Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Foretaste of the Future

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Most teachers tend to overlook or go past this particular passage in Ephesians 3. Here’s the reason. In the middle of the first sentence, there’s a dash. Paul just breaks off and goes into a digression, literally a sidebar, and he doesn’t come out of it until verse 13. This really is a sudden thought he had. And yet, what’s in here is so practical. In here we’re going to learn 1) the hardness of life, 2) the wonder of grace, 3) the brilliance of the church, and 4) the freedom that comes. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 20, 2011. Series: A Study of Ephesians: Who is the Church? Scripture: Ephesians 3:1–13. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. When we look at the Christian church today, it's easy to see that there is polarization and disagreement between various groups and denominations. Yet, as Christians, we know the Bible calls us to unity. How can the Gospel bring us together? Join us as Tim Keller preaches through the book of Ephesians, which is all about the church and how Christians can experience deep unity across divisive issues. Tonight's scripture comes from the book of Ephesians, chapter three, verses one through 13. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles, surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you,

that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me to

preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God who created all things. His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in their heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

I ask you therefore not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. This is the word of the Lord. So we're going through the book of Ephesians, which is about the church, and we come to chapter three. And honestly, most teachers and preachers who go into the book of Ephesians tend to overlook or go past this particular passage. When I look back over my own particular passage, when I look back over my own career of teaching and preaching, I haven't gone here very much myself. And here's the reason. Do you see that in the middle of the first sentence, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of

Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles, is a dash. You know why? Smack in the middle of the sentence. He just breaks off and goes into a digression, literally a sidebar. And he doesn't come out of it until verse 13 and gets back to his subject in verse 14. And this really is a sudden thought he had. It's kind of a ramble. It rambles. It's not very well structured. And yet what's in here is so practical. And so the best we can do is sort of try to divide it up

and understand it like this. In here we're gonna learn the hardness of life, the wonder of grace, the brilliance of church, and the freedom that comes to people who understand all those truths. The hardness of life, the wonder of grace, the brilliance of church, and the freedom that comes if you grasp and understand these truths.

Look, first the hardness of life. Why does Paul break off? He's pointing out to them, I'm writing from prison, he says. I'm a prisoner. He's writing from prison, and then suddenly, he thinks of something, and we know what that is, because in verse 13, he says, I ask you, therefore, therefore is going back to all the verses,

I had the previous 12 verses, I ask you therefore not to be discouraged because of my sufferings. See, Paul knew that his being in prison was a huge discouragement to his friends. And so right in the middle of a sentence, he breaks off and he addresses it and he tries to engage them and tries to help them. Now, there is no book in

the world more realistic about the inevitability of suffering and the hardness of life. Life is hard, and it's not just hard for bad people. The best people, good people, they suffer as well. Huge disappointments and tragedies. And the Bible unflinchingly shows you that. And Paul's no different than any other author in the Bible because as soon as he hears, as soon as he thinks about the fact that these people are really struggling over the bad things that have happened to me, because they're struggling

with suffering, he does not just say, well, suck it up. He doesn't ignore it. He engages them. And that's how the whole Bible is. The Bible engages us over the reality of suffering. Now, the reason it engages us is because suffering shakes your faith. In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is in prison. You remember John the Baptist had declared that Jesus was the Messiah. He said,

Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. But when he's in prison and about to be executed, he sends Jesus a message and the message is this, are you really the one who is to come or should we look for another? Why is he filled with doubts? Are you really the Messiah or should we look for somebody? Why is he experiencing doubts? You know why. Because he's in prison, he's about to die. And what he's really saying is, if you're really the Messiah, why would your servant be in this situation? Why is my life falling apart

if you're really the son of God, kind of thing? And here you actually have Paul feeling, Paul's friends feeling the same way about his suffering. If you're really a servant of God, if this God is really so good, why is all this bad stuff happening to you? In some ways, you know, when someone you love is suffering, it's a peculiar kind of suffering.

You suffer when someone you love is suffering, there's a helplessness. And actually in verse 13, it says, I ask you therefore not to be discouraged. It's a word that means disheartened. The heart gets taken out of you. You get bitter, you get numb. And Paul is saying, I don't want you to do that.

But the point is, he's trying to help them. Because he knows and the Bible knows that life is hard and that we need help to help to deal with it. And all of verses one to 13 is Paul's help. So, what is that help? Let's keep going. First, the hardness of life.

Secondly, the wonder of grace. One word that comes up the most in this whole passage is the word mystery. Paul says it's his job to proclaim a mystery. What does the word mystery mean? Now, when you and I hear the English word mystery, it actually conveys something that is almost the opposite

of what Paul means by it. So we have a little bit of a translation problem. When you and I think of a mystery, you think of what? Something hidden from you that it's your job to discover. Now, Kathy and I love reading mysteries and we love watching mysteries. And when you watch a mystery, the truth is hidden from you till the end

and it's your job to try to figure it out. And of course, you spend your time guessing who done it, and Kathy's a little better than I am at guessing. She's usually more accurate than me, and you're sitting there trying to figure it out. So a mystery is something hidden from you that it's your job to discover. The Greek word, especially as Paul uses it,

means exactly the opposite. It means not something hidden that you have to discover. It means something revealed by God because you would never discover it because it's so counterintuitive, because you would never come to the conclusion of it by a process of reasoning. In other words, a mystery is an astonishing,

counterintuitive revelation, something revealed to you that's astounding that goes completely against anything you would have guessed. And what is this mystery? Whenever Paul uses it, it has something to do with the gospel. It has something to do, notice another word that comes up over and over and again, is grace. Three times grace, one time gospel. The mystery, the gospel of grace, your salvation by grace is the great mystery. And I want you to contrast it with the law of God. The Ten Commandments are never called a mystery in

the Bible. The golden rule, never called a mystery. Why? Well, let's think this out now for a minute. The gospel is not that if you live a good life, obey the Ten Commandments, live by the golden rule, then God will bless you, hear your prayers, and take you to heaven. That's not the gospel, you know why? Because it makes too much sense. That's exactly what you'd think. To live according

to the golden rule, don't lie, don't murder, you know, don't steal, the Ten Commandments, the golden rule, have never been called mysteries because they're common sense. Almost all the religions of the world know them. Most people know them. They understand them. It makes sense. The gospel is not that though. What is the gospel? The gospel is that the Son of God came to earth and triumphed through weakness and suffering. He won through losing. He gained everything by giving it all away. He overcame your and my sin and guilt by taking it on himself. And as a result, when you become a Christian, when you're in Christ, you are, as Luther said,

simul justus et peccator. Simultaneously, you're a sinner, like Paul says here, the very least, and yet, you're loved, you're affirmed, you're pardoned, you're accepted, you're delighted in. You're completely, you're simul justus et peccator, simultaneously, a terrible sinner, You're delighted in. You're completely, you're simile justus epicator, simultaneously a terrible sinner,

and yet absolutely loved, justified, accepted in God's sight. That's a mystery, you know why? Because it is counterintuitive, it is not what you would ordinarily think. It goes against all your instincts that in spite of how bad you are, you're saved by sheer grace.

The law of God is never called a mystery because the idea that you're saved by living a good life makes perfect sense. The idea that you're saved by grace, you're now simultaneously just and yet righteous in his sight makes absolutely no sense to the heart. But here's what I want you to consider. If you decide to live by the first framework. That if I do live a good life and I obey the 10 commandments and I live by the golden rule, then God will accept me and take me to heaven.

If you live by that, at first it makes sense, but as time goes on it will crush you. Because no one can live up to it. But if you live by the gospel, that you're saved by sheer grace, no matter how bad you are, no matter what you've done, it doesn't matter,

you're completely accepted in him, it doesn't make sense, but as time goes on, it will become more and more wonderful, it will become more and more liberating, and the more and more you look into this, because it's a mystery, because it's a counterintuitive,

astonishing revelation of God, the more wisdom and grace you're going to see in it. Is the gospel a counterintuitive, astounding wonder to you? If it is, you never get tired of thinking about it. You are always fascinated by it. You're like the angels in 1 Peter 1, they endlessly longed to look into the gospel. Why? Because it's a wonder. It's a counterintuitive, astonishing wonder. There's depths to it, and you're always seeing new things, and you're always being liberated

new ways. And you're never getting to the bottom of it. And sometimes you say, I'll never understand the gospel. It's so wonderful. If you feel you understand the gospel, you don't understand the gospel. If you say, I can hardly even begin to grasp the depths of the gospel, that means you actually have started to grasp the depths of the gospel. It's the wonder of grace he's talking about here.

Is the gospel that to you? Thirdly, he's talking about the brilliance of the church. What do we mean by the brilliance of the church? Now, Paul is saying that it's his job, his calling, to be a preacher and a missionary of this gospel of grace. And in verse nine, he says, verse seven, eight, nine, he's actually saying it's his goal in life to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the brilliance of the gospel. How is that going to happen? What's everyone the brilliance of the gospel.

How is that going to happen? What's the main way in which the gospel's brilliance and wisdom is shown to the world? And then Paul says something here, even though it's a digression, it's kind of an afterthought. He says one of the most amazing things he says anywhere is verse 10 and 11. Let me read it to you and unpack it backwards. He says, his intent, verse 10, was that now through the church, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ

Jesus our Lord. Now let's work backwards. Verse 11, the great purpose of God that he's going to accomplish through Christ is what? It was mentioned in Ephesians 1, verses 8 and 9. It's kind of the seminal theme of the book. Back there, Paul says that the ultimate purpose of God is to sum up and bring together everything in the world in Jesus Christ. Recap. Perhaps the main fact about life in this world is that things fall apart.

Perhaps the main fact about life in the world is things fall apart, everything falls apart. So what's war? Violent crime, racism. It's people that should be together at each other's throats. Things that should be one coming apart. Society falling apart. Your relationships falling apart. All right, what is disease?

What is hunger? What is death? It's your body falling apart, which eventually happens. The parts of your body, they unravel, that's what death is. They no longer cohere. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Genesis one, two, three tell us that originally

God created the world for everything to be together, everything to cohere, everything to be in eternal harmony. Your body to stay together, your relationships to stay together, everything to stay together. But because sin came in, now everything falls apart. Things fall apart. But, God in Christ is someday going to bring us to the place where all those things are brought together again, forever. And there'll be no more suffering, there'll be no more tears. There'll be no more death. No more disease. No more injustice

Be peace on earth right That's the purpose and we talked about that before but now look at verse 10 How will the world really see most clearly that that's God's purpose? This incredible good news of what God's trying to do in Jesus. What is the most clear way that the world, everybody can see what God is doing? It says it in verse 10.

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold was a word that means brilliant. The brilliant wisdom of God, the brilliant gospel should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms through the church. Now this is kind of breathtaking, but here's what he's saying. He is saying it is the community, not any one individual, as great as any individual could be.

It is through the Christian community, it is through healed relationships. It is through the Christian community that the world can most readily see the incredible future that God is preparing for everyone. FF Bruce, a great biblical scholar of the previous generation, generation ago, on this verse says this, he says, the church here, this is in Ephesians 3 10, the church appears as God's pilot plant for the reconciled universe of the future. Would you think about that for a minute? we are God's pilot plant for the reconciled universe of the future and FF Bruce goes on to say, you know Paul's been talking about the fact that the gospel has brought Jew and Gentile together in the church

This the gospel brought down a division that would never have been eradicated by anything else, but the gospel brings down this division. We've been talking about that and what he means. But he says the healing of racial divisions inside the church is only a foretaste, and then he says, of a time when all the mutually hostile elements in creation will be united. All the mutually hostile elements. Right now, all the things hostile elements in creation will be united. All the mutually hostile elements. Right now, all the things that fall apart, everything that falls apart,

all the mutually hostile elements in creation will be united. And it's the church that shows people a taste of what that's going to be. And then he goes on and says, the church therefore is to be a new society, not just a fellowship, a new society in which this world can see exhibited what family life, what business and economic practices,

what race relations, what all of life will be under the healing kingship of Jesus Christ. God is out to heal all the effects of sin, psychological, social, and physical, and the place where people can most clearly see will be in the church. It's easy to assume that if we understand the gospel and preach it faithfully, we will be shaped by it.

But this is not always true. How can we make sure that our lives, churches, and ministries are being shaped by, centered on, and empowered with the gospel? Tim Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, is meant to help congregants, lay leaders, and pastors understand how to make the Gospel the center of all ministry. In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how Gospel-centered ministry is more theologically driven than program-driven.

As you read, you'll discover how reflecting on the essence, the truths, and the patterns of the Gospel lead to renewal in your churches and ministries. This month when you give to Gospel in Life, we'll send you Dr. Keller's book, Shaped by the Gospel, as our thanks for your gift. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with Christ's love. Now, he says, the manifold wisdom of the future can be seen now in the

church in a way that no individual person can exhibit it to the world. And he goes so far, he goes so far and says, it's not just the world, but he says the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. Now look, this is nosebleed stuff. Just stay with me for a second. Who are they? Those are angels and demons. That's the word that means angels and demons. And this is, how do I say, the Deuteronomy 4 principle to the nth degree. Deuteronomy 4, God says to Israel, Israel, if you obey me and you create a society, a godly society, you'll be showing the nations my glory Regards says to Israel if you are a godly people a godly community You'll be showing the nations my glory

But now Paul says that was the Old Testament people of God Paul says the New Testament people of God don't just show the world the brilliance of the gospel but don't just show the world the brilliance of the gospel, but angels and the demons, not just the visible world, but the invisible world, all look in and are amazed at what the church is. Look, we have to move on. Let me just come down out of nosebleed heaven for a minute

and just say, you know what he's saying? I'll bring it up again. 81% of all Americans say to pollsters, you can be a good Christian and not be part of a church. And Paul has no idea what in the world they're talking about. Paul is saying it is indispensable for the world to understand the brilliance of the gospel to have churches. And Paul's not unrealistic.

Paul knows what a mess all churches are to some degree. Look at all of his writings. Look at his writing to the Corinthians. Look at his writing to the Colossians. All these churches are riddled with trouble. He's not naive, and yet he says the church is indispensable. Look, there's a hundred reasons, I don't have the time to do it.

There's a hundred ways in which it's true, but let me just give you one. Don't you think the gospel should change your life? Sure. Well, let me ask you for a second, how did you get the life you've got right now? How did you become the person you are right now? Through individual decisions of yours? Not mainly. It's because of who your family was, you know that. It's because of your culture, you know that. It's because of who your family was, you know that.

It's because of your culture, you know that. It's because of your community. It's because of the relationships around you. That's what formed you. And most of your personal decisions were a response to those things. And now if you want the gospel to come into your life and to change your life now,

do you think that's gonna happen just by you going off and making individual decisions? No, you need a new family. You need a new culture. You need a new culture. You need a new community. That's how the gospel works. That's how human beings work. Do you see the brilliance of the church?

The word manifold means brilliant, multicolored. It might be referring to the racial diversity of the church of God, but it's probably talking about even more than that. Do you see the brilliance of the church? Now, time's up. Point four, why is Paul telling him all this stuff? Don't forget, Paul is not lecturing to students, he's pastoring hurting people.

And all that heavy theology we just laid out was all a way for him to say at the end, I ask you therefore, if you know all these things, you're not going to be discouraged by suffering around you. How does that work? Here's how it works. Three things. Paul has shown us if you're a Christian and you're in Christ, no suffering is for nothing,

no suffering can really hurt you, and all your suffering will be for glory. No suffering is for nothing, no suffering can really hurt you, and all your suffering is for glory. A little sermon inside a sermon. So here they are. Number one, if you've been listening so far, you'll know that there's no suffering that can come into your life that's really for nothing. Johnny Erickson Tata is a woman who's been in a wheelchair most of her life. When she was 18, she had a swimming accident and she's been a quadriplegic since then. And when she was originally injured

and she was in a rehabilitation hospital in the Baltimore area, she was in a room with three or four other young women who had also had some kind of debilitating condition. And one of the people in her room was a girl named Denise Walters. Wanna know her story? Talk about life being hard. Denise was a 17-year-old cheerleader, happy, popular, 17-year-old high school senior at a high school in Baltimore. And one day she was bounding up the steps, she stumbled because her knees felt kind of weak.

By the end of the day, her legs felt kind of even weaker and shaky. She went home and took a nap and when she woke up, she was paralyzed from the waist down. Several days later, she was paralyzed from the neck down. Her arms didn't work. A few weeks after that, she went blind. Just like that. What was it? It was a rare form of rapid progression,

multiple sclerosis. And I think about four or five years she was dead. But when she was in the room with Johnny Erickson and the others, she couldn't see, she couldn't move, she could hardly talk. And as the weeks and months went went by Nobody came to see her but her mother Denise and her mother were Christians and every night her mother came in read the Bible to her and prayed but that was it and Sometime later, of course she did die and Johnny was really Upset about this. She was very distressed and here's the reason why Erickson, and she's written a number of books on this, was struggling with her own suffering. You know, why did this happen to me?

I'm a Christian, why in the world am I in a wheelchair? The rest of my life, why did this happen to me? And she had begun to develop in her thinking, she had begun to discover some of the reasons why suffering can be meaningful, some of the things that suffering can accomplish. One of them was that suffering can help you grow spiritually, turn you into somebody wonderful and great.

Another one was suffering is a way of testifying. It's a way of being a witness to other people who if they see you being patient, you know, under the suffering, it shows them that God is real. So it can be a testimony and it can be a way of growth. But when Denise died, Johnny really struggled because she says, here's one person whose suffering seemed to be completely pointless.

It was for nothing. Nobody saw her. Nobody saw it. She certainly wasn't growing, you know, spiritually because she was just dying. It was just dying. It was for nothing. And so, Johnny shared her struggle with some of her friends, and one friend suddenly said, but wait a minute, wait a minute. And she pulled out Ephesians 3.10, that the angels and the demons are looking

at what happens inside the church. And then she pulled out Luke 15 that says that there's rejoicing by the angels in heaven for every person who repents. And actually if they had done it, they could have gone to the book of Job. And if you know anything about the book of Job, you know that the suffering of Job happens

in front of a council of angels and the devil. And suddenly Johnny got it. Do you get it? What if I told you that tomorrow, for one day, there was a special camera that was gonna put everything you said, everything you did, and everything you thought on television, beamed around the world

and probably a billion people would see it. Tomorrow, would that make any difference, by the way, as to how you lived? I think it would. And what if you said, oh my goodness, there's a couple of things I really have always wanted to tell the world, things I always wanted to show the world, maybe causes that are dear to your heart.

Would you be excited? Would you really work very hard to live as, to be on your absolute best behavior, both externally and internally? Yes, you would. It would make an enormous difference. It would make the day incredibly meaningful. Don't you see?

You're already on camera. There are billions, I don't know how many angels and demons there are, don't you realize that even, even if nobody here on Earth sees, there's a whole lot of other people, there's the visible and the invisible world. You're already there, you're already on.

Everything you do is seen by billions of beings. And when Johnny realized that, she sent Denise's mother a consolation note, a little comfort note, and she wrote this, the basically she said, here's the message to her mother. She says, I am sure that the angels and demons stood amazed as they watched the uncomplaining patience of your daughter. See, no

sufferings for nothing. Secondly, no suffering can really hurt you. Do you see what Paul calls himself? A prisoner of Christ. He will not say he's a prisoner of Rome. He will not say he's a prisoner of this person. He is not a prisoner. And his attitude is amazing. In fact, one place in 2 Corinthians he says, he says, five times I've received 40 lashes minus one, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked.

I've been constantly on the move. I've been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles. I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food. I've been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

But if I must boast, I will boast in the things that show my weakness, that God and Father, the Lord Jesus knows that I'm not lying. What does he mean, boast? In other words, he says, these things don't get me down. These things don't bother me. I'm not really your prisoner. You haven't really got me in jail.

You can't hurt me. Why does he have this attitude? Where does it come from? Some years ago, I remember two young guys at Redeemer many years ago both auditioned for the same role. I think it was in a movie, I'm not sure, it might have been stage. But I remember this, one of the guys was an actor

who had other job, another job, but he was an actor and he really prepared for it and he really wanted it and it was really important to him and he really needed the role. The other guy auditioned for the same role and he really wanted it and it was really important to him and he really needed the role. The other guy auditioned for the same role and he was in business and he was very successful and that was really what he wanted to do and acting was sort of a sideline

and he said who knows, maybe, and they both auditioned and both got turned down. One of them was devastated, one of them just shrugged it off. You know which one and which one, right? You know why? When Jesus Christ says, where your treasure is, there is your heart. Where your treasure is, there's your heart. What's he

mean? Everybody invests in something that says, this is what I really am about. This is where I really get my meaning. This is where what's really important to me. This is my real hope. This is my real identity. Everybody sticks their treasure into something. Everybody invests their heart in something. And what had happened was,

that turndown touched one man's treasure. It's what he really most wanted in life. And it didn't touch the other person's treasure. And you know what Paul is saying? What's Paul's treasure? It's in verse 12. In fact, I think it may be deliberately ironic. He says, I'm in prison.

But then he says, I'm really not in prison. I'm Christ's prisoner, because he wants me here, but I'm really not their prisoner. They can't really bind me. they can't really hurt me. And then he says in verse 13, pardon me, verse 12, in him and through him we may approach God with freedom. He says I'm really free, but why? What is his treasure?

There's his treasure, verse 12. In Christ, because of the grace of Christ, I can approach God. I am free. I am confident before God. To be loved by God, to be known by God, he says, that's his treasure. And then to have other people experience that through the preaching of the gospel, that's his treasure. And you know what that means? Nobody can touch that treasure. There's nothing in the world, if you make that your treasure, if you put your heart

there, if that's the main thing you're after, don't you realize? You will be invulnerable. Nobody can touch that treasure. Can you make that move? You can, don't you see? It doesn't mean you won't weep. It doesn't mean you won't feel pain. But if you put your heart there, it means it will never devastate you. It can't. Because you're free. You know what Paul is saying?

Not only am I free, and no chains in this world can possibly take that away, but the worst they can do is what? What are they going to do to me? Huh? What are they going to do to me? Kill me? That'll just make me more free. That'll make me more beautiful.

That'll make me, that'll just give me more of my treasure. If you're devastated by suffering, because you can't handle it, it's because you have not made that move. And if you make that move, no suffering can hurt you. And lastly, as Paul says, my suffering is for your glory. And lastly, as Paul says, my suffering is for your glory. My suffering is for your glory.

Why? Because that's how it works, and you know why it works that way? Jesus Christ is the only person who earned freedom and confidence to approach God, because he lived a perfect life, but at the end of his life, what happened? He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free.

He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the one bit of suffering, the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you, that is being cast out from God. He took that so one bit of suffering, the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you, that is being cast out from God. He took that so that now all suffering that comes into your life will only make you move you from being a lump of coal to being a diamond. You know, a lump of coal under pressure becomes a diamond.

And suffering of a person in Christ only turns you into somebody gorgeous. Jesus Christ suffered, not that we would never suffer, but that when we suffer we would be like him. And you can see it in Paul. Paul's happy to be in prison because, first one, it's for your sake. Paul's happy to be in prison because my sufferings are

for your glory. He's like Jesus now because that's how Jesus did it. And if you know that that glory is coming, you can handle suffering. As Dostoevsky put it at one point, talking about that incredible glory that is to come and how when we get there, it's gonna mean that all of our suffering will be meaningful

and make sense, he says, I believe, this is in the Brothers Karamazov, I believe that like a child, that suffering will be healed and make sense, he says, I believe this is in the Brothers Karamazov, I believe that like a child, that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a painful mirage, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,

something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they shed, that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. My friends, I ask you not to be discouraged because of the sufferings in your life and around you, because glory's coming. Let's pray.

Thank you, Father, for this digression, this detour, this sidebar, but it's the pastor's heart we have here in Paul, and when he gets all that nosebleed kind of theology out, in the end, he's telling us, here's how you can handle tomorrow because it's going to be a tough one. We pray that you would show us how we can take these incredible truths, these high and lofty theological precepts and bring them down into our life and

become people who can face trouble with poise. Lord, the gospel equips us for everything. Show us how to look into it and find what we need for the next day and the next day and the next day. And to become more and more conformed to the image of your son in whose name we pray, amen. Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you.

You can share your story with us by visiting GospelinLife.com slash stories. That's GospelinLife.com slash stories. That's gospelinlife.com slash stories. Today's sermon was recorded in 2011. 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.