Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Noah and The Reasons of Faith

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

The Bible tells us faith begins with thinking. The Bible says faith requires and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost.  Nowadays, we’re told by our culture from the time we’re very little that the big questions—what is real, what is right and wrong, and what we should be living for—are questions for the philosophers. We’re taught that the important things are standard of living, career, appearance, and psychological needs.  Hebrews 11 shows us three aspects about faith: 1) that thinking leads to faith, 2) how thinking leads to faith, and 3) whythinking leads to faith.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 18, 1994. Series: The Nature of Faith. Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-7. 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. While some might think that Christian faith is just a blind leap, a closer look shows us that it requires deep, rational thinking. Join us all month as Tim Keller preaches on genuine faith, which requires both a deep conviction of the heart and a sound understanding of the mind. Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible. By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.

By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings, and by faith he still speaks even though he is dead. By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith, it is impossible to please God. Because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

By faith, Noah, when warned about things not seen in holy fear, built an ark to save his family. By his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. This is God's word. The entire chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament is all about faith and we're looking at it all fall

because faith, Christian faith, is a multi-dimensional thing. What is faith? What does it mean to believe? That's what we're looking at. And last week, we mentioned that faith has three elements. Faith begins with understanding, which leads to conviction,

and completes itself in commitment. Understanding, conviction, commitment. Unless all three are present, it's not Christian faith. Now starting this week, we begin to look at each of those elements in turn. And today we're going to talk about the first one. Faith begins with understanding. It begins with thinking. It begins with reasoning. And the two verses in this passage that tell us about this aspect of faith It begins with understanding. It begins with thinking. It begins with reasoning. And the two verses in this passage that tell us about this aspect of faith are verse three

and verse six. In verse three we read, by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. And verse six, without faith it's impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. Look at verse 3, by faith we understand. Let me put it another way, a paraphrase. By faith we think. The Bible tells us that faith is thinking. It begins with thinking. It starts with reasoning. This is not the popular conception I know. The popular conception is that Orthodox believing

Christians are people who don't like to think. They would rather not think. They would rather not ask a lot of questions. They would rather accept what they're told. They would rather not ask a lot of questions. They would rather accept what they're told. They would rather rest on tradition. You know, last year a Washington Post writer, you know, made comment about Orthodox Christians and he said most of them were poor, uneducated, and easily led. And of course he apologized for this statement, but he didn't change his mind, from what I can tell. The idea is yes, if you believe all these things, if you believe all the orthodox old classic

Christian doctrines, you can't be a person who thinks, you just want to believe. And so faith in the popular mindset is put over against thinking. We are here today to see that the Bible teaches not only that faith is compatible with thinking. Oh my, we're not going to settle for that today. We're not going to say, oh you can have faith and still think. No, what we're going to say is, what the Bible says is, faith consists of, requires, and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning and rationality. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost.

In fact, to go so far as to say the reason there is not much faith today is because there's not much thinking today. Norman Cousins puts it this way. He says, Our age is not the age of the meditative man. It's a sprinting, shoving age. Daily, new antidotes for contemplation spring into being and leap out from store counters.

See, the average person says, ah, the great philosophical questions. Yes, you know, Immanuel Kant and his critique of pure reason, that great work of his, he says, there's three questions. All educated people have to wrestle through and come up with a working answer for if you're gonna live a thoughtful life an examined life. He says the three questions are how can I know what's real? What ought I to do that's right? And what can I hope for? What

can I live for? See the one question is how do I know what's real? How do I decide what is right and wrong? And what is it I should be living for? And you know, nowadays we're told by our culture from the beginning, from the time we're very little, that that's for the philosophers. The important things are your standard of living, your career, your appearance, your psychological needs, and therefore religion, the philosophy, all that stuff. How do I know?

How do I decide right and wrong? What is meaning? And you say, you know, that's not important. That is not doubt on the basis of thinking. That's doubt on the basis of an absence of thinking, a refusal to think. You cannot have fully or Christian faith without a vigorous life of the mind. Faith consists of, requires, stimulates thinking.

You've got to use your brain. Let me show you. This passage shows us thinking leads to faith. Thinking is the basis of faith. Thinking is the foundation of faith. Let's just look at it in three aspects. That thinking leads to faith, how thinking leads to faith, and why thinking leads to faith.

That it does, how it does, why it does. First of all, that it does. In other words, let's look at the principle in general. That you can't have faith, real Christian faith, without thinking. We're told that here in verse 6, where it says, first of all, without faith it's impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists. In other words, you can't come to God unless you believe he's real, unless you've come to the conclusion that he's actual. There's a bottom layer before you can have a personal relationship with God.

Let me put it to you in an obvious way, but then let me show you how people are missing that, especially in places like New York City. Let's just say that you lived on a coast and you'd always heard about this remote island. You'd heard of it. There's a remote island, a beautiful island, people talked about it. You don't just say, I'm going to go find it and get off in your boat. No. What do you do?

You research it. You look at maps, maps that are trustworthy. You use them in the past. You talk to people, people who have been there, people that you know, people that you trust. You do the research and you come to the conclusion that the island really is there and where it is and then you come to it. Before you come to the island you must believe it exists and you must know where it is and any other approach is really very responsible. Maybe that's obvious, I won't go on any further with that illustration, but you say, well of course that's obvious, but listen,

I'm continually finding that people will come to church in a time of crisis, people will come to Christianity when there's a great need, and they come, sometimes they'll come and talk to me, I'm maybe the most visible figure in this church, they'll often come to me and they'll say, I'm ready, I want this. I want Jesus. And you talk to them and you see that there's great needs there and I of course know

that the needs will be met by Jesus. But more and more I'm coming and saying, well let me ask you something. Before you say I want to become a Christian, before you get baptized, before you receive Christ, before you do that, do you receive Christ, before you do that, do you know that He's true? And I am finding that people, sometimes they're puzzled,

sometimes they just get quiet, sometimes they're even a little irked, but one way or the other what they say to me is, it's true for me. I can't speak for other people. I just know it fits me. I know that it excites me. I know that it's connecting right where I am. It's true for me. That's all that matters. I can't speak for anybody else, but I know it's true for me. And more and more I'm saying, you cannot skip over what it says here in verse 6. Before you come to him, you must not just think it's true for you, you must think it's true

period. That's what verse 6 says. When a person says, oh I don't know if it's true period, I don't know if it's objectively true, I certainly would want to tell other people it's true for them, but I know that Christianity is true for me. That is an alien view of faith that you are importing into Christianity. Leave it out there. Okay, it's another religion we're talking about, another whole approach to truth, another whole view of the world. See,

thinking leads to faith. Christian faith starts with thinking. It's not enough just to say, oh, I know it's true for me. You have to also know it's true, period. Thinking is the very foundation for faith. Let me show you this way. When Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight, he doesn't contrast faith with reason. He doesn't say we walk by faith, not by reason. That's what people think, but that's not what Paul says.

He says we walk by faith, not by sight. He contrasts it with sight. Let me give you a couple of great examples to see why reasoning and thinking is, in a sense, it's what faith consists of. And doubt and unbelief is not too much thinking but too little. You see, a loss of faith is not too much thinking but too little. Let me give you an example. A couple years ago, several years ago, my doctor noticed and I noticed that there was

a kind of fatty growth underneath my skin over here on my hip and he called it, they called it a lipoma, which is an innocuous, fatty little growth and yet it was irritated so he says, well we need to get it out, we need to cut it out. And so he explained this to me and all it takes, he says this is a very, it's a necessary operation because you wouldn't want it to turn into something bad, but it's simple. You do it with a local anesthetic, you do it in the office. It's really a necessary thing, but it's not at all a dangerous operation at all. It doesn't take any kind of skill to do it and so on.

So I was convinced. I was convinced. And I didn't just talk to him, I talked to other people who had been done it. I was a convinced when you actually walk into the office and you sit down and you see the knives and you see you smell the smells and you see the white coats and you see the straps on the on the The you know the place you lay down and you say, what are those straps for? In other words, you start to have doubts.

But where are the doubts coming from? You start to lose your faith. Why am I doing this? You start to lose your faith. Where is the doubts coming from? They are not coming from new evidence. They're not coming from new reasons. No, as a matter of fact, they're coming from sight.

I was walking by faith. Now that I'm losing my faith, it's not because I'm losing my faith because of reasoning. Ah, yes, faith versus reason. Reasoning is what gets into trouble. No! I'm losing my faith because the sight of the knife. I'm losing my faith because it looks much more awful than I thought. So how do I get my faith back? I think. I remember why I'm doing this. I remember what I was told. The way to renew my faith is to renew my thinking. In fact, my doubts and my fears come from an absence of thinking, just reacting. You know, a doctor comes to you and says, I want you to know that you've got a major

heart problem. You're right on the edge. If you eat steaks, it'll kill you. You believe him. You've seen the evidence. Other people have told you the same thing. You had a friend die, okay, of the same situation. So your reason, you know, you have faith in what the doctor says and you're going to walk

by faith, but I'll tell you something, first time you actually get into the presence of a great big stake, it's not going to feel true. See, when people say to me, look, I know it's true for me, that's all that counts. I don't know if it's true for anybody else. I know Christianity is true for me. What's going to happen when things get bad? What's going to happen when God doesn't deal with you in a way that you understand? What's going to happen when your feelings change?

It won't feel true for you anymore. Christianity will not always feel true for you, because things that are true, period, don't always feel true. And to keep your faith in the truth of something is to keep thinking about it, to renew your thinking, to say, this stake will kill me. You see, it's the sight that will destroy your faith, not your thinking. Oh my, no. When Jesus, in Matthew 6, he looks at these anxious people and he says, oh ye of little faith, then what does he say? He says, he Oh ye of little faith. Then what does he say?

He says, he tells them how to get faith. What does he say? He says, consider the lilies of the field. He says, if there's a God, look at how he takes care of the grass. Look at how he takes care of the lilies of the field. Look how he takes care of the birds. Now if you are more valuable than they, why in the world would God take more care of the lily than you?

What is Jesus saying? He says, just believe. No, what does he say? If you want to have faith, think, consider, deduce. What Jesus is saying, what Paul is saying, what the writer of the Hebrews is saying is people with little faith or no faith are people who just react instead of think. Are people who let their feelings bludgeon them. People who let their circumstances collar them. Faith is foundational in thinking. It's founded in thinking. Thinking is, it consists of faith.

It takes faith to think, as we're going to see, but it takes thinking to have faith. Very, very important. faith to think, as we're going to see, but it takes thinking to have faith. Very, very important. Let's move on. Number two, not only do we see that faith is grounded on thinking, that thinking leads to faith, we not only see that thinking leads to faith, but secondly, we see, let's take a minute to see how thinking leads to faith. Now a lot of people say, okay, reasoning and thinking leads to faith, how could that be? In verse 3, we have a clue, but it's a powerful clue. It's a short, but a tremendously suggestive sentence. We looked at it just briefly last week, but let me open it up a little bit more. In verse 3, it says says, by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.

By faith we understand. Now, this is a very, very, this is tremendously powerful. What it's saying, let me show you at least the outlines of how it works. I can't get into all of it. Couldn't possibly, but the outlines. What it's saying is, Christians are people who look at the visible world and say, the visible world, the physical world, what is seen, is not self-explanatory. That takes a lot of thinking to come to that conclusion. It says by faith we understand that the world, that which is visible, did not come

from that which is visible. In other words, by faith we start off and we say if there's a God then the universe makes sense. What I see is explanatory, is explainable. But if there is no God and all there is is matter, all there is is the visible universe, there's nothing else but that, it doesn't make sense. Christians are people who have not skipped over. See, I mentioned you cannot skip over

and say it's true for me. You have to understand it's true, period. It's objectively true. It's real. Well, how do you get there? This is the way. Christians are people who have looked at the universe and thought about it and it takes plenty of reflection, plenty of reasoning, plenty of thinking and have decided that if this, if all that exists is what we can see empirically with our five senses, if all that exists is the natural, it doesn't make sense. There's no greater hope for you today than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In fact, His resurrection is the key to understanding the whole Bible

and the greatest resource we have for facing the challenges of life. Discover how to anchor your life in the meaning of the resurrection by reading Tim Keller's book, Hope in Times of Fear, The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter. Hope in Times of Fear is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's redemptive love with people all over the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give to request your copy. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

See, verse 3 actually tells us something very profound. Philosophers of science are now saying, I mean, not looking at verse 3, they're now telling us the way in which all knowledge not looking at verse 3. They're now telling us the way in which all knowledge of the physical world progresses is the same way that the writer of the Hebrews mentions in verse 3. In other words, philosophers of science say, when a scientist observes a phenomenon, how does the scientist account for it? How does the scientist understand it? The scientist has to say, what causes this? What governs this? That's what I mean by an explanation. What causes or governs the thing I'm observing? And the way to find out, say the philosophers of science,

is that you posit a premise. You pose a theory and then you try out the theory. How do you try the theory out? Does the theory lead to us to expect the things that actually happen? Does the theory make sense out of it? And let me just give you a little quote. The philosophy of science I was reading said, the way that scientists decide which theory is the one that really is right and is true, the theory with the greatest explanatory power.

That's the quote. The theory with the most explanatory power. The way you understand things is you start with a faith premise. You can't prove it, you start with the premise, the theory. You say, let me try that theory on. And then you look at the phenomenon and then you try another theory on it. And the one with the greatest faith, the greatest explanatory power is the one you say, this is the only one that explains what I see. This is the only one that accounts for it. This is the only one that shows that there's a valid cause and a government. This is the only one that leads me to expect the things that actually happen.

And therefore, here's what it means to be a Christian according to verse 3. A Christian is not somebody who says, ah, yes, Christianity, the teaching that there is a supernatural God, a personal supernatural immaterial God who created all that I see. Christianity, I believe it not because it is perfectly coherent, not because that there are no intellectual problems with it. But because every other faith premise, every other alternative theory, every other way

of trying to understand the universe is far, far, far less than its explanatory power. It's far worse. It's got far more problems, far more contradictions, far more incoherence. A Christian doesn't say, I'm a Christian because I have no intellectual problems in my system. A Christian is somebody who says every other system, every other way of understanding the universe is much worse. Far more problems. Christians realize that if you doubt Christianity, you can only doubt by standing on some ground

and believing something from which you doubt Christianity. You can't prove that there's a God, nor can you prove that there isn't a God. Therefore, to doubt that there's a God is to stand on a faith premise and doubt from this position of belief. Christians are people who realize that the place where you're standing to doubt Christianity is giving way. The place where I'm standing may have its problems. The place where you're standing is a disaster. And that's why Christians become Christians. Listen, let me put it to you this way. Here's basically always been two faith premises.

There is no God, therefore the universe is self-explanatory and its ultimate. All that exists is the physical. On the other hand, God created it. So a Christian looks at a person who's standing over here and doubting and saying, all right, let me ask you some questions. Does your premise have explanatory power? So let me just give you a couple of examples. The first question, and do not get impatient with these.

I'll show you why. The reason that modern people are impatient with these things is we have been taught to doubt Christianity through the absence of thought, not through thinking. We just are impatient with those big questions that Kant says you can't be an educated person without working your life out on the basis of those questions. We hate that idea. He was right. So listen, first thing, you ask a Christian, ask the

person who says all the universe is the visible is all there is. The universe is self-explanatory. First thing you can say is, all right, why on the basis of your understanding, on the basis of your view, if there is no God, if the world is an accident, and therefore all my thoughts and all of my feelings and everything about me is just the chance collocation of molecules. If everything I think and everything I feel is really explained in terms of chemistry and physical

laws and molecular actions, why be rational? Here you are arguing with me, but on the basis of your view, weeds grow because they're weeds, laws of physics. Minds just do whatever minds do. You're acting as if we're free to think about different kinds of ideas and listen to different arguments and then choose the best one. On the basis of your view, that's impossible. Your mind is just a bunch of atoms vibrating around.

You will do whatever you've been programmed to do. There's no freedom. When you use logic and when you use language, when you assume the world is orderly, when you assume that there's a uniformity of nature, that the fire burns you once, it'll burn you later on, you assume all these things but there's no basis in your view for assuming that reason works. See, modern philosophers, especially the most influential modern ones, people like Richard things but there's no basis in your view for assuming that reason works. See modern philosophers, especially the most influential modern ones, people like Richard Rorty, people like that, they know that if there is no God and if this visible universe

is all we've got, there is no reason to trust reason. There is no basis for logical. There's no logical basis for logic if there is no such thing as anything besides what we see. Why should I trust my mind if it's just the product of evolution? Why should I trust it? Ah, says the Christian to the person who's a skeptic, you do trust your thinking, you do trust your reason though you have no basis for it. You have no explanatory power in your view to explain why reason still works and why we know it works. Let me give you a second one. On the basis of your views as a Christian to the person standing over here,

you have no ability to talk about moral obligation at all. You have no way to appeal to people and you have no basis on which to work for freedom and justice in the world. You notice for example at the Cairo conference, a lot of the nations were saying that Western nations who were trying to say women should have their dignity respected. Women should be treated with dignity. Women should be given their rights. And what do those nations say? Those are Western values. Now is there anybody in this room who says,

that's not a Western value. That is true. That is a trans-cultural value. That is true for everybody. Ah, the Christian says, okay, we know some things are always wrong. We know genocide is always wrong. But, if this world is all there is,

then all moral feelings are the product of atoms and molecules. In the end, everything is an accident. The fact that I feel that people should be free is an accident, because the universe is an accident. All my thoughts are accidents, and they're all programmed by chemistry and physics. Again, the most modern influential philosophers, people, the postmodernists and those folks, they admit that if this universe is all there is, there is no reason to trust reason. And secondly, there's no basis for moral obligation. There's no grounds for appeal.

You know, last year the Pope, Pope John Paul, came out with his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, which means the splendor of truth. And in it, and so ironic, he does a little analysis of what the philosophers are saying. Two hundred years ago people said, oh you don't need God, you don't need God anymore, you don't need to talk about God. There might be a God, there might not, but you don't need God to explain what's happening. You don't need a God to explain the universe, you you don't need God to explain what's happening.

You don't need a God to explain the universe. You don't need a God to make sense out of life. And John Paul very, very intelligently, very intelligently says, isn't it ironic that at the end of the 20th century, the only people who have a basis for either reason or morality are the people who believe in God and absolute truth. Finally, after 200 years, the smartest thinkers are realizing that if the visible is all that there is, there is no basis for reason and there is no basis for morality or moral obligation of any sort.

But, don't you see, we do know that our thoughts work and we do know that we do know some things are wrong. Here's the person over here that says, I don't know that there's a God, but you go home and you kiss your loved ones as if love was real, but on the basis of your own view there is no such thing. Love is really just chemical reactions. Ah, but you see, if you start with your premise that visible is self-explanatory. Everything that I experience can be explained in terms of natural laws and physics. If you

start from a premise and it leads you to the conclusion that reason doesn't work, that love doesn't exist, that my thoughts, my loves, my plans, my trusts, my choices, my achievements, all those things are personal. That those things are not really real. They really can be reduced to molecules, they can really be reduced to physics and chemistry. If your premise leads you to a conclusion you know is wrong, look at your premise. I mean some years ago I remember talking to a kid in philosophy class. He wasn't in my philosophy class in college, he was in another one. And he had come to the conclusion that he could do whatever he felt like because,

frankly, all morality is subjective and frankly there probably isn't a God. He went in and had a philosophy class with a very, very intelligent philosopher. It was hard to find people in the late 60s who were willing to admit the consequences of rejecting the idea of the supernatural. But there was one guy at my school, and he was trying to show everybody, listen, I want you to know if you don't think there's a God, that's fine, but I want you to realize you shouldn't be arguing that there's no God, because to argue there's no God is to use language and logic, and in a sense, you have to assume that there's a God, and that your mind works, to refute that there's a God,

and that your mind works. So you might as well just stop talking, he said. And on the other hand, if you say, hey, I'm free to do everything and anything I want, and there's no such thing as judgment or absolute law, I want you to realize that you can never stop anybody from hurting you, nor can you appeal to anyone that they should act in a certain way because it's objectively morally true.

And I remember my friend said, well, I know I can't live that way, but I'm going to try to live anyway. See, there's a lot of people that say you can live a full life without Christianity, without religion, but I want to know full of what? It's not a life of integrity because you will not be able to take what you believe and apply it to what you do. There's no integrity. You believe one thing, you act in another way. You have to because the theory that the universe is ultimate has no explanatory power. You know your mind works, you know some things are true, you know some things are wrong, you know that love is real, you know that beauty lasts, but you can't account for it.

Christians say, my dear friend to the non-Christian, or just the skeptic, I got some problems. There's always the existence of evil, for example, which is another sermon, not this one. You know, that's a problem. There's problems. But he says, I'll tell you something, I'm not in a position of having to contradict my most foundational beliefs about the nature of the universe every day. I'm not in a position of having to actually assume the very thing I'm trying to deny in order to deny it. I'm not in the position of where I've got to live my life in a complete schizophrenia. Jean-Paul Sartre admitted on the basis of his view of the world that he had no right to really say

that Nazism and Fascism was wrong. He knew it. But he knew he didn't have a basis, but he also knew it was wrong. But if you know that your premise leads you to a conclusion that's wrong, why not change your premise? Because to disbelieve takes a lot of faith, and faith that's not based on thinking, real faith is based on thinking. Now lastly, just to conclude, why is our thinking, why does thinking lead to faith? We said that it leads to faith and how it leads to faith, but why does it lead to faith? Here's the wonderful answer, and it's in verse 6 as well. The reason it leads to faith, the reason our thinking actually does correspond to reality, the reason that reason works, the reason that thinking works is because the God who invented

the world is not just an impersonal force, but he's a person. It says if you want to come to him, you must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. This is not an impersonal force. This is a person. This is someone who wants you to seek him, who wants you to come into his presence, who wants a relationship to you. And suddenly you realize, wait a minute, the only way that I can account for the fact that

I know that love is true and that reason works is if the one who created me is not just an impersonal life force, but a person. And take a look at verse 6 a little further. Your thinking leads you to see that there is a God and that he's personal. But then it will also lead you if this is a God who made me. And the reason that friendship works is he wants me to have friendship. And the reason that love works is he wants me to have love. And the reason that I do need to find out what is right and wrong is because there's a person behind the universe who

cares about how we live. It's only necessary for you, it's only natural, that your thinking will lead you to want to please Him. You want to love Him, you want to have a relationship with Him, you want to find Him, you want to please Him. And the Bible tells us that if you don't let your thinking take you all the way to Jesus Christ, it will end in despair.

You know why? Martin Luther, his thinking led him to see that there was a God. Then his thinking led him along further to see he must be a personal God. Then his thinking led him along a little further to see that if this is a personal God, I want to please him. I want to be in a relationship in which we are pleased with each other and love each other. But the more he tried to obey, just the golden rule, just the things that everybody knows instinctively you should do, the more he felt like, I'm not pleasing this God. How in the world can I please this God? And the Bible tells us there's only one way. When John the Baptist

baptized Jesus, the Spirit came out of heaven and it came down on Jesus and God the Father said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Well pleased. The one human being who ever lived a perfect life and pleased God. But we're told in Romans 8 that when we believe in Jesus Christ and we receive the Spirit, the Spirit comes down on us and tells us we're God's children too. That we are well pleasing and we say, oh my, your thinking will lead you to see there's a God, it'll lead you further to see there's a personal God, but eventually you're thinking we'll have to say, take you, how in the world can I please this God? And your thinking will lead you to despair if it takes you down

any other philosophy that's merely theistic and doesn't take you to Jesus Christ. The only one who pleased God and who said philosophy that's merely theistic and doesn't take you to Jesus Christ, the only one who pleased God and who said, I died on the cross and I rose again, so that if you believe in me, all that I have done accrues to you, so that my Father looks at you and is pleased with you in me. Number one, if there's anybody here who does not understand that believing in God means

you have to have a sense of personal dealing with Him. When you pray, you're not just saying your prayers, but you should have a relationship with Him. If you don't see that, don't stop until you have that personal relationship. It's not enough just to believe in the terms of thinking. You have to let it push you through to a relationship in which you know you please Him, and it's only possible through Jesus Christ. In fact, it's the only religion that even claims to give you a way to please here and

now this great God. And on the other hand, Christian friends, why are you afraid? Why are you worried? Why are you anxious? You know why? You're not thinking. Jesus says if you have little faith because you're worried,

you have little faith because you're afraid, you have little faith because you're bitter, you know why? Don't say, oh Lord, give me faith and sort of expect it to come down kind of abstractly. Get out the truth and look at it and renew your thinking. Think it out, deduce. If you're afraid today, if you're bitter today,

if you're discouraged today, don't just say, oh, I wish God would zap me with some faith and then I would have this kind of courage, then I'd have this kind of happiness. What does Jesus say? Consider. Look to the heavens and I'll open your eyes. Let's pray.

Father, we see how important it is to come to you. Let it be possible to come to you after we think, finally to please you through Jesus. Help us to see what it means to believe. Help us to see how we have to build up our faith in layers. Help us to see and understand every one of us as individuals what it will take for us to come to the place where we can all stand before you and know that you say to us, you are my beloved child in whom I'm well pleased. In Jesus' name

we ask it. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. It's our hope that today's teaching challenges you to go deeper into God's Word. We invite you to help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit Gospelinlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1994. 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.