Ecclesiology (The Study of the Church) – Page 18

James Montgomery Boice on “The First Miracle”

An Expositional Sermon By James Montgomery Boice on Acts 3:1-26

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.

Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” – Acts 3:1–6

In chapter 3 of this study I pointed out that Acts is a transitional book. Acts comes between the Gospels and the Epistles. When we begin to read it, the Lord Jesus Christ is still here. The characters we come across are people who knew Jesus, those who in many cases had traveled with him during the days of his ministry. Most of them were witnesses of his resurrection. But then as we go on through the book, we come to people who did not have those experiences. Paul himself did not live with Christ during the days of his earthly ministry. And there are people like Timothy and Titus, Aquila, Priscilla, and Apollos, who had not even seen him. The flow of the book is from those early days in Jerusalem, when Jesus is still present, to Rome, which is where Acts ends. Acts is a transition in another way too. It is a transition from an age in which miracles were common to a time more closely resembling our own.

Better Than Gold

Luke described the early fellowship of believers by saying, “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles” (Acts 2:43). In Acts 2 Luke does not give us any indication as to what those miraculous signs may have been. But now, when we come to Acts 3, we have the account of at least one of them.

Why did Luke choose to chronicle this particular miracle? The answer is two-fold: (1) because it was the occasion for a second sermon of Peter’s, which Luke wants us to hear; and (2) because the miracle and sermon were the cause of the first persecution of the church.

Verse 1 tells us that Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer. We were told in chapter 2 that one of the things the early church did was gather in the temple courts to pray. In time God would cause a break with formal Judaism. But the break had not come yet. The apostles and other early believers were still Jews as well as being Christians, and they were continuing to take part in the worship that their people had enjoyed for centuries.

As Peter and John were doing this, they met a man who had been placed at the temple gate to beg from those who were entering. He was unable to walk. But he had friends, and they had put him in what was obviously a good position. They must have reasoned that it would be difficult for people to enter the temple, offer heartfelt worship to God, and then, as they left, utterly ignore a poor man who clearly needed help. Peter and John saw him and stopped. We are told that Peter fixed his attention on him and demanded that the man look at them.

That is what the man wanted. I can imagine that if his experience was that of most beggars, most people would simply have walked by. If you see somebody who is needy and you do not want to help, you try not to notice him. That is what most people would have been doing. So when Peter and John stopped, looked at him, and said, “Look at us,” the man must have looked up very hopefully, thinking that they were going to give him something. I do not know what they begged with in those days. But if he had owned a tin cup, I imagine he would have held the cup out to them, no doubt thinking, This is going to be a good day. These people are going to give me money.

Then Peter uttered the words that most of us know very well: “Silver or gold I do not have.…”

Can you visualize what must have happened at that moment? The man was expecting silver or gold. So when Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have…” his eyes must have dropped, and he must have put his cup down. But Peter went on, adding, “But what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (v. 6).

Notice, first, that it was to Peter’s credit that he could utter both parts of that sentence. There is a story from the Renaissance period that I have come across in several different versions. It may or may not be true. In any case, the version I like best goes like this: St. Thomas Aquinas was in Rome. He was walking along the street with a cardinal. The cardinal noticed a beggar. Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out a silver coin and gave it to him. Then he turned to Aquinas, the great doctor of the church, and said, “Well, Thomas, fortunately we can no longer say, as Peter did, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’ ”

St. Thomas replied, “Yes, that is true. But neither can we say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ ”

It has always been sadly true that people have used religion as a means of acquiring wealth. We see much of this today, particularly in the way some “ministries” are promoted on television. The heads of these ministries make a great deal of money. Peter was not one of these people. I suppose that in the early church there were people who kept the church’s money. Later on we find that there was a treasury. Perhaps Peter had learned something from Judas, who dipped into the common purse when he needed something. Peter apparently did not. So when he went up to the temple to pray, he said quite honestly, I do not have any money. His penniless state may even have been a factor in his being close enough to God that he could also say, “But I am going to give you what I have.”

When Peter reached down, he took that man by the hand. Luke, who perhaps was interested in this miracle from the point of view of a physician, records with particularly vivid language how strength flowed into the man so that his feet and ankles could now bear his weight. He was completely restored to health. And he was so exuberant in his new-found health that he leaped—“walking and jumping, and praising God.” The language itself literally leaps, just as he leaped. This was a great, great day. And the people who knew the man because they had gone in and out of that gate many times and had seen him often were filled with amazement and undoubtedly praised God also.

In the case of the man who had been born blind, whose story is told in John 9, the man’s appearance was so altered that the people questioned whether or not this was the same man. In the case of the man healed by Peter there was no doubt at all. Everyone understood at once what had happened. A miracle had taken place by the same power that had been displayed in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and at Pentecost.

Peter’s Second Sermon

At this point Peter began to preach his second sermon. When we compare Peter’s first sermon with this one, we find some differences. Yet there are similarities too, because regardless of the circumstances, Peter was trying to do the same thing here as on the earlier occasion: He was trying to point his listeners to Jesus as the Savior of the world. He also confronted them with their sin, appealed for their repentance, and gave reasons to repent and believe.

Christ-Centered

Just as in the sermon at Pentecost, this new sermon focuses on Jesus. I suppose it would have been possible for Peter to have focused on something else. He could have focused on the miracle itself. He could have said, “This is an important thing that has happened, and I want to make sure that you understand that this really is a miracle. Look at this man. Let’s all gather around and examine him.”

Peter’s sermon could have led into a testimony service. He could have said, “Now, brother, you have been healed. Here’s your chance to give a testimony. Stand up and tell everybody what Jesus has done for you.” A testimony like that might have focused on the man. The man could have said, “Let me tell you about my experience. Let me tell you how I first came to be part of what is going on here today.…” The man could have gotten quite a bit of personal attention out of that.

Instead, Peter said, “Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus” (vv. 12–13). Jesus! This is where the emphasis of the entire sermon lies.

In speaking about Jesus, Peter is inevitably biblical. I say inevitably because this sermon is not so obviously biblical as the previous one. When we were studying the sermon Peter gave at Pentecost, I pointed out that it focuses on three great texts (see chapter 5 of this study). The way Peter preached that sermon was to quote each text at length and then explain it. The fact that he is biblical is not so obvious in this second sermon—although at the end he does quote from Deuteronomy and Genesis. Nevertheless, Peter is biblical.

The biblical nature of the sermon is apparent in Peter’s choice of words. When Peter refers to Jesus as God’s “servant,” as he does in verse 13, he uses the word for servant that occurs in the Septuagint (Greek) translation of Isaiah 52:13–53:12, where the coming servant of God (52:13) is described as the one who would be “pierced for our transgressions [and] crushed for our iniquities” (53:5). The concept of the “servant of the Lord” was well-known in Israel because of Isaiah 53 and other texts. So when Peter used “servant” and then went on to speak of “the Holy and Righteous One”—another title for the Christ that also appears in Isaiah—it is pretty clear that he was thinking of these chapters. He was teaching that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament Scriptures.

When Peter talked about Jesus, he had a number of important facts to mention. One is that Jesus was a real man. Earlier when he spoke to the paralyzed man, he referred to Jesus as “Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (v. 6). It was not some imaginary, philosophical Jesus that Peter was proclaiming. It was a Jesus they all knew, a Jesus who had lived in Nazareth and who had traveled about the country teaching and doing good. But notice: That Jesus was also the same Jesus who had died for sin and then had been raised from death by the power of God. Peter was not retreating into philosophy, nor was he de-supernaturalizing the gospel, as some modern Bible critics have done. He was preaching a biblical Jesus who was both the Son of God and fully man.

When you think about Christianity, do you think primarily about Jesus Christ? And do you understand who Jesus is by the words and doctrines of the Bible? There is a lot more that Christians talk about, of course. But properly understood, those other things all relate to Jesus in some measure. Without Jesus you do not have Christianity, and the Jesus of Christianity is the Bible’s Jesus. To be a Christian is to have a personal relationship with him. Therefore Peter was preaching about him in this sermon.

Grappling with Sin

Peter’s sermon is also direct in speaking about sin. Even more than in his earlier sermon Peter emphasizes the sin of the people in disowning Jesus and handing him over to Pilate to be crucified.

He does it in a personal way. Where Peter begins to talk about the sin of the people he uses the word “you” (the second person plural pronoun) four times. In the previous sermon he only used it in that way once: “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23, italics mine). That is pretty blunt. But I suppose that as Peter reflected on it (and even got a little better with practice), he figured that when he got around to preaching a second time he would give that point emphasis. So now he says, “You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead” (vv. 13–15, italics mine).

Peter is saying this in the very city where the people had cried out against Jesus, saying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” He is speaking to these same people, perhaps with the very same leaders who had urged them to cry out looking on, and he is saying, You did it; you crucified him. The verbs are powerful, too: “You handed him over to be killed. You disowned [him]. You killed the author of life” (italics mine).

From time to time when I am preaching I will say something about the death of Jesus and how the Jewish leaders handed him over to Pilate to be crucified. Whenever a study like that appears on the radio later, as many of my studies do, I get letters from people who object to my saying that Jews demanded the death of Jesus. That is understandable, of course, because it is a sensitive point in Judaism, and I usually answer by pointing out that the Gentiles in the person of Pilate were also guilty. We are all guilty of Jesus’ death, and if we had been there at the time, we might all have joined in the cries of those who demanded Jesus’ death. But I notice here that, sensitive as that point may be, it was certainly never any more sensitive than it was in this early day when Peter preached in Jerusalem. In spite of the sensitive nature of the issue, Peter did not allow people’s feelings to stand in the way of preaching clearly. He did not say “Jews” to the exclusion of others. He included Pilate in his “you.” He included the Romans. They had actually put him to death. But that was not what concerned Peter in this sermon. Peter’s “you” meant everybody, including the Jews and perhaps even the Jews particularly. He was not pulling his punches.

We need to realize that we are all to blame for the death of Christ in one way or another. Even though we were not there at the time Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified, it was our sins that took him there. And if Jesus were here today, we would spurn him today, just as the masses of Israel spurned him in Jerusalem long ago.

An Appeal for Repentance

Third, not only does Peter’s sermon point to Jesus and highlight the listeners’ sin—making it clear that the people of Jerusalem had something to repent of—but it also contains an appeal. This is because in the final analysis, Peter was not interested in merely condemning his hearers. On the contrary, he wanted them to repent of their sin and believe on Jesus.

He begins with the words “Now, brothers” (v. 17). He does not treat them as foreigners, aliens, or enemies. Indeed, how could he, since what he said earlier, “You disowned him… you disowned the Holy and Righteous One” (he repeated it), was the very thing Peter himself had done? Peter had denied Jesus on the night of his arrest. So he does not stand aloof now as he appeals to these people. He calls them brothers, saying, “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.” Their ignorance did not make them guiltless. Nevertheless, they were not fully aware of what they were doing, and Peter was in exactly that category himself.

Where our English text has Peter encouraging his listeners to “turn to God” (v. 19), the Greek text actually says “flee to God.” That was probably intended to suggest a powerful image. In Israel there were cities set aside from other cities as “cities of refuge.” If an Israelite accidentally killed someone else, he could flee to one of these cities and there be protected from an avenger of blood, a relative of the deceased who might try to kill him in retaliation. These cities were not to protect real murderers. If somebody intentionally killed someone, well, he was to be tried and punished, as he should be. But if the killing was accidental—if it was what we would call “manslaughter” rather than “murder in the first degree”—then the killer could flee to the city and be protected there. He was to stay there until the high priest died. Then he could go home.

There is something like that idea in Peter’s sermon. Peter told the people that they were guilty of killing Jesus, but he taught that God would forgive their sin if they would repent of it and flee to the refuge that he has provided in Christ.

Peter tells them to “repent, then, and turn to God” (v. 19). These two things always go together. Sometimes we feel sorry for what we have done. But it is not enough merely to feel sorry. Sorrow is not repentance. Repentance is feeling sorry enough to quit, and quitting means turning from sin to Jesus Christ. When Peter tells the people, “Repent… and turn to God,” he makes the connection apparent and indicates exactly what we need to do.

Reasons to Repent and Believe

The fourth thing Peter does in this sermon is offer inducements to repent and believe on Jesus. The first is: “so that your sins may be wiped out” (v. 19), that is, so that you might be forgiven. Forgiveness is what people need, and the only place anyone will ever really find forgiveness is in Christ. A director of a large mental institution in England said to John Stott some years ago, “I could send half of my patients home tomorrow if only they could find forgiveness.”

Most people carry heavy loads of guilt. This may be true of you. You may not have not told anybody what you have done. You are afraid that if you told someone else, that person would reject you. Nevertheless, you remember what you have done, and you carry the guilt of your actions around with you day by day, week by week, and year by year. Your burden keeps you from being what you might otherwise be. Moreover, you do not find forgiveness in the world. The world is not capable of that. The world can judge you for your sin or pretend to overlook it. But it is not capable of forgiving it. On one occasion the Lord Jesus Christ said to a man, “Your sins are forgiven,” and the religious leaders who were standing by replied, “Who can forgive sins but God only?” They were absolutely right. They did not recognize that Jesus was God and therefore had the right to forgive sin. In that they were wrong. But their theology was right. Only God can forgive sin. That is why the world is so unsatisfactory in this respect. Peter is saying that God can forgive your sin; he can lift that great load of guilt. Clearly this is one great inducement to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

Peter has another inducement too. It is the “times of refreshing [that] come from the Lord” (v. 19). This may be understood in different ways. On the one hand, it probably concerns a future day of blessing when the Jewish people will turn to Christ in large numbers and a final age of national blessing will come. Paul talks about it in Romans 11. On the other hand, there are also “times of refreshing” for all God’s people even now.

Many of us go through much of life feeling pretty stale in what we do. We feel like the horse that eats hay and oats on Monday, oats and hay on Tuesday, hay and oats on Wednesday, and so on throughout the week. Many people find, especially if they are in an unrewarding job, that life is often quite dreary. And sometimes even their Christianity becomes stale. They say, “I’ve been coming to church every week. But somehow it just isn’t what it used to be. I feel so flat when I come.” Well, that happens. We all go through dry spells. Times like that do not necessarily mean that we are far from God. They only mean that we feel far from God. Sometimes the cause is bad health. Sometimes the cause is the weather. A few days of gloomy rain and cold sometimes plunge me into a dark night of the soul. What we are told here is that in Christ there will be times of refreshing.

Haven’t you known times when Jesus became so real and the gospel so vivid that your whole spirit, soul, and body were revived? If you want times of refreshing, times that make life really worth living so you can say, “Oh, it is good to be a Christian,” turn from sin and follow close to Jesus.

There is another inducement here also, in verse 26. After Peter gets through saying that all that has happened in Christ is a fulfillment of prophecy and that they ought to know it because it is clear in their Bibles (he quotes from Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, 19 and Genesis 22:18), he says, “When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” First to you! To whom? Well, to the Jews! But more than that, because it was not just to Jews generally that Peter was preaching on this occasion. Peter was preaching to Jews who had been instrumental in the death of Jesus. They handed him over to be killed, disowned him, asked that a murderer be released to them, and demanded that Jesus be crucified. It is to these people, the very ones who had been instrumental in the greatest crime in human history, that God now comes with the gospel of salvation. And he comes to them first. It is God’s way of saying, “I know what you have done, but I do not hold it over you. I love you anyway. It is precisely for people like you that I caused Jesus to die.”

You and I cannot say that God sent his servant to us first of all. Many have come to Christ before us in former ages of human history. But the principle is the same. Regardless of what you have done, the low self-image you may have, or the guilt you may carry, God proclaims his Son to you. And the reason the gospel is proclaimed to you is because God says it is for you that Jesus died.

About the Author

James Montgomery Boice, Th.D., (July 7, 1938 – June 15, 2000) was a Reformed theologian, Bible teacher, and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1968 until his death. He is heard on The Bible Study Hour radio broadcast and was a well-known author and speaker in evangelical and Reformed circles. He also served as Chairman of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy for over ten years and was a founding member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. James Boice was one of my favorite Bible teachers. Thankfully – many of his books and expositions of Scripture are still in print and more are becoming available. The sermon above was adapted from Chapter 7 in Acts: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997, 2006.

An Acrostic for S.C.R.I.P.T.U.R.E

All Scripture is to/for:

S-anctify: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” – John 17:17

C-orrect: “All Scriptures is breathed out by God and profitable for…correction…” – 2 Timothy 3:16

R-ejoice: “The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart.” – Psalm 19:8

I-nstruct: “All Scriptures is breathed out by God and profitable for…instruction…” – 2 Timothy 3:16

P-urity: “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth [of the Word]…” – 1 Peter 1:22

T-each: “Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes!” – Psalm 119:12

U-nite: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name” Psalm 86:11

R-eprove: “All Scriptures is breathed out by God and profitable for…reproof…” – 2 Timothy 3:16

be E-aten: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” – Jeremiah 15:16

Spurgeon on Christ’s Love for You

The Love of Christ by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Christ loved you before you loved him.

He loved you when there was nothing good in you.

He loved you though you insulted him, though you despised him and rebelled against him.

He has loved you right on, and never ceased to love you.

He has loved you in your backslidings and loved you out of them.

He has loved you in your sins, in your wickedness and folly.

His loving heart will still eternally the same, and shed his heart’s blood to prove his love for you.

He has given you what you need on earth, and provided for you an habitation in heaven.

Now, Christian, your religion claims from you, that you should love others, as your Master loved you.

How can you imitate him, unless you love too?

With you “un” kindness should be a strange anomaly. It is a gross contradiction to the spirit of your religion,

And if you do not love your neighbor, I cannot see how you can be a true follower of Jesus.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” – John 15:12-14

A Garden That You Should Plant Daily

For best results, this garden should be planted every day:

Five Rows of “P”eas:

Preparedness,
Perseverance,
Promptness,
Politeness,
Prayer.

Three Rows of Squash:

Squash gossip,
Squash criticism,
Squash indifference.

Five Rows of Lettuce:

Let us love one another,
Let us be faithful,
Let us be loyal,
Let us be unselfish,
Let us be truthful.

Three Rows of Turnips:

Turn up for church,
Turn up with a new idea,
Turn up with the determination to do a better job tomorrow than you did today.

– Eugene Prime

Tim Keller on “Removing Idols From Your Heart”

Sermon: Removing Idols of the Heart – Series: Growth in Christ, Part 1—October 22, 1989

Colossians 3:5–11

We are in the middle of a series of studies of Christian growth, and eventually we’re going to be talking about the fruit of the Spirit here. We’re going to be looking at love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and self-control. We’re going to be looking at all of those, but for these few weeks here we’re looking at how you can create a dynamic (a cycle) in your life that results in supernatural maturity and character change, and what we have been saying is there is a combustion cycle, you might say, a dynamic, a motor that needs to be going on in the heart of a Christian.

When that cycle is going there is growth, there is progress, and if there is no progress in your life, it’s because that cycle is not going. It’s a two-part cycle, and we have said that cycle is repentance and faith. Let’s again read the passage we’ve continually looked at, but we’re going to be looking at it in more detail in one aspect here tonight. We’ve been looking at it for a number of weeks, but we’re especially going to read Colossians 3, and I’m going to read verses 5–11, because it’s about repentance, and that’s what we’re looking at tonight.

⁵Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. ⁶Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. ⁷You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. ⁸But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. ⁹Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ¹¹Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

The Word of the Lord

A quick review, but an important review. Repentance. When Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the Wittenberg door to start the Protestant Reformation (one of the watersheds in the history of the world), the first thesis was all of life is repentance. That is misunderstood by the Christian church today. I believe the average Christian believes repentance is something for the bad times. It’s something for when you have done something rather majorly wrong.

You slid back in the Christian life. Then you need these times of repentance, but otherwise a Christian is supposed to walk on (if he or she is doing it right) in a obedience and having victory over sin and over troubles and rising above things and not letting anything get to them and always rejoicing in the Lord, whatever that is. Repentance is not understood the way Martin Luther understood it, who after all was the first Protestant, and we probably better take this seriously. He might have understood more about evangelical religion than many of the rest of us.

You see, he was right, not us. The cycle by which you grow, the thing you must be doing daily, is moving from repentance to faith. You remember in Luke 7, Jesus was in the home of Simon, a respectable pillar of the community, and when he was there a woman of ill-repute came in and began to kiss Jesus’ feet and anoint them, and Simon thought to himself, “If this man knew the kind of woman she was, he wouldn’t be doing this.” Or he probably also thought this, although it’s not listed in the text, “If this man does know what kind of woman this is and he’s letting her kiss his feet, what’s going on here?”

Jesus turns to Simon, perceiving his heart, and he says, “Let me tell you a story.” Whenever Jesus says, “Let me tell you a story,” you’re in for trouble. He has you in a corner, all right. He says, “Simon, there were two debtors. A single man had two debtors, and one debtor owed the man 50 denarii …” I still don’t know exactly what that is in yen yet, but I’ll find out. “… and the other debtor owed the man 500. He forgave both.” He said, “Simon, which of the two will love him more?”

Simon said, “Well, the one who was forgiven 500 denarii.” Then he turned to Simon and said, “Simon, listen. Ever since I got here she has been kissing my feet. She loves me, Simon. You don’t,” and then he said, “Because she was forgiven much, she loves much.” The last line of the little parable is, “… he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Here is what he was saying: “The difference between you and her, Simon, is not that you are more moral and she is less, or that somehow, because we’ve changed our standards, she is more moral because she is more honest or authentic or something like that and you’re a hypocrite or a stuffed shirt. That’s not the point.

She has more love and joy in her life toward me because her repentance is deeper, because she knows the size of her debt.” Because of her repentance being deeper and deeper her joy and her love are getting greater and greater, because the dynamic was unleashed in her heart. It was going on, and it wasn’t in Simon’s heart. Simon kept repentance for the bad times. Simon says, “I’m a pretty good person. I move right along, and as a result, occasionally … Yes, I repented last January, remember, when I did this thing I shouldn’t have done, and I repented maybe the September before that.”

He’s like most of us. Repentance is for the bad times, and as a result this woman is way ahead of him. Her joy and her love are deeper because her repentance is deeper. You see, the dynamic goes like that. If you understand the gospel (that Jesus Christ has covered your sins and he actually is your Savior) that means God doesn’t accept you because of your efforts but because of what Jesus has done. You’re accepted in him. You’re loved in him. If you understand that, then when you see your sins more deeply and when you repent, that releases joy and love.

If, on the other hand, you don’t rest your life on the gospel … If you’re an atheist, or if you’re a criminal, or if you’re a very moral and religious person but you don’t rest your life on the gospel … All those people are in the same boat for the purposes of this discussion because they all basically rely not on Jesus Christ for their sense of self-worth and acceptance, but rather they rely on their own power and ability. If you’re like that, if you’re one of them, then a discovery of your sin and a discovery of your weakness is going to lead you to despair.

In other words, repentance leads to despair if you don’t understand the gospel, and repentance leads to joy and love and a burst of energy and growth if you do, because repentance leads to a greater appreciation and gratitude and thrill at what Jesus has done for us. That is the dynamic and as that’s moving along, you grow. See, it’s very misunderstood. That is how you grow, and that’s what we’re talking about. The reason I keep repeating it is because I know how many of us think about repentance, but, oh, be very careful.

If you find that to look at your sins and to get a deeper knowledge of your sins leads to despair, I have to begin to ask you on what basis do you believe God loves you? What is the basis? Is it your efforts? Is it your moral excellence? Is it coming up to your standards? If so, of course repentance is just going to push you down, but if on the other hand Jesus Christ is your Savior, then repentance is the beginning of that cycle, it gets the combustion cycle going, and that’s what we’re talking about and what we have been talking about.

Now one more thing. See, I’m trying to recap, because I know people are in an out. A lot of you weren’t here last week or the week before last, so I have to recap, but I’m trying to recap using new illustrations so even if you were here, you’re getting a chance to rethink it and rethink it so it becomes clearer. The other thing I have to recap is we have tried to talk about repentance using a different name. We’ve said repentance is identifying and removing the idols of the heart. Now the reason we’re doing that is because if you don’t understand the idols of the heart, you can still think of repentance as just basically stopping certain kinds of superficial, external behavioral sins.

As we reread the Scripture we see the things the Bible talks about such as greed or sexual immorality and so on are really idols, you see. For example, covetousness (greed) is called an idol. Real quickly, again, psychologically from our point of view, an idol is actually something you get your identity from. Now I used an illustration this morning in the morning service I can use again tonight. Rocky Balboa says he wants to go the distance. He’s going to go for it. Why? What is he going for?

He says in the most important line in the film, “If I can just go the distance, I’ll know I’m not a bum.” Now I would submit to you … I propose to you … that you have something just like Rocky does in your life you believe, and you talk to yourself about it, and you say, “If I can have that, if I can get that, then I’ll know I’m not a bum.” We all have some things. In some cases, it might be relationships. In some cases, it might be financial security or independence. In some cases, it might be achievement and status.

It’s different for everybody, but there are some things in your life you look at and you say, “If I have that, I won’t be a bum.” That’s what an idol is, because an idol is making something else besides Jesus Christ your life, and the only way you can tell if something is an idol usually is God sends a problem into your life, and you begin to see you can’t get to that thing. “I can’t get there.” When you can’t get to it, you begin to realize what really is running your life. Now that is the psychological way to look at an idol. It’s identifying with something saying, “That’s my life. Then I’ll know I’m not a bum.”

Theologically, what the Bible says is these are things you are making your righteousness. See, from God’s point of view, God says what you have done is you have gone about to patch up a righteousness of your own. Paul, for example, in Philippians, the book right before Colossians, talks about himself like this. He says, I was “… circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

He says, “… I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from [my striving], but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” Now what he is very clearly saying is he’s giving you a list of all the things that used to be his righteousness. He’s saying, “Look at my pedigree. Look at my family background. Look at my career accomplishments. Look at my intellectual attainments, but I count them all as loss.”

What he means is, “They used to be my righteousness. They were the things I relied on and said, ‘This is my honor. This is my glory. This is my dignity.’ ” He said in order to be a Christian he had to give up on that, and he said, “I count them as rubbish.” Some of you know (it depends on your translation) rubbish is a kind of nice word the translators use there because it might be offensive. He said, “I count them all as dung, excrement, bowel movement,” you see, because that had become his righteousness.

Now the fact is, though, when you become a Christian, though you say, “Now I know God accepts me only because of the righteousness of Christ” (that’s what the gospel is), you still have a big part of yourself the Bible calls the “old” man. You have the new man who says, “Only in Jesus Christ am I acceptable, and he is my righteousness. He is my honor. He is my glory.” On the other hand, you have the “old” man who says, “Are you kidding?” You know, like that little 16-year-old girl years ago I remember talking to down in Hopewell, Virginia, at that other church I invited you to today.

I remember sitting down with Debbie. She was 16 years old. She was five foot ten and weighed about 90 pounds, and she couldn’t get dates. She was always saying, “Nobody wants to ask me out.” In as gentle a way as I possibly could do it, I used to say … I mean, I took time doing this. I didn’t just throw this at her, but I gently reminded her since she was a Christian and she professed faith in Christ, we have so many great things in Christ. We have our adoption. We’re in the family. We have guidance. We have protection. We have all these things. We’re going to rule and reign with him forever.

You talk about that, and at one point she looked at me, and she said, “Well, what good is all that if you’re not popular?” You see, Debbie will mature because at some point she’ll realize you don’t say that to ministers, and a couple of years after that, she’ll realize you don’t even say that to yourself because you don’t want to believe you’re really that crass. You don’t want to believe you’re really that enslaved. You don’t want to believe you’re really that childish, but we are, you see, and we do have a little thing down there saying, “If I can just go here, I’ll know I’m not a bum.”

We do have a little thing down there saying, “If I don’t have this, then what good is everything else?” You see, that was Debbie’s righteousness. She was going about doing that. There was an “old” man (a part of her) still operating on the old basis. The job of the Christian in order to grow is to identify what those things are and to pull them out. Now, by the way, we’re not going to go into identifying. That’s what we did last week, but doing that is a process like this. You’re looking at yourself and you’re saying, “Why am I so angry? Why am I so worried? Why am I so depressed?”

Then you say, “Let me analyze this. What is actually driving me? What goals do I feel like I must have?” Here is a good question a counselor friend of mine wrote down and would give his counselees when they were trying to analyze themselves and understand themselves. He says ask yourself this: “Has something besides Jesus Christ taken title to my heart’s functional trust?” That’s a great word, functional trust. Everybody who is a Christian says, “Oh, I trust Jesus and nothing else,” and he says, “I don’t care about what you say and what you believe and what you appear to say. What is your heart functionally trusting? What does it actually trust? What does it really rely on?

Here is the whole question: “Has something besides Jesus Christ taken title to my heart’s functional trust, its functional preoccupation, loyalty, service, and delight?” You can do that when you find yourself getting extremely anxious and biting your nails down to the knuckle. When you find yourself very depressed or extremely angry, you say, “What is it out there that I’m not getting to and why is it driving me like this?” That’s if you’re failing. But what if you’re succeeding and you find yourself stretching and stretching and working harder and enjoying it less?

At a certain point, you need to ask yourself a similar question. You should say, “The desires I have for this achievement, as satisfying as they are, isn’t it possible what’s going on here is I’m trying to go about patching up a righteousness of my own? Isn’t this success actually my effort to do for myself what only Jesus Christ can do for me? Am I trying to patch up a righteousness of my own?” Now that is what repentance is, and as we said before, you realize the flesh (the “old” man) …

Talking about the word, flesh, when the Bible says, “kill the flesh” or “war against the flesh,” it’s not talking about your body. When the Bible talks about the flesh, it will say, “These are the works of the flesh,” and it will say gossip, envy, pride … things that have nothing to do with the body … because the word flesh does not mean the body, usually, in the Bible when it talks like that. Usually, when the Bible talks about the flesh versus the spirit, the flesh is Self. It’s the “old” man. It’s the side of you who still wants to go about making its own righteousness, wanting to live for its own glory.

The fact is your flesh can still operate when you become a Christian. It can still operate, absolutely. People who still have a need to dominate the discussion, the need to hold forth, the need for security, the need for love and approval … You come into the church (the kingdom) and you can still be dominated by the flesh even in all of your Christian activity. Oh, yeah. There are some people who have this deep need for certainty and control.

They come into the church, and every time they take a class on the Bible what they’re actually doing, instead of reading the Bible to say, “Ah, I need to get this into my life,” instead they’re saying, “Aha! Now I can spot heresy. Now I can spot people who are not accurate, who are not preaching the true Word of God. Now I can hit them. Now I can get them. Now I can tell them what’s wrong.” There are a lot of people, you see, who are very critical and love control and love to be always the right ones.

Before they were Christians, they were insufferable, and now that they’re Christians, they’re still insufferable because the flesh is continuing to dominate them. It’s still continuing to control them. It’s very, very important to see. Therefore, every one of us has an “old” man. Every one of us has a flesh. Every one of us has a way of going about patching up our own righteousness, and the only way in which we’re going to grow is to recognize the ways in which that happens and repent of it every day.

You’re going to see pride. You’re going to see selfishness. You’re going to see gossip and defense. By the way, I know one pastor who, when somebody says, “I really don’t see all this going on in my life,” he says, “Okay. I want you to really do a discipline for me. This week a) don’t gossip, b) don’t defend yourself, and c) don’t brag. Now watch yourself. Never, ever, ever gossip. In other words, say nothing bad about anybody else, never defend yourself, and don’t brag. You just try that for a week and just see how easy it is.”

If you start looking for that sort of thing, which is the flesh, you’re going to find it’s all over. Repentance. Now last week, after the service a couple of people came up and said, “You were specific enough about identifying it. You were specific enough about making me feel terrible. You did a wonderful job of that. I thought I was doing okay until you showed me these things, but please give me a very specific one-two-three step way of taking the things out. I mean, it’s nice to see them, but taking the things out.”

Okay. Let’s begin. I’ll be real specific, but on the other hand, it’s not that easy. Some of you get more frustrated than you ought to when you begin to see the things that are driving you, and you say, “I just can’t seem to purify my motives.” Some people say, “Now that you’ve helped me look at my motives, now that you’ve begun to help me see that, I begin to realize I can never purify my motives, and I start to feel discouraged, and I start to feel in despair.”

1. When you’re able to spot your problems like you are, half the battle is over

The only way your flesh can completely dominate you is if you are not aware of it at all. In a battle, for example, if the enemy is completely unknown to you (you don’t know where the enemy is or what their movements are at all) you’re going to get annihilated. If on the other hand, you can spot the enemy’s movements then you’re going to have a big fight. You might still lose on a given day, but at least you have a fighting chance.

In the same way, the only way you can be completely dominated by your flesh is if you don’t see it at all. If you know, because people have shown it to you and God has shown it to you, you need to control a group you’re in or if somebody has shown you that you’re extremely sensitive to what people think of you and you constantly get your feelings hurt … In other words, if you begin to get aware of your pride and the way in which your pride is shaped … Some of us, our pride (our Self, our flesh) takes the form of a need for domination and holding forth and telling everybody how they ought to live.

Others of us are just shy, self-conscious, or afraid of what people think and always getting our feelings hurt, which is just another form of self-centeredness. It’s just another form of pride. When you begin to see the form and see it for what it is, it no longer can ambush you the same way. On a given week you may fall prey to it, but if you’re able to name it, if you’re able to see it … In fact, anybody who comes and says, “Oh, I see all kinds of bad motives. I see all kinds of problems. I’m so discouraged,” I say, “You are not being really dominated by your flesh if you’re upset like that, if you can see the movement of it.

You have already basically engaged it. The most important part of the battle is actually over, and that is, you woke up.” You see, if the enemy is after you and you’re asleep, there won’t even be a battle. You’ll be dead, but if you’re awake, at least there will be a battle. If you feel the fight, that is a sign of life, and it’s a sign of growth, and it’s a sign God is working in you. The only people who are really losing are the people who have no struggle in their life at all, you see. Don’t be discouraged when you see the bad motives. That is a sign of life.

2. There are two basic parts to repenting of a sin

I began to tell you about the first one last week, but I’ll finish it and tell you the second part, too. First, you have to unmask it, and secondly, you have to take it to the cross. Unmasking it means make sure you stop doing little rationalizations, calling the sin by nice names, you see. Be ruthless with yourself. If you say, “Well, my feelings get hurt pretty easily, you mean you’re bitter. If you say, Well, I’m just very, very concerned,” you’re actually eaten up with anxiety.

You see, call it by its name, and recognize what is going on. We talked about that last week, and I just can’t go into it. The second part, which is what I really want to bring out, is the way in which you destroy the power of a sin is to take it to the cross, not to Mount Sinai. Take it to Mount Calvary, not to Mount Sinai. I’ll explain this for a minute. If you take a sin to Mount Sinai that means you’re thinking about the danger of it. You’re thinking about how it has messed up your life.

You’re thinking about all the punishments that are probably going to come down on you for it. That is not repentance; that is self-pity. Self-pity and repentance are two different things. I came to a place in my life where I realized 90 percent of what I thought I had been doing as repentance throughout most of my life was really just self-pity. The difference between self-pity and repentance is this: Self-pity is thinking about what a mess your sin got you into.

Self-pity is thinking about the consequences of it, what a wreck it’s made of you, how God will probably get me for it, or how my parents will probably get me for it, or how my boss will probably get me for it, or all the problems it will create in my life or already has created in my life. “Oh, Lord, how sorry I am this has happened. Oh, Lord, get this out of my life.” What you’re really doing is saying, “I hate the consequences of this sin,” but you haven’t learned to hate the sin. What is happening is instead of hating the sin, you’re hating the consequences of the sin, and you’re hating yourself for being so stupid.

Self-pity leads to continuing to love the sin so it still has power over you but hating yourself. Real repentance is when you say, “What has this sin done to God? What has it cost God? What does God feel about it?” Let me give you an interesting example of two guys who wrote 300 or 400 years ago. One man’s name is Stephen Charnock. Stephen Charnock tries to explain the difference between taking your sin to Mount Sinai, where you just look at the danger of it, and taking your sin to the cross, where you see what effect it’s had on God.

When you see what effect it has had on the loving God who died so you wouldn’t do it, who died for your holiness, when you begin to see that it melts you, and it makes you begin to hate the sin. It begins to lose its attractive power over you. Instead of making you hate yourself, you find you hate it, and so the idol begins to get crushed bit by bit. Listen carefully to Stephen Charnock, because he’s using old English. Charnock says there is a difference between a legalistic conviction of sin and an evangelical one.

“A legal conviction [of sin] ariseth from a consideration of God’s justice chiefly, an evangelical conviction [of sin] from a sense of God’s goodness.” Now hear this. “A legally convinced person cries out, ‘I have exasperated a power that is as the roaring of a lion … I have provoked one that is the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth whose word can tear up the foundation of the world …’ But an evangelically convinced person cries, ‘I have incensed the goodness that is like the dropping of a dew. I have offended a God that had his hands stretched out to me as a friend. My heart must be made of marble. My heart must be made of iron to throw his blood in his face.’ ”

Now you see what he’s done. Don’t you see the difference? Let me tell you. I’m going to have to close. I’ll say one more thing. You unmask the sin. We talked about that last week. You take it to the cross. The way to destroy the power of a sin in your life is to take it to the cross where, you see, Jesus Christ died so you wouldn’t do it. Jesus Christ died out of a commitment to your holiness.

When you see that and realize this sin is an insult to him because it’s putting something as more important than him in your life, yes, that will make you feel bad, but it’s not a pathological kind of bad feeling. Instead, it actually frees you, because instead of making you hate yourself, it makes you say, “I don’t want this. I know what he wants for me. This thing I can do without,” and you’re free. You have to look and see what Jesus has done. You know, there is a place in the Bible where Jesus said to the people, “Fear not those who could destroy the body, but fear him who can destroy body and soul in hell.”

Just keep this in mind. He’s talking to his disciples, all of whom were going to die horrible deaths. Stay with me for one minute here. The people who were in front of him who he talked to, we know historically how they died. Some of them were crucified, which is a pretty terrible death. Some of them were ripped to pieces. You know, one of the things they used to do to Christians was to tie one hand and one leg to this horse and one hand and one leg to this horse and just let the horses go and rip them apart. Some of them were impaled while still alive on stakes and covered with pitch and lit as torches.

Some of them had little holes drilled in their skull while they were still alive and molten lead poured into them. Jesus knew what they were going to go through, and he has the audacity to say that’s a picnic compared to hell. He says, “Don’t be afraid of any of that stuff. What’s that? That’s a Sunday school picnic compared to hell.” Jesus talked more about hell than anybody else. You want to blame hell on Paul or somebody nasty like that, I’m sorry. Go take a look. Jesus Christ experienced not just one hell but all of our hells on the cross. All of them pressed down into three hours.

Why? So you could be holy. Now if you think about it like that … Do you know what I’m doing? I’m telling you how you have to preach to yourself, because when you’re saying, like Debbie, the little 16-year-old girl, “What good is all that if you’re not popular? What good is what he’s done if you’re not popular?” You have to look. I said, “You know, Debbie …” I couldn’t do this to her because it’s a pat answer. You have to give yourself pat answers. You can’t get them from anybody else.

She should have come to the cross and said, “Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, I see what you’ve done so I wouldn’t put anything before you, so I wouldn’t do anything but be holy, because only when I’m holy am I happy. You died so I wouldn’t do this. I drop it. I don’t even want to see it. It’s an ugly thing to me because of your beauty.” That is something you should be doing every day, and usually what I do is I find a verse that works on me. You know, verses get radioactive for a while. Last week, a particular verse that got radioactive for me was the verse in Psalm 32 where it says, “You are my hiding place. You fill my heart with songs of deliverance. Whenever I’m afraid I put my trust in you.”

I began to realize, “Wait a minute here. I find all kinds of things to hide in.” If some friend calls up from some other part of the country and says, “How are things going?” and I say, “Well, we’ve only had five weeks.” “How many people are coming?” I’m so glad he asked me that. I say, “Well, I don’t know, but probably something like …” He says, “That’s wonderful.” I’m so glad he said that. I find myself hiding in that, you see.

But then all day, all week I find myself hiding in things besides him. I begin to see my flesh creeping back in. I began to see myself, and what I have to do is I have to go back to the cross with it and say, “Listen. Nothing is worth what he is. There is nothing as valuable as what he is. I put that to death.” I have to do it. You can. It’s something that is done every day. He who is forgiven much loves much. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we ask you would help us to get ahold of some of these important truths and use them in our lives. What we ask, more than anything else, is you would enable us to see the difference between repentance and self-pity, between legalistic repentance and evangelical repentance.

Father, in many of our lives we have found we’ve stayed away from looking at our sins. We’ve stayed away from dealing with our idols because we just despair when we see them, yet we realize now what we need to do. We need to recognize what they are. We need to take those things to the cross. We need to leave them there.

We pray, Father, you would enable us to do these things, because it’s only then that we grow. We want to have ourselves growing in joy and in love like that woman, because her repentance grew as well. All of life is repentance. We see that now, because all of life is your love. Your love gives us the security for that. Now Father, lead us into this. Grant us repentance into the life, for we pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.

About the Preacher

Timothy Keller is founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York City and the author of numerous books, including Every Good Endeavor, Center Church, Galatians For You, The Meaning of Marriage, The Reason for God, King’s Cross, Counterfeit Gods, The Prodigal God, and Generous Justice.

Where Are Christian Missionaries Coming From These Days?

Stats From 2010 May Surprise You!

Gordon-Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity “calculates that Christians sent out approximately 400,000 international missionaries in 2010. And nearly half of the world’s top missionary-sending countries are now located in the global South.” says Christianity Today’s Melissa Steffan.

The report puts numbers behind the dramatic rise in missionary sending from countries that many American Christians still associate only with mission destinations.

While the U.S. still does send the largest total number of missionaries, “127,000 in 2010 compared to the 34,000 sent by No. 2-ranked Brazil,” the prize for the largest percentage per million Christians in the population goes to a contender that many will find surprising.

Palestine.

This country’s vibrant population of Christians send 3,401 missionaries for every million Christians. Palestine’s “followed by Ireland, Malta, and Samoa. (Interestingly, South Korea ranks No. 5 at 1,014 missionaries sent per million church members, a sign of the continued strength of its missions movement compared to the No. 9-ranked United States at 614 missionaries sent).”

*Source: Leadership Journal

Four Acrostics for F.A.I.T.H

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. – Hebrews 11:1, 6

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. – Ephesians 2:8-10

Feeling

Afraid

Trust

Him

Faith

Asks

Impossible

Things

Humbly

Flouting

Appearances

Trust

Him

Forsaking

All

Take

Him

What Failure Does, and Doesn’t Mean

Failure doesn’t mean that you are a failure; it does mean you haven’t yet succeeded.

Failure doesn’t mean that you have accomplished nothing;

it does mean that you have learned something.

Failure doesn’t mean that you have been a fool; it does mean you have a lot of faith.

Failure doesn’t mean that you have been disgraced; it does mean that you were willing to try.

Failure doesn’t mean you don’t have it; it does mean you have to do something in a different way.

Failure doesn’t mean you are inferior; it does mean you are not perfect.

Failure doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your life; it does mean you can start afresh.

Failure doesn’t mean you should give up; it does mean you must try harder.

Failure doesn’t mean you will never make it; it does mean it will take a little longer.

Failure doesn’t mean God has abandoned you; it does mean God has a better way.

– Author unknown

How Long Would It Take to Win the Whole World to Christ?

“If you were an outstandingly gifted evangelist with an international reputation, and if, under God, you could win 1,000 persons for Christ every night of every year, how long would it take you to win the whole world for Christ? Answer, ignoring the population explosion, over 10,000 years. But if you are a true disciple for Christ, and if you are able under God to win just one person to Christ each year; and if you could then train that person to win one other person for Christ each year, how long would it take to win the whole world for Christ? Answer, just 32 years!”

– David Watson – speaking of a D. James Kennedy Illustration

Tim Keller on The Joy of Knowing Jesus

Sermon: The Joy of Jesus by Dr. Timothy Keller

Series: The Fruit of the Spirit—The Character of Christ—May 3, 1998 on John 16:19–24

I’m going to read from John 16:19–24.

¹⁹Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? ²⁰I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. ²¹A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.

²²So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. ²³In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. ²⁴Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

We’re doing a series here in the morning that has to do with character change, how we actually change. The premise is moral reformation is not the same thing as spiritual transformation. In moral reformation, you can make changes that aren’t the deep spiritual changes, the habits of the heart. One of my wife’s favorite authors is Judith Martin, “Miss Manners,” and she wrote a book called Miss Manners Rescues Civilization.

There’s one spot in there where she asks, “Where did manners come from?” Of course, she gives her learned opinion along the lines of, “Some caveman learned it paid to restrain and control his impulses through courtesy, manners, and customs. It was worth it to avoid living among people who were perpetually furious.”

Her whole idea is she says, “What are manners? Restraining your impulses, controlling your heart. Otherwise, you’ll just live amongst people who are perpetually furious.” That’s right. Moral reformation is fine. Over the years, people have been honest, people have been generous, and people have been self-controlled, simply so we don’t have to live amongst people who are perpetually furious with us.

But notice what she said. Moral reformation is restraining the heart. It’s controlling the heart. It’s sort of jury-rigging the heart. It’s not really changing the heart. What do I mean by jury-rigging? For example, you want self-control. You’re filled with fear. Use the fear to get self-control. “I’d better change, or people are going to find out.” Use the pride to get self-control. You see, out of self-interest, out of pride, out of fear, we can make these kinds of changes.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them. In fact, the world would be a terrible place without them. But that’s not the same thing as changing the habits of the heart. That’s not the same thing as, instead of restraining the heart, changing the heart so that out of the heart flows, at least with increasing naturalness and freedom, love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, integrity, courage, humility, and self-control. The fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5.

What’s the difference? We’ve said moral reformation comes by looking at the rules and conforming, but spiritual transformation comes from looking at Jesus Christ and regenerating and transforming. Paul lays it down in 2 Corinthians 3:18. He says, “With unveiled faces we contemplate the glory of the Lord and are transformed from one degree of splendor to the next.”

Spiritual transformation does not come like moral reformation, restraining the heart by looking at the rules and conforming. Spiritual transformation comes from looking at Christ and being melted with spiritual understandings of his person and work. That’s the premise. Boy, that sounds so sweet, doesn’t it? That sounds so beautiful. What in the world does it mean? I know where you are. What does it mean?

That’s what we’re doing in this series. We’re looking at the character of Christ and how that character can come in and produce deep changes in our hearts. Today I want to look at something Jesus says: that he gives us joy. There is a joy Jesus gives. On the night before he died, not only in chapter 16 of John, but also in chapter 14 and in chapter 17, in this very last discourse, the last time Jesus had with his disciples before he died, he’s continually saying, “I have a joy to give you.”

I want to look at this joy. He tells us three things in this passage about this joy. He tells us about the promise of it. It’s real. He tells us something about the structure of it, and he tells us about the growth of it, how it comes. Let’s just take a look at that for a moment. The reality, the promise of this joy, then the structure of it (what it’s made of, it’s nature), and then how it comes to us, how it grows.

1. The promise of it

The reality of it. Here’s what he says. In this passage, Jesus Christ says, “If you come to meet me and you come to know me, you will have a joy that is deep and powerful and is now.” Essentially, he says here, “Joy is inevitable if you meet me.” Right here in the very beginning he talks about this “little while and little while.” Do you see this? Right at the top. He has already said, “In a little while you will grieve; then in a little while you will see me. I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn, and then in a little while your grief will be turned to joy.”

What is he talking about? Most commentators, though they think there may be some levels of meaning here, say basically he’s talking about the time between his death and his resurrection. He says, “I’m going to die, and you’re going to weep, but when you see me, when you meet me, the resurrected Lord, you’ll rejoice.” You will rejoice. He doesn’t say, “Some of you who are more emotional in temperament will rejoice.” He doesn’t say, “Some of you who have nicer lives will rejoice.” He says, “You all will rejoice.”

The reason it’s important to see what he’s saying here … He’s not saying, “You will see me at the second coming and rejoice.” He is not saying, “You will see me on the last day, you will see me when you die and go to heaven and rejoice.” He says, “When you see me resurrected you’ll rejoice.” Now why is that so important? Those of you who were here on Easter remember this, but those of you who weren’t here, don’t.

In a nutshell, why is it that Jesus Christ’s tomb was lost? Why is it that by AD 120 Christians weren’t even sure where it was anymore? Why is it, when the tomb of every prophet, every religious founder was always venerated …? It was a shrine. It was a place of pilgrimage. How could the Christians have lost the tomb of Jesus?

We said the reason would be that when you have your son, your son’s room, your son’s things, aren’t all that important. There’s nothing special about his room. There’s nothing special about his shoes, about his clothes, if you have your son. But if your son goes away, or your son leaves for a long time, or your son dies, suddenly those things become important.

The reason the tomb didn’t matter to them was that they had him. He wasn’t away. Real Christianity is to meet the risen Lord. It’s not just the apostles who have met the risen Lord. Anyone who’s a Christian doesn’t need to go to the tomb, because you have him. You don’t need a relic. You have him. You have a relationship. There’s a giving and taking of love.

Why is that so important? Because what Jesus is saying here is Christianity does not only promise this incredible joy in the sky, by and by. He doesn’t say, “You’ll see me in heaven and you’ll rejoice. You’ll see me on the last day and rejoice.” He says when you meet the risen Lord you rejoice. He says, “This is it. Everybody, you’ll have this joy. It will come. It has to come.”

In fact, the illustration of the woman … He says, “Joy is like a woman in labor; when her time has come, she has the child.” I’ve watched, very intimately, a woman have children three times, and I know one thing about labor and children. It will come. When it comes, it’s coming. There’s no stopping it. You don’t say, “Well honey, could you hold it until next week so we could have this trip?”

It will come. In fact, you can’t even say, “Honey, could you hold it for five minutes?” When Jesus Christ gives this woman in labor as the illustration of joy, what he is saying is, “If you actually meet me, you will have joy.” You will. It is inevitable. It has to be there. You’re not a Christian without this joy.

The Bible goes over and over. Listen. When I read this stuff, I got so convicted this last week. What the Bible says about joy … I guess, frankly, until I read it, at least in my mind and my heart and my head, I kind of had this idea that joy is optional. You know, “Some of us have harder lives than others. Joy is optional.” It can’t be. Joy will come. It’s like labor. It’s like birth. “When you see me you will rejoice.”

In the New Testament, the very first miracle of Jesus … Remember it? John 2, the wedding feast at Cana. What was the first miracle of Jesus? This is the beginning of his public ministry. When you begin your public ministry, you make sure you do the very thing that gives people the essence of what you’re about. Your first speech, your first ad, your first event … When you’re starting a campaign, you give them the essence.

What did Jesus do when he was trying to get across to people the essence of what he came for? He didn’t raise the dead. He didn’t walk on water. He didn’t heal the sick. He created 150 gallons of incredible wine to move a party to a new level. What was he saying? He was saying, “Have you heard of the myths of Dionysus? Have you heard of the legends of Bacchus and Dionysus? Have you heard about forests dancing and running with wine and dancing and joy? That’s kid stuff compared to what I’m bringing. I am Lord of the feast.” At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

What about the beginning of the church, the day of Pentecost? Jesus goes to heaven, the Spirit comes down, and the New Testament church is inaugurated. Everybody who saw them that day, everybody who saw the fullness of the Spirit … What did they say about them? “These people are drunk.” Yes. That’s Christianity. Not just the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not just the beginning of the church; the beginning of every Christian life. What does the Bible say about how to become a Christian? What does the Bible say about conversion?

Paul was writing to the Thessalonians, and he said, “You became followers of the Lord.” He’s talking to them about their conversion. “You became followers of the Lord, for you received the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” Do you know what it means to become a Christian? Some of you say, “Well I guess I’m a Christian.” What’s a Christian? You say, “Well, to believe Jesus is the Son of God, to believe he died on the cross, to believe he rose from the dead.”

The devils believe that, and they’re still devils. What’s the difference between a devil and a Christian? The devils know he’s the Son of God. The devils know he died on the cross. The devils know he rose from the dead, but they have no joy in it. The difference between a Christian and a devil is only joy. At the very essence of faith there has to be a kernel of joy, or it’s not faith. Do you see?

The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like a man who discovers a treasure buried in a field, and when he discovers it, he sells all he has and goes with joy. He sells all that he has and buys that field. The beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the beginning of the church, and the beginning of the Christian life. What’s the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God, Jesus continually says, is a power that descends upon you and sends you out into the world to change the world, to do the will of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

What is that power? How do you know if you’re in the kingdom? Is it the way you dress? Is it the way you look? Is it the way you eat? Ask Saint Paul, and he’ll tell you. Romans 14:17: “The kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” When you’re right with God, a tidal wave of joy sends you out into the world to change it. That is the power of the Spirit.

Look at the gospel. Do you know what the word gospel means? Euangelion. It means literally the joy news. Jesus Christ is born. What do the angels say? “Behold, I bring glad tidings …” That’s the news. “… of great joy.” The word gospel means joy news. J.R.R. Tolkien in his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories” … Don’t you hate it when somebody says something is famous and you’ve never heard of it? You say, “What am I? Chopped liver?” I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’s famous, but it’s a great one.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in his great essay “On Fairy-Stories,” says there’s a kind of story … There are all kinds of stories, and they move us. He says there’s a kind of story (and he ought to know) that brings us unbelievable joy, whether it’s a movie, or a story we’re reading, or a story we see depicted on the stage, or a story we hear sung about. There are certain stories, he says, that bring us unbelievable joy.

He says these stories always have a certain kind of kernel to them. He says there’s always some incredible hopeless situation, and victory is snatched out of the jaws of defeat. But how? Always through someone who comes in, and whose weakness turns out to be strength, someone whose defeat turns out to be a victory. He says it’s those kinds of stories that just seem to bring us joy. He believed (and I think he’s right) … He called them eucatastrophes.

Do you know what the word eucatastrophe means? The joyful catastrophe, the tragedy that turns out to be a triumph, the sacrifice that turns out to bring joy, the weakness that ends up being strength, the defeat that ends up being victory. He said, however, there’s a Eucatastrophe of the eucatastrophes. There is a Story in all of the stories. He believes there’s a bass string to the human heart, and those stories can kind of make it reverberate a little bit but can’t pluck it. He says there’s only one story that can: the story of the gospel.

All of the other stories are based on that. From the ugly duckling who turns out to be a swan, to Beauty and the Beast, the Beauty who gives up all of her happiness to throw herself in the arms of this Beast and, because of her incredible sacrifice, gets a love and frees this person beyond anything she ever understood. Tolkien says the gospel story is the only story that will pluck that string so the whole heart never stops reverberating and vibrating with joy.

The reason it will reverberate is, of all of the great stories, this is not one more myth pointing to the great reality; this is the reality to which all of the other stories point. It happened. It really happened. There really is a Beauty who kisses the beast. There really is a Hercules who defeats the villain. There really is a hero. There really is Jesus. The word gospel means the joy news. Joy. It’s real. You have to have it. It has to be there.

Let me put it to you this way before I go on. Do you know this? Let me talk to two kinds of people. One of the great things about Redeemer is there are always two kinds of people. Actually, there are three. There are people who say, “I’m a Christian,” and there are people who say, “I’m not a Christian,” and then there are a lot of people who say, “I wish I knew what I was.” That’s it. You’re all there.

For those of you who are Christians, I want to ask a quick question. If this is true, if joy is what it’s all about, if it’s the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the beginning of the church, and the beginning of Christianity in your heart, it it’s inevitable, if it’s not for the second coming but for now, how can you live with the moroseness that you do? How is it possible?

Remember when Elizabeth was carrying John the Baptist and Mary was carrying Jesus in the womb? Mary gets near Elizabeth, and suddenly she starts. Mary says to Elizabeth, “What happened?” She says, “At the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.” Psalm 96 says that when Jesus Christ comes back, the trees of the wood will sing for joy. If the trees, if babies in the womb, if anything getting near Jesus leaps for joy, why aren’t we?

Here’s what I have to suggest. When the Bible says, “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice,” when it commands your joy, it cannot be saying, “Force your feelings.” That’s impossible. You can’t anyway. I’ve had people say, “Is the Bible telling me to force my feelings?” The Bible is not going to say, “Two plus two is five.” It’s not going to tell you to do something that’s impossible. What it must mean is this joy is so inevitable that if it’s not flowing through your life, you must be doing something to stop it. You must be.

I know there are times of grief. Joy is like a tree. It doesn’t always blossom. The joy can be growing in wintertime, just like a tree can be growing in wintertime. Joy is not always in blossom time. But here’s what I want to know. What comparatively small thing are you doing to keep you from seeing what you have in Jesus? What comparatively small thing are you so upset about it’s keeping you from seeing what you have in Jesus? You must be doing something. We must be doing something, if all of the things the Bible says are true.

Secondly, for those of you who are not Christians, or you’re not sure you’re Christians, one of the things that keeps you from Christianity has always been … You say, “You know, religion would be good at some time in my life, but right now I’m not bald yet. I’m a size 8. Later on I may need something to help me deal with life. Right now Christianity is interesting, but I like to have fun.” Jesus Christ throws down the gauntlet to you, and I’m going to try too.

If Jesus could make himself visible, he would say, “Look, if you have a real objection, okay. Suffering and evil? That’s a real objection. The injustice done by the church in my name in history? That’s a real objection. But when you tell me, ‘I don’t want to become a Christian because I want to enjoy myself, I want to enjoy life,’ first, that means you don’t even know what you’re rejecting. That has no integrity. Secondly, how could you possibly turn later to something you mustn’t even know about now or you wouldn’t say such a thing? How can you turn to it later? You don’t even know what it is.”

If you know anything about Lord Byron’s history, you’ll know he tried exactly what you’re doing: to have fun. Somewhere near the end of his life, he said, “There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.” He’s right. Christianity is not something that makes you philosophical. It’s joy now.

2. The structure of it

What is the structure of this joy? This joy is very, very different. In a way, Christian joy is like every other kind of joy. You rejoice in that which you find beautiful. What is something you find beautiful? You find beautiful something that doesn’t give you something else but is satisfying in itself, just for what it is.

Some of you might find this weird. When I can’t relax, or if I can’t get to sleep at night and I just want to really get peace … There is a high mountain pass in Northern Wales I have driven over three times in my life. When you get over the top of it, you go down into the most beautiful valley I’ve ever seen in my life. I think of that. I have a couple of pictures of it, but I also have a memory. I think about it.

Maybe you have places like that: a seashore … What gives you joy about that? What does it give you? All it gives you is itself. Joy and beauty … it’s the same thing. Keates said so. The only thing that can always give you joy is something you find beautiful not for what it gives you, but for what it is in itself. Why is the woman so happy that a child is born? Bad parents say, “Oh great, now I can have love in my life.”

If you have a child and the reason you rejoice is you say, “Finally, somebody will love me; somebody I’ll have a relationship with,” you’ll be a lousy parent. You’ll destroy that child, and the child will destroy you. Good parents rejoice in the child for what it is in itself, and as it grows up, you do everything you can just to let the child go off. You’re happy if your son or your daughter is happy. Why? Because that’s real joy. Real joy is you don’t want the thing to give you something else; you just find it beautiful for what it is in itself.

The structure of this joy is so incredibly different, because it tells us the spiritual joy Jesus gives is like the joy of a woman … Take a look. It says she’s in this incredible pain. She’s in this incredible labor. She’s beaten up like nobody can be beaten up. It says suddenly the child is born, and it says literally in the Greek, “She remembers her pain no more.” Notice it doesn’t say her pain is gone. I happen to know. I’ve watched this. When the child is born, her pain is not gone, but she remembers her pain no more.

What does the word remember mean? The Bible says when you become a Christian, God remembers your sin no more. Does that mean he’s not aware of the sin? Does that mean he says, “Did they ever sin?” No. He’s aware of the sin, but the sin doesn’t control the way in which he reacts to me. If he doesn’t remember my sins anymore because I’m in Christ, he’s not controlled by it. He doesn’t focus on it. It hasn’t captured his heart. Love has captured his heart.

Here’s what’s going on. Here’s this woman and she’s all beaten up, but the structure of her joy is not that she’s in denial. She’s not saying, “Well, doctor, I don’t feel a thing. I’m fine. Everything is fine.” She’s not saying that, but she’s furiously and lovingly and joyfully looking at the child, and she forgets her pain. It doesn’t mean she denies it. It doesn’t mean she’s not even hurting. It doesn’t control her. The pain can’t get her down anymore. Not when she has this.

The structure of Christian joy is that you’ve located your greatest joy and your greatest beauty in God. He gives you more joy, and you find him more beautiful than anything else in life. That’s the reason Jonathan Edwards, years ago, could say the difference between a religious person and a Christian is not that one is obedient and one is disobedient. Oh no. He says religious people and real Christians both obey God. They’re both committed to God. In fact, a religious person might look more obedient and committed.

The difference is that only the Christian is attracted to God. The religious person finds God useful, but the Christian finds God beautiful. What does that mean? It means the religious person will obey as long as God answers his prayers, but if God doesn’t answer his prayers, he says, “What good is it to be a Christian?” Some of you have done that. Some of you said years ago, “I worked my fingers to the bone, and I did all these incredible things, and I didn’t get into the law school I wanted to get into, and I’ve never had the career I wanted to do, so I walked away.”

What does that mean? It means your law career was the beauty. It was the satisfying thing. God was a means to an end. God was useful; he wasn’t beautiful to you, so you’ve never tried Christianity. You have a joy that is very different than Christian joy, because Christian joy coexists with suffering. Christian joy coexists with sorrow. She remembers her sorrow no more. It doesn’t mean she isn’t aware of it. It means it doesn’t control her anymore.

Worldly joy has to avoid suffering, worldly joy has to deny suffering, but Christian joy coexists and, in fact, is enhanced by it, because it shows you where true joy is going to be found. The structure of Christian joy is you’ve relocated your beauty, you’ve relocated your joy in God, and now circumstances can’t touch it.

This is, by the way, the reason why Christians should be the least sentimental people in the world. Christians should never be denying their own pain, and Christians should never be denying that the world is painful, and Christians should never be afraid of getting empathetically involved with people who are suffering. Why? Because you have a joy that coexists with that.

The world’s joy says, “I can’t admit how bad things are. I can’t admit how much I’m hurting. I can’t admit how bad the world is.” Christians should be the least sentimental people in the world, because they have a joy that coexists with sorrow. They have a joy that grows deeper … Just like the darker the night, the brighter the stars. Christian joy is like that. It gets brighter when things get darker. Everybody else’s joy just goes out. That’s the structure.

3. The growth of it

Up to now you’re saying, “Okay, that’s fascinating. This incredible joy, you rejoice even in suffering, and it’s a different structure and everything, but I can’t do that. I read these texts, ‘Rejoice, and again I say rejoice.’ I tried to be happy. I can’t do it.” Well, it’s not a matter of trying. When Jesus Christ tells us about this woman … Who is this woman?

The New International Version, the translation I read from, has done us a little bit of a disservice. The New International translation says she’s in all this incredible pain, she’s in all this labor, and then it says … Why? Why is she in all the pain? What does it say? “Because her time has come.” Gee, that’s unfortunate. Literally, the Greek says, “Because her hour has come.”

If you have ever read the gospel of John, you’ll know the word hour has a very technical meaning and has a very focused meaning. It has a very specific meaning. In 7:30; in 8:20; in 13:11; and in chapter 12, I can’t remember quite where; even in chapter 2 … Remember when Mary says, “They have no more wine,” Jesus turns and says, “Woman, it is not my hour”? What is the hour?

Do you know what the hour is in the gospel of John? “It was the sixth hour, and darkness took over, and Jesus Christ cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” In those days before epidurals and anesthetics, every time a woman gave birth she was in incredible agony, and she was right on the verge of losing her life. Jesus Christ is saying two things to us here.

He is the one in labor, and the first thing he says is, “I went into labor, but the labor pains I endured were my hour.” They were far greater than any woman has ever endured, because they weren’t physical. The only way for a mother to give the baby the joy of life is to take away her own joy at that moment. She has to give away her joy and maybe even give away her life to bring life to the child.

Jesus Christ says, “I gave away a joy to bring joy to you, and the joy I lost and the pain I suffered was my hour. Do you want to know what I threw away for you? Go back and read Proverbs 8. When my Father and I were creating the universe, I danced before the Father, and we delighted in the human race, the men and women we were creating to take part in our joy. Because of your sin, I lost everything. I lost that.

Don’t you say, ‘Oh, how bad could it have been? It was only three hours.’ No, no, no. I suffered something you’ll never understand. That’s why I suffered it, so you wouldn’t understand it. I lost something you will never know. I went into labor. It was my hour. I lost something you will never know. I suffered something you’ll never know. I lost all the joy I had, a joy you never will know, so you could have joy.”

That’s the first thing he’s saying, but do you know the second thing he’s saying? It’s just about as astounding. Not only does the woman show us how Jesus suffered, but the woman shows us why Jesus did it. In Hebrews 12, it says, “For the joy that was set before him, he went to the cross, despising the shame.” For the joy that was set before him. How could that be? What joy was it? What does the woman see? The baby.

Do you know what this means? What did Jesus get out of it? What did Jesus get out of that incredible, infinite experience of agony and torment he went through? Did he get out of it a sense of accomplishment? He didn’t need that. He had that. Did he get out of it the admiration of the Father? He already had that. Did he get out of it self-esteem? He already had that. What didn’t he have? Us. What could he have gotten out of us? Nothing.

What does that mean? He located his joy in us. He wanted us just because we were beautiful to him. It tells us in Isaiah 53, “The results of his suffering he shall see and be satisfied.” He’ll look at us and say it was worth it. How could that be worth it? The only way would be if he has located his joy in us. He has linked his heart to us. He has made us his treasure. He has made us his beauty. The great philosophical minds of the world have noticed that.

Jonathan Edwards says, “… Christ has his delight, most truly and properly, in obtaining [our] salvation, not merely as a means [conducive to his joy and delight], but as what he [actually] rejoices and is satisfied in, most directly and properly. […] ‘As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.’ […] ‘The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will [quiet thee with] his love, he will rejoice over thee with singing.’ ”

We are his jewels. We are his treasure. There it is. How can this joy grow? It’s very simple. Actually, in some ways this sets up next week’s sermon, so I hope you can come back. Next week’s sermon is about suffering. The fact is, if you just see somebody say, “Be joyful,” you’ll never do it, but if you see Jesus Christ did this and he made you his joy, that will change you.

If you see him locating his joy in you and making you the ultimate beauty of his life, that means you will be able to finally … It’ll melt you, and you’ll be able to put your joy in him. Then you’ll have that joy with that whole new structure. He’ll become the joy. He’ll become all you want. You just want him. You don’t say, “I want him plus law school.” You say, “I want him.” Then you’ll finally be happy. Then you’ll look at him.

When I look at that valley or when I listen to some great music, that’s what my eyes … Your senses are made for a certain sight. Your eyes are made for certain kinds of visual beauty, and your ears are made for certain kinds of auditory beauty, and your nose is made for olfactory beauty, but your soul is made for this. Do you see him doing it? Are you affected by it?

Don’t you see? This is how all the fruit are connected. You say, “Okay, so that’s how I get joy, but how do I get patience?” Rejoice in his patience for you. “Well okay, how do I get peace?” Rejoice in his wisdom. You’re fearfully and wonderfully made. If you know how to rejoice in what he did for you, at the moment you lack peace or lack patience or lack courage or lack humility or lack self-control … What is self-control? You want a kind of beauty. You want a kind of pleasure. Rejoice in him as the ultimate pleasure.

Let me end this way. For those of you who say, “I don’t know much about this joy,” I’ll tell you how it happens. You never have a birth without labor, and you never have a resurrection without death, and you will never get this incredible joy if you come just for happiness. If you come to Jesus for comfort, you’ll never get it. On the far side of repentance is comfort. On the far side of labor is a birth. On the far side of death is a resurrection. Therefore, you need repentance in order to have this incredible joy.

You say, “What do you mean by repentance?” It’s simply this. If you think Christianity is saving yourself, if you think Christianity is living a good life, if you think Christianity is trying your best to live like Jesus Christ, of course there’s no joy in your life. You’re trying to save yourself. You don’t have the joy of the Holy Ghost, and you never will. Your life is humorless. You’re trying real hard. If you’re willing to say, “I am a sinner, and I deserve to be lost, but look what he has done for me,” that will give you joy. Don’t you see that?

I never get a chance to say this. There are people in New York City I run into relatively often. They’re women who say, “I can’t relate to a Savior in Christianity who’s just a man. I can’t relate to a man. He’s a man. He doesn’t understand. I can’t relate to that, a male Savior. How can I get into Christianity?” Don’t you see? This is the only man who ever gave birth. What does that mean? Of course Jesus was male when he was on earth. Historically he was male. But don’t you see what this is saying?

Jesus is trying to say, “I’m not less than a man; I’m more. The problem is not that I don’t understand what it means to be a woman or what it means to give birth. The problem is you don’t understand my labor over you. That’s your whole problem.” To the degree you understand that, to that degree, even in sorrow, it’ll just push you more into the joy. Even in your troubles, it’ll push you more to the One who is the final and true joy. Do you see? Look to him and be radiant. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we pray that now, as we take the Lord’s Supper, your Son Jesus Christ would become real to us. Help us to see the brokenness being the broken body giving birth to us. The cup poured out is his heart and his lifeblood poured out for us. Help us, as we see him locating his joy in us, doing all this just for us, just because of his love for us, his delight in us, give us that delight in him that will give us that impervious joy that will help us to move out into the world and change the world, because the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking; it’s righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

About the Preacher

Timothy Keller is founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York City and the author of numerous books, including Every Good Endeavor, Center Church, Galatians For You, The Meaning of Marriage, The Reason for God, King’s Cross, Counterfeit Gods, The Prodigal God, and Generous Justice.

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Sermon: Removing Idols of the Heart – Series: Growth in Christ, Part 1—October 22, 1989

Colossians 3:5–11

The Word of the Lord

1. When you’re able to spot your problems like you are, half the battle is over

2. There are two basic parts to repenting of a sin

Our Father, we ask you would help us to get ahold of some of these important truths and use them in our lives. What we ask, more than anything else, is you would enable us to see the difference between repentance and self-pity, between legalistic repentance and evangelical repentance.

About the Preacher

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