Christ: The Final Word
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. This month on the podcast, Tim Keller is preaching through the book of Hebrews to answer this essential question. If God loves us so much, why is life so hard? The scripture is from Hebrews 1 and 2. In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, the Son of God.

whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.

So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape?

if we ignore such a great salvation. This salvation was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. This is God's word. We're going to do for the next few weeks...

is do what the church has done for centuries, and that is that during the weeks up to and right after Easter, we're going to reflect in a more direct way, even than usual, on who Jesus is, what he came to do for us. And we're going to do that by looking at the book of Hebrews. Interesting book of the New Testament. It's

In the Old Testament, we have quite a few books that are written anonymously. That is, we don't have the author's name in the book. We don't know who the author is. In the Old Testament, it happens at a number of places. In the New Testament, it's rather unique, but that's what we have here. Hebrews is written by someone, and we don't know who. But we do know who it was written to. First of all, this letter was written to urban Christians.

There's more references to city in this text than anywhere in the New Testament, and therefore most all commentators understand that this was probably written to urban Christians. And they lived in a pluralistic society like ours, and because it was so fiercely pluralistic, there's so many different beliefs and religions and philosophies that Christian commitment brought marginalization.

Being a Christian brought hostility, and the people who this letter is written to are suffering. And the question arises, and this book is addressing that, if God is so committed to our joy and our glory, if he loves us so much, why is our life so hard? That's what the book's about. Why is our life so hard? And the answer of the book, in a nutshell, which we're going to explore over the weeks, is life is a journey.

The text tells us it's a journey from weariness into rest. It's a journey from alienation into the presence of God. It's a journey from isolation into the city of God. And the only way you're going to get home is by fixing your eyes on Jesus. Fixing. The whole idea of this book is that you don't get home through bursts, through sprints,

But in a sustained, long-term way, do you know how to fix your eyes on Jesus? That's what gets you home. Now, that's what we're going to be doing because it's the appropriate time of the year anyway to do that. Now, in this introductory part, we learn that Jesus brings us something and we learn why he brings it and how it can change our lives. What he brings, the final word. Why he brings it and how it changes our lives.

First of all, what he brings. And we read this right here in the very beginning. In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. Now, first of all, it says through Jesus, through the Son, God has spoken. But notice, if you look down just another sentence, why he's speaking. It says the Son is the exact representation of his being.

And the Greek word translated representation is literally the word character. That's the Greek word, character. And we're being told that God is speaking to us through Jesus, not just to give us information in general, but to let us know who he is. He's actually communicating himself. He wants a relationship. He doesn't just want us to know certain things. He wants us to have him. He's communicating himself. How wonderful.

Here is not just a force field kind of God that you experience only in the emotions, maybe a sense of his presence or its presence. Here we have a personal God who speaks. And see, words can engage every part of you, the mind and the heart, and every part of you. So here's God who wants a relationship. God speaks through his son. But we're told not just that God gives us his word, but God through Jesus gives us his final word. Notice all the contrasts?

In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. The term various ways, polytropos, means in pieces. In the past, God has spoken in piecemeal ways, but now in Jesus. And notice it says, in the past, God has spoken in many ways, but now through one way, Jesus.

And then he actually has, the writer has the audacity to say, in these last days he has spoken to us. Now, last days means the entire period from when he was writing to the end of time. And so what is this saying? It's saying that from now to the end of time, there is no fuller, no more final expression of God than Jesus. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. Nothing further. This is it. Absolute.

Now, let's stop and realize what is being said here. There's something really wonderful, right, about this. God wants to communicate with us. But there's something kind of hard about it, too. This is the way it is, and that's it. Now, I want you to know, although that seems paradoxical, that's the way all personal relationships work. Do you realize that? Well, let me put it in a nutshell and explain it. There's no intimacy without finality.

Or there's no intimacy of relationship unless you're willing to accept the other person's finalities. What do I mean by that? Well, we wanted to be married, didn't we? We wanted to have a wonderful, intimate, loving, romantic relationship, didn't we? And we got married. And then we found out this other person contradicts us, crosses our will, tells us things we don't want to hear.

says this is the way it is and you don't like it. So what do you do? Well, you figure everything's negotiable and then you realize who you're really married to because the fact is, of course, lots of things are. You know, in the beginning of a marriage, you're crossing each other's wills, you're contradicting each other and then at a certain point, you realize there are lots of things you can get the other person to negotiate with and back off of but at a certain point, you realize there's some finalities

There are some things that just aren't going to change. There's some ways in which that person, that's just the way they are. That's it. And at a certain point, you realize, unless you accept those finalities, you cannot have any more personal relationship. The relationship's over. You want intimacy, but you want intimacy with a person, and a person has a will. And at some point, you're going to have to accept the finalities, or else that's the end of the relationship. You're going to have to adapt. You're going to have to adjust. Now, you know, the men of Stepford, Connecticut didn't like that. Not at all.

And they said, no, no, we have another way. Now, I didn't see the remake because every review I read said it was terrible. So I didn't want to spend my hard-earned money. However, I hear that the way they dealt with it, you know, they had these wives and these wives had finalities about them. They had non-negotiables. They had their wills. They were crossing their wills. They were contradicting. They were telling things they didn't want to hear. So they put little microchips in them.

Little microchips in their brains that made them kind of robotic, totally compliant. No more finalities. No more non-negotiables. They were just happy in the kitchen, whipping up for their men whatever the men wanted. Something was missing. What? The personal relationship was gone. You can't have a personal relationship with an appliance.

And that's all they had become. Because you see, when the other person only ever says, yes, dear, whatever you say, dear, that's not a person. There is no intimacy without adjusting the other person's finalities. Now, in New York City, people are constantly talking to me like this. They say, well, I think I believe in God or I believe in God.

But I believe in a loving God. I can't accept the idea of a God of judgment. And that's the reason why there's some things in the Bible that are good, but there's a lot of things we just can't believe anymore. I can't accept this. I can't accept this. I don't believe that. I don't like that. And so, you know, some things I accept, but things I don't. And I like this about God. Now I always say, wait, I got a question. If you don't take the Bible as God's speaking...

And as we go through the book of Hebrews, we're going to see that this is one of the clearest places in the Bible where the Bible speaks about itself. The book of Hebrews, as the Bible says, as the church has always said for centuries, the Bible is God speaking to us. Now, if you don't accept that the Bible is God speaking to us, and all of the Bible is God speaking to us, I have a question to you. How will this God of yours ever contradict you?

How will this God of yours ever cross your will, ever tell you anything you don't want to hear? Oh, I don't believe this and I don't believe that. Fine, but let me have a question. Have you put a microchip in your God?

Do you have a real God, a God who can cross your will, who can contradict you? Or do you have an appliance, a God who's happy in the kitchen, whipping up whatever you want? How will your God ever tell you something that offends your modern sensibilities? How will that happen? So, well, I can't accept this part of the Bible because we now today, modern people, we find that offensive. Fine. How will your God ever offend you then, you modern person? How will that ever happen? It can't unless you accept the authority of the Word of God

It can't unless you are willing to admit there's some finalities about God. There's some things he says that even though you don't like it, you have to adjust. You see, you have to accept. Otherwise, you don't have a personal relationship. Isn't that weird? Unless you accept the hard edges of what God's will is, of what God's word is, unless you're willing to accept the things that God says that you don't like, you can't have an intimate personal relationship with God.

So the first thing we see is that Jesus Christ gives us not just the word of God, but the final word. Now, secondly, we see why Jesus can bring this to us. Why can Jesus bring us the final word? And here we get in verse 3 and following what I've heard called nosebleed Christology. Nosebleed because it is so high. It is so, what it says about Jesus Christ is so over the top, so astounding. It's kind of hard to find any place in the Bible that says anything stronger than this.

It says, the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. My life was changed quite a few years ago by this verse. Let me explain. First of all, Jesus Christ is the radiance of his glory. In the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, when Moses begins to lead the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, something appears.

It's called the fiery cloud. It's in the form of a pillar, vaguely, interestingly enough, vaguely looking like a kind of figure. At night, it's clearly fire. In the daytime, it's fiery, but it looks more like a cloud. And it is so awesome and so powerful that when it shows up at one point, when the Egyptian army is after the children of Israel, it stops the army. They can't get by it.

And later on, it leads the children of Israel through the wilderness. And when it comes down on Mount Sinai, there's thunder and lightning, and no one can even touch the mountain or die. And later on, when the temple is dedicated under King Solomon, down comes the glory cloud. Down comes the fiery cloud, the pillar. And it comes into the temple.

And anyone near can't even stand on their feet. They fall to the ground. They can't get up because of the, what is it? What is that cloud? It's the glory of God. It's God in a form we can see, but God in a form that expresses his brilliance, his beauty, his infinite, overwhelming, shattering, superlativeness and importance.

But now what we're being told here is that Jesus is the ultimate way in which God appears. Jesus is God in human form, but it's still the glory of God. And it's the exact, see that word exact? It's the ultimate, it's the unsurpassable form in which God appears. Nothing greater than this. Here's the reason why.

2 Corinthians 3 tells us in this amazing passage,

And here's what this means. If you've ever actually just spent a lot of time with someone who is just so far beyond you, so much more kind, so much more confident, so much more noble, so much more wise, and if you've ever actually spent any time with that person, even this illustration shows

When you're gazing at them, it changes you. When you see how they treat people who disagree with them and you contrast it with you, you feel so embarrassed and it changes you. When you see how they express themselves, when you see how they carry themselves, when you see how they do things, it changes you. You're never the same. You're gazing on what's good about them and it's passing into you. But now the glory of God

You can't even gaze into the glory of the sun without it destroying your eyesight. It literally destroy your eyes. It'll burn them out. How in the world can we look into God's glory? And yet, we're being told that, you know, when the pillar showed up, people fell to the ground, people died, you know, when anything else, the burning bush. But this is God's glory in a form that you can relate to

This is God's glory in a form that you can have a personal relationship with, and this is God's glory in a form that can come into your life, and it can change you into his likeness. The person you know you should be, the transformation you want to happen, it can happen this way. This is the unsurpassable, highest, best form that God comes to us. It's in human form, Jesus Christ.

That's the reason why Jesus can bring the final word, because he is the final word. Or, put it another way, the reason that Jesus can bring us the ultimate truth is because he is the God of truth. Now, if this is the case, before we go on to the last issue, which is how do we actually get this into our lives, how do we actually come through and have that transformation, this amazing statement, he is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word,

there's a personal implication and a global implication to this statement that we need to at least consider for a minute. First of all, the personal implication. Now, I already mentioned this in the beginning. The context is important. The book of Hebrews was written to people exactly like us in New York. They lived in a pluralistic urban society.

in which everybody had their various gods and religions. It was by no means a culturally or religiously homogeneous society. And therefore, to say stuff about Jesus' uniqueness and about his superior, being the superior, the ultimate expression of God, sounded incredibly exclusive and very, very difficult to hear. So what does the Hebrews writer say to these readers who are in that situation? What he's actually saying here is, don't you dare back off of that.

We all long for a home, for a place where we can truly flourish and belong. In One with My Lord, a new book by Sam Albury, he shows how the Bible promises that there is a place like that for all of us, but it doesn't have a zip code.

Instead, the key to home and the very heartbeat of the Christian faith itself is that we find ourselves in Christ. For the New Testament writers, this phrase was so important that instead of using the term Christian, they referred to followers of Jesus as those who are in Christ.

Jesus is not only our Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend. He is also our home and our location. Each chapter of One with My Lord is short enough to be read as a devotional, and in it, Aubrey examines what being in Christ means, giving us a fresh lens to view the gospel and all that it means for our hope, purpose, and identity.

We believe this new book will help you grow in your relationship with Christ. To request your copy of One With My Lord, visit gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Look at the first verse. How much clearer can it be? The first verse is saying you can't put Jesus Christ on a shelf with all the other prophets and wise sages and religious leaders. He will not stay on that shelf forever.

He's either way above them or way below them because of the nature of his claims. What do I mean? When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus, it's just astounding. Not so much the direct claims, sometimes the indirect things that most hit me. You know, there's a place in Luke chapter 10 where Jesus is talking to his disciples about demon possession. And they were talking about people they saw who had demons. And he's talking about demons. And suddenly Jesus, this is in Luke 10, suddenly Jesus says...

I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. What? He's having this conversation with his disciples. He says, yeah, I was there before the creation of the material universe and I saw Lucifer go bad. What a sight. Matthew 23, it goes on. It's almost an offhanded comment. In Matthew 23, verse 34, Jesus says, I keep sending you prophets, wise men, and teachers. What? What?

Notice he doesn't say, I am a great wise man. I am a teacher. I am a great prophet, and God has sent me. No, he says, I am the force behind the universe that's been sending all the prophets and the wise men and the teachers and the religious leaders. What? You read any of the prophets in the Bible, read Isaiah, Jeremiah, any of the prophets, and they're always saying, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord. This is not my idea, they say, thus saith the Lord. Jesus never stoops as low as to say that. Do you realize that?

Never does Jesus say, thus saith the Lord. Never. All he ever says is, truly, truly, I say unto you. Jesus Christ's consciousness of being the transcendent, uncreated, the transcendent, uncreated, beginningless God of the universe, it permeates everything he says. It's behind everything he does. It's on every page of

such that you can't extricate his teaching about love or ethics from it anyway because everything he teaches is based on that self-understanding. And what does that mean? He can't be on the shelf. He's either way above them or way below them. N.T. Wright put it this way very well. He says, How can you live with a terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life, capital L, itself has walked into our midst?

Christianity either means that or it means nothing. It is the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world or it is a sham, a total nonsense. Most people, unable to cope with saying either of those two things, are condemned to live in the shallow world in between. And that's exactly right. Most people cannot cope with saying either of those two things, and yet those are the only two things that you can say if you have even a shred of intellectual, spiritual, moral, or emotional integrity.

Why? When you read the Bible and you read Jesus' sayings, read Jesus' words, read Jesus' deeds, when you see that, how can you call that wicked, a sham? I mean, it's too nice. But you see, if it's true, then you have got to throw everything in your life down at his feet and say, command me. See, either it is a sham, either he is wicked, either he is a lunatic or else every particular of your life has to revolve around him. And there is nothing in the middle

There is no other position with regard to him that has any integrity at all, and almost nobody can cope with either of the only positions that have integrity. Most of us are right in the middle, and as N.T. Wright says, what a shallow place to be. I mean, some of you know this, that years ago, this verse, this verse 3, "...the sun is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word," or a word of his power."

A woman teaching the Bible many years ago now, 25 years ago, expounded on that verse and said something that I still say to myself and to you. It just passed in. It's changed me forever. She says, think about this. If the distance between the earth and the sun was 92 million miles, was the thickness of a sheet of paper, then the distance from the earth to the nearest star would be a stack of paper 70 feet high.

And the distance from across the galaxy, the diameter of our galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high. And our galaxy is just one little speck of dust in the universe as it is. And if there is a person who holds all that together with a word of his power, his pinky, as it were, is this the kind of person, she said, you ask into your life to be your personal assistant?

Some of you have heard that before because I want it to affect you the way it's affected me. It's just one of the ways of putting it. But this is what the text is saying. There's nothing in the middle. You need to be extreme. Jesus forces you to be extreme, extremely loving, extremely humble because of who he was, but extremely devoted and extremely committed to him.

Now, there's a global implication as well. And what's the global implication? Well, you know what the average person sees? I mean, here's a book written to people in a setting just like ours, and it will not compromise. And it starts right out saying what it says. And surely there are people today who say, we're never going to have global peace like this. Until everyone...

in their religion is willing to admit that all religions are equal until everyone stops claiming that my religion is the best one or my religion is the superior one, as long as people say things like this, we're not going to have peace. Until everyone admits that all religions are equally valid, we'll never have global peace. I want to say in response to that, that that is by no means the way to get global peace, if you say that, in the slightest. And here's the reason why. The only way

that all religions could be equally valid is if you assume either there is no God or there is a God who doesn't hold people accountable for what they believe. Right? The only way all religions could be equally valid is if there's no God or there's only a God who doesn't hold people accountable for what they believe. And of course, that God...

is different than the God of all other religions, right? Yeah. But you know what you're saying? When you say all religions are equally valid, you are assuming a very particular view of God, which you're saying is better than what everyone else believes. And therefore, when you say, stop making exclusive claims, religions have to stop making exclusive claims. That is the most exclusive possible claim. And yet you won't admit what you're doing. What you're saying is my white, Western,

Relativistic take on objectivity and subjectivity is the right one. You know, religions are subjectively true, but objectively they're all basically the same.

You're taking your view and putting it on top of everybody else's. And you know, when another religion, when any religion says, my religion is the best one, convert. There's integrity there. There's openness there. There's self-knowledge there. There's consistency there. But when you say all religions are equal, no religion should claim to be the superior one. And you're making your spiritual view of reality the superior one. That's hypocrisy.

and it's infuriating to all the adherents of all other religions, and it'll never lead to global peace. Well, you say, then what will? What will? And the answer is Martin Luther King Jr. understood, because when he went into the South and he confronted racism and injustice on the part of white Christians, what did he tell them? Did he say, well, now, you know, you people just got to stop being so Christian?

Did he say, you know, you've got to weaken and loosen your Christianity? You've got to become less Christian? You've got to see that everything's relative? No. He says you've got to become more Christian. You've got to go deeper into Christianity. There's the resources at the heart of Christianity to make you people love those who are different than you. It's in the heart of the gospel. You've got to go find it. That's how you lead the tolerance and love and embrace. And that leads us to our third point. How can we

experience this transforming glory through Jesus Christ in our lives? And the answer is in the first four verses of chapter 4, 2. Let me just briefly look them over and tell you what it's telling us to do. It's very practical. We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received and it's just punishment, how should we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?

This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. There's a lot there. Let me just outline it. First of all, there was a message that we heard. What is that message? Well, it tells you it was the message announced by Jesus, the Lord, and then given to us by those who heard him. That's the apostles. That's his disciples. This is the gospel.

It's what you see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's what you see in the New Testament. This is the message of Jesus, the gospel, and the message of Jesus was given to his disciples, and they preached it, and the people who this book is written to heard that. But notice, it says, we must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so we do not drift away. Now, this term, more careful attention, is really much stronger than I ever thought before I studied it for this week.

The word attention literally means obsession. And the word more careful is another very strong word. More and careful is trying to get across a word that actually means to be furiously obsessed. And this is telling us that anyone who hears the gospel and says, okay, now I'm a Christian, I believe that, you have just begun to become what God can make you. Because you have to become furiously obsessed with the original message.

You don't move on and say, well, I got the gospel, the gospel about Jesus Christ dying for my sins. That's fine. Now I want to go on. You're going to drift. That's not rebel. It means you're going to drift unless you take that message and obsess on the grace, obsess on the gospel. And you have to work it into your life because there's an imperviousness about your insides. You have to work it in and work it in and work it in. That's the first thing we learn. Secondly,

in contrast to another approach to the glory of God. It says, verse 2, for if the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore, neglect so great a salvation? Now, what is the message spoken by angels? In the Old Testament, the message spoken by angels is the law given at Mount Sinai. That's the place where the angels, there's a number of places in the Bible that refer to that.

And what it's saying is this. On Mount Sinai, God gave us the law. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt love thy neighbor. Not covet. No greed. No materialism. Always content. The law. And notice, they're not saying anything bad about the law here, is it? The law was binding. If you disobey, that's punishment. But here's what it's saying. If to neglect the law of God would have disastrous consequences, how much more the gospel would

The word brought by Jesus. And what is that? Because Jesus is not another prophet. If he was another prophet saying, here's how to get to God, that would be one thing. But if he's the final word, if he's God himself come, if he's not another prophet sent by God, but if he is the God from whom all the prophets come, then what you have now is a complete salvation. He doesn't come to tell you how to find God. He's God come to you.

And that means, according to the Bible, you are saved by grace. You're saved not by what you do, not by obeying the law, but by what Jesus Christ did on the cross. And unless you understand that, if you try to get the glory of God in your life by simply living up and obeying the law, it's not going to actually change you. Somebody years ago, a very long time ago, I read a book that's at least 200 years old that put it perfectly. You know how in the old days you used to seal an envelope. You took a piece of wax, you softened it with heat, and you put it in your mouth.

You laid it there, and then you brought out your stamp. And the stamp had a, literally, by the way, in Greek, the word character. It had a seal or maybe even a face. And you put it on the softened wax, which permanently shaped the wax into the image of the seal, and then your envelope was sealed. What if you try to stick...

the seal on a piece of wax that has not been softened. Only two things can happen. One is there can be a superficial impression, right? In other words, the seal can make an impression on the surface, but it doesn't actually shape the wax, or you might break it. And this illustration, the preacher who I heard this illustration from said this, if you just try to get the glory of God into your life by obeying the law, I'm going to try to live a good life. Only two things can happen. One is you can succeed and be a

So on the surface, you're very moral, but inside, you're filled with pride. You're filled with cruelty. You're filled with superiority. You're filled with insecurity, too. Or the other thing you can do is I'll try to live up to the law. The other thing that can happen is it can break you. It can just break you. It can shatter you because you feel like a failure because you can never live up. Something has to change your heart, has to melt your heart. And what that is is what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

You know what he did on the cross? Some of you may have been thinking about this. When I gave that illustration some time ago, maybe a real long time ago, some of you say, in which I talked about the fact that in every marriage or every relationship, there are some finalities. And at some point you have to adapt to the other person's finality. You have to adjust if you want to have a relationship. And maybe somebody said, well, you know, the trouble is here, you told me how I've got to adapt to God. You know, God has these finalities and I just have to surrender to his will.

Well, I know, but aren't relationships two ways? Don't I have some finality? Shouldn't God adjust to me? He did. He did. You know what our finality is? You know what our non-negotiable is? You know what something is that we can't change? That's just true of us? We're sinners. And the only way for a holy God to relate to us was to adjust to that. And when he was born in a manger and he lost his glory and became a weak human being,

And then when Jesus Christ on the cross really, really adjusted, and here's what happened. You know one of the great ironies of Jesus Christ being the word of God? You know what happened on the cross? He got silence. All of his life, Jesus had talked to the Father, prayed all the time, but on the cross, there was silence. I was reading a little article about why solitary confinement in America is actually illegal. You cannot do solitary confinement in prisons in America.

Solitary confinement where no relationship, no one speaks to the person, not at all. You know why? Because utter solitary silence leads to mental breakdown. We need relationship. But on the cross, Jesus Christ, the word of God, got cosmic solitary confinement. Cosmic silence happened to him. It was hell. He disintegrated. It was infinite agony for him to lose his relationship with his father. Why? Why?

He took what we deserve so we could have God, so we could have relationship. Oh, God, look how God adjusted so he could have a relationship with us. To some things about us, he adjusted. When he asks us to surrender to him and to follow his word and to follow his will, he's not asking anything of us even close to what he gave to us. Obsess on what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross.

pay close attention to it, obsess on God's grace, obsess on his love. And you know what that does? It changes you on the inside. It shows you that you're not saved by leading a good life, which will either lead to pride or to despair. It'll either superficial change or else it'll break you. But the glory of God in the face of Jesus, the glory of God as you read the scripture, coming into contact with a heart that is melted by the sense of God's grace and

because of what he did on the cross for you will mean the glory of God really changes you. Obsess on the grace of God until you become what you know you should be, the person you know you can be through him. Let us pray. Father, we thank you that you've made it possible for us to receive this word. We have to pay close attention to it. We have to think it out. We have to recognize it for what it is.

We have to let it melt us. We have to let it sometimes convict us. We have to let it disturb us. We have to let it certainly support us until we become made more and more in the image of your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover this podcast. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2005. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.