Bible Study with Tim Keller hosted by CFEL & CTC

hmm all right are we ready to go yeah richard i think you should okay hi everybody [Music] welcome i think i know most of you this is richard simmons um we're just really pleased to have this event here on the first of june and uh before we get started i want to thank gary yard and melanie penn who uh uh who were able to work this out uh gary and i've been talking about trying to have this kind of event for a while now and uh we were able to pull it off because of the two of them um tim's gonna speak for 30 minutes um and then we'll have 30 or 40 minutes just whatever and then we'll have a question and answer um if in fact you have a question i think the best way to do this because of the size of the crowd and this has worked before is for you to text me and my number is 205 229 and what i thought i would do is go ahead and open us in prayer introduce tim and then we'll we'll get going so if you would bow your heads uh father thank you for this day we're grateful for you as our king as our lord as our god as our savior we thank you lord for just all the relationships that exist between all the people that are on this uh this zoom call particularly grateful for tim uh his life uh his his witness just the way you have used him so powerfully in so many people's lives and it just really glorified you with his life and so we just pray now for your blessing on our time together that you might use his words to speak into our lives and that you might use this in a mighty way we pray all of this in jesus name amen all right i am not going to take but a minute to introduce tim keller we've been real fortunate to have him i think we've had him here twice in birmingham live and then we this is a second or third time we've had him on a zoom call and so what a blessing that has been for all of us i think most of you know him from his days as the pastor the founder and the pastor of redeemer presbyterian church in manhattan um i know you probably like me listened to or read a number of his sermons personally i'm a big fan of his books i'm ready for a new one to come out so maybe he'll tell us a little bit about that but um tim's just been a great friend of us and i think birmingham has been a good friend to him and melanie and so it's just a real privilege to uh have this event tonight and to uh introduce tim keller to you tim thank you i've just unmuted myself richard thank you very much um yeah let's uh let me just give you a text and an outline and we'll try to work through this i might take as much as a half an hour but i also know that i want to give you plenty of time to ask questions about what you really want to know about this subject but uh i'd like to talk to you about joy rather than just simply happiness i mean in english i think the word joy sounds deeper than happiness i think happiness usually means fun i think joy is a deeper word there's a place in the third book of lord of the rings jr tolkien's lord of the rings where it's in the book not in the movies uh where gandalf during a very dark time laughs out loud and one of the hobbits looks up at him and is very surprised that he is laughing even though it's a very bad situation they're in a they're in a fortress under siege it doesn't look very good but when the hobbit looks up hearing that laugh this is what the text says this is what tolkien writes he says uh yet in gandalf's face and he's talking about the hobbit named pippen pippin saw at first only lines of care and sorrow but as he looked more intently he perceived that underneath all of it there was a great joy a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing were it to gush forth that underneath all the the sorrow because uh it was a sorrowful time there was a fountain of birth a fountain of joy like a like a deep geyser or something like that uh that they that could set a kingdom laughing word to to go forth and i believe the bible talks about that i believe that there's a joy that can be there even when you're not happy i i do know that uh there's a joy that can be there even when you're told like and i mean i'll get a chance to share a little bit more about this uh when you're told look you know you have pancreatic cancer which is what i was told about it almost exactly a year ago and there's a joy that can be there in spite of the fact that you're weeping with your wife every day there is a joy in fact it's a joy that that can sustain you during times of unhappiness so what is that joy or a bitter yet how do you get that and i'd like to read you a very famous passage very short and it i think it outlines three things that if you put it this way to the degree you know these things to the degree you know them and grasp them to that degree you'll have this joy that even under sorrow doesn't go away and it can actually set a kingdom laughing word to gush forth and so those three things we're going to see in this this is a pretty famous text this is uh romans 8 28-30 let me read it and we know that in all things god works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose for those god for knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the first born among many brothers and sisters and those he predestined he also called those he called he also justified and those who justified he also glorified just three verses romans 8 28 to 30. and let me tell you what i think those verses tell us three things we're going to spend some time on each of the three things and if you know all three of them to the degree you grasp them and know them and their realities to you uh you'll have this joy the story that never goes away and that can gush forth even under sorrow even when you're weeping it can sustain you so what are these three things that we're learning here's the three things this text teaches us our bad things will turn out for good if you're a christian your bad things will turn out for good the your good things can never be taken away from you and your best things are yet to come your bad things will turn out for good your good things can never be taken away from you and your best things are yet to come let's take a look at all three of them now the first one is your bad things will work out for good and this is a pretty famous verse it says we know that in all things god works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose now this is the new international version translation and i have a bit of a bone to pick here i don't want you to think that i'm i don't like this translation it's a fine translation and there is no translation that there are matters where you might say i don't know i think that was the best rendering of it but i can just say in greek this is written in greek in romans 8 it actually uses only one word and it's a word that could it's a word sin ergone ergone means to work you know ergone means to work sin ergon means to work together and what all it says is that god works all things together for good it's the trouble with the niv it sounds like it's saying god it says it says and we know that in all things god works for good that's a little too weak it actually is saying that god is working all things together for good to those who love him and are calling according to his purpose it's a very very strong thing and what does it mean by all things well here's there's two things i think at least we can learn here what does it mean to say god works all things for good first of all all things does include bad things it has to uh because if you look at all the things that are happening to you some of them are bad and if actually if you look at the rest of the chapter uh you know when he means all things he means bad things as well in verse 18 it says the sufferings of this present time in verse 26 he says the spirit helps us in our weakness uh in verse 35 it talks about getting verse 35 of this chapter paul talks about trouble hardship persecution famine poverty danger and sword and also at verse 37 it says we're more than conquerors through him who loved us now everybody knows a conqueror is somebody who's in a fight you're not a conqueror unless bad things are coming at you things like arrows and bullets and spears and things like that you you can't conquer unless bad things are happening to you otherwise you haven't conquered anything and so what paul clearly is saying is that very very bad things will happen to you terrible things will happen to you but god will work them for good now how can he how can he say that what does that mean that doesn't mean by the way that there's uh it doesn't mean something quite as saccharine as well behind every cloud there's a silver lining or even well if you just learn to look at things a little differently you could see that this thing isn't so bad no no look when when jesus christ was walking to the tomb of lazarus in john chapter 11 and when jesus is about to raise lazarus from the dead he knows he's going to do that but he doesn't walk up to the tomb going where do you people see what i'm going to do now he doesn't do that he's not smiling he's weeping and he's angry well why would he be why would he be like that and the answer is because death is terrible because the world is filled with sorrow and because even though jesus is going to do something wonderful at that moment even though he's going to work this for good it doesn't mean that it isn't a very terrible thing what has happened to mary and martha his sisters what has happened to lazarus to his friends it's a terrible thing and so there's nothing saccharine about this but it's at the same time it does say absolutely everything is going to work together for good now what does that mean well it certainly means in the long run it certainly means in the big picture uh what if god had shown up you know job everything went very badly for job if you remember all of his children were killed all of his money all of his uh his wealth was taken away and his health so his health was gone his wealth was gone his family was gone except for his wife his wife was of no comfort to him and job went what are you doing god and it's a great book the book of job is a great book and it shows us that uh that crying out and being being uh in great consternation is right i mean at the very end of the book of job even though job is crying and he's weeping and he's saying god why are you letting this happen at the very end of the book of job god vindicates job that is he actually shows up and says to job's friends job has done right maybe if joe prays for you i won't smite you and you go back and you say wait a minute job was really practically losing it but the answer to the point is that though job was crying and he was complaining he was doing it before god he didn't walk away from god never he was complaining but he was complaining to god he was crying out but he was crying out to god he never stopped praying he never stopped going to god he never walked away from god at all and god says in the end no of course when you're suffering suffer look at jesus walking to the tomb of lazarus i mean you don't have to say oh god i know working everything out for good and therefore i'm gonna be okay no none of that and yet at the same time god says but don't go away because i am working all things together for good but what if god had shown up and said to job hey joe i got i got to tell you something yes your children have died your wealth is gone your health is gone but do you know that if you stay true to me hundreds of millions of people for centuries to the end of time will read about your story they'll read your story and you'll become one of the most famous people in the history of the world in the history of the world what would job have been able to say was oh really okay maybe i better just suck it up here then but god doesn't do that of course he doesn't do it you and i know uh yeah it's a jesus christ suffered horribly did he not he suffered terribly and when he was on the cross surely there were people who were looking at him knowing what he could do he could raise the dead he could he could feed the hungry he could heal the sick and there he was because of a kangaroo court he's executed surely there were people walking away saying i don't see how god could bring any good out of this now you and i don't say that because we have a whole book you know it's called the bible and that entire book tells you why what happened to jesus christ work together for good enormous good infinite good unbelievable good universal good infinite cosmic good but get this there's actually a book according to romans 8 28 for everything that happens to you there's the book for every every person on this call but we don't have access to that book not yet but all things work together for good that's a remarkable thing to realize it is a remarkable thing and that's only the first thing now here's the second two things you do you believe that do you understand that do you know that but the second thing though though is it says our good things cannot be lost so that our bad things will turn out for good but what are our good things well paul lists a whole lot of things that christians have you are it's he says he says he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son that we might be he might be first born among many brothers and sisters and those he predestined he called those he called he justified as he justified well i'm going to stop right there because i have one more point but if you're a christian you've been justified the bible says that means you are accepted completely not because of what you have done but because of what he has done so there's no more condemnation those are in christ jesus not only that he's the firstborn among many brothers and sisters meaning that you've been adopted you're god is not just your boss he's your father and none of these things can be taken away now some of you may have noticed that i read something i i read a little word that can be controversial in the christian church where it says those god for knew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son i um nobody here expects me and i'm not going to go into you know do you believe in predestination uh or what predestination means i mean that would be another talk maybe some other time when when uh richard and gary and everybody give me three or four hours with you maybe we can go into predestination but don't you understand whatever the word predestination means it means it's certain if you're a child of god if you're a son or a daughter of god if you're justified these things are certain you know it says in romans 8 chapter 8 chapter 8 verse 1 it says now there is no more condemnation for those who are in christ jesus no more it's gone it can never come back why so you can't earn your salvation so you can't unearn it i am gonna insist on that because you can't earn your salvation right it's a free gift and how can you unearn it how can you you can't uh we are secure once you are adopted once you are justified once you are uh filled with holy spirit that doesn't go away i don't have time to go into i know there's people and you want to ask a question about it you can but the second thing that this is telling us is the good things that you get when you become a christian they can never be taken away from you never they can't be taken because their gift and they're not a gift based on any particular condition that you give it's not like god says i'll give you this gift if you do this and of course okay i'm pushing my my presbyterianism here you say well don't you have to believe yes but the bible says god grants people repentance unto life he faith is a gift and therefore even if you uh believe that's something you've only done with god's help so god actually uh gives you they can he he provides the condition he provides the gift and therefore the good things can never be taken away from you when those things will never be never be removed and here's one more thing now okay your bad things will turn out for good your good things cannot be taken away from you but now let me just suggest that the best things are yet to come because at the very end it says you'll be glorified those whom he for knew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son and those whom he uh predestined he called those he called he justified those who justified he glorified by the way it doesn't say some that called get justified some that he justified it glorified no if you're justified you will be glorified and what does it mean to be glorified well it beggars the mind but bear with me for a minute or two if you go online you can probably find a sermon online by jonathan edwards called heaven is a world of love there's a lot of versions of it and it's kind of long but it's one of the most astounding things if you if you're patient with it's one of the most astounding sermons you'll ever read and jonathan edwards points out he says this he says on earth when are you happiest think about everything when are you happiest when you're experiencing love when you're about to die nobody says i wish i'd spent more time at the office we always say i wish i spent more time with my family with my friends life is about love life is about relationships and um of course what what edwards points out is that in heaven love will be perfect and in order to kind of get our wet our appetite here's what he says he actually goes into a place uh in heaven as a world of love where he says if you think about a clogged pipe i mean edwards lived quite a long time ago but they still had pipes even then and he says sometimes the pipe is clogged and if a pipe is supposed to be bringing water in and it's clawed you only get a little teeny bit of water he says every human heart is like a it's like a pipe that's clogged 99.99 clogged and only a little bit of water gets through and here's what he says here's the reason why then he goes through let me just look down here at what he says for example he says in this world for example we almost never love another person equally to their love for us have you ever noticed that it often happens that you love the person more than they love you which of course that creates pain but in heaven everyone he this is uh john numbers he says in heaven all love will be answerable and perfectly mutual perfectly mutual love something that actually we have virtually never experienced here on earth he says here's another example edwards also points out that our love here is always diminished by envy and selfishness uh love the the essence of love is that you put the needs of another person ahead of your own but because of our sinful hearts we're all we're selfish we're thinking about ourselves and that makes it difficult not only to love other people because we're so absorbing ourselves but it's difficult for them to love us and because of our selfishness he's oh just so little love really gets through the clogged heart pipe but he says oh do you realize how different that's going to be he says in heaven love is a pure flame where all people will love god for his own sake we will love each other for god's sake for the image of god that is upon them we'll have no pride no selfishness to interrupt or hinder the exercise of love our hearts will be full of love we'll be receiving love in ways that we can hardly imagine and he goes on and on and talks about how uh another thing by the way is one of the worst things about love is that everybody eventually gets separated i mean one of the things that kathy and i deal with all the time is now that we're you know in our 70s we're saying so who who dies first maybe you think that's morbid but those of you who are older you know that that's in your mind because the reality is that basically eventually everybody experiences the horrible grief of losing people they love love doesn't ever want to lose the person you love and yet we're always losing people also not just through death but also through the mobility people move away but of course as jonathan edwards says you realize that disrupted love he says which is the greatest sadness that earthly life contains will be gone forever in heaven disrupted love will finally be gone he says in heaven this is his quote they shall know that they shall forever be continued in the perfect enjoyment of each other's love all things there shall flourish in an eternal youth age will not diminish anyone's beauty or vigor and their love shall flourish as a living spring perpetually springing has a river whichever runs and is always clear and full why am i reading stuff like this because look do you understand that the best is yet to come do you understand that you you know nothing of joy compared to what that's going to be like ah but doesn't it doesn't jesus pardon me doesn't john say in first john 3 says beloved we don't know what we're going to be like but we do know that when we see him we will be like him and everyone who hopes for that purifies himself as he is pure that's first john chapter three one two and three and what he's saying is we really don't know what it's going to be like to finally see him in his full glory that first second it's finally going to instill in us a glory and a fulfillment and a joy and a love that we've longed for all of our lives uh but he actually says even to hope for that even to set your hearts on that starts to purify you here and it does it does enable you to face everything that's the point look let me let me finish like this jesus said i mean we're told about jesus in uh in in hebrews chapter 12 for the joy that was set before him jesus christ ran the race and went to the cross i mean that you might just say well now wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute how could jesus christ how could there been any incentive that jesus christ would have had didn't he have perfect joy in heaven so if he came to earth what joy would have been set before him and the answer is would you say that jesus christ was the man who had everything he was in heaven didn't he have everything no he didn't have everything he didn't have us because we were lost and for the joy of his saved brothers and sisters for the joy of knowing that he was going to spend eternity with us he was willing to handle suffering and for the joy of knowing what he did for us and what it's going to be like in heaven for the joy of knowing that our best things are yet to come you'll be able to handle life here look i do you know these three things your bad things are going to alternate turn out for good the good things you have can never be taken away from you and the best things will yet are yet to come and let me just read this is something that edward says edward's actually this is a wonderful way he puts it uh it's forgive me it's it's old english but let me read it slowly you'll get it and we'll close with this uh edward says if you know all these things then you may look down upon the whole army of worldly afflictions and you will be able to consider with joy that however great your afflictions are however great your suffering is however numerous your afflictions are if they joined all their forces together against you and put on their most roofal and dreadful habits forms and appearances and they spent all their strength vigor and violence with an endeavor they cannot do you really any hurt they cannot ultimately hurt you they can't take away your best things they can't take away your good things and even the bad things will work out for good all will be in vain you will triumph over all earthly afflictions if you know these things amen okay um i'll probably close in prayer but i'm not going to do it now so i'm going to turn it back to richard and richard is going to ask questions and see if we can um um i know everybody is interested uh you have a lot of people down here in birmingham they've been praying for you let's give us an update on your health well the first thing i'll tell you is my wife would want to say kathy wouldn't say please keep praying because pancreatic cancer victims uh 75 of all pancreatic cancer patients die within a year of diagnosis as i mentioned i got my diagnosis a year ago over the last uh year i get a scan every three months i get chemo treatments every other week i'm having my next one tomorrow um so i'm actually feeling pretty good tonight because as you know you go down into the rabbit hole through chemo and then you come back up and you get better but over the over the entire year every single time the scans have shown my cancer has continued to shrink it's still there but it's shrunk down to every time the my my doctors say it's very unusual it's an exceptional response sometimes it can't pancreatic cancer doesn't respond at all to chemo sometimes it does once and then starts to grow back um i have responded very well it means i still have it but uh my wife and i are absolutely certain that it has to do with with prayer so please keep praying well just a word of encouragement i know of two individuals that uh uh had pancreatic cancer both of them lived another 10 or so years and both of them are deceased but neither of them died from pancreatic cancers yes they are it's a small number but uh it may be that god in his mercy is going to let me be one of those so yeah um i also thought it might be good for you to take a minute or two to uh maybe just share with us about the current status of city to city means a great deal to so many here in birmingham and i know that it's been somewhat disrupted by the virus and so if you would just take a minute and then i'll get to we've gotten a number of questions and i'll i'll get we'll get into those next but i'll talk yeah let me say a couple things while the questions are coming in uh for first of all thank you so much for uh you in birmingham uh i'm not sure but melanie probably knows this better than me but uh uh the support that comes out of birmingham i'm not sure there's any one city that gives city city as much support as birmingham does i think that may be right and i want to thank those of you who are supporting it it's uh you you've done a remarkable job uh city to city has con we still around the world still probably i mean it's a little difficult to judge exactly probably seen a good 90 churches start in the last year in spite of the pandemic but um it has slowed down at least for the pandemic year uh city to city is the only mission agency just for those of you who may not be as familiar city city is the only mission agency that we know of in the world i keep saying this and nobody is contradicting me that is completely dedicated to developing expertise and helping national leaders start churches in the biggest global cities of the world the fact is that in spite of the pandemic there's still a mass migration of human beings into the big cities of the world that's going to continue at least for another generation and the church is way behind in getting into cities we are under churches are underrepresented in cities uh churches don't know how to minister in cities yet the people of the world are going into cities at this astounding rate is still happening despite the pandemic and therefore there's never been more of a need for us to be able to both train and equip and help churches get started in cities so that's what city city is doing and uh nothing's really stopped even though there's been plenty of interruptions and there's been a lot of sadness and sorrow and deaths in in amongst even christian leaders in many parts of the world nevertheless it's just actually just stealing our resolve if anything so and by the way if there's anybody on this call i thank you for those of you are supporting anybody on this call who uh hadn't heard of city city and would like would be interested at least learning more about how to support get a hold of gary art or melanie penn okay richard all right we've gotten several uh kind of duplicate questions uh and i've tried to write some of them down i got all kind of uh text but here's here's two two similar questions um what are some of the ways people misunderstand verse 28 that god causes all things to work together for good or for our good and you know our good is it's an interesting phrase um uh it can easily be misinterpreted it could be pleasure my prosperity and then how does it relate to verse 29 about being conformed to the image of his son is that the ultimate good i love questions like this that are that i call these questions leading questions those of you who are lawyers now they usually um the ju you know they're leading questions and not good but in my case i love these leading questions right many people look at the word good in verse 28 and define it differently than verse 29 verse 29 says your ultimate good is that you become more like christ there is no real happiness without holiness the more holy you are the happier you will be but when you therefore see uh the word good in the first verse it is uh richard you're right it's like uh well i broke my leg but uh i went to the hospital i met the nurse and now we're dating you know and so it's it's uh it's a very superficial approach to say i just know that that something good will come out of this well the good that comes out of this is christ likeness that's what verse 29 tells you and the thing that makes you stronger uh the thing that makes you wiser the thing that makes you godlier the thing that makes you more patient more you know more loving joyful peaceful patience you know the fruit of the spirit that is your ultimate good now it doesn't mean that god um there aren't other things i mean i've just again forgive me for mentioning the cancer there's i've had opportunities for witnessing i've had opportunities to talk to a number of different people who have really been i think affected and i look at that and i say well you know if i didn't have cancer i never would have talked to that person that person looks like he or she is going to come to faith in christ then you step back and you say really probably god has got about a billion reasons for everything that happens good reasons everything from christ's likeness down to somebody you know hears the gospel who wouldn't have otherwise so you can't you just have to be so careful of not reducing the word good in verse 28 to uh helping my agenda so anyway i i think that's the i love that those questions because they kind of had the answer embedded in them and i think it was a very important thing for us to say here tonight okay great second question again two same two different people with a similar question um regarding disrupted love especially when it comes to love and we know a certainty that we will be reunited with our loved ones in heaven the bible says there is no marriage in heaven which leads the other question um what do you think your relationship with kathy will be like in heaven yeah by the way you know there's a uh the place where it says there's no marriage you're giving in marriage in heaven it's in matthew um i've got a commentary by a guy named rt france a new testament commentary who gets very personal at that place you know it's a scholarly commentary with the greek and the hebrew and the ugaritic and the aramaic and all that stuff and he says this this verse really upsets me because i feel pretty i want i want to have a special relationship with my wife i i think look look at jesus christ after the resurrection he's different he's very different because nobody recognizes him one of the most astounding things about the resurrection errors are actually one of the things that the resurrection narratives what are the marks of authenticity is that if you were making up stories about a resurrected christ you you you would either have him be a radiant being you know who's like you know you bow down or or he would look like he did before like lazarus when he comes out everybody recognized lazarus but instead you have someone who looks like an ordinary human being remember the road to emmaus they just start talking to jesus they don't know who he is he looks like an ordinary human being and he can eat with them he can eat a fish and at the same time he can go through walls or just appear or disappear it's just like nothing that anybody would have ever made up and the reason i bring all that out is just to say um obviously since you can recognize him they would look at this oh he they did recognize him it's a little bit like if i had if i hadn't seen if i hadn't seen melanie since she was eight which is possible because i'm an old person okay what if i met her when she was eight and i'm just meeting her again i would look and she said hey it's me it's melanie penn i would say melanie oh wow yeah hi melanie it would have been something along those lines uh you you it's this person but it's not the same person and so jesus was so human he's perfect and yet he's human i just can't believe that if he's that human and he's talking with his disciples and eating with them and encouraging him and all that that somehow your your earthly relationships go away now if you if we're talking about we don't need reproduction we don't need that aspect of us that in that sense yeah there's no marriage in giving in marriage but does that really mean that your friends aren't your special friends that your spouse isn't still your special spell i just don't believe that i don't i don't think when it says there's no marriage or giving in marriage i think it's talking about he says we'll be like the angels meaning we don't need to reproduce but it doesn't mean that somehow my relationships are are going to be so different that i'll have the identical relationship with every person up there i don't think so i i uh heaven's going to be perfect everything you've ever wanted and i do think that that means we will be with our loved ones and we'll have the relationship with our loved ones we never really even had here on earth very good very good all right here's another so there is certainly a measure of joy in my life as a believer but how do i go deeper in this joy how do i unclog the fight well okay i'll tell you the story um well i don't know when my life is over it's just going to be a lot of cancer in it um in the story because some of you may know i had thyroid cancer when i was uh in my early 50s when i was 52 and you also had probably the thyroid cancer is fairly treatable and so immediately people said oh you'll be okay and i was nevertheless it was a hard time it i got my uh thyroid cancer in 2002 this was still after 9 11. still a lot of trouble in in new york city kathy's had had also a number of physical issues and at one point some of you may know this from if you ever read my book on prayer at one point um kathy looked at me actually if i go all the way i'll just tell you she uh pricked her finger and stuck some blood on the wall over our bed that's not it's not in the book um which is gone by the way now so you can't come see it because the house has been repainted since then but the point is she put some blood on the on on the wall and she said i want us to remember something she said if you knew that you had some kind of disease and the doctor said unless you take a pill every night at 11 00 pm you'll be dead by morning would you ever forget that pill would you ever forget the pill no she says if we don't pray together every night i don't think we're going to make it just not going to make it i'm not going to make it you're not going to make it god is not real enough to us these things that you're preaching about these things that i'm teaching people about they're kind of abstract they're not they're not they're not gripping my heart and the only way for that to happen is the word of god in prayer and um she was absolutely right i i had a renaissance really of prayer after that it took about a year but i just said i wasn't making the time and the other thing is i look i am not i'm a presbyterian okay i'm not charismatic so just keep this in mind there's also a certain sense in which when i'm praying i'm i learned to say look lord i you know ultimately at a certain point i'm going to have to say okay not today you know i start at seven o'clock eight o'clock i've gotta get out the door so but nevertheless i i would personally push more and say lord i know you want to show me your face maybe it's not today but i need it it's a little bit like jacob wrestling with god and saying i will not let you go till you bless me and i i what i don't even know what that means you know that place in in genesis 32 because i will not let you go till you bless me and what's what's moving to me about genesis 32 if you read the whole story of jacob you know jacob wanted blessing from his father but his father loved esau and he wanted blessing from esau but he saw the you know all of his life he was looking for blessing and finally he realized one night as he was wrestling with actually with god this is the person i need to bless me this is the person i need to hear i need to hear him say i love you i need to hear him say you're my child i need to i need a blessing now you know what's interesting the text tells us and he blessed jacob there we don't really know what he said or what he did or we it's it's it's but it moves me every time i see it and i realized in prayer i shouldn't just say okay well i just read my bible passage and now i'm going to say bless mommy and daddy and gertrude no in prayer i'm really going to be wrestling and saying lord maybe it's not today i but i i you need to bless me i need your i need your reality i need to i need to hear from you you know psalm 90 satisfy us each morning with your steadfast love not just read about my you're steadfast though i need to be satisfied with it so i know that doesn't sound like i'm being much for presbyterian i sound like a charismatic at that point but it was the thing i learned at that point to say i'm not just going to say my prayers i'm really going to seek god and there has been it's not listen to the to the questioner i don't have the joy i need either so i'm not trying to say well you know keep trying you'll get where i get no but there really is um there really are benefits to the to being absolutely diligent with the word of god in prayer and my wife was absolutely right without it there is no alternative we're going to die without it so you got to make time for it you just have to make time for it and that's where i get the joy basically great very good okay here's another um i heard you share in a sermon about a couple in your church whose son had been arrested uh you went to be with them and they were very troubled and in despair and you asked them if you could read one verse to them remember that i remember too john 13 7 jesus was talking to peter and says to him what i do what i do not what i'm you do not understand now one day you will understand right and apparently it really impacted them would you say that that passage is similar to romans 8 28 it almost seems to be more appropriate yeah what jesus says jesus of course is washing the disciples feet and it's a very very almost offensive thing to do i mean uh to wash somebody's feet in that day and time was something that only the most menial servants did were slaves and for jesus to start do it doing it would just confused everybody and it actually seemed beneath him and it seemed very upsetting and so peter got very upset and jesus says in john 13 verse 7 he says peter you do not know now what i am doing but later you will understand you do not understand what i'm doing but later you'll understand i read that to uh easley and teresa shelton neither of whom are alive now um when their son was put in had been picked up for something and he was at petersburg jail in petersburg virginia and i went down to see him in the waiting room there and i read that verse and they've never forgotten it never forgot it and i i only got it because i found it in a i you know it hit me that it was the sort of thing that even though jesus was saying to peter it really was of roman's i agree with the question it's a romans 8 28 sort of statement now jesus is saying later on you'll understand now by the way come later in in peter's case it was like just a few days later because jesus died he was raised and you know and he ascended to heaven uh i'd say in most of our cases uh it can be later in our lives but we have to remember this everybody is later you will understand may not be in this life and therefore i think we have to be very careful not to demand from god that we get our explanation in this life that's what i was getting at when i said we know why jesus died on the cross as horrible as that was we have a whole book explaining it but you don't have your book i don't have my book about all sorts of things that haven't met us and i'm not sure in this life we will get that explanation but but later eventually we will understand great this is real quick uh predestination is a big complex concept what resources would you recommend in order to learn more about predestination well gee i don't know um uh rc sproul does have a good book on it uh on election i believe isn't that right uh our i listen i i learned my belief in predestination of marcy sproul as a kid literally on on the floor of his uh of his living room in stallstown pennsylvania many many years ago so i'll tell you what look around i do know that there's a book he wrote on election or predestination i just don't remember the name of it and i would suggest reading it but uh let me let me tell you a story a true story by the author some of you may know who rc sprole is some of you may not he passed away a couple years ago but i was in a room i was a college student no yeah i was a college student i guess and he was it was a it was what they call the gab fest and a gad fest was generally college students and seminary students who had come to his place it was in the middle of nowhere in the middle of western pennsylvania stall look it up stallstown pennsylvania it's just a very rural area and um they would come one night a week and he would do what they call a gap fest where they you could just shoot him questions marcy sprole and uh he was a theologian pastor one night a a young woman i'll just call her girl said i really can't believe in predestination do you believe in prayer destination and rc's paul said yes i do he said well i think that's just terrible she said i think it's it's awful and rc said all right look i do not have all the answers to the questions but let me just ask you a question okay i said do you have a roommate she said yes are you a christian yes is your roommate a christian no okay rc says now listen he says why is it that you're a christian and she isn't and so the woman said well because i accepted christ and she didn't okay marcy said but let me ask you another question why did she accept christ why did you accept christ since she didn't so she thought and she said well honestly i think i was just more willing to repent for my sins and she just didn't like the idea okay rc said but then he said well let me ask you another question like columbo um who and he loved rc loved columbo than tv show it says why was it that you were willing to repent and she didn't so she thought she says well i don't know i guess i'm willing to humble myself i guess and she wasn't and i just said right she said he said do you see where i'm going are you saying the reason you're christian and she isn't is because you're a little better a little humbler a little wiser is that what you're saying and she said no no i can't say that right well here's then from what i can tell the only way that you can get away from saying that you're a christian because you're a better person which is totally against the gospel totally against the gospel the only way i can get i can get away is to say that god opened my open your heart and didn't open hers otherwise it's because you're just a little wiser a little better and boy i'll tell you listen i i don't remember how she responded that but i remember i was just knocked over the head because i suddenly realized i was trapped because i do know if there's one thing the bible teaches that i am not saved by anything good in me uh then it would all depend on me so the difference between me and the non-christian would be something in me and i know that can't be true it has to be in god and immediately i showed that i it pushed me toward predestination uh the idea that god opened some people's hearts and for reasons we do not know even though people are guilty for what they do yet god does not come in in the same way now some people just utterly hate that like i don't know whether that girl walked away that night that young woman walked away convinced but i realized i wanna i i went home really depressed because i felt like i said you know what i'm gonna have to come to grips with this because i know there's a mystery here and we're not gonna understand at all but i guess i'm really gonna have to eventually get myself to the place where i see that the difference between me and and anybody who's not a believer has got to be god and it can't be anything in me and i i do not know why god doesn't open everybody's hearts but nevertheless uh the lord he knoweth so i got that from rc i don't know whether that's in any book i just remember i'll never forget that it changed my life changed the course of my life i wouldn't be a presbyterian minister i would never have gone to redeemer would never have gone to new york i wouldn't be talking to you tonight if i hadn't heard that interchange must be predestination hope never mind okay that's the end i'm not going to go any further on that richard boy that's it maybe we can get you back for a couple of hours and talk about it like you said uh yeah listen we have a lot of questions and we're about at the end of our time i got one more question and i'll just ask this one and this is i think this is a pretty good one i hope you can remember all this i've read this also um but i'll ask it and you can respond and then you close in prayer and we'll we'll conclude our evening but one of my favorite stories you tell as it relates to romans 8 28 is about how god took watergate which was a terrible period in our country's history and used it for good and starting redeemer uh well now listen uh so richard you probably brought me that question because you remember the story right i do yeah that's why yeah i think that's right all right it is a fascinating story all right look um one time i was preaching on this text or something like this and that's what i said to my congregation at redeemer i said when i was at gordon conwell theological seminary i was not really heading toward being a presbyterian i'd probably be something else um i was a christian but i wasn't really all that sure about presbyterian doctrine that sort of thing but at the last minute my last semester at gordon conwell a british uh professor a guy named andrew t lincoln came and started and taught some new testament courses which i took and it just changed my whole trajectory and i moved into the presbyterian and if i if i if if dr lincoln hadn't come from britain to teach i would never have gone to the presbyterian ministry i never would have uh started redeemer i wouldn't be talking to you now i would never come to new york well how is it that he got there the reason he got there was because the dean was trying the dean of gordon county was trying to get him a visa but at that time and this was like 1975 it was very very very difficult uh to get a visa for somebody from outside to come gordon conwell kept being asked why can't you find an american new testament professor and they said well nobody knows this how about that and so one day the dean was praying trying to find out whether or not uh you know whether god would would bring andrew lincoln to britain and in mocked mike ford mike ford was the president gerald ford's son he was the president united states drill forward and mike ford's son who was gerald ford's son was a was a student at what at gordon conwell walked in on the dean said what's what's going on the dean explained the problem he said we just can't seem to get him through immigration and mike ford said maybe i could talk to somebody the next day andrew lincoln was waiting in his long line at the american embassy as he did every day trying to get in and trying to and suddenly somebody comes walking outside going down the line saying is there an andrew lincoln here is there andrew lincoln here and he said i'm andrew lincoln he brought him in there right through now why did that happen you know why was i at redeemer because i became presbyterian why because of andrew lincoln why because mike ford got him into the country why because gerald ford his father was the president why because nixon had resigned why because of watergate why because as you know the people who planted a little bug in the democratic committees national committee's office had forgotten the latch that when they came on out and they pulled the door shut it didn't latch if they pulled it all the way shut and it had latched nobody would even notice but because it was open a night watchman noticed that and went in and looked around and called other people and they found the bug which was traced back eventually to nixon which was traced back to you know and it created the watergate scandal so if that door had been closed i never would be there preaching at new york at redeemer but it was open and i said you know what this means watergate happened for you if you're happy that i'm here i would say to my congregation watergate happened for you in that sense you see when you say well i don't see what good god could bring out of this everything is linked everything is connected there's a zillion reasons why god lets everything happen and we can't see even the slightest number of them so you heard that story and that's the story and it's it's it's a little bit like some of the other ones but it's true by the way and uh yeah it it it just and my guess is that it gave me a little glimpse of one way in which you you got a figure there must have been a billion reasons why that door wasn't latched and i was just one of them that's it cool huh great story great story all right well let's uh we're right at 7 30. uh why don't you uh once you close for us thank you i will let's pray everybody our father i thank you so much for my brothers and sisters in birmingham i thank you for the christian communities there the churches there and and the and the broader fellowship of believers there they are they're doing so much good in the world they're furthering your kingdom in so many ways they have they have certainly helped in so many ways the ministry ministries of so many uh people in the big great global cities of the world we thank you i thank you for them and i also thank you for our time together in which we could remind ourselves of the joy that's available for us oh lord virtually all of us who are believers have tasted it but we we need more we need more uh and uh and the world is not an easy place to be and you have given us all the resources and we pray that you would equip us to take hold of these great blessings and appropriate them for ourselves and we pray that tonight this hour we spent together will help us do just that so we thank you for all these things and we ask you for all these things through jesus in his name we pray amen amen thank you tim one final thing this this session was recorded uh if any of you have any interest in receiving a copy you just just shoot me an email and uh melanie you just need to tell me how we can get it to them so thank you good night

Channel: The Center For Executive Leadership

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Id: JvNmC091MRg

Length: 59min 2sec (3542 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021