House of God (Part 2)

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. We tend to think of faith as a personal matter, a relationship that's just between us and God. But the Bible presents a much bigger vision, one in which God brings people into a relationship with himself and brings them together into a new kind of community with each other. This month, we continue going through an extended series of teachings from Tim Keller that explore the core truths of the Christian faith and what they reveal about God's purposes for our lives together.
Tim Keller: We're looking at Hebrews chapter two, verses 19 to 22, which is all about the church, what God says the church can be and should be. It's something that you probably know by now pretty well because I've been reading it to you for a number of weeks. Ephesians 2:19-22. Let me read it and we'll just get back to where we were. "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." This section, as we said last week, gives us three pictures of the church. It's possible for a local church, for the church in general, to be characterized by such supernaturally excellent quality to its relationships. It's possible that our community would be so remarkable that people flock to it like moths to a flame. The only time I can ever remember being in what probably the Bible would define as a revival, I saw a little group of Christians, scared, huddled together, 10 or 12 on a college campus, grow to about 120 people, mostly through conversions over a very, very brief period of time, over a matter of months. I remember because I was a part of that. I was one of those 12 little scared ones, a brand new Christian myself and not a terribly consistent living Christian at all at that point. There was a lot of hypocrisy in my life. Yet, I saw us grow largely through the strength of the quality of relationships in the community. We did not know how to articulate the gospel. We did not know how to answer the objections. We were not at all bold in talking to other people about what we believed. What really happened was God sent his Spirit into our midst so that there was a kind of community, a situation in which we were really obeying what the Bible says when it talks about "one another-ing." It says confess your sins to one another, build one another up, bear one another's burdens, exhort one another daily lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. It says welcome one another, admonish one another, bear with one another, forgive one another. We started to do it. It sounds very simple, but we started to do it. There's nothing that the human heart, whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, no matter what religion you are, no matter what your philosophy, there's nothing the human heart wants more than to be in the midst of a group of people who are doing those things. When God gives you the grace to actually begin to do it, it just sucks people on in. It really is very much like moths to a flame. It gives the gospel plausibility and it gives it power. Paul is saying that this sort of thing is possible and he's trying to show you how great the church can be. He does it by giving us three metaphors, three pictures of the church. We talked about this last week. He first of all says we're citizens of a nation, no longer strangers and aliens. Secondly, we're members of a family of the household of God. But the main and the most detailed of the pictures is he says we are building blocks. As we read last time and as we mentioned before, it says we are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And you are being built in to a dwelling place for God of the Spirit. So we are living stones in a holy temple in which God dwells. We began looking at this last week and the theme that Paul is speaking of is a theme that if you understand it, actually knits the whole Bible together. Think of the Bible as a bunch of pearls and there are certain strings through which, if you pull them tight—in other words, there are certain themes through the Bible—if you get a handle on them, everything lines up and you begin to see the whole Bible falling into place. I'm not saying there's only one theme, there's a number of them, but this is one of them. Paul is saying, if you're a Christian, you are a dwelling place of God's presence. A citizen has access to a king like the first picture. A child has access to the father like the second picture. But a child is still an individual outside the father and so the metaphor doesn't quite tell us what our relationship with God is through Christ. This metaphor is the highest of all. When it says that you are like a temple, you are blocks in a temple in which God is dwelling, it really says that the presence of God interpenetrates us, infuses us, comes into us and takes us over. It indwells us and there's nothing higher than that. When I say this is a theme of the Bible, I know I touched on it to begin with, but I want to show you just how it really pulls the Bible together. I want to show you how the theme of God's dwelling place is something that the whole Bible is about. After we see how it draws the whole Bible together, we'll turn around and apply it to ourselves and say, practically, what difference does this make to me now, here, today, this week? First of all, the theme. The presence of God in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament, whenever you see the word "the presence of God," it uses a Hebrew word that is translated "presence," but the Hebrew word is *panim* and it means "the face of God." In the Old Testament, we're told in the very beginning, God created a place which was his dwelling place on earth and we lived there with him. It was called the Garden of Eden. It was his dwelling place and we lived there. Because we lived with him, as you know if you've lived with anybody, you get to know them very well. They see who you really are, you see who they really are. So there's this great intimacy and there's this great sense of oneness. But the Bible tells us that though we saw God's face, we had access to his face, we lived with his face, his *panim*, something happened. We're told in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve decided to be their own masters. Once they decided to do that, immediately they were cast out of the garden and the face of God was hidden from them. In the Old Testament, we're told the way in which God did this was they were cast out of the dwelling of God, that's what the Garden of Eden is. At the door of the Garden of Eden was a Cherubim with a flaming sword that turns every way, keeping anyone from getting back in. What's that mean? It means the presence of God is now something that is fatal to us. The presence of God is now something that cannot be entered without blood. It's fatal to us. It means death. Why? Over the years I've been here, which is not that many, I have continually tried to get this across because you can't understand the Bible unless you understand that God is holy and his face is something that we need to dwell with. We need to see his face, we long for it, we were built for it as in the beginning, but we can't get near it. This is the fundamental human dilemma and you can't understand the Bible without it. None of it makes sense unless you understand this. Somebody says, "I don't understand why the sword, why would it be fatal to come into the presence of God?" Over the years, if you've been around here, you've heard all these metaphors, but it's important to put them all back together. There's a number of metaphors I've used that help. Maybe one of them is the orbiting metaphor. The orbiting metaphor is this: what makes a solar system a solar system? What is it that enables planets to orbit in such a way that they're in harmony with one another, they're in unity with one another? It's very simple. All the planets have to agree on the same center for their orbits. They can be very different, but they all have to have the same center. If, on the other hand, each planet has its own center, it orbits around its own center, what happens inevitably is tremendous cataclysm, collision, conflict, crashing and burning. That's one of the ways to understand why it is that when sinful human beings get back into the presence of God, there's this tremendous antithesis, there's this tremendous trauma. It's a chemical reaction. It's like if you get a base and an acid together, there's an explosion. Why? It's very simple. Look at God. What does he center on? Everything God does centers on what is right, what is true, what is righteous. Okay, now look at you. What do you center everything on? The right and the true? Well, you take that into consideration. I'm not kidding, you'll take that into consideration, but that's not your center. You'll do it if it seems to be practical. What do you mean by practical? In other words, what we center on is our happiness. We center on what makes us happy, what gives us joy, what makes us comfortable. So here's a God who is centering on the true and the right, and here is you and me, who center on what makes us happy. Two different centers. What's going to happen? Collision. And of course, if the divine and the human, if the immortal and the mortal collide, who's going to be totaled? There's another illustration people use for why it is that when you get into the presence of God, there's this tremendous clash, why it's fatal. Why, when Moses says "I want to see your glory," God says "I can't show you my face because it'll kill you." Why when God descends on Mount Sinai and his presence is there, he says "keep everybody back, if even an animal touches the mountain, it will die." Why? Well, one illustration is the orbit illustration. Another one is the masquerade illustration. Imagine that even though you're not a police officer, you've decided to dress as one. Imagine that you've decided to impersonate a police officer. Why? Because you would like the privileges a police officer has that nobody else has, like driving 120 miles an hour on 87th Street, like telling people what to do. You want the privileges of a policeman, but you don't want to actually have to go be one, you don't want to have to go to school, you don't want to go through all of that, you don't want to be accountable. So you masquerade as a policeman to get all these privileges. Well, what happens if you see a real policeman off in the distance? You get nervous. What happens as the policeman gets closer? What happens as you get closer and closer to his face or her face? What happens? You know what happens. You begin to feel traumatized, you begin to feel nervous, you begin to feel anxious. Why? Because the closer the real policeman gets to you, the fake policeman, the more afraid you are that you'll be exposed. The more you're afraid you will be judged for what you've done. Now, what do you think Adam and Eve did in the garden? They did what you and I have done as well. It's true that we inherit their sin, but we're guilty too, we do it too. What is it? When a person says, "Well, I would like to take the Ten Commandments into consideration, but ultimately I have to do what really makes me happy and fulfilled," what you've done is you have dressed up as God. You're impersonating him. You're your own Lord, you're your own master. You're unqualified for the position. You don't have the credentials for it, you don't have the wisdom for it. Here you are thinking you're so practical. "Yes, the commandment says don't do this. Well, but in this case, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be very practical. If I did that, I'd lose this, I'd lose this." How do you know what's going to happen? How do you know? Whenever you look back a few years, you realize you thought something you thought was going to work didn't work. You thought it was going to have this ramification. Why? Because you don't have the qualifications. God is up here, he can look down and see everything. He knows. So when he gives you directions for how to live, he sees it all, he's got the perspective. He knows what's practical. If you think to lie to somebody is more practical than to tell the truth and God says no, you must tell the truth and you decide to lie, what have you done? You've dressed up as God, you've taken on his job. No wonder when he starts to get close, you get nervous. When you even see him in the distance, you get upset. And when he starts to come in close, you've got to do anything to get away. Rudolf Otto, the great religious sociologist, studied all the world religions and he came up with what he called "numinous awe" to describe how human beings feel when they get into the presence of the Holy. What he said is they are torn with an enormous contradiction of two passions: both a fear and a fascination. There's the ultimate approach-avoidance conflict. I want it. Why? Because you see, we were built for it. But I'm scared of it. Why? Because you'll be exposed. You can use the orbiting illustration, you can use the masquerade illustration, you can use whatever you want. The fact of the matter is the Holy, the face of God, the presence of the superlative, is a place that is lethal to us. It's lethal. We need it, we want it, we desperately want it. Actually, there are other illustrations, but if you ever get into the presence of anybody, any human being even, that's superlative, you have the same problem. If you're an athlete and you are in the presence of a superlative athlete, how do you feel about that person as you hang around with them? If you're a musician and you're in the presence of a superlative musician, if you're a model and you're in the presence of a gorgeous man or woman, how do you feel? Well, on the one hand, you want to be near that person, don't you? You like to be around them. The person is so great that the fact that this person would make you their friend is something that makes you feel good. So there's a fascination, but there's an absolute fear too. In the presence of the superlative, you see your own inadequacy, you're exposed. And you hate it. If even superlative humans give us this kind of experience, how much more so are we traumatized? And the Bible says it's a lethal trauma. That's the reason the sword is there. When we start to get near God, we sense the wind from the sword of God's justice. We know that there's a debt that we can't pay. We know that by putting ourselves in the center, we're being penalized. We know that there's a condemnation, there's an obstacle between us and him. We want to get in like Moses. When Moses got near God, he said, "Show me your glory." Moses was wise enough to realize that underneath all the sexual desire and underneath all the professional ambition, underneath all the other desires, this is what will fulfill me. And God says, "I can't show you. You can't get in there." And so the real question of the ages is, how can God dwell with us again? How can we dwell with God again? That's the issue. That's the issue of the whole Bible. God knows that we have to live with him, but God knows that we can't live with him. There's a sword there, the sword of God's justice. He can't just—well, you say, "Why can't he just get rid of it?" A debt can never ever just be forgiven. Debts only get absorbed and paid by somebody. If somebody harms you and you forgive them, what do you mean? What does that mean you forgive them? You eat it. It means that you pay for it. Debts don't go off into the blue. If you owe a bank some money, if a construction agency owes a bank a tremendous amount of money and the construction agency goes bankrupt, what does the bank do? The bank says, "I guess we have to forgive the debt, we'll never get it back." What does that mean? Does the debt go off into thin air? No, the bank eats it. The bank pays for it, it lays people off, restructures itself. Debts do not go away. Someone's got to pay. The sword just means if you're going to get back into the presence of God, there's an obstacle between God and you that has to be dealt with. There's a debt that has to be paid. There's no way back into the presence of God except under the sword. Blood will be shed. The wages of sin is death. It's there.
Guest (Female): Woven into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like "What gives my life meaning?", "Can I have a happy and fulfilled life?", and "Why is there so much suffering in the world?". We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So, what are these stories our culture tells us about who we are and do they actually deliver what they promise? Tim Keller and his son Michael Keller explore this in a brand new book, *The Stories We Live By*. Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics like identity, freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships and sufferings of life. *The Stories We Live By* offers a challenge to skeptics and to Christians alike to examine the underlying narratives that drive our lives and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of September, we'll send you this new book, *The Stories We Live By*, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give, because the gospel truly changes everything.
Tim Keller: Now, that's an improvement, right? Not a temporary sanctuary, a permanent sanctuary, the Tabernacle and the Temple. But here's the problem with it: nobody lives in that house with God. Nobody lived in the Tabernacle, nobody lived in the Temple. They lived outside, they lived around it. And not only that, even when they visited it, they couldn't go back into the actual holy place. They couldn't go behind the veil because in the front of the veil separating us from the Holy of Holies, you know what was on the veil? Cherubim. They were embroidered. And leaves and palm trees and pomegranates showing that this is the garden. And the only way that anybody got back there was one day a year, the High Priest, after weeks of cleansing himself and slaying an animal, putting it under the sword and bringing it in. One day a year he could go back and he could pray for the people in the very presence of God. And when he came out from before the presence of God and he survived the experience, everybody went, "Whew." Nobody could live back there. Nobody could even visit back there except once, and only when something went under the knife. But now, when you get to the New Testament and you get to Jesus Christ, suddenly, if you understand what God's been doing for hundreds of years, all of the imagery of the temple and the dwelling place of God, the Shekinah glory—there was the holy place, there was the altar out front where the sacrifices were done, there was the altar of the showbread, there was the candlestick—all of this imagery blazes out. All of it suddenly catches fire. Moses was told by God, "You can't look on my glory and live," but Paul says, "The one who said let light shine out of darkness has made the light shine into our hearts by giving us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We're told in John chapter one, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory." "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us" is what John actually says in the Greek. He pitched his tent. In John chapter two, Jesus comes into the temple and he looks around and he sees all the people there, the money changers and the cattle sellers, and he gets out a whip and he throws everybody out and he says, "My temple should be a holy place, a house of prayer, that's my Father's house." The Jewish leaders come to him and say, "By what right do you do this?" They don't say he's wrong to demand holiness in the temple, do they? No, the temple's got to be a holy place. Nobody but the holy can come before the presence of God. But they say, "By what right do you do this?" And Jesus says, "Tear this temple down and in three days I'll build it up." And they said, "What are you talking about? It took years to build this temple." But John, the gospel writer, says Jesus was referring to himself. He was talking about himself. "You kill me and in three days this temple will be back." What does that mean? "I'm the temple. I'm the real temple, I'm the real tabernacle, I'm the real priest, I'm the real showbread, I'm the real candlestick." But most of all, "I'm the real sacrifice. I've gone under the knife." You know that Cherubim and that flaming sword? I'll take it into my own breast. And the minute he dies, the minute he dies on the cross, what happens? The veil in the Holy of Holies veil, the veil that separates the Holy of Holies from the people, is ripped not from bottom to top, but from top to bottom. And what does this mean? He's the temple. He's the place through whom you actually reach the very presence of God. It means that if you receive him as Savior and he has paid for your sins, the very presence of God that was fatal to Moses, that he wanted so much, the very presence of God that was fatal to those animals on Mount Sinai, the very presence of God that was lethal, that was forbidden to Adam, forbidden to Moses, forbidden to Abraham, forbidden to Jacob, comes smack-dab into downtown you. It's no longer lethal. It comes in. You're a dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus is the temple, when you unite with him, when you become one with him, you're part of the temple too. And actually, we're not done, because if you want to go to the end of the Bible and really understand this, you'll see at the very end of the book of Revelation, down comes the new heavens and the new earth. What are the dimensions of it? It's a cube. It's a cube. And even though it's a city, it's a garden with a tree of life in it. What is it saying? It's saying in the end, the whole universe will be the dwelling place of God. The Shekinah glory of God, the face of God, will be everywhere. And the Garden of Eden will finally take over the universe. And we will live with him and we will dwell with him and we will walk in the cool of the day with him. God's dwelling place, you see it at the very end of Revelation 21. At the very end of Revelation, there's a voice that comes from heaven as the new heavens and the new earth come down. What does it say? "Now is the dwelling place of God amongst men." That's what it says. Why? That's how the Bible started. That's how the Bible finishes. That's what all the stages of salvation are about. This is the thread along which you can understand all the little pearls of the stories of the Bible. This is what your life is all about. This is where your problems are. This is the solution to all your problems. This is it. Now we can go home. No, not quite. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand the privilege of it? Do you understand when the Bible says angels long to look into the salvation that you've got? You know, it even says the salvation you've got, but of course, you see, the Bible tells us in the end, in the very end, the presence of God that's in your heart as the seed that's slowly taking over—sort of like zoysia grass, you know, you put a plug in and eventually it takes over—that's the image of the Bible. You work that presence of God out into every part of your life. Eventually, someday, on the day you die—the reason that Christians face death without any problem—on the day you die, the presence of God that is in there as a plug, that it's growing in your life, it bursts into flame, it takes you over and you burst into the presence of God as a radiant, dazzling creature. A bright, stainless mirror reflecting back to God his own boundless love and greatness and joy and goodness and love and patience and nobility and power. That's what we're in for. Because the dwelling place of God is amongst men, the presence of God is in your midst. It comes into your heart. You're partakers of the divine nature. Now, having said all that, what's the practical implications of it? Just listen for a couple seconds. There's both exciting news and there's also convicting news that you are the temple of God. Let me just talk about the exciting news first, then we'll end with the convicting news. The exciting news is this: the Bible says because you're the temple of God, because you actually dwell in the temple of God, you're priests. It mixes metaphors. That's all right because you need to mix metaphors. This is too great for one metaphor. What you've got bursts the banks of any one metaphor. So you're priests because you're living in the presence of God and the Bible says the job of priests is to offer sacrifices. Just think about this for a second. If you are a priest, if you are the temple, if you have the presence of God dwelling in you, the first good news is this: you always have access. You should always have full assurance to draw near to God. I'm constantly talking to people who, when they begin to see their flaws and their sins, they immediately feel like I've got to get away from God. Well, maybe you're not a Christian then. I'll tell you why. A Christian is somebody who the more they see of their sin, the more they want to go near God. A moralist and a legalist, somebody who really doesn't understand the gospel and somebody who really does not have the presence of God in their life, moralists and legalists, the more they see of their sins and their flaws, the more they want to get away. I've had a number of people that have come to me and said, "Now, doesn't the Holy Spirit convict of sin?" I said yes. "But then doesn't the Bible say doesn't the devil accuse you of sin?" Yes. "Well, how do I know the difference?" That's a normal question. How do I know if I feel bad, it's because the Holy Spirit is showing me what's wrong with me or how do I know it's just lack of self-esteem or how do I know it's not just demonic attack and the answer is very easy. It all hinges on this idea of the temple. If when you think about your sin, you feel "how can I have anything to do with God? God wouldn't have anything to do with me now," if you want to get away, if the voice says "look at your sin, why would God have anything to do with you?" that's low self-esteem or that's the devil or whatever, but it's not the Spirit of God. Because you see, the Spirit of God says you're a priest. You're acceptable. You have been made holy. You're wrapped in the robe of Jesus Christ's righteousness. "Let us draw near with full assurance of faith," says the Hebrews writer, "with our hearts sprinkled clean from dead works." And so whenever you get convicted of your faults in such a way that you don't want to have anything to do with God—you don't want to come to church, you don't want to pray, you don't want to have anything to do with God, you feel like how could he want anything to do with me now?—you're forgetting or else you never knew that a Christian is a dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit. That your sins have been paid for, that the sword has not come down on you, it's come down on him. And the veil has been ripped and God is standing there, not with terrible fury and majesty, but with his arms open saying, "Come in." Amazing. 2,000 years, don't go back there, don't go back there, don't go back there. The veil rips and there is the Father saying come. If you understand this, then when you sin, you'll go to him. You won't run away. Not only that, here's some other exciting news. The Bible says that if you think of yourself as a priest always living in the presence of God, then you will think of everything you do as the offering of a sacrifice. You know, Romans 12 says make your life a sacrifice. What is a sacrifice? Well, priests were always making sacrifices. There's a place in Galatians 3, put it this way, there's a place in Galatians 3 where Paul says, "Oh foolish Galatians, before whom Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified." Now Paul is saying—I won't get into that—he's criticizing the Galatians and that's another story and another sermon of course. But what he's saying is, if you continually see that Christ was sacrificed for you, if you constantly let it portray it, sense it, look at the cross, see him dying for you, oh how that should affect you. If you see his sacrifice, it'll make every other part of your life a sacrifice. We're told, for example, Hebrews 13 says think of yourselves as priests and offer up a continual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. If you think about what Jesus has done for you, then instead of you just working during the day, you'll offer everything you do up as a sacrifice. As you think about the sacrifice Jesus has done, it turns you into a priest. You're always thinking you're always in front of God, you're always living in the presence of God, you're always practicing the presence of God, and that means everything you do. The phone rings. What do you say if you're in a priestly mode of thinking? You say, "Lord, I don't know who that's going to be, but I praise that somehow I can glorify you by responding in a proper way, responding thinking about you, responding in a way that's consonant with your values." George Whitefield, the great Anglican preacher, every night he asked himself this question: "Before every deliberate act or conversation, did I consider how I might be certain to do it for God's glory?" He looked back on his day. "Before every deliberate act or conversation, did I consciously consider how can I do this in a spirit of thanksgiving to you? How can I offer this up to you? How can I offer this conversation? How can I offer my heart?" That's a spirit of sacrifice, that's a spirit of thanksgiving, it's a spirit of praise. If you have got this sense of always living in the presence of God, being in God's presence, if you're temple dwellers, if you're always seeing everything as a sacrifice, just make sure that your lives are characterized by these three things: first of all, you should be characterized by a praising spirit, not an irritable spirit. Secondly, by a repenting spirit, not a defensive spirit. And thirdly, by a grateful spirit, not a self-pitying spirit. And if you're continually saying "look at what Jesus has done for me, look how he's given me access to the Father, look at his sacrifice" and offer everything else up in your day as a sacrifice to him, that's what'll happen. First of all, have a praising spirit. It says in Hebrews 13:15, if you're a priest, continually offer up a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips who acknowledge his name. What's that mean? Look at the way God always seems to find something to affirm. Are you like that or are you irritable? Here's Jesus being spat upon, being hit. He's hit. "Prophesy if you're so smart." He's laughed at, he's mocked, he's up there he's dying. They say, "If you're the King of the Jews, come on down." And what does Jesus say? "Father, forgive them, they don't completely understand what they're doing." He says "won't you watch with me one hour?" he says to Peter and James and John. "Please stay awake with me." He comes back, they're asleep. What does he say? "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." He says, "I knew you meant well." Unbelievable. Jesus, under those circumstances, finds something to affirm. Here's the Father. Remember the prodigal son? He runs away and he's wasted all of the father's money and squandered it. Back comes the son. What does the father say? "This better be good." No, what does he say? He doesn't even wait for the son. He knows the son is going to repent. So what does he do? Does he wait there tapping his foot? He jumps on him and says, "All that matters is that you're safe." He makes it easy for the person to repent. Are you a praising person? Do you live a priestly life? Do you offer up the sacrifice of praise? Are you always able to affirm people? Are you an irritable person? Are you a critical person? Are you a judgmental person? Also, you should have a repenting spirit, not a defensive spirit. Why? Because you know, you know what Jesus Christ has done for you. So you're very quick and humble to repent. Somebody criticizes you? That's all right. That's okay. Repent. Because it says the sacrifices you will not despise—this is Psalm 51—is a broken and contrite heart. If you live in the presence of God and you think of everything as a sacrifice, you're happy to repent because you know God likes it. It's a sacrifice, a way of saying "this is the least I can do for what you've done for me." And you should have a grateful spirit, not a self-pitying spirit. You should think "look at what God has given me." It says that in Hebrews 13: offer up a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. See, that's the exciting news: the more you see you're in the temple, right there is the place where Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as having been sacrificed for you, the more you look at his sacrifice, the more you can offer up every part of your life as a sacrifice to him. That's the exciting news. But then there's the convicting news and that's this: when Jesus Christ came into the temple, what did he do? He threw things out. He shook things up. Why? Well, he was fulfilling what it says in Malachi chapter three. What does it say in Malachi chapter three? It says the Lord will come to his temple and he is like fuller's soap and like a refiner's fire. Jesus says if you're going to be in the presence of my Father, you've got to be holy. And so, zeal for the cleanliness of the courts of his Father consumed him, we're told in Malachi and John chapter two. Well, now he's in the middle of your life. And even though there's no condemnation for you, zeal for the purity of your lives consumes him. Your life is the dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit. Why do you think Paul can say "don't sleep with a prostitute" because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? What does he mean by that? He says, "Do you want the eyes of the one who is purer than can behold iniquity to see the stuff that you let pass through your heart all the time?" You're a temple of the Holy Spirit. That's the convicting news. Jesus comes to you and says, "I'm Lord of this house, and therefore I want it to be pure and I want it to be clean." What does it mean to be a dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit? It means that you've got to be holy. What does it mean to be holy? Well, when things were put into the temple, they were made holy. When a pot was put in the temple, it became holy. How can a pot be holy? When a piece of furniture was put in the tabernacle, it was holy. How can a chair be holy? Very simple. They became holy because they were only used by God and for no other use. You know what it means to be holy then? It means to say, "I don't belong to myself anymore. I'm for you. I'm for you." The reason sometimes that God puts you through the refiner's fire to make you holy is it's so easy sometimes to tell the truth is so practical. They say "honesty is the best policy." It usually is. So many many times, most of the time for you to tell the truth, to be holy, not only pleases God but also works for you. In other words, obedience to God very often pays off economically, it does. Obedience to God very often pays off relationally, it does. But sometimes it doesn't. At that moment, you're being refined because when in order to tell the truth, when in order to obey one of God's commands, you have to choose between God or your job, between God or economic advancement, between God and a relationship, that's when Jesus is in the center of your courts and he's refining you and he's saying, "Now you know what it means to be holy? To be holy mine. To be set apart for my use and no one else's." And it's at that moment, at those moments, that you have an opportunity to really become like your Savior. The good news: he's in your midst, you have access to him. Your life can be characterized by sacrifices of praise. The convicting news: the Holy One lives in your midst. Don't subject him, his eyes, to the things that you tend to just bring through your heart. Oh, but don't forget, the veil is ripped. That great, powerful presence is now in your life and it will never go out. It will grow and grow and grow until it takes you over and you finally become yourself. You're a temple. You're holy. Rejoice in it. Live in the knowledge of it. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have made us your dwelling place. We thank you that you have done this at incredible cost to us. We thank you that you have given us what angels long to look at, what Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses longed to have. We ask only that you would help us to appreciate and act on the basis of it. Our lives, oh Father, we just live so far below the level of greatness that you want for us and you've even now made available to us. But we thank you that the victory is inevitable and that eventually your presence in our lives will be absolutely triumphant and we long for that day and we say may it come soon and enable us to cooperate with the march of your presence through our lives, making us like your Son, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, the fairest among 10,000. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.
Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.