he's given the new challenge. Or actually, it's the old challenge, frankly. It's the word comes back to him and says, now will you go to Nineveh? That's when he's released. That's when he suddenly finds himself able to function in the new situation that God sends him.

Tim Keller: And what is that? What what was the key? What does he what does he get to in verse eight and nine that is the key, that the thing that when he gets that, then God lets him move on. Then he breaks through, then he's changed. It's grace. The climax of verse eight and nine, he says, those who cling to worthless idol forfeit the grace.

Tim Keller: I've been forfeiting the grace that could be mine. Salvation is literally it says, salvation is of the Lord, which is the same thing as talking about grace. That's when he's released and he has a breakthrough. Years ago, I heard somebody, I heard a a teacher when I was actually preparing as a student for ministry and I heard someone lecture on this verse.

Tim Keller: Actually the last line of verse nine, salvation is of the Lord. Literally, salvation comes, it flows out of, it's from salvation is of the Lord. And I heard this lecturer say this, this verse is the key verse in the Bible. He said, this is the summary verse of the Bible. This is the theme of the Bible. This is the whole Bible boiled down to one verse right there.

Tim Keller: Not only that, let me tell you what. He says, this is what Jesus' whole ministry and message was about, to show us this. Salvation is of the Lord. He says, this, he says, is what your life is about. Every single thing that happens to you in your life. This is what God's trying to show you in every one of those things. That salvation is of the Lord.

Tim Keller: And this is the thing you've got to relearn and relearn and relearn. Every time you're going to break through any kind of new barrier. Any time you're going to meet any kind of new challenge, salvation is of the Lord. It's it's it's the it's the essence of what makes the gospel, what makes the Bible so unique in all the thought forms of the world. Remember, I think I said last week that there's three kinds of people in the world, religious, irreligious and Christian.

Tim Keller: And the reason I say that, the reason we say that, is because the world thinks of everybody as being along one sort of spectrum with two poles. Irreligious, religious. And they say, everybody's along there somewhere. There's the most irreligious and there's the most religious, and most people are somewhere in the middle, but that's it. Everybody fits on there somewhere.

Tim Keller: But that's not what this says. That's not what the Bible says, that's not what the gospel says. There's a whole another way of going, you see, look, salvation is of the Lord. The irreligious person doesn't know they need salvation. They don't need they they say, I'm doing just fine, thank you. I'm savvy, I'm okay, I'm a good person, I don't need salvation.

Tim Keller: So the irreligious people don't believe they need salvation, but the religious people believe salvation is from them. Religious people say, I've got to be good and I've got to obey the Bible and I've got to try to live like Jesus, I've got to pray and I've got to go to church and I've got to take notes when Tim Keller preaches. I've got to do all the things that God wants.

Tim Keller: And then God will bless me and help me. In other words, religious people all the way out here say, I don't need salvation and religious, pardon me, irreligious people say, I don't need salvation. Religious people on the other end say salvation is of me. And the Bible says, neither, none of the above. Salvation is of the Lord.

Tim Keller: It's utterly and solely and surely of the Lord. This is what you need not only the first time you meet God, but it's also the key to every breakthrough. What I mean by the first time, Paul says in Colossians one six, he says, the gospel has borne fruit in you since the first day you understood the grace of God in all its truth.

Tim Keller: Isn't that an interesting verse? The gospel has borne fruit in you. Now that's that's the language of that's an organic metaphor. It's the language of spiritual transformation. The gospel began to really change you, really bear fruit in you when? Not the day you signed up, the day you said I believe it. The day you understood the grace of God in all its truth.

Tim Keller: That language means the day it dawned on you, you grasped it, it it began to overwhelm you, began to electrify you. What? The grace. So you see, grace of God is not only the the way in which essentially you have your first encounter with God. But as you can see here, it's the way you break through into every new level of spiritual reality and spiritual functioning because obviously Jonah knew something about the grace of God.

Tim Keller: In fact, when we get to chapter two, chapter four, verse two, we're going to see in a very ironic way, he said, I knew you were a gracious God. That's the reason I didn't want to come in the first place and it's a very, very interesting dialogue. But the fact is that Jonah, being a prophet, already knows about the grace of God. So what's this? He says, oh my gosh, grace.

Tim Keller: Salvation is of the Lord. Didn't he already know that? But he didn't know it like he knows it now. And by the way, if Jonah, a prophet who gets revelation from God, if Jonah did not have grace straight, if Jonah's life was distorted, deeply distorted because he didn't understand the nature of the grace of God. If he didn't have grace of God straight, do you think you have?

Tim Keller: And you know what, whether you're a pastor on my staff or whether you're somebody here saying, I don't even know if I believe in Christianity at all. The answer is, no, you don't have it straight. Because Jonah didn't. So the key to all spiritual transformation and every spiritual breakthrough is to see salvation is of the Lord. Is to grasp it in a new way. Okay, well, say, all right, you say, okay, fine, but what do you mean grasp?

Tim Keller: Okay, so let's move on to the method. What do you mean by grasp? How do I actually get hold of it? And I suggest three. You have to learn more about grace with the mind. You have to love more into grace with affections. And you have to live more into grace with the life. And by the way, this this lines up completely with Martin Luther's outline of saving faith, which is notitia, assensus, and fiducia.

Tim Keller: Notitia meaning mental knowing, assensus meaning heart consenting, and fiducia meaning life committing. But you know, they're all here. You can see Jonah doing them because it's not only the way you grasp God's grace to start with, it's the way you grasp God's grace at every new breakthrough. What are these three? Let's go through them. First of all, the mind has to get a clearer, you have to learn more about God's grace.

Tim Keller: That's whenever you break through, you you your you get a clearer intellectual grasp of it. Notice verse four. You see the two components that get clearer and clearer and clearer in your mind as you learn more and more about grace. As your life goes on. Verse four says, I have been banished, yet I look toward your temple, you lift you bring me up.

Tim Keller: Now, here's what these two components are. Good, let me put it to you like this. Grace is an undeserved gift from an unobligated giver. Grace is a completely undeserved gift from a completely unobligated giver. And in my own life, those two components to the doctrine, the biblical teaching about grace, got clear and clearer in my mind over the years.

Tim Keller: And the clearer they get, the easier it is for me to love and live into grace. Now, what do I mean by these two components? I'll make you a three quick case studies and then I'll show you how that works. First of all, imagine that you're the parent of a disobedient, rebellious, ungrateful, irresponsible teenage child. Now, what do you do with that child?

Tim Keller: You still help them, you still do everything for them. Why? They are undeserving. Yeah, they're undeserving. But the fact is, you're still obligated, you know why? You're a parent. And to be a parent is both a moral and a legal obligation. You don't get into parenting without that obligation. So in a sense, when you help a disobedient, wayward child, it's not a perfect analogy of what God's talking about in terms of grace because though the child might be undeserving, you are still under obligation.

Tim Keller: Let me give you a second example. You're in a Bible study and your Bible study leader, she's just great. And at the end of the Bible study, you all decide, let's let's all chip in and let's buy her a really nice gift. Now, by the way, a lot of your small group leaders wanted me to use this illustration. Now they didn't, actually.

Tim Keller: Now, in that situation, you as the students are not obligated to do that. That wasn't part of the deal when you when you signed up. But on the other hand, she is deserving. See, so it's it's again, it's not let me let me give you a nice example of both an undeserving, an undeserved gift from an unobligated giver. And if you live in New York, you understand this.

Tim Keller: And if you don't live in New York, you just you know, the whole sermon's you know, a waste because you won't get this illustration. And here it is. You live you live in a relatively small apartment building with relatively uh you know, thin floors and walls. And you have one absolutely obnoxious, insensitive resident. And when anybody in the apartment walks up and says, would you please turn your music down, he walks over and he turns it up and then he looks at you and slams the door in your face.

Tim Keller: And whenever anybody else in the apartment, any anybody else in the building, even turns the music on at all, he calls the police. All right? You see. And then he gets sick. And you run errands for him and you bring meals into him. And what you have is not only somebody who absolutely does not deserve that kind of sacrifice on your part and that kind of inconvenience on your part, but nobody in the whole world thinks that you have any obligation to give it.

Tim Keller: But if you do, that's grace. And one of the things one of the reasons I bring up these two components, both undeserving and unobligated, is because I have found not only in my life, but in the life of working with people over the years, that usually one or the other of those components is missing in the brain. For example, there's some people that have a very light view of their need.

Tim Keller: They don't really see the depth of their need. They don't see themselves as really being all that bad off. They don't see themselves as all that needing of forgiveness and pardon and help. They don't see themselves as that weak. They say, I'm doing fine. So they have too low of a grasp of of their need. Other people feel very unworthy. Oh, I'm so unworthy.

Tim Keller: After all the bad things I've done, but they have too light a view of God's love. They they don't understand the depths of his commitment. They believe they're very unworthy, but they just don't believe they believe actually they're too bad for him to love and accept. And what's ironic is those two kinds of people. People with too light a view of their own need or too light a view of his love and commitment to them.

Tim Keller: As different as those kinds of people are, those are very different personalities, those are very different kinds of people. Here's how they're the same. When you say to either of those people, Jesus gave his life for you. They might even agree, but it doesn't change them. It doesn't transform them. There's no inner transformation. It doesn't reconfigure their their their self-understanding, it doesn't reconfigure their identity.

Tim Keller: It doesn't at all. They might even say, sure, I believe that. But because they don't grasp the depth of their need and the depth of his commitment, that just the the idea of God's grace is isn't really it's just fuzzy for them. But then, like what's happened recently, something comes into your life. That's come into all of our lives really and you begin to see I'm weaker than I thought.

Tim Keller: I'm more cowardly than I thought. I'm more superficial than I thought. And you're humbled by it. I mean, there's a hundred ways in which what's happened in our lives have been humbling us. A woman this morning, a a therapist, a professional therapist told me that she had a a man in her who's been counseling for quite a while, who was just filled with anger and hate toward all sorts of people and saw nothing wrong with it.

Tim Keller: He felt like he people deserved his hate. And when he saw what happened on September 11th, he realized where hate can take you, and he has just been absolutely humbled. He says, you know, I'm on that same path. I'm headed for something like that. I am really wrong. I've got to do something. I need God. There are three million ways in which the stuff that's been happening here has actually brought people deeper into the sense that I really have I see the depths of my need.

Tim Keller: But then what has to happen is you've got to move over. When when when your understanding of your need and your understanding of God's love were kind of commensurate but shallow, and you suddenly begin to learn in an existential way, the depth of your need, the depth of your sin. Then you have to move over and you go back to the things you've heard a hundred times. You go back to the texts you've read a hundred times.

Tim Keller: You go back to the truths you believe maybe or you discarded because it would they weren't transforming. You go back to them and you look at them and you reflect on them and you yearn for them and you seek after them until your existential grasp of the freeness of his love catches up with your existential grasp of your undeservingness and your condition.

Tim Keller: But that's a that can be a pretty painful process by the way. When when your existential grasp of your need hasn't quite caught up yet to the existential grasp of Jesus' love. It can be a little bit like somebody's doing surgery on you and forgot the anesthesia. Really. But that's how you learn, frankly. Your your your mind gets a clearer grasp when something comes in and deepens your understanding of those two components, the depth of my need, the depth of his love.

Tim Keller: You know, completely undeserving, completely free and unobligated. And the more that increases, the clearer your mind grasps grace. And that's the first thing you got to learn grace about grace more clearly. But the second thing is you got to learn to love grace. Because it's not just a mental thing. It's not just enough to see how free the grace is, you have to see how costly the grace is.

Tim Keller: You don't just have to have a clear grasp of the freeness of the grace with the mind, you have to find your heart being drawn out in affection. Because of the costliness of the grace that you sense in your heart. Notice that whenever Jonah talks, he is not talking directly to God, he goes to the temple. Isn't this interesting? Look at verse four. He says, I'm banished from thy sight.

Tim Keller: Yet I will look to your holy temple. Look at verse seven. I remembered the Lord, my prayer rose to you to your holy temple. Why? Isn't that weird? I mean, he's nowhere near the temple. What what does it mean? It means he's thinking, he's yearning, he's relying. Look. You don't see Jonah saying, just forgive me. Just you know, I broke my oath.

Tim Keller: But could you just let it go? He doesn't do that. We don't have much hope in the world if you just let if God just lets things go. Just lets evil go, lets sin go, lets lying go, lets you see, lets hypocrisy go. Just lets uh, you know, uh but on the other hand, he doesn't say and therefore, I there's no hope. He looks to the temple. Why? Because the temple's the place of sacrifice.

Tim Keller: Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible. But it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him, and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross.

Tim Keller: During the month of May, we'll send you a copy of Rediscovering Jonah as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel and 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: Now, before somebody says, oh yeah, I always hated that about the temple. Animal sacrifice, slaughtering of animals, you know, you I agree. How primitive. I'm glad we're beyond that. Well, let me ask you to consult your own experience on something. When someone really, really wrongs you, really wrongs you, don't you see yourself caught in a kind of conundrum? And here's what I mean.

Tim Keller: On the one hand, if you don't forgive, if you say if you just vent your hatred, if you just let it all out, I'm just going to vengeance, hatred, pummel the evildoer, the enemy. Next thing you know, you found you've spread the evil. You know, you might take the evildoer out, but you haven't taken the evil out at all. If you don't forgive, evil wins. It's all over the place. There's all sorts of awful things. It's hurt you, it's hurt the person.

Tim Keller: And then all the his friends, you know, are after you and all of your friends are after all of them and on it goes. If you don't forgive, evil wins. But if you just let it go. If you just say, oh, that's all right, don't worry about it. Don't you just let it go. Evil wins again. I mean, if someone wrongs you badly and you say, oh, I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to do anything about it.

Tim Keller: So that person's out there free to keep live his life in the world. Is that good for the world? Is that good for all the other people that are ever going to be in his path that you said nothing, done nothing? Huh? Is it good for him? Here's the conundrum. If you just forgive, evil seems to win. But if you just make him pay, evil seems to win too.

Tim Keller: Now, not would you please not take what I'm about to tell you and try to apply it to US foreign policy at the moment? Actually, I want me to talk a little bit about that next week, believe it or not, in a way, indirectly. But what we're talking about here is the relationship with God. Because what Jonah does is he looks to the temple because in the temple he realizes that on the one hand, in the temple, with all that blood and guts and all this stuff that you hate, here's one thing that the temple taught him.

Tim Keller: That sin is taken seriously there. There is shedding of blood. Sin is not just said, bye, you know, who cares, don't sin is taken seriously, blood is shed, but it's not the blood of the sinner. And all Jonah knew was, somehow God's going to deal with this mystery, this horrible mystery in the midst of injustice. If I just forgive it, evil wins.

Tim Keller: But if I just make it pay, make them pay. Evil wins. And yet we know what Jonah only sensed. Jonah sensed that somehow God's going to solve it. Somehow God's going to be able to be just and the justifier of those who believe. Somehow God's going to punish sin and yet at the same time forgive me. I don't know how he's going to do it, but I know there's some kind of hope.

Tim Keller: And next thing you know, he senses God returning to him and he starts to praise the grace of God, but he doesn't know what we know. And that is that Jonah himself was a living analogy of how God really fulfilled what the temple's all about. Just as Jonah was voluntarily thrown into the stormy sea, we saw last week, to save the the sailors.

Tim Keller: So Jesus Christ, the son of God, was voluntarily thrown in. He voluntarily had himself thrown in to an ocean of eternal justice and he paid our sin. So that God can be both just and justifier. So God can forgive us and yet not just say, bye, it doesn't matter. Amazing. Jonah kind of realizes, but you see Jonah is looking to the temple.

Tim Keller: He's not just thinking about the temple. He's not saying, oh, yes, the temple, the temple, as in the sacrificial system, depicts the doctrine of propitiation. That's not what he's doing. What he's saying is, I'm looking to it. I'm yearning for it. I see some kind of some kind of severe costly mercy there. But boy, do we see what he could hardly he could only vaguely see.

Tim Keller: When you think of the freeness of God's grace to you, you're learning. But when you sense the costliness of God's grace to him, your heart is beginning to come out toward it. You're beginning to yearn for him. You're not just knowing about grace, you're loving grace. You're starting to appreciate grace. You're starting to have your hearts drawn out toward it.

Tim Keller: You're starting to be changed, you're starting to be changed. And then lastly, you have to live grace. You see, God comes along, he's learned what grace is. He's beginning to love grace. And then God comes along and says, now you go to Nineveh. And Jonah says, all right. Because the third thing you have to do is you have to start to live as if I'm a recipient of grace.

Tim Keller: I have to live it out. I have to live as if I'm that loved. I have to live as if I'm that cherished. I have to live as if I'm that bad. And yet that loved. I got to live in a new way. I'm going to practice it. And that's how you make the breakthrough. And that leads us real quickly and briefly to the third point, which I want to talk about. What are the marks of this new lived life?

Tim Keller: And you'll see two things right away, as soon as as you look at verse eight and nine. Two things that are a sign that you've had a breakthrough into an understanding of grace. A breakthrough. That there's two signs here that he did not just get more religious, but that he grasped grace. And the first sign is his fear is eroded.

Tim Keller: Something I had, you know, I've looked at the book of Jonah a lot over the years, but something I didn't ever saw in verse nine till this week. He says, I with a song of Thanksgiving will sacrifice to you, what I have vowed, I will make good. I with a song of Thanksgiving will sacrifice to you, what I have vowed, I will make good. Now, I used to think that was talking about two different things.

Tim Keller: I used to think, well, first of all, he's going to get out and he's going to go make a sacrifice. He's going to go to the temple and he's going to sacrifice bulls and goats and all that. And then he's going to go live an obedient life and pay his vows. But I don't think so. Not only does that not fit Hebrew parallelism, it usually means the same thing is said one or two different ways.

Tim Keller: Uh, but also think about this. What are his vows? His vows, of course, as a prophet, original vows, what to to to do whatever God called him to do. But what is God going to call him to do? To go to the capital city of his of of the great enemy. I mean, if in 1942, the word of the Lord came to some American minister and said, go to Berlin and preach against its wickedness and its violence.

Tim Keller: What are that guy's chances? And that's what Jonah's being called to do. And what you know what he's saying? He is saying is, if I obey, I will be sacrificing myself, but I'm going to do it with Thanksgiving. His fear has been eroded. And here's why. Look, listen, you know, you probably some of you have heard me say this before.

Tim Keller: If not, you need to hear it again anyway. And some of you have not. Here's it in a nutshell. Both religion and irreligion essentially are the same thing because they give you an identity based on performance. The reason I know I'm okay is because I'm living up to standards. Now, irreligious people have more secular standards and religious people have moral and religious standards, but basically, your identity is based on that.

Tim Keller: It's based on I can prove that I'm okay. I know I'm special. I know I'm all right. I know I'm valuable because look at look what I'm doing. And that fills you with fear because you're never sure you're being good enough. And it fills you with pride because you look down your nose at anybody who hasn't done as well as you have. And in fact, you need to look down other people to bolster and make sure that you know that make to to sort of bolster the the sense that you have that I am achieving, you know, I I am living up to my standards.

Tim Keller: The gospel comes along and says, you are not saved by giving God a perfect record or a good record, and then he owes you blessing, but rather you receive through Jesus Christ, a perfect record, which you accept by faith, and then you live for him. Because at the same moment, you see, religion and irreligion says, you can be confident if you're living up to your standards, but not humble.

Tim Keller: But if you're failing your standards, you can be humble, but you won't be confident, right? See, religion and irreligion, your your identity can either have confidence when you're living up, but not humility, or can have humility if you've been failing a lot, but not confidence. It cannot keep those two things together. The psychology, the identity based on either religion or irreligion can't keep those two things together.

Tim Keller: But what does it mean to be a Christian? What it means to be a Christian is, though you are undeserving, God loves you. God has given himself for you. God has died for you. And though you are no better than anybody else, really. Come on, let's face it. You're no better than anybody else. You are now irrevocably irrevocably loved. You are utterly loved.

Tim Keller: You are completely loved by the only person who's in the universe whose opinion counts, which means that you are on the one hand humbled by grace because you're only saved by grace. And at the same time, incredibly assured by grace, that God is absolutely for you and that he loves you, no matter what. So you're humble and bold together.

Tim Keller: What's unique about the gospel-based identity is humility and confidence intermingle. In fact, they actually are mutually self-supporting. And what does that mean? My assurance makes me less afraid. I'm affirmed. Of course, you know, the logic of Romans eight, there's some place where where Paul says, if God loved us so much that he spared not his own son.

Tim Keller: How will he then to not together with him freely give us all things? And what he's really saying is, if God gave you the diamond ring, is he going to begrudge you the ribbon? And if God did this for you, if he loves you like this, is he going to somehow abandon you and sort of you know, not take care of you? Grace strengthens me away from fear.

Tim Keller: And you can see it right here. But on the other hand, the second mark of you know, a grace changed life is not only has it assured you out of your fear, but it humbles you sweetly out of your bigotry. Because in verse eight, he says something remarkable, though it's not that easy to tell as you read it, you know, just off in English.

Tim Keller: Literally, he says, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the cases that is theirs. Their own case. Now, a case is a word that means covenant love. Sometimes it's translated loving kindness. It means permanent love, unconditional love that God gives to the people with whom he has a covenant. But you see, back then, as far as Jonah knew, the only people in with whom God had a covenant were the Hebrews.

Tim Keller: And therefore it is astounding for him to say, I realize, this is what he's saying in verse eight. I realize that those idol worshipers, those pagans that I so despised, those people in the boat that were worshiping to their little statues, those people up in Nineveh that I'd so despised. I realized something. That God's covenant love is as much theirs as it is mine.

Tim Keller: That my self-righteousness was keeping grace for me, just like their idol worship keeps grace from them. But grace is as much theirs as mine. I'm no better than they are. And that's the reason why he's willing to go to the people that he despised. In other words, the second thing you can tell about an experience of grace is not only has it assured you out of your fear, but it humbles you sweetly out of your bigotry.

Tim Keller: And you know why this is an important thing to say? Because recently, it's pretty hard to miss it over and over in the newspapers and just talking to people. You know what a lot of people are saying? One of the things that we've learned from all this is that religious fervor is dangerous. I've heard people say, I just read it, you know, today on a web page even.

Tim Keller: It says, you know, what we've learned from this is all religious fundamentalism, all religious fervor is turns to violence. Anybody who thinks they have the truth tends to violence. Nah. Let me give you an example. Think of the Amish. Now, let me ask you a question about the Amish. Amish are very conservative. Oh, yes. The Amish are patriarchal. Oh, yes. The Amish will not wear modern clothes.

Tim Keller: Oh, no. The Amish are unbelievably traditional. The Amish are incredibly religious. The Amish are not by any means secular, moral, relativistic people. They believe they have the truth. Are you really worried about Amish terrorism? It's nice to be able to laugh about that in any way at all, isn't it? No. And let me give you another example. The Khmer Rouge, atheists.

Tim Keller: Dialectical materialists. Don't believe in truth, don't believe in uh, you know, the supernatural, don't believe in God, absolute atheists, right? Don't believe in moral absolutes. And yet the Khmer Rouge were were one of the most, if not the most, murderous and genocidal regimes in the history of the world. Now, here's what when I I mentioned this to Cathy, my wife, a couple days ago, and I said, it's interesting, they're saying that religious fundamentalism, all religious fundamentalism is violent.

Tim Keller: And she said, oh, yeah. She says, it depends on what you think the fundamental is. It depends on what your fundamental is. And the reason the Amish are so peaceful, though they're obviously fundamentalist, because they know they have the same fundamental that every Christian should have and that is, what is the truth? What is the truth? The truth is, a crucified God.

Tim Keller: A God who dies for you. A God who doesn't come with spears in his hand, but nails in his hands. A God who says, here's how I'm going to win you. I'm going to give myself away. Here's how I'm going to get power and influence over your life and heal you. I'm going to sacrifice. I'm going to become poor. I'm going to lose all my power.

Tim Keller: I'm going to lose all my strength. And if that's the God that you believe is the heart of the universe, and if that's the fundamental, if that's the truth that we know we've got, that's not going to make you hostile or violent. It it's going to drain it all away. And if you don't believe there is such a thing as truth, why can't you do anything you want?

Tim Keller: It's pretty stupid to say if you think you have the truth, that's going to lead to violence. And all depends on what you think the truth is. And the truth is, a crucified God. A God who suffers for you. A God who becomes weak for you. And that takes away fear because if he would do that for me, you think he's going to let me go now?

Tim Keller: And that gets rid of bigotry. It humbles you sweetly enough to handle enemies and it strengthens you enough to handle enemies. Now, the reason, let me let me let me conclude this way. We've seen the key, we've seen the method, we've seen the marks, but last thing I want to point out is the need for continual spiritual breakthroughs. Now, I mean, in a way, I've already shown you that this is the way it happens.

Tim Keller: That you see, not only the first way through, it's the second way and the third way. Every single time you get to a barrier. Every time you get into a situation in which the level of your spiritual functioning, the level of your grasp of grace, the amount of fearlessness that you derive from grace, the amount of humility and love and sweetness you derive from grace.

Tim Keller: You see, you have a certain level of spiritual functioning, a certain level of grasp of grace, and you have a world around you. And when that world is of a certain kind of level of comfort and so on, you can handle it. But when your world changes and you suddenly realize I need a deeper grasp of grace, that's when you have to have a breakthrough.

Tim Keller: Now, I'll be let me just be real honest about this. Like I was last year week, but a little more clear maybe. I wish my old world was back. Because in that old world, in the in my pre-September 11th world, everything was safe, everything was fine. And the level of spiritual functioning I had, the level of assurance and confidence I got from my my grace of God.

Tim Keller: And the level of humility that I could, you know, with which I looked at people who are different, my enemies and so on. Uh, I was able to handle it. And guess what? The world changed and my level of spiritual functioning can't quite meet it anymore. And you see, like everybody else, I'm praying for protection. I'm praying that no more attacks would happen.

Tim Keller: I'm praying that the economy would recover. I'm praying that uh, you know, we wouldn't do too much or too little militarily. Aren't you all praying for that? I'm praying that uh, I'm praying that all these things will go well. But I suddenly realized that even though I should continue to keep praying about that, underneath I realize, here's what I was really also praying.

Tim Keller: I was also saying, Lord, I want my old world back because in that old world my little amount of spiritual faith, my little grasp of grace of God was enough and now it's not. I want my world back. I'm holding my breath. So that eventually things will be like they were and I won't have to grow. I won't have to move up a bracket.

Tim Keller: You know, there's two ways to pray if you're coming along in a boat and there's this and and you suddenly you see your boat's about to be dashed on a rock that's sticking four feet out of the water. You can say, oh Lord, get rid of the rock. Which is fine. But you could also say, or, Lord, if it's your will, why don't you raise the level of the water five feet?

Tim Keller: And even though I need to pray and I want you to pray that the old world comes back, I want you to prepare your heart to handle any world that's on its way. One of the things that amazed me about here's what let me tell you about this interesting parallel. You know, the Lord of the Rings, you're going to be awash in allusions to the Lord of the Rings when all these movies comes out, but let me tell you, in the book, there's something pretty interesting.

Tim Keller: The narrative engine, one of the main engines of the narrative of the Lord of the Rings, is you have this group of people called hobbits. They're kind of small people, like they're three and a half to four feet tall. And they live in a very safe place, and they think that that's the way the world is. And in the very beginning of the of the uh, of the book, this is what the this is how they're described.

Tim Keller: It says, they heated less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in the world and the right of all sensible folk. They came to believe that peace and plenty were the rule in the world and the right of all sensible folk. Americans. Short Americans. Americans.

Tim Keller: And then the way that, that's how we've been. But then something, there's four of them, four of them, four protagonists, four hobbits, four protagonists are drawn out into the real world and they struggle. They can't just change like that. They're not used to a world of such darkness and such evil and so such so many bad things and and so many tall things.

Tim Keller: And they don't immediately suddenly become courageous. They can't handle it for a long time. But then one of them has a transformation. It's on a battlefield and it's one of my favorite spots in the book. And this one protagonist, he's a hobbit, you know, and he's on a battlefield and suddenly who's looming over him is one of the biggest baddest guys in the book. Some kind of ancient evil, you know, sorcerer.

Tim Keller: Big. And it says, such a horror was upon him. That's our protagonist. Such a horror was upon him that he became blind and sick. You know, he's just scared. He's so scared, he doesn't even know what to do. He's been living in this safe little world. He thought that peace and plenty was the rule in Middle Earth and the right of all sensible folk.

Tim Keller: He comes out and sees the world's not like this and he can't really adjust. And now he sees this big thing in front of him. And he says, I'm just going to go under. He's he's blind and sick and then he sees just off to his left, one person standing up to this great dark sorcerer and ready to die for not only him, but everybody around him.

Tim Keller: And then this is what the this is what the text says. Pity filled his heart and great wonder and suddenly the slow kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. Now I want to tell you, I've been getting a lot of comfort from that line. Because I'm like him, I thought peace and plenty was fine. I had this little little bit of faith.

Tim Keller: You know, I I thought it was a lot. It was enough for my old world, not for the new world. But when he saw someone ready to die for him. Pity and wonder filled his heart. And the slow kindled his slow kindled courage awoke. And I realize if I keep and if you keep looking at the one who is going to die for us, the courage will awake.

Tim Keller: It really will. Let's not just pray for the old world back, though I think we need to. And I think there's a really good chance it's coming back. But let's pray for a heart ready for any world that would come. Let's pray for a new level. Let's move up. Let's grasp the grace of God so we're fearless enough and humble enough to handle the world, whatever it is.

Tim Keller: Salvation is of the Lord. Let us pray. We thank you, Father, for the possibility of spiritual transformation and breakthrough at any level, at any time in our lives. Doesn't matter whether you've been a Christian for years and years and years, doesn't matter whether you're the preacher of Redeemer. Doesn't matter whether you're a brand new person, not even sure what he or she believes.

Tim Keller: Every one of us, we need to learn, we need to love, and we need to live into the grace of God till it catches fire in our hearts and changes the very way in which we think about ourselves, the very way in which we relate to the world. And I pray, Father, that we would become the great hearts that can handle absolutely anything that comes to us.

Tim Keller: Make us the kind of neighbors and citizens and friends that the people of New York need. Make us people like Jonah who are so transformed by a new realization of their of your grace, that they're able to handle the call. Able to handle the call. To be your people in this great city. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Tim Keller: Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and 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 Gospel and Life.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2001. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.