The Sandals of Peace (Part 2) 42:10

Welcome to Gospel and Life. If you're a Christian, God has given you everything necessary to face the storms in your life with peace and fortitude, but many times it can feel difficult to access. Today, Tim Keller shows how the idea of the armor of God can allow us to stand in the battles of life. The verses that we've been looking at for a number of weeks...

have to do with the whole armor of God. Let me just read to you verses 14 to 18. But of course, tonight we're going to be looking again, the second week out of three that we're going to spend on this particular article of the armor of God, the shoes of the readiness of the gospel of peace. Let me just read you from verse 14 to 18.

And Paul says, "Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Now, remember, Paul is using...

the metaphor of a soldier putting on armor, breastplate and a helmet and shoes and so on, as a way of saying that when you become a Christian, you get all kinds of privileges and benefits and resources and powers and strengths that you don't use. It's the whole idea behind the metaphor. He says we have to wear them.

And this isn't the only place the Bible talks about putting on mercy, putting on courage, adorning yourself. It's a way of saying that God has given you, when you become a Christian, all sorts of things that you just aren't using.

There are many places that hint at this in the Scripture. This is an extended metaphor, like the place in Lugate where when the apostles are panicking because Jesus is in the boat and he's asleep and it looks like they're about to drown, and they say, "Master, we're going to perish." He calms the storm and then he turns around and he says, "Where is your faith?"

And in a sermon that changed my life, it was a sermon I read some years ago on that passage, the minister pointed out that Jesus didn't say, gee, it's a shame you don't have enough faith. Gosh, you know, you guys have got to get more faith. You know, you're just you're scared. You're you're you don't have courage. You don't have confidence. Instead, Jesus said, where is your faith? Which is a very odd question. You ought to have it.

Get it out. Where is it? What have you done with it? Is it in the trunk at home? Did you leave it at home? In other words, Jesus says you have the implication, which is brought out here, really, in this extended metaphor. The implication is you have, you're a Christian, you have absolutely every resource necessary to face that storm with peace, with inner calm, with fortitude, with understanding. And if you don't,

"Go get it!" You say, "You've got everything you need. Go get it. Where's your faith?" That's what Paul's talking about here. Now, the shoes, we said it was part of the armor. And we said the shoes of a Roman soldier had to have three qualities. They had to be gripping, they had to give you traction. They had to be tough, they had to protect your feet from spikes and so on. And they had to be light, to give you mobility.

I'd like to develop this a little bit more than I did last week. The only kind of shoes that we that in our culture need to have these qualities are athletic shoes. They need to be so light that

that you can run like crazy, but they have to be so gripping. That's why you're trying to find cleats, you're trying to find shoes that have got these great, that are tough, that last a long time, but they're real light, so when you put them on your feet, you hardly feel that they're there. There are actually a lot of manufacturers who are putting an awful lot of money into trying to find the shoes that combine these qualities, but they're athletic shoes. Same thing, though, with the soldiers. And therefore, when Paul says...

put on the readiness of the gospel of peace. We said last week the word readiness is an unusual word. It's a Greek word, etoimesia, which literally means nimbleness as opposed to sluggishness. And what Paul's talking about is a kind of spiritual athleticism. Now let's talk about what that is.

I'll tell you in a minute what it really is, but let's talk about what spiritual athleticism is. The word "athleticism" I know is a coined word that probably didn't exist 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, but it has been brought into existence by who? By TV commentators, from what I can tell, from sports commentators. I'm sure athleticism isn't a real word.

But what they would try to do is they used to grope for the difference between Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. See, Larry Bird can't jump. He can't run.

You know, he doesn't seem to be all that incredible an athlete, but he has practiced and practiced and he has tremendous perception as a result, gets the job done, and is a great, great basketball player. But then when you watch a Michael Jordan or a Julius Erving or someone like that, they try to say that the difference between someone like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan is Jordan's athleticism.

Well, what does that mean? Well, you know, he doesn't seem to have to deal with gravity the way the rest of us do. That's really what athleticism means. He can stop on a dime where the rest of us find that when we try to stop, gravity keeps a hold on us a little bit longer. Or he's up in the air and there's somebody else coming to stop him. So most of us, in order to change direction, have to come down again.

and get our feet on the ground and sort of take off in another direction. But not some of these guys. They don't have to. If they're in the way to the basket and somebody's in the way, he'll just go around them. He doesn't have to get on the ground. And see, athleticism was a way of trying to say there is something about these people, something about Michael Jordan, something about them that they do not have the same problem with gravity the rest of us do. It doesn't seem to have as much of a hold on them.

There's a lightness, there's a buoyancy, there's a sureness of foot. The rest of us find ourselves falling down, the rest of us can't move as fast, the rest of us can't stop as fast, the rest of us can't change as fast. Now when Paul is talking about ettoimazia, he is talking about the same thing in the realm of character. What ettoimazia really is, is a beautiful athletic metaphor to talk about what elsewhere in the Bible is called joy.

Now the reason I like the word "et tu amazes you" better than "joy" is because when you see the word "joy" you immediately think so one-dimensionally. You say, "Joy, sure, fun, laughter, ha ha." But joy is actually in the Bible a buoyancy of spirit, an ability to keep your footing where other people are falling down. Joy is the ability to move on when other people are weighted down. Joy is this: when Paul says,

These slight momentary afflictions, you know, the slight momentary afflictions, the stoning, the flogging, the beating, you see, the imprisonment. These slight momentary afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. It outweighs my afflictions. See, what's happened to Paul is his grasp of the glory of God, and the word glory means weight, his understanding of the glory of God outweighs everything else that the rest of us feel weighs us down.

It's the same basic idea when you run with weights on your feet, and then you take the weights off, and you feel like you can run like the wind. In the same way, what joy is, is a spiritual ability to have such a grasp of the glory of God that the things that used to weight us down, that weight the other people down around us, don't weight us down anymore. They don't have the same hold on us anymore. Our troubles no longer have the same hold on us. They are outweighed by what we know is in store for us. Our sins...

don't have the same hold on us because they're outweighed by the glory of what Christ did on the cross. Our duties, the things that God has asked from us that used to be, oh gosh, I know I have to do this because I'm a Christian, but I guess that's the price you pay to go to heaven. I mean, that attitude, which is one of being weighed down, you get a grasp of the glory of God when you see what Christ has done for you and you compare it. You compare it. As Paul says, it's outweighed. What God has asked you to do, compare it to what Jesus has done for you.

What God has asked you to do, compare it to what is going to be given to you in the future. See, our troubles are outweighed by the glory that is to come. And our sins are outweighed by the glory of what he's done for us. And our duties are outweighed by the glory of both the past and the future. And a person who has this grasp of the glory of God and understands the truths of the gospel and understands them gets this etoimesia, gets this nimbleness, this spiritual athleticism.

This ability to defy gravity, when other people are saying, "What keeps you going? Why haven't you slipped and fallen down? I don't get it." Now, let me tell you that in a sense, Christian joy, I think, has in a sense three levels of depth to it. At the most superficial level, Christian joy, this ectomacia, comes from a clarity of conscience. When I say superficial level, I mean the thing that's closest to the surface.

The joy of a clear conscience is very important, very important for lightness of step, for this joy, for this spiritual buoyancy. How do you deal with your conscience? When you fail,

When someone criticizes you, do you go, I did it again, I blew it again, how could I have done it again? How do you answer your conscience? How do you answer the accusation? Now, we won't go into that because we've actually spent some weeks on that under the breastplate of righteousness. Do you know how to turn and say, the Lord has paid for this? Do you know how to quote that hymn? By now you ought to. Well may the accuser roar of sins that I have done. I know them all and thousands more. Jehovah knoweth none. How do you deal with your conscience?

You think about the glory of what he's done on the cross and you deal with it. And that gives you a lightness of foot. Now, one step below that, not only do you have a clarity of conscience, but the joy goes a little deeper. You also have the certainty of your salvation. This ettoimazia, this readiness that comes from the gospel, is very clearly an assurance of your salvation.

Remember, we referred to it last week when we said, "What was it that gave Thomas Cranmer the ability to stick his hand, his right hand, into the fire before he himself burned because his right hand had signed a recantation of the biblical faith?" What has given the Christian martyrs over the years the ability to go singing to the lions? And the simple answer is they know that they're Christians. They know that God loves them. There's an assurance. That assurance will only come from the gospel.

If you believe that being a Christian is basically a matter of being a good person, you'll never, ever, ever know. And it doesn't matter if a particular team before the season, you know, spring training is favored by a wide margin to win the World Series that year. The fact is they might be kind of sure, they might be pretty sure, they might be, you know, all the sports writers have said they've got everything it takes. They've got a lot of confidence, but they don't know for sure. They're scared.

In fact, the more people tell them how great they are, you know what happens to teams like that. Very often they don't win because there's tremendous pressure put on them. As long as you think that it's your performance that will bring you to the throne of God, there will never be joy in your life. As a matter of fact, the better people tell you you are, just like the better people tell the teams that they are, the more likely they are to crumble.

It's the reason why all the coaches of favorite teams want...that's why basketball coaches, you know, when the team is number one, they want the team to lose early in the season so that the guys get off of their high horses, so the pressure is off. The same way, the better people tell you you are, you're a moral person, you're a decent person, the less joy you're going to have if you don't understand the gospel.

The gospel is what says it's been done for you. We've been through this. Jesus has fulfilled the law for you. He's paid the debt for you. And therefore, the gospel brings that certainty. The classic, in all of my reading on assurance, the classic scripture,

The classic statement of it was by Bishop J.C. Ryle, the bishop of Liverpool in the 19th century, an Anglican bishop who said this, "Assurance goes so far to set a child of God free from all sorts of painful bondage. It enables him," this is assurance, the knowledge that you are in Christ, "it enables him to feel that the great business of life is a settled business.

the great debt a paid debt, the great disease a healed disease, and the great work a finished work, and all other businesses, diseases, debts, and works are then by comparison small. In this way assurance makes him patient in tribulation, calm under bereavements, unmoved in sorrow, not afraid of evil tidings, in every condition content, for it gives him a fixedness of heart."

It makes him always feel he has something solid beneath his feet. See all this attraction metaphors, the buoyancy. And something firm under his hands, a sure friend by the way, and a sure home at the end. See, that certainty brings you a...the certainty of being a Christian brings you a nimbleness in the day out and day in and day out kinds of things that happen. When someone cuts you off, when someone does something wrong to you,

Is that going to throw you to the ground, cast you down? A person who has this nimbleness that comes from knowing that in the gospel that you're a Christian, what do you say if you're putting on the shoes? If you're a Christian, you've got the ability to do this when someone has just done something to you that's about to ruin your week emotionally. You can say, "In the context of eternity, what is this? In the context of my crown, in the context of my place at the head of the family table, what is this?"

If I just won the gold medal and I was standing up there and listening to the anthem being played, would it bother me that a fly had just alighted on my ear? I'd just brush it away. Would I say, oh, this fly, after all this work and after all of this achievement, in my greatest moment, this fly has ruined everything. The camera probably picked it up. Mellow ear itches. No, of course not. You wouldn't. Listen, you wouldn't know there was a fly on your ear. You wouldn't even know it.

You wouldn't even care, because what is that to the gold? And you see, a Christian is somebody who says, "What is this to the gold? What is this to my crown? What is this in the context of eternity? Look what I've got. The great debt's paid. The great business is over, and all other business and all other debts and all other problems are small things by comparison." Nimbleness, et tu amasia, putting the gospel on your feet.

And I said that there's levels. I said there's the clarity of conscience, which is the most important level. I mean, it's the most, in a sense, the superficial level. That means it's the thing that you've got to have day in and day out in order to keep that nimbleness of character, that spiritual athleticism. Then secondly, there has to be a certainty that you're a Christian. That comes from knowing the basis on which that you stand in access to God, not on the basis of your works, but on the basis of what Christ has done for you.

But thirdly, there's the deepest kind, I think, of joy that really gives you the deepest sort of traction, the deepest sort of toughness, the deepest sort of lightness and swiftness is something that, in a sense, we refer to. It's the hope of glory. See, the clarity of conscience comes from looking in the past, what God's done for me. And the certainty of salvation comes from looking at the present.

that I'm in Christ now, that he stands before the Father, me, my representative. But I think that the deepest sort of joy comes from the hope of glory. See, that's the reason why Paul says that all these slight momentary afflictions that I'm experiencing are preparing for me an eternal weight of glory. He's thinking about the future. They're preparing it for me. You see, the Bible, the New Testament, is full of rumors about what we're going to be like.

Romans 8 says that nature is subject to decay. It's groaning because it's not what it ought to be. It's not what it's supposed to be. It's not what it can be. It's not what it will be. And it says it's groaning and waiting for the revelation of the glorious liberty of the children of God. Now, don't ask me, you know, you say, you're a minister, tell me what that means. I don't know, but I know it's going to be great. I don't know exactly what it means, but what it means is the Grand Canyon is

The Himalayas, you see snow upon the mountain and lightning and the raging sea and the beauty of nature is nothing compared to even what nature is going to be. And we're going to be greater than that. Success, true love and the life you've always wanted. Many of us have made these good things into ultimate things. We've put our faith in them when deep down we know that they cannot satisfy our longings.

The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, gods that can't give us what we really need. In his book, Counterfeit Gods, Dr. Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals and our own hearts, and that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires.

Dr. Keller's book is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the power of the gospel. So request your copy of Counterfeit Gods at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. That's the reason why, you know, here's one passage from a sermon that

Here's a passage from a sermon, not my sermon obviously. It says, "If we take the image of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the morning star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, though false as history, in Christ are prophecy. At present, we are on the outside. We're on the wrong side of the door.

We discern the freshness and the purity of the morning, but they don't make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors that we see, but all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we will get in. And when human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, you hear that?

It says, "When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience," that's God's job to turn you into that, and he will. "The good work he began in you he will bring to completion on the day of Christ." It says, "When the human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then we will put on its glory, or the greater glory of which nature itself is only the first sketch."

The faint far-off results of those energies which God's creative rapture implanted in matter when he made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasure, and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be, then, to taste at the fountainhead, that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that's what lies before us. The whole person is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. From the sermon, The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis.

You see, it's the hope of that and the knowledge of that and the feeding on that and the meditation on that that Paul says makes this 39 lashes, the fact that my back has been ripped up and will probably never heal, this slight momentary affliction, is outweighed by eternal weight of glory, which actually my obedience here is just making greater. See, now that...

It's something that you've got. Are you a Christian? See, if you don't know that you are, of course, you don't know you have it. And I'll turn to you in a minute and say, here's how you get it. But if you're a Christian, you've got it. What's with you? Where's your faith? Get it out. It ought to be here. Put it on. See, how are you dealing at this level with your conscience? How are you dealing at this level with your present irritations? How are you dealing at this level, at the deepest level, with the future, with your worries? Now,

Now, this is something else. The last thing we have to talk about is in order to get this ettoimazia, it says, this spiritual athleticism, you have to put on the gospel of peace. Now, just like last week, I got part of the way into telling you what that means. The gospel of peace is Paul's way of talking about a certain aspect of the gospel.

You can call the gospel a lot of things. It's the gospel of love, the gospel of joy, it's lots of things. But he calls it the gospel of peace because he says that spiritual athleticism, this tremendous joy,

that we're talking about will never happen unless, first of all, you use the gospel to get rid of your anger at God. Remember we brought that up last week? I got a lot of questions about it, but I'm going to try to seal it off right here and try to finish it up. What Paul is saying is you must use the gospel on your heart to deal with the warfare, with the war. Peace is the opposite of war.

The gospel brings peace for those who are at war with God. You're not going to really be able to break through to the kind of joy that we're talking about unless you're willing to see that you are an enemy of God, that your heart is full of anger and hatred and enmity toward God, and that when you look at the gospel, it shows you that you've been wrong and it sucks out that anger and it absorbs that anger.

You're not going to, unless you use the gospel on yourself in that way, you're never going to get this etymology into spiritual athleticism. I don't want to re-go over what we said last week. I'll just quote two scriptures to remind you what the Bible teaches. Romans 8, 7 says, The natural mind is enmity toward God, is hostility toward God. That's the natural inclination of the heart to be against God. Romans 5, 10 says that when Christ died for us, we were still his enemies.

And I told you, and a bunch of you went off and said, "I gotta buy this book." I don't know that you do, but I told you that Jonathan Edwards wrote a tremendous treatise. It's not even a book, it's almost like a very long sermon, even longer than my sermons, it's fairly long, called "Men Naturally God's Enemies." And what Edwards says there, and I think he's right, is he says that the Bible teaches very firmly that at the deepest level,

The anger and hatred we feel is toward God, ultimately, foundationally, before anything or anybody else. The Bible teaches that you hate God. That's your natural inclination. Psychologists will tell you that if you can't make a hatred conscious, that will distort your life, right? If what the Bible says is true, then, it's everybody's duty and need to make conscious just how hostile you have been all of your life toward God.

So the Bible is saying you may take that hatred and deny that it's really toward God and redirect it toward other things. You may decide to hate your parents. You may decide to hate the other sex. You may decide to use it to hate the other races. You may even, Freud is right in saying, you know, Freud had an interesting insight. He said, he saw that we have a libido. We have this tremendous drive to

for complete gratification. And since we find out that the world will not give it to us, this is really a very good insight for Freud, because the world will not give it to us, every human being has deeply ingrained in him or her thanatos, a self-destruction, a death wish. And what is he saying? What the Bible would say is that Freud's right, but ultimately even that anger is

that death wish is ultimately rebellion against God. The Bible has always seen suicide as not really anger at yourself, but the final act of rebellion against God. You can see that in Genesis 9. When you assault another human being, what you're really doing is assaulting God because you're really mad at God when you're that mad that you'd kill someone, even yourself. Now, the question a lot of people came up with is, "Why would we be so mad?" A number of people after the service last week said, "Why would we be so mad?"

Jonathan Edwards, in section three of his treatise, says, he answers the question, on what account men hate God? And this is what he said. The general reason is that God is opposed to the worship of their idols. This is a quote. I just want you to know that I'm not the only one that says this. Listen, listen. Every human being, he says, will either worship the true God or some idol. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. Something will have your heart.

and whatever you give your heart to will be called your God. Nothing will so soon excite enmity as opposition to that which is dearest to your heart.

A man cannot serve two who claim to be his master, who stand in competition for his service. If he serves one in that competition, he will necessarily hate the other. Matthew 6, 24. No man can serve two masters. He either will hate the one and love the other, or he will love the one and despise the other. Listen. If a person loses his idol, they lose their all.

To take their idols from them is more grievous to them than to rend soul and body asunder. But since God will away with their idols, therefore they hate them. Let me give you an example. One thing you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do is stand between a mother bear and her cub. Why? Because even though this isn't a choice now, but the dynamic's the same. She lives for her cub. That cub is her body and soul. If you stand between her and the cub,

She hates you and watch out. Now what the scripture says and what Edwards says, he's building an entire psychology on the biblical principle. The reason we hate God is because underneath everything, we believe that to really worship God and to give ourselves totally to God is going to hurt us.

The first lie, the serpent said, "Adam and Eve, if you really obey God, he will oppress you." And the poison of that lie, as we said this often, has settled into our hearts so that now we believe that if I get my career, if I have the right figure, if I get a good marriage, if I get these people to like me, if I can break into this professional field, if I can get this thing, then, then I'll finally be in charge of my life and I'll be happy.

And it's inevitable that we will find that we never can achieve that because things get in the way and the things are ultimately from God. And therefore, ultimately, we're constantly to one level of consciousness or another, the Bible says, angry at God because the things that we are absolutely sure will make us happy and will let us keep the mastery of our lives. We see obstacles out there.

We see this person or we see that person or we see this condition, but underneath it all we know is from God. And therefore, we're angry at him because he stands between me and my cub. Between you and your cub. Now, some people say, well, you know, I've had a number of people say, I don't sense that I hate him. No. Edwards even has a pretty interesting example.

theory about that. He says, "Why is it that so many people say, 'Look, I don't sense that I hate God at all. I'm not particularly religious, but I don't really hate God.'" And he says, "Probably because it's a combination. First of all, you've been taught that it's wrong to hate God. You've been taught that it's wrong. And so you repress it. You keep it down. You don't want to admit that you're such a nasty, awful person. Who would hate God? I mean, only awful people would hate God. You're taught that. So you repress it. You keep it down."

You know, there's a place in 2 Kings 8 where Elisha the prophet meets a Syrian general, Haziel. And he's weeping and Haziel said, "Why are you weeping?" And Elisha says, "Because God has shown me that you're going to become king of Syria and you are going to be the cruelest person. You're going to come down to Israel and you're going to kill us. You're going to rip the unborn children out of the wombs of the mothers. You're going to take infants and spit them upon pikes."

You're going to dash out the brains of our elderly men." And Haziel looks at him and says, "You think I'm a dog that I would do that?" But what's so interesting is later on he becomes king of Israel and king of Syria and he does it all. In other words, when he was sitting there asking Elijah that question, he was a dog like that, only he didn't have an opportunity. The vindictiveness was in his heart, the self-worship, the pride was in his heart, but it was sleeping.

Edward says you got a lot of fears. You don't want to admit you're a person like that But the other thing is Edward says you've got a lot of hopes You still hope God will let you have your cubs and you're still playing the game But wait till you get old enough to realize it's not going to happen He says you use your fears to keep down your anger but as soon as you have a midlife crisis as soon as you begin to realize that you're not going to get your Cubs watch the rage become conscious now what are you supposed to do about it every single person in the Bible

who fights with God, who's at war with God. Job, Jacob, remember who wrestles with God? Habakkuk, who wrestles with God. You read them, you'll always see they always come down to the same thing. Job has everything taken away from him, his family, his career, his money, and he wrestles with God in a sense.

And he says, "Why have you done this?" And in the end, God opens up his heart and talks to him and reveals himself to Job. And at the very end, Job does not get an answer. All he gets is God. And he says, "You know what? I heard of you with my ears. Now I see you with my eyes. If you are my God, you're enough. I don't need the explanation. I don't need the other things. If I have you, I have enough. The reason I was mad was I never thought you were enough. I never thought if I just had you, I'd be happy. You're enough.

Or Jacob? Jacob literally wrestled with God. See, Jacob actually had been wrestling with God all of his life, and if you study the life of Jacob, you see that. But one night, a mysterious stranger showed up in the darkness and wrestled with him all night. And he was so powerful that at one point he had actually, he just, with a touch of his finger, touched Jacob's thigh and put it out of joint permanently, so he was lame for the rest of his life. Suddenly, in the middle of the darkness, Jacob realized he was wrestling with God.

And he holds on to God and he says, "I won't let you go until you bless me." What happened to Jacob was he moved from fighting and wrestling with God to clinging to God. And what he was saying there at the end, there was a great victory in a sense in that defeat. He said, "All my life I've wrestled with you thinking you're getting in the way of my happiness. Now I'm realizing instead of wrestling with you, I've got to cling to you. You're enough. You are enough." And of course, you know, Martin Luther,

This is his biography by Roland Bainton called "Here I Stand: The Life of Martin Luther." Martin Luther hated God because he believed... See, Martin Luther, his idol was religion. See, some of you, your idol is the money and some of you, your idol is relationships, but some of us, our idol is religion. Can I be a successful clergyman? Can I be successful as a preacher in theology? Can I be successful as a religious person then?

Then, I like myself, but see Luther was angry at God because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make it. And in the biography, there's a place where Luther says, this is his own words, he says, "I pondered." Now, by the way, I read you this three weeks ago, but there's more to it. "I pondered." I couldn't understand the gospel of the book of Romans. He said, "I pondered until I saw the connection between the righteousness of God

In Romans 1:17, "The righteous will live by faith," I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through faith and sheer mercy God just makes me righteous through faith. I had never been able to love a righteous God, but I hated and murmured against him. However, when I realized that the righteousness of God is something that Jesus Christ has given me, he said, "If you have true faith and you see that Christ is your Savior, then all of a sudden

Faith leads you in and opens up God's heart. He who sees God in anger does not see him rightly and does not see him in Christ, but looks only on a curtain as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face. Listen, if you want to deal with your anger toward God, you've got to make it, you've got to say, it's real, it's true. Under my self-pity, under all of the things that I've done wrong, under all of my anger and depression, I'm mad at him because he hasn't given me what I think.

I need, but God is enough. Some of you have to realize that the reason you're afraid of surrendering is you say, "If I give my life completely to God, he'll slaughter me." That very thought is an act of hostility. It impugns the integrity of God. You see that? That very suspicion is part of that hatred. You surrender to a friend. When you surrender and give yourself and say, "I know Jesus has taken away my guilt,

Luther says instead of finding him something hateful, you'll realize that he's opened the way to himself and he's enough. And when you finally realize that, when you say, Lord, I thought that I had to have this, but if you're enough, then how wrong I've been. You know, it's pretty amazing what Jesus did. If you don't see that you were an enemy, you'll never appreciate what he did, ever. Can you, listen, close this way. Can you imagine somebody drowning off the coast

out in the water and you're a lifeguard and you're getting ready to go and if the person says oh save me mr lifeguard you're so wonderful so strong so compassionate i'm going to die if you don't come get me you'll feel hey i better save this person this is great but what if instead the person is out there saying

I'm drowning. That's all your fault, Mr. Lifeguard. In fact, you're slime. As a matter of fact, the whole reason I'm even out here is because of your incompetence. As a matter of fact, don't even come and get me because I'd rather drown than have you save me. Come near me and I'll scratch your eyes out. How would you feel? What would you say? What would you say? You'd say, shove it. I'm not going to rescue you. The Bible says while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies, he died for us.

He came down and died for people that punched him until his eyes were swollen and said, "Prophesy, if you're so smart. Consider. Take the gospel, use it on your anger, surrender to him, repent of that anger, and you will see the joy, the spiritual athleticism growing in your life." Let's pray. Father, as we take up the offering, we pray that you might give us a moment to reflect on what this means

Help us to spend some time just giving our hearts to you. Help us to remember what is available to us if we just put it on. I ask, Father, that tonight you would enable us all to put it on, some of us maybe for the first time. So thank you that you're a God who helps us to put on this peace and this joy. We ask that you'd enable us through your spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the truth of God's Word and the hope of the gospel. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner to learn more.

This month's sermons were recorded in 1992. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.