Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Longing for Home

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

We’re not at home. We live in a world that doesn’t sustain or support the deepest needs of our hearts. Martin Heidegger (a fascist sympathizer) and Karl Marx (the father of Communism) were very different, prominent thinkers; yet, they both agreed that we can’t understand the human condition without the concept of alienation. Of course, that immediately raises the question, why wouldn’t we feel at home here?  The prophet Jeremiah gives us a lot of insight: 1) why we long for a home, 2) how we can get home, and 3) what life there will be like. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 28, 2003. Series: The Necessity of Belief. Scripture: Jeremiah 31:10-17; 31-34. 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. We live in an increasingly fragmented culture, one in which it's more and more difficult to come to a consensus about what's true and what's right. As Christians, how do we navigate the challenges of living among competing worldviews and systems of thought? Join us as Tim Keller teaches on how we can live faithfully and wisely in this cultural moment. The scripture is on page 8. It's from the book of Jeremiah. Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, proclaim it in distant coastlands. He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd. For the Lord will ransom Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than

they. They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion. They will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord, the grain, the new wine and the oil, the young of the flocks and herds. They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness. I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. I'll satisfy the priests with abundance and my people will be filled with my bounty, declares the Lord. This is what the Lord

says. A voice is heard in Rama, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more. This is what the Lord says, restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord. They will return from the land of the enemy, so there is hope for your future, declares the Lord. Your children will return to their own land. The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts I will be their God and they will be my

people no longer will the man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying no the Lord because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. This is God's word. Looking at the book of Jeremiah, because Jeremiah, we've said each week, we said Jeremiah lived in a fragmented culture. That's a culture that didn't have any consensus about what is right and wrong and what society should be like and who we are and what we're here for. There's no consensus in his culture, there's no consensus in our culture. We live in a fragmented culture with various competing visions of reality. And we said when you live

in a culture like that there are peculiar particular challenges. We've been looking at one each week and we've looked at the challenge of forming beliefs in such a culture and forming identity and relationships and sexuality. This week, though, we look at another challenge which is a little harder to put into a nutshell, a little harder to put into a word. But I think as we describe it and we go along, you'll recognize it. Two thinkers, very diverse thinkers, very prominent thinkers, Martin Heidegger, the existentialist, Karl Marx.

Very different. Martin Heidegger was a fascist sympathizer. Karl Marx was the father of communism. And yet they both agreed that you cannot understand the human condition without the concept of what they called alienation. A sense of being estranged, a feeling that we have that we are not at home in the world, not at home in the world. You see, literal homelessness is a horrible tragedy. And being literal refugees, I mean, when you have entire homeless nations and groups of people, that's a terrible tragedy. But what they're talking about is the fact

that underneath all that, every human being is characterized by what Heidegger called unheimlichkeit, a sense that we are living in a place that's not really home. It's not we're exiles. We live in a world that does not sustain and support the deepest needs of our heart. And of course that immediately raises the question, why wouldn't we feel at home here? Why would we feel alienated? Why wouldn't we feel at home here?

Now, Jeremiah, of course, in this passage, as we're going to see in a second, is addressing a literal homelessness, literal refugees, exiles to Babylon. But as he addresses it, he's going to actually give us a lot of insight into the bigger questions of why we long for home, how we can get home, and what life there will be like. Why we long for home, all human beings, how we can get home, and what life there will be like. Why we long for home, verses 10 to 14. How we can get home, verses 15 to 17. And what life there is like, verses 31 to 34. Look, first we learn something about why we long for home. Now, this text, of course, is about the fact that Israel had been invaded, Jerusalem had been sacked by the Babylonian

empire. And the children of Israel were taken captive, they were made exiles taken to Babylon. And this passage talks about that when it says in verse 10 and 11, he who scattered Israel will gather them. He will bring them back. They will come. So this is all about the fact that though they've been scattered, though they've been displaced, though they're homeless, he will bring them home. He will bring them back to their land. Now, you say, fine, I've heard about that and that did happen. They did come back from Babylon. They were resettled. What's that got to do with us? The answer is a lot. Because it's not just here in Jeremiah, but all through Ezekiel, all through Jeremiah,

all through Isaiah, all through the prophets. There are many, many, many prophecies like this that say the Lord will bring them home. He will bring them back out of exile in Babylon. He will bring them home. But the problem, not a problem, the thing I want to point out to you is that those, if you look at those prophecies which I had to do all week getting ready for this sermon, they are over the top. They are exorbitant it seems. They are incredibly extravagant. The claims are enormous. So for example, let me just give you a few here. In Ezekiel, this is a prediction that he will bring them back out of exile. And he says, God says, I will gather you from the countries. I will bring you back into your own land.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, the desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. And they will say, the land that was laid waste has become the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden. Not just come back. The Garden of Eden. Or here's Isaiah 35. The ransom of the Lord will return to Zion. They will enter Zion singing. Sorrow and sighing will flee away. The wilderness will rejoice and bloom. The eyes of the blind will be opened. The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame

will leap like a deer. The mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness. There will be streams in the desert. Of course, there's another place where Isaiah says the wolf will lie down with the lamb. Or here, in Isaiah 19, in that day, Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria. And the Lord will bless them saying, blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, my handiwork. Or here in Psalm 87, it says, God says, I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me, and I will say say this one was born in Zion. Do you know what that's saying? The prophecies about the return out of exile are so over the top that the actual literal return that did happen seventy years after they were taken into captivity, they came back and they resettled. But these

prophecies are so over the top that these prophecies have never been fulfilled in all of history. Nothing in history has ever fulfilled them. They're talking about Babylon and Assyria being brought in, to the, you know, being brought out of exile. Babylon, they're the ones who did it. And we're talking about the Garden of Eden, and blooms in the desert, and streams in the desert, and the wolf lying down with the lamb. What is all that talking about? What does it mean?

And here's what it means. Israel coming back was great, extremely important, but in a way it was only an image of a deeper lesson. And what's that? In a way, it was only an image of a deeper lesson. And what's that? All human beings were made for a home that they've lost. Every human being has been made for a home that they've lost.

All of us are in a form of exile. Every, let's talk about this. The Bible is actually saying, and the only way you can understand these prophecies that are so over the top, and they were never really fulfilled by the literal return of Israel from Babylon, is that God is, when he says, I'm going to heal you of your exile, he's not just talking to Israel. He's talking to the human race. He says, there's an ultimate

exile and I'm going to eventually bring you back. Now what is that? The Bible says that God has made us for home, but we've lost it. Let's break that down. First of all, God has made us for a home. Genesis 2, when he created us, he put us in the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Eden was our home. Let's get a grip on this idea of home. And I think I can do it by giving you a negative illustration.

Imagine you're shipwrecked on Mars. Your rocket crashes on Mars. The first thing you do is you open the door and you take in a great, big, deep breath of that wonderful Martian atmosphere. And your lungs will start to experience alienation. Why? Because this is not home and therefore that means this environment cannot support the function of your lungs. Your lungs are built to breathe an atmosphere that is 20% oxygen whereas the Martian atmosphere is 1.5%

oxygen. I looked it up. Your lungs will feel, you will experience physical alienation. You'll start to break down because you're not built for this atmosphere. This isn't right. This doesn't fit you. It doesn't fit the physical capacities of your lungs. Not only that, you will not only experience physical alienation, you will experience psychological and social alienation because this is Mars and there is nobody home. There is nobody there. And you need somebody else. And you remember Tom Hanks in Castaway with Wilson? See, if you haven't seen that movie, I won't explain it. You will start to experience psychological and breakdown because you need other people. So see, Mars isn't home. You will experience psychological,

physical, social alienation and you will break down. You will not survive long on Mars. The oxygen eventually, whatever you have, will give out. And because you're in an environment that's not home, it's not home. What that means is it doesn't support who you are. Ever notice if you're going to have to live someplace even for a month, even for a month you live someplace, you have to arrange it the way you like it. That fits you. So when you get out of bed at night you don't immediately crash into something because you're used to doing this. You change where the chairs are. You make things higher, you lower. They have to fit you. And you see Mars isn't home.

That's why you start to break down. that's why you experience alienation in all your capacities. Because it doesn't fit who you are, it doesn't support the capacities of you, your capacities physical and psychological and social. And when God created us, he therefore put us into home. He put us in the Garden of Eden, the one place where every capacity was absolutely intellectual and aesthetic and social and psychological and spiritual and emotional. Every one of our capacities was absolutely sustained, totally fulfilled, absolutely supported. See? So the first thing is we were meant for home. We've got to have home. But the second thing the Bible tells us is we all have lost it. Genesis chapter 3, not Genesis chapter 2,

tells us that when we chose to be our own bosses, our own masters, essentially our own lords, we went into exile. We went into exile. We lost the garden. We lost home. And let me not put too fine a point on it. Let's imagine that you somehow get your spaceship on Mars working again. Okay? You're a great mechanic and you get your spaceship going and you fly home and you step out and you're on earth, you're home. But are you home? See, on Mars you would have died really pretty quickly. And here on earth you're going to die a little more slowly. But you're going to die. How could that be

home? Even this world, you're wearing down, you're breaking down. Nobody understood this better than Camus. He wrote something that I read back in college and it's actually affected me ever since in many, many ways. Albert Camus said this in one of his works. Now, listen to it carefully but I'll explain it afterwards because he's still a philosopher so you need to read it twice and I'll explain it afterwards because he's still a philosopher, so you need to read it twice. I'll explain it. He says beauty is unbearable. It drives us to despair because it offers us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we desperately want to stretch out over all of time.

But we do not have that consolation. Why this, not that is the question. Why this woman, why that job, why not that woman, why not that job? To put it all in a nutshell, why do we have an eagerness to live in limbs that are destined to rot? For most men the approach of dinner, the arrival of a letter or a smile from a passing girl are enough to help them get around it. But the man who digs into ideas finds that being face to face with the fact of death

gives rise to disgust and revulsion, and this revolt of the body is what we call nausea." Now, here's what he's saying. It's simple, but it's pretty profound. He says, nobody, hardly anybody, wants to actually face the implications of death. Nobody wants to face the philosophical, emotional, they want to face the implications of death. Most people, they don't want to think about it, so they have sex, they have food, they do things, they travel. Lion King, even the Lion King does everything he possibly can to make death seem natural.

There's even a wonderful song about it. There's a song called The Circle of Life and it goes like this. Basically, in not so many words, when you die you become fertilizer. But out of the fertilizer that used to be you grow little plants and flowers that the animals eat and then they're able to live for a while until they become fertilizer and the same thing happens and isn't it a lovely thought? We're all part of the circle of life. And Camus says, no, it's not a lovely thought and here's why not. A world in which everyone you have ever loved or ever will love is going to become fertilizer.

And then you will. And then everyone who ever remembers anything that you've ever done is not a world that fits us. It's not a world that supports the most basic desire of our hearts. What's the most basic desire of our hearts? The most basic desire of our hearts is to have love last, is to have beauty last, is that when we do something right, it counts, it counts forever. I mean, that's the most fundamental need of the heart, is to have our love last. And this world cannot sustain that any more than the Martian atmosphere can sustain your lungs. And therefore this world can't be home. Yeah the Martian atmosphere can sustain your lungs. And therefore this world can't be home. Yeah, we don't die as fast here, but we die wearing down.

This world cannot be home. This world isn't home. It cannot sustain and support the most basic needs that we have. This is not the world we're for. This is not the home that we have ‑‑ this is not the home we're built for. You know, there was a great movie that I love so much. It doesn't get a lot of attention anymore, but Geraldine Page starred in a movie called the trip to bountiful, 1980s. She plays an aging widow who is very unhappy with life and then she gets in her mind the idea that if she could just get back to where she was raised, if she could

get back to the little farm outside of the little town of Bountiful that's a Gulf Coast, Texas little village, if she could just get home, if she could just go back there, somehow she would get back her strength and her dignity and she gets there. And she finds that everyone she's ever known is dead or gone. And she finds that the house itself is a crumbling wreck. And you see, I don't know, you know, if you go back to places that you have these incredibly fond memories of, grand, wonderful memories of, it's not just that you find back to places that you have these incredibly fond memories of, grand, wonderful memories of, it's not just that you find that the places change, it's not just that you

find that the house is falling down or that somebody built a shopping mall in the field where you used to listen to the birdies, it's not just that, but even the parts that you ‑‑ when you go back, you find even the parts that you have, that haven't changed, you realize you remember them as being much grander than they really are. In other words, even the home you remember you never had. Why? The Bible makes sense of it. The Bible says the home that your heart seeks, in fact, even the home that your heart remembers, it's never had as an individual. It's the collective memory of Eden, of God. Because

Psalm 90, what does Psalm 90 say about God? Oh, Lord, you have been our dwelling place through all generations. Whereas Isaac Watts puts it in his hymn based on Psalm 90, you are eternal home. God is the home we're missing. God is the home that somehow we remember. Eden, the face of God, walking with him in the cool of the day. It's what we absolutely remember.

It's what we're absolutely trying to get to, and we can't get there. And that shapes everything we do. How can we understand the meaning of life's milestones through the lens of the gospel? In the How to Find God series, Tim Keller offers three short books on birth, marriage and death that will help you understand

the meaning of these milestones within God's vision of life with biblical insight for how the scripture teaches us to face each one. These books of pastoral care are designed for specific life situations you or someone you know will go through. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of April, we'll send you the How to Find God series as our thanks for your support of this ministry.

To receive this short three-book set, simply make a gift at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Your gift helps us share the message of Christ's love all over the world. So thank you for partnering with us because the gospel truly changes everything. See, what Camus says is avoid, well, Camus says,

let me use Camus to just say two things to you before we move on. Number one, avoid the naivete that Kamu is talking about, which is, do not mask your profound spiritual homelessness by thinking if I just have a great family or if I just have this great house, if I can just make enough money so I can get this beautiful house or just a house that looks at the mountain or a house on the sea. He says don't be so naive. Don't try to mask your profound spiritual homelessness by thinking that if you build a great enough family, if you build a great enough home, that will deal with it. It won't. Don't do

that. It won't work. They crumble. They rot. Not just the house, the family. So don't try to mask your profound spiritual homelessness and think you're going to fix it that way. Secondly, though, on the other hand, so don't be naïve, but don't be as despondent as Lewis, pardon me, as Camus himself. See, Camus says, this is not, this universe is not our home. It doesn't meet the basic needs of our heart. C.S. Lewis asks Camus, and you, if that resonates, says, well, why wouldn't we?

Think, what are the implications of that? C.S. Lewis wrote a man who said something to him like that and said, I hate the universe, it's not home. And he says this, he says, though being hungry, this is C.S. Lewis, though being hungry does not prove I will get food, surely being hungry proves that there is such a thing as food. You say the material universe is ugly, unjust, you don't like it. But if you are just the product of a material universe, if that's all you are, why don't you feel at home in it? Do

fish complain about the sea for being wet? When we get wet, we feel wet when we get into water because we're not aquatic creatures. Then why don't you feel at home here? The only possible explanation is real home is somewhere else. So don't get naive, but don't be despondent. Understand what your longing for home means and why we long for them. So number one, why we long for them. Number two, how are we gonna get home? How are we gonna get home?

See, we have a problem. Verse 11 tells us, interestingly enough, he can't just bring Israel back. Notice this? He says, the Lord must ransom Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those who are stronger than they. Now what does this mean? We can't just find our way home.

Why were Adam and Eve exiled? Why were they cast out? There's something about sin. What is sin? Sin is a self-centeredness. Let me just suggest something to you. Sin by its very nature casts you out. Do you know that? It thrusts you out. Sin by its very nature isolates and alienates. For example, if you lie, if you lie to somebody, there's an isolation. There's a distance. You've created a distance.

They've moved away from you. You've moved away from them. You've got to hide from them. You've got to be careful that you don't say what you say now because you might say something that might show that originally there was a lie. There's a distance. Listen, when you lie to a friend,

that's the beginning of the end of the friendship. You could always remedy it by telling the truth. When you lie to a spouse, that's the beginning of the end of at least a good marriage and maybe the beginning of the end of the marriage. All selfishness, all self-centeredness, all sin, everything automatically drives you out. You're asking for it. You're doing it even as you do it. The penalty throughout the Bible, the penalty therefore of sin is to be banished,

is to be exiled, is to be, you know, in the Old Testament during the wandering in the wilderness the children of Israel once a year put their hands on a goat, confessed their sins and drove it out of the camp. That was their way of recognizing that what the penalty of sin is to be driven out, is to be exiled, is to be cast out, is to be banished. How then are we going to find our way home? How are we going to be brought back into the arms of God? And the answer is the tears of Rachel. Look, verse 15, a voice is heard in Rama mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more. What's that all about? There's three places in the Bible, three places where Rachel weeps for her children. Number one, back in Genesis 38, Jacob was

bringing his family home. He had been in exile and he couldn't wait to bring his family home and raise his family in his homeland. But the great tragedy is on the way home at Rama, Rachel had to stop because she was pregnant and she had to give birth. But as she gave birth and she looked upon her child, her son, she knew she was dying. She knew that she was dying in labor so that he could live. And she named him and wept and died. Now the second time we hear about Rachel's tears is right here. Years later, what happens at Rama? Something interesting. The Babylonians have sacked Jerusalem. They've killed people and they've taken prisoners and they brought them to Rama. Rama was a staging station where it was a transit camp

for the people on their way to Babylon in exile. It was sort of a camp of prisoners who were going to be taken away. And you can imagine the tears of the mothers. Weeping over the children who had been lost, weeping over the children who had been killed. Rachel's tears are the tears of every person who has ever wept over the spiritual inhospitality of the world to your deepest desires. And your deepest desires are to have love that lasts, to love someone who is not going to turn to fertilizer. You realize that every mother who has ever picked up a baby, either the baby is going to see the mother turn to fertilizer or you are going to see the baby turn to fertilizer. That's it. I don't like to think of it. Let's not go there. Camus says have the guts to do it. Because if you recognize that, if you

recognize the reality, you realize not only Mars isn't our home, but this world isn't our home either. That you're not home. Rachel's tears are the tears of every person who's ever wept over the spiritual inhospitality of this world to your deepest desires. But there's a third time in which Rachel's tears are mentioned. Genesis 38, here in Jeremiah 31 and Matthew chapter 2. Matthew quotes this verse, this very verse here from Jeremiah 31 verse 15, Rachel's weeping for her children and says and that is fulfilled. Fulfilled. Matthew says Jesus fulfills this.

Now how did that happen? I'll tell you why. Matthew quotes this thing the first time is in Matthew chapter 2 when Herod slaughters the innocent, slaughters the infants in Bethlehem trying to kill the Messiah who supposedly he's heard has been born at Bethlehem. But Jesus in order to escape that and his parents go into exile to Egypt. They go into exile. Interesting. Not only that, but if you understand the whole career of Jesus, he is always in exile. You know the place where

Jesus says foxes have holes, birds have nests, the son of man doesn't have a place to lay his head. Why not? His family thought he was crazy. The authorities wanted to kill him. His friends even were stupid. And he therefore had no place to go. He was always a homeless wanderer. Jesus was a homeless wanderer. And finally, at the end of his life, he headed for Jerusalem. Luke 19 says, when he saw Jerusalem, he wept over it. And Matthew says, when he wept, he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I wished I could take you under my wings. That's the language of a mother bird. And that is mighty bold that in the gospels

we have Jesus Christ, the Messiah, weeping like a mother. Weeping deliberately like a mother, referring to myself as a mother, why? Oh, don't you see, he's the ultimate Rachel who's gonna die in labor so that we can be born again. And when he gets up to the cross, you know what Hebrews 13 says? It points out that the cross was outside the gate. It was outside the camp. It was outside the city. He was cast out. He's the true scapegoat. He went into the ultimate exile. The father

cast him out so we could be brought in. He paid the penalty. He took what we deserve. What do we deserve? Exile. He took it. And that's the reason why we can be brought in. Listen friends, three hours or four hours only before he was completely cast out of

his Father's presence, he said to his disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house there are many to his disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house there are many sweets. I go where? To the cross to prepare a place for you. We want a place. You build a beautiful home. It won't be enough. It will crumble. You build this great family where you find the love of your life. One of you will watch the other of you turn to fertilizer. It won't work. And when Jesus says, I go to my father's house to prepare a place for you, listen, the best fathers and mothers are just a dim echo of this, the most beautiful homes are just an

echo of this. And until you recognize that, until you realize that this is the home you're looking for, you'll spend all of your life chasing well of the wisps, all of your life. But Jesus has opened the door. Jesus has paid the mortgage on a palatial apartment in the Father's house. It's not millions of dollars the way the nice ones are here in New York. It's far more than that. And yet it's incredibly costly, but the doors are wide open to you. He says, I go to the cross to prepare a place, the home that your hearts have always been longing for. Unless you recognize that,

you're going to spend a tremendous amount of your life chasing a little of the wisps. Now, lastly. Lastly. What does that really mean for us practically? It means an incredible new relationship. And that's what verses 31 to 34 are all about. But let me summarize it like this. If you get this new relationship with the Father through Jesus, you notice how verses 31 to 34 says I'm going to bring a new covenant. Now covenant is a word for relationship. And a new covenant means I'm going to bring a new covenant. Now covenant is a word for relationship.

And a new covenant means I'm going to give you a far more intimate relationship with me than you ever had before. Moses was the mediator of the first covenant. And he slaughtered animals and he sprinkled the blood for atonement. Now if you were standing there, how would you have felt? You would have said, well, that's very instructive. I kind of learned something about atonement. I met my sin.

It's very awesome. But it wouldn't be all that moving, would it? It wouldn't be beautiful, no. But when you see the better mediator, Jesus, who sacrifices himself, that changes you. It doesn't just frighten you. It doesn't just awe you. It melts you That's the reason why John Newton has that line in the hymn our pleasure and our duty though opposite before

Since we have seen his beauty are joined apart no more Joined apart no more his beauty when you watch Moses Conduct worship it wouldn't have been beautiful It would have been awesome. But when you see the sacrifice of Jesus giving himself to you, the ultimate Rachel weeping in labor, dying in labor so you could be born, the ultimate exile so you could be brought in, that writes the law on your hearts. The law does not become something out here I've got to do to please this big God up here. The law becomes something I want to do to please and delight the one who's done this beautiful thing for me. The

Holy Spirit burns it into your heart. It becomes you. It becomes the thing you want. It's a whole new relationship. And what this means is simply this. Two final applications. If you get this new covenant relationship in Jesus Christ, because of what he's done on the cross for you, you must regularly visit your true home through prayer so that you can renovate your future home through action. Visit your true home through prayer, renovate your future home through action. What do I mean? Okay, very fast.

First of all, visit your true home through action. What do I mean? Okay, very fast. First of all, visit your true home through prayer. Yes, Psalm 17 is right when he says, when I awake, he means after death, when I awake, I will see your face. I will be satisfied with your form. It's a profound verse but what it's saying is that when we actually see God face to face, it's like back in Garden of Eden. That's home. You were built for the glory of God. You were built to see his face. And all of your intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual capacities will

finally be utterly filled. You'll finally be home. You won't be breaking down. You won't be disintegrating. Finally home. But do you realize that Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, now, even now we gaze on the glory of God through the face of Jesus Christ. And what he means is that it's possible through the Holy Spirit right now, even though you're not home, you can visit. There are times in which you can experience his love.

There's times where you can experience his presence. He can come into your heart and actually say to you, I am yours and you are mine. And when that happens, in other words, if you just do give me prayers, Lord give me this, give me this, help me here, help me there. But if you through prayer visit home, it's possible. You know what the stability is that you'll have in your life?

You'll be able to face disease even though you're still experiencing some alienation but it won't take you out because the great disease has been healed, right? And if you experience debts, even though you experience some economic alienation, it won't really take you out because the great debt's been paid. Think of the stability you will have. So visit your true home regularly through prayer. And then if you do that, you'll be able to renovate your true home through action. What do I mean by that? This world is not your home. But the Bible says it will be. At the end of time, at the end of Revelation, Revelation 21, we see the city of God. Home, huh? Father's house, many mansions and all that. We see the city of

God. But notice, at the end of Revelation, we do not leave to go to the city to go home. The home comes down. God is going to come back. He's going to descend with his power at the end of time, and he's going to make the whole world into a Garden of Eden. That's what Ezekiel says. That's what all the Bible says. He's going to get rid of the disease that's here. He's going to get rid of the death. You know, Camus was right. You're not home until death is gone. We were not built for death. We don't want death. There's nothing nice about it. No reason to sing about it. Until death is gone, we are not home. But God's going to come down. He's going to destroy death. He's going to destroy poverty and injustice, he's going

to destroy disease, he's going to destroy everything that's wrong here. If you visit your true spiritual home with regularity through prayer, you will have the ballast and the strength in your life to work to renovate your future home. You'll have the guts to call a spade a spade as it is, you'll have the guts to say, this is wrong, this is unjust, this is not true. And you'll also have enough emotional wealth that you don't have to make so much money. You can spend a lot of money on other people. You can be generous. You can work to serve other people.

If you truly, if you visit your spiritual home, your true spiritual home through prayer, you can renovate your future home through action. When I first moved here 14, 15 years ago, a lot of homeless people lived in the parks. And you know, it's a terrible thing when homeless people were forced to a great degree to live in the parks, I think. But I know this, as wonderful as parks are, if you visit them, if you go in for several hours to read or to walk or to just talk with people, the parks are wonderful. But if you live in them 24 hours a day, they get very foul. Because parks are not designed to bear the full weight of the whole human life. They can take visits, but if you live in it, the parks, people lived in it, they got foul, you understand?

That is a metaphor. Look at your houses, look at your careers, look at your friends, look at your family. They're wonderful, but they cannot bear the full weight of your soul. They're not home. Unless you recognize that, unless you make your relationship to God, getting it and cultivating it, the most important thing in your life, unless you recognize that and only that is home, you're going to feel so much estrangement, you're going to feel so much alienation, you're going to feel like a person always traveling, never arriving,

your life will be like always winter and never Christmas. The Bible says, dry your tears, Rachel's. There is hope. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us to have the poise in our lives that comes from knowing where our true home is and visiting it with regularity experientially through your Holy Spirit and prayer. And we also thank you that you have promised us

that the home we know we're built for is going to be set up here on earth someday. We're going to live with you in it. We're going to live with each other in it. We need this. We need to know this. We need the hope of that. There is a hope. Your future will not be cut off. Dry your tears, Rachel's, because your son wept the bitterest of all tears.

Your son was cast out. We can know that you will bring us in. So we pray that you would help us to live the great kinds of lives that go along with that knowledge. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover the Gospel in Life podcast. This month's sermons were recorded in 2003. 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.