Tim Keller - Center Church Webcast, hosted by Zondervan and The Gospel Coalition

well welcome glad that all of you could be here for this conference here tgc New England we have the great privilege of being able to put this free conference on with Tim Keller and Zondervan we'll be providing a similar so everyone else out there can see what we're doing here in Boston in in in New England what's encouraging about this conference is that there are people here in this city and in this region who actually have great love for God and have love for the local church and and the things that the Scriptures have to teach us and I think what we're going to notice from our presentation from Tim and also during the panel discussion is is that what's so helpful about this book the the curriculum content which I have had the privilege of of using in many different cities throughout the world to to Train pastors the powerful thing about the resources that we find here is is that it's not just talking about foundational doctrinal truths it does at least that of course because it's very theologically a deep and rich but it has this what what Tim will call middleware it's it's not just a hardware of doctrinal truths that we find this scripture what God has done through his special revelation and throughout history and it's not just about practical ministry philosophy of ministry however you want to call it software but it's this middleware it is this theological vision that shapes everything that we do it is the gospel that shapes everything that we do in other words we want to be able to present a powerful demonstration of God's work as people that do not merely believe the gospel the people who are being shaped by the gospel and this is what centered church is about so he outlines a for us all of the different theological a distinctive such as what he will call generative gospel theology grace renewal gospel preaching issues of contextualization in an integrative ministry and living him being moved in mind and planning churches all of these extremely important theological distinctives and emphases that are being shaped by a deep reflection on the gospel and he talks about it in the context of a DNA it's it's self-generative it is self-replicating and what we're going to see in a moment in this presentation is how it affects everything that we do every dimension of life in our thinking in our ministry in the way we speak in the ways we formulate all of our ideas now as I introduced Tim Keller and I guess I'll have the privilege to do so in a moment as well later on when the the main part of the conference begins but Tim has influenced many pastors throughout the years and for me I guess the best way for me to introduce him it's by saying that he is a dear friend and a mentor who has shaped my understanding of the gospel the way I understand scripture the way I have come to love my city here in Boston and all cities and he has been able to help me to realize what it means to take that which I believe to be true from the Scriptures the gospel and how that affects everything that I do and and so it's our great privilege to introduce him now but before I do that if you have any questions for for dr. Keller then tweet your question with a hashtags pound Center Church or pound tgc any 12 and we will take questions later on at the end of our panel discussion but why don't we welcome Tim Keller now Thanks that too loud okay would one in overwhelm you I was uh you know the way this works is you get asked to speak at a conference pretty far in advance and they say what do you want to talk about and you tell them then as the time gets closer you don't remember what you told them then what you do is you go to the website that advertises the conference where you're going in order to come and you see what it says that I'm the speaker is speaking about then you say okay and you start preparing it this is what Walt Disney calls the circle of life and this is what I'm supposed to tell you about today many pastors are struggling to adapt to a post-christian culture without abandoning Orthodox theology how do we communicate the classic doctrines of grace and substitutionary atonement in our culture and context now we're New Englanders I'm maybe not all of you are but I'm assuming I'm in New England most of you are and I know that New England is a post-christian place I want to keep in mind the fact however that all of New England isn't the same that if you're ministering in the shin in Cambridge in the shadow of Harvard and MIT if you're ministering in the blue-collar towns of the Merrimack Valley if you're ministering in the new agey village you know in Vermont those are three very different parts of New England I know that nevertheless and I'm gonna try to keep that in mind occasionally I'll try to try to say that many of the things I'm saying need to be even inside New England adapted somewhat but what I want to talk about is we do live in a post-christian place New England we do live in a place in which not only are we told that Christianity is inconsequential laughable of no interest we're told that until we actually assert ourselves or say something and then we can see there's it's not just that people are indifferent to Christianity we live in a society that is that truly is post Christian I think you can call it post Christian because it's still mad at Christianity it the the people who are at the center of culture today are still in reaction to Christianity and they're mad at us Miroslav Volf says Western churches have a past they like to boast about but a future they seem to dread and we do dread it to a great degree because we we know about the hostility you know in that situation how do we tell the truth at the same time and not abandon orthodoxy but at the same time be compelling is there some way to do that and therefore I'm going to lay out here's some ideas on how to do that the first thing we need in order to be Orthodox and be compelling and adaptive all together is we need to be a certain kind of community I won't spend long on this but I'll tell you why it's got to be said we need to be a particular kind of community the British Presbyterian missionary to India Leslie Newbegin when he came back from retirement in the seventies you know he had basically left before world war two comes back later he recognized what had happened in the West he recognized that churches in the past had been able to assume that in many ways the average person was somewhat Christianized by the cultural institutions cultural institutions when I say Christianize it mean it meant the average person respected the Bible and respected Christian doctrine the average person tended to seek out the church for milestone places in their lives like baptism or you know their child being born or a wedding or a funeral that kind of thing and they were Christianized enough that when you talked about the gospel and when you called people to follow Christ they they some they had the mental furniture to at least know what you were talking about and all that's gone and lesson if again saw that was gone and so he began to write write essays and do lectures and write books in which he said that the church in the West is acting as if the culture hadn't changed the church is still ministering as if the cultural institutions we're still Christianizing people and because of that the church needed to become they needed to realize they're on a mission field and so what new beacon kept on saying was this how can the church have a missionary encounter with Western culture how can the church realize we're on the mission field we've got to have a missionary encounter with Western culture it's not our turf anymore it's not a place where the culture institutions on our side anymore now Newbegin was not an evangelical though as the years go by he he kind of does a bit of a trajectory toward more conservative theology that's the reason why if you read him since I'm mentioning him some of you're gonna read him if you read him you'll that's why sometimes the things he says seem to an evangelical theological a right on other times not at all the main point is though he he he has been very influential and rightly so because he has put a lot of emphasis on the fact that our witness must will not be credible unless it's based in a particular kind of community that the church has to become a kind of community and there are I'll give you six features of that community new bigot and the people who follow him have all spoken like this the church number one that is effective today needs to be a contrast community this was not something that was quite as necessary 50 years ago but the the church's understanding of how people should use sex money and power the church is understanding a forgiveness of hospitality these things are so different than the way the world sees things that the church has to be among other things a mini society an alternate human society that shows the world a different way of being human so the church has to be a contrast Society secondly the church has to be a servant community not just the contrast community a servant community that means the people around the church have to see the churches not just living for themselves at some level somehow they have to see that we're not just evangelizing people which to non-christians looks like we're just trying to accrue our increase our footprint increase the number of people that we have the amount of money that we have see if the world sees us only evangelizing and of course they're wrong about this but if the world sees evangelizing they see us is just one more power broker just one more body vying for more turf and power but if they see us serving the city if they see us as individuals and as a body pouring ourselves out and help toward the needs of a particular city if they see us being a servant then they'll listen or at least we that at least they won't won't stop listening and if certainly if you look at the Old Testament you see that so often in the Old Testament Israel was called to be a just society to care about the poor and the widow and the alien but very often God when God is calling them to be a servant community that is to say that they would care about the poor and they care about the ailing they care about the the needy in their midst so often there's this little appendage that says and therefore the nations will see the glory of God being a servant was always part of being a witness if a church is only a social service agency that will not be a witness because if that's all this church is we don't need the church because there's plenty of other agencies that do social services better than the church ever will but if the church is not only evangelizing but also showing that it's trying to serve the needs of the city that's a very important part of a witness today it wasn't necessary I think some years ago but it is now church must be a contrast Community Church must be a servant community Church church must be a non divisive unifying community I'll be careful what I say here but I must start with it with a story did you hear the one about the guy who was shipwrecked on a desert island all by himself he was the only one on the island and two years later a ship came by and rescued him and when they got there they noticed something that first of all he had built himself a house very rough of course made out of leaves and pieces of wood but he had built himself a show of it was a house and at one in the island he'd also built himself a little a little house a Shack really but it had a steeple and had a cross on the top and was very clearly a church but at the other end of the island there was another building that was also had a steeple and also had a cross on the top so when the captain who had rescued the man saw this he says you know I'm curious I I understand the house and I even understand the church well I see you're a very devoted person but why if there's only one of you on the island did you build two church buildings and the man said we have to understand I'm a Christian and all Christians need one church to go to and one church to stay completely away from I have nothing to do with it now Leslie Newbegin at one point says something pretty intriguing that when our society was all Christianized the way you justified your existence as a denomination was to say we're not like them we're not like those Christians we're like us we're not like them and it is true that over here is an awful lot of churches have started that way we start because we're not like them and so we define ourselves over against other Christians Nipigon says but you know today because of the situation we're on a mission field we should be defining ourselves primarily as over against the world it's different from the world not as different from every other Christian and I don't think this certainly doesn't mean I believe anew began of course was in the ecumenical movement I certainly don't believe in watering down doctrine to create some kind of organism artificial organizational unity between Christians I certainly don't think we should water down our distinctives of tradition and a denominational or theology but simple fact of the matter is at the local level it is an amazing witness when non-christians see the Christians basically not bashing each other and being as respectful and as cooperative as you can be the fact of the matter is I can certainly do some things with another Church but there's other things I can't because our theology just just makes it impossible to do that together our differences I mean our theological differences might be too much but for church to simply be a have a unifying unifying a unifying attitude an attitude that's not devices it's not super critical it's very much a part of the kind of community that we need to have if we're going to have any kind of impact in this post-christian society so a church must be a contrast community a serving community a unifying community here's number four church must be a late launching community what I mean by that is this that in the early centuries of the church's history when the church had no cultural status at all it was it was only suspected who carried the Christian message out there it was individual Christians it wasn't the church speaking it wasn't the bishop speaking I mean the church was essentially underground or at least it had no cultural status at all what what took the word out who was being salt and white it's the individual Christians and what this means is and this is bad actually there's a bad thing for us because we live at a time in which market how do I say it every part of human life is essentially being recast in the image of the capitalist market so everything is seen as cost-benefit analysis everything is seen as and basic you know listen I don't have to go into detail here because many of you heard of this Christians tend to be consumers the Christians tend to say I have no loyalty to a particular church they don't say it as a family they don't see it that they're part of a family if you're part of the family you don't pick up and change families every year so because you don't like the you know the turkey X Thanksgiving you know you this is my family I got to go she's a horrible cook I wish mom could still cook why my sister-in-law always has to cook it's terrible but you don't say I'm gonna go find a Thanksgiving dinner someplace where the turkeys better you know I one another I want another family so the idea was that churches are supposed to be families right we're supposed to be you know in community with each other but of course Christians are actually more if they think of themselves more as customers than they do as brothers and sisters and family members so we jump depending on where we like the music better over the youth ministries better over there now you've you've heard this I don't want I'm not here to rant it's very easy to rant at this point I'm trying to show you that at the very spot at which we're weakest right now where people go to church to consume ministry they don't see themselves as ministry providers they see themselves as ministry consumers and they go to wherever they can get fed the most which is a something of a euphemism under which we're basically going to where we feel like our felt needs are being met the most and we don't go to say we're responsible for the other people's lives here we're responsible for this community we're going to be producing ministry no we say where did I get my needs met and yet we're coming into a time in which the church as the church is getting having less and less clout in our culture in which more and more laypeople need to be trained so well inside the church the church needs to be launching lay people out they need to be the average Christian ought to be more theologically student needs to be more theologically astute then then we need it to be 50 years ago we need to be more trained to do ministry than back we fifty years ago when you sort of come to the church and you've had these great programs all the time more and more laypeople have got to learn how to reach out and do witness in their relationship networks they don't have to know how to be salt and light in their neighborhoods they need to know how to integrate their faith with their work out in their vocational fields so the church must be a lay launching community this isn't the main thing I want to talk about so I'm going to rush on the fifth thing it's church must be a contrast community a servant community a unifying community a lay launching community it needs to be a suffering community outside of the West in non-western countries the church often experiences suffering and it's a major part of its inner strength and witness you get away from North America and Europe you get into other parts of the world you'll see very often that the suffering of the church is one of the main ways it's a great witness and one of the main ways it grows in sanctification it's important it's an important part of being a church we know nothing about that as soon as we get persecuted we complain so we go to the press we talk about lawsuits and by the way I believe in justice so sometimes maybe that's the right thing to do but the main point is that we in the West are gonna have to learn how to be a suffering Church if we're gonna have a witness now those are five things right contrast servant unifying lay launching and suffering but there's one more and it's really important and here's where I do a contrast the sixth is we have to be a community of the word we have to be a prophetic community now here's why I talked about this as I mentioned Leslie Newbegin and his followers and many people who have read him and actually the whole industry you might say the cottage industry of people who are trying to figure out how do we have a missionary encounter with post Christian culture how can we be missional how can we you know that's that's just an enormous industry of books and and conferences and discussions so often they've gotten a hold of what Newbegin says and they say the key is community that's the whole key we need to be a loving community now let me push this a little bit tell me if you haven't heard rhetoric like this spread the gospel use words if necessary because the gospel is a basically a way of life it's a way of life like Jesus and what we need to be showing people is instead of talking about Dogma and doctrine we need to be showing people the love of Christ we need that they people need to see us loving including the marginalized caring for the poor and the oppressed they need to see us loving each other belonging comes before believing people need to come into a community like that and begin to work alongside and be loved and to show love and slowly but surely they will believe because you know Christianity become more credible to them so don't try to convince them let's not worry too much about dogma and doctrine Christianity is first of all a way of life and a way of life of love now immediately going to contextualize this briefly before I say anything about that let me keep this keep this in mind when I was in a small blue-collar town in Virginia for ten years and the only other I've only had a church in a small blue bucolic town in Virginia and I've also had a church in the middle of Manhattan those are the only two teachers I've ever had and one of the things I learned a long time ago was this that in a blue-collar community my pastoring setup my preaching in a white-collar community my preaching sets up my pastoring you know what I'm talking about for example in Hopewell Virginia very often the people they could so they could certainly tell the difference between a really good sermon and a really bad sermon but the fact was that if you were with them if you loved them if you pastored them and if you earn their respect as a wise courageous and tender-hearted pastor then they started saying okay I'll listen to this guy sermons I when I was my twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination my people in Hope virginity's year 2000 gave me an ordination anniversary okay it was in this summer time they all got together and they just wanted to honor me it was a complete surprise they worked it out with my wife was on my vacation it was amazing but at one point everybody said let's all stand up let's everybody say one thing they remember from Tim's ministry not at this point you got to keep in mind Tim's ministry been over for a you know in Hope offer of 16 years already our already 16 years past from it's I'd left 16 years before that so they're all getting up to say what was one thing that really had an impact on you from Tim's ministry that you've never forgotten it's really helped you they all got up nobody nobody mentioned anything I'd ever said in a sermon not one they said things like I never forgot when my son was in jail you went down to Petersburg jail and my wife and I were sitting there and feeling like the world was over and you sat down he read from John thirteen seven night if John thirteen I remember the very words you said see in a blue-collar town now you think that would happen today in New York City it's the other way around it's an expertise culture people come and they hear you rightly dividing the word of truth being wise publicly you know being wise and being insightful and and it may be you know convict in their heart public and they say hi huh Wow okay maybe I'll go and talk to this person about my problems it's exactly the opposite so that's the reason why you you it is so what I'm about to tell you still has to be contextualized and it is true to a great degree it is true to a great degree that your words no matter how biblical they are and no matter how logical they are and how about how well-crafted they are in some situations unless the context of that is a relationship of caring and love they're not going to listen to can't listen they don't they don't get it so everything I'm about to say needs to be put in that in with that background having said all that let me restate what I'm about to refute basically Christianity is first of all primarily a way of life a way of loving a Christian Way of life is first of all primary way of life that is wrong it is not first of all primarily a way of life Christianity is first of all a message which if believed leads to a new way of life and what that means that both a philosophic I'm gonna say other principio and a practical level it is really a mistake to think if we just love and to forget about doctrine and dogma don't worry about that in fact the sermon isn't that important what really matters is bringing people in the community that's wrong on two levels I'll give you the practical level the practical level is there's lots of close-knit communities lots of incredibly loving communities lots of communities that that reach out and help the poor there's a million kinds of communities most of them are religious most of them we Christians would call they're all over the place non-christians are going to call them cults but the fact of the matter is there's lots of communities like that the real question is why should you adopt the beliefs of that particular community why well look how loving and nice they are well there's a lot of loving and nice people around you ever heard of common grace there's a lot of loving and nice people and besides that you remember that list I gave you a church must be a you know a contrast community people need to be holy different church must be a you know suffering community it needs to be a lay launching community a sermon community and all that sort of thing do you know what kind of person it takes to create a community like that that person needs to be filled with joy most people are not happy enough to create the kind of community the Bible talks about they don't have the vision they don't have the joy you know why because they don't believe the gospel the gospel Christianity is first of all a message which if believe leads to a light way of life now let me press on that if you don't mind I'm gonna say more about this tonight I'll say this what I'm about to say now I'll say again but I'm going to apply it differently and something I try to put point out in a couple of the books including the center church book the gospel is news not advice advice is counsel about something that needs to get done news is a report about something that's already been done advice is counsel about what I want you to do in order to accomplish something news is a report of something having been accomplished with now you have to respond to those are two completely different things all other religions are basically advice and in many parts of the world many churches even Christianity has recast in the form of advice it's advice because basically what's being said is if you want to connect to God if you want to have the divine life in you if you want to change the world if you want to and I have a have relationship with God that you want to have these are all things you must do do this this this this this now there are conservative ways of recasting Christianity into religion and advice and there are liberal ways of doing it the conservative ways is you you must do this and this and follow all these rules and don't do this and don't do this and then maybe you know you have to believe all these things and that's what we will call traditional moralism and legalism but there's a liberal approach and that liberal arts goes like this God is creating a community that's going to renew the world it's a community of love and of justice and a peace and if you want to become a Christian you have to join that community and if you come into that community you've become part of a community then you become an agent for God's justice and peace and love in the world and you will renew the world that sounds good but it's a burden because all religion and all forms of Christianity recast as religion and vice is a burden because you know there's the conservative form of it in which you have to follow these rules as a liberal form which now you've got to be this you have to be out there doing justice and caring for the poor but the gospel is news that Jesus Christ has done what you can't do he's accomplished your salvation for you and now you rest in him now what does that mean it takes the burdens off religion puts burdens on there's a liberal way to do that there's a conservative way to do that but the gospel takes the burdens off the burden of having to prove yourself the burden of fear of the future not sure whether you're gonna live up and participate in that future the burden of of living up to what your parents said the burden of guilt and past you know what is the gospel the gospel is news about what Jesus Christ has done now having said that you know I'll talk a little bit more about that tonight what that means is ultimately Christianity still the essence of Christian witnesses you got to say something not just do something you don't just model it'll just show people love you've got to convince them that the message is true so for example you know a CS Lewis in his book studies and words has a final chapter called at the fringe of language and in that chapter he points out that there are some things that words can't do very well and one of the things he says words don't do a very good job of is a conveying complex physical action so he says for example if you do not know how to tie a man's tie notice I don't have one on but anyway if you don't know how to tie a man's tie there's two ways to learn one is to find somebody who's written it all down in words step one step two step three if you have you ever tried to read somebody explaining how to actually Lewis I think uses this as an illustration you you can read a description of how to tie man's tie about ten times and you still don't know how to do it all you have to do is watch somebody do it and you oh okay I see it and a lot of people say that's Christianity if Christianity is mainly a way of life it's primarily a way of life then you don't need words you don't need preaching you don't need communication you don't need persuasion you just show people you model it you embody it right but that's not actually the essence of Christianity because the essence of Christianity is not a way of life it's a message you know in anything that's happened in history has to be explained if the significance is going to be there if the when I was seven years old I remember it well Life magazine put out it maybe was eight I don't remember that well after all life life magazine put out a series of articles on if the South had won the Civil War and it was a speculating that if the South had won the Civil War and that when we got to 1939 there were two united states - you know United States of America United States's Wow made that up to United States of America's that we probably would not have the Allies wouldn't have won World War two which would have been a kick in the head and then they worked their way back and they said so the world would be different if the South had won the Civil War the South would won the Civil War if they'd won the Battle of Gettysburg this Battle of Gettysburg would have been won if Little Round Top had been held I had to have been taken by the Confederates but Little Round Top was not taken by the Confederates and some of you know the story there was a good New England academic named Joshua Chamberlain from Maine and he was in charge of a group he was in charge of a Union troop that was out of ammunition out of ammunition one more assault from the Confederates and they would have been killed or captured and they would have taken Little Round Top and they would have won the Battle of Gettysburg and they would have been been able to hold off the Union they would have kept their their their own country would have changed history but Joshua Chamberlain said fix bayonets and in a nutty crazy amazing feat he had his troop charged without ammunition down the hill with fixed bayonets the Confederates were so discombobulated that they surrendered some of you know this story it's amazing changed all of history now how am I going to tell a group of people how Joshua Chamberlain changed the course of history I can't do it by modeling it I can't do it by modeling I can't do it by you know demonstrations I gotta use words I gotta use words so one of the big problems with saying that you know Christianity is basically a way of life you just love people and you do justice and peace and you don't you don't do dogma and you don't you don't do apologetics and you don't do evangelism and you don't try to convince people that they're wrong and you don't talk about the wrath of God and the substitutionary atonement of Christ you talked about how we have to live lives of peace and just you don't go there you don't do all that the trouble is when you say it's a way of life first not a message you are giving people the impression that basically by living in a particular way you can be right with God dr. Lloyd Jones years ago dr. David Lenoir Jones says a lot of people say oh doctrine and dogma doesn't matter what matters is how you live he says you know what's ironic when you say doctrine and dogma doesn't what matters is how you live being a good person he says that is a doctrine you know what it is it's the doctrine of justification by works now yeah he didn't make it he didn't make a lot of friends having said that and because fortunately for me and I hope for you I've got some time left now how do you do that see if if I what I've just tried to do up to now is show you that the kid your community does matter if you just think preaching great sermons and and and having slam dunk apologetic arguments is enough you're wrong you need to be doing our we need to be doing our witness in our communication in the context of a community that it's contrast servant lay launching suffering all that I all that it's all true but having said that we've got it for suede people we've got to persuade people the message because Christianity is not primarily or first of all a way of life it's a message which believed if believed leaves a way of life now what I want to do the rest of the time is say okay then how do you do that in a post-christian culture let me give you something general and let me give you five rhetorical strategies and I'll show you that it depending on whether you're in a little place in Vermont or in the Merrimack Valley or down here in Boston or Cambridge if how you do it use me how you do it makes a difference but nevertheless let me give you something general this is in the center Church book under this section called contextualization but in a nutshell I really hope people will think about this understand this and if what I'm saying right now in the next three minutes doesn't quite click I hope that you get the book and give a give it a give it a read especially on into that area basically the essence of good persuasion is this you're meeting somebody who you disagree with on some very important issue and you want to persuade them one way to go is you just beat on them from the outside you just show them every place that they're wrong the other is you go inside you find something to agree with you find something that they believe to you say you agree with that you believe that well I believe that yeah we believe that and then you say but if you believe that why don't you believe this you can just in other words you can beat on them from the outside or you can come inside agree with them and then use their belief against them and every time you've ever seen a persuasive interchange that's actually what's happening another way to put it is there's a doctrines and there's B doctrines and a doctrine is something that I as a Christian actually share with a non-christian in this particular culture you know if you think about this the gospel is that God is holy and he cannot tolerate sin so he's a god of Wrath and he's a God of holiness he's a God of justice and he's a God of judgment he's also a God of mercy and a forgiveness and of grace now no culture that I know of can handle both of those even though the Bible does of course the gospel is God is just an justifier of those who believe you have shame and honor cultures these are cultures some of you are from if you're from if you're Asian you're from a shame and honor culture and the non-christian version of shame and honor cultures can really when they hear what the Bible says about judgment and justice and coming down on people yeah all right when they talk about eternal forgiveness infinite forgiveness no matter what you've done they struggle here in the West and in the West we are individualistic cultures they love what the Bible says about grace and forgiveness they struggle with the idea of judgment and justice they can't take that so there's really no actually there's no culture out there that has all the mental furniture necessary for you to just hear preach the gospel and have them say okay I understand that so what you usually have to do is generally speaking you have to go into the part of the culture that is more amenable to Christian truth the part of the culture that by common grace is a you know more aligned with Christian truth you go in you talk about that you say yep that's true yep that's true we both agree okay if you don't believe if you believe that then why don't you believe this you're being inconsistent if you don't believe this you see this a belief that you have the Bible says the same thing so we agree but if a is true then why do you not believe B now let me give you some examples no another way to put it is this with the authority of the Bible in good persuasion with the authority of the Bible we allow one part of the culture along with the Bible to create critique another part so somebody let me give you four examples quick a real classic example is this this is a place in the problem of pain where CS Lewis is talking to people who don't like this idea but God who's angry we don't I don't believe in a God of anger I believe in a God of love so what does he say this is very you know this is classic many of you have heard this he says when we fall in love with a woman do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty fair or foul do we not rather than first begin to care in an awful unabie means in an awesome and surprising truth we are the objects of God's love you asked for a loving God you have one not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate but the consuming fire himself the love that made the world's persistent as an artist love for his work Provident and venerable as a Father's love for a child jealous and ex herbal exacting his love between the sexes how this should be I do not know it surpasses reason to explain why any creatures not to say creatures such as we should have a value so prodigious in their creator's eyes is a burden of glory not only beyond their heart are our deserts but also except in rare moments of grace beyond our desiring now did you say what he did I mean obviously that's nobody speaks English like that anymore so I need to translate and here's what the translation he says you say you believe in a loving God I don't believe in a wrathful God but if you stop and think about it if you really love anybody you get mad when something is threatening if God loves human race wouldn't he be furious at anything that's destroying the human race and therefore see he says you believe in a loving God I do too and therefore if you believe in a loving God you have to believe in a God who gets angry at sin you have to believe in it that's that's the move let me give you a one you can say for example to modern postmodern late modern people they don't know if they believe in God but if they do believe in to God they love the idea of an intimate relationship with a personal God they like that wouldn't be great to have a God who's a person not just a force out there but a person who really loves you and you can interact with and you can have an actual give-and-take relationship with yeah in that case you need to believe in an authoritative infallible inerrant Bible really they say why well have you ever seen a marriage in which one person always walked all over the other person in other words one person always said things the other person never felt they could contradict never felt they could comment and and they always said yes dear yes dear yes dear okay you know let's let's create the idea of an overbearing husband and a wife who's just intimidated by her husband and and no matter what he says it's okay with her she never contradicts she never talks back she never she can never cross his will what do you think of that relationship what you say that's not a relationship at all it's not a personal relationship it's it's you know it's it's oppression it's it's wrong it's not personal right okay how will you have a god that can actually contradict you like you say well I like to believe in a God who of love and I don't like this I don't believe in a God like this and I see the Bible I got some things in the Bible I like but other things I just can't accept okay that's interesting so you have a God of love and you believe some things the Bible not other things how will this god of yours ever contradict you how will he ever make you mad how will he ever cross your will how will he ever tell you that you're wrong in one of your beliefs isn't it true that every real personal relationship has that right okay so unless you have an infallible Bible you can't have a personal relationship with God you've got a God who always is saying to you yes dear yes dear yes dear yes here okay now what did I just do came inside this wouldn't work I don't think in a shame and honor culture they don't want a cuddly God they don't they're not all that they're not they don't rhapsodize about the idea of a God who just loves me and that he's just my friend now the fact is the Bible does say God is our friend it's amazing and therefore it pushes against the shame in our culture but what we're doing is we're talking about we're taking a part of the Bible that fits to some degree at least it appeals to Western individualistic culture and we're coming inside saying don't you want a relationship Bible says the relationship like that it's possible but then if you believe this why don't you believe this we just give you one other example well no you too because I can tell you listening you never know the next point might be a waste you know if you have a point that seems to be working milk it okay we were we're in a lot of we're in a lot of hot water evangelical Christians are in a lot of hot water over our that our understanding our traditional understanding what the Bible says about sex and gender we're in a lot of hot water but I was talking to a pastor a great pastored preacher who's a friend of mine this week and he told me an interesting story he said he was preaching on sex and a I don't know if it was a church service or a conference and what he did was he really went deeply into the the theological basis for the Christian understanding of sex and gender and he went to the Trinity and he went to the very nature of God and the fact that God is not you know personal but in sees tri-personal that inside the Trinity there are persons who know and love each other who glorify each other and who complement each other and and then he went into the idea of the imago Dei and he talked about a male and female together mirroring the image of God in a way that two men and two women cannot Jilin in all stuff and he was creating this beautiful picture of deep Union and the union of two people who are unlike each other and yet at the same time who were meant to be together and and marriage and sex is a way of of reconciling and bringing back you might say the two halves of humanity into a into a whole this amazing picture and then talked about the joy of it and all that he he said that there was a woman that came up after the service I guess it was a service and who says I can't just ask you a question I need to see you and so he saw her later that week and she was a gay woman and she sat there and she said you know I'm still mad because I know you don't believe that you think homosexuality is wrong but for the first time nobody's ever shown me what the biblical idea of sex is it just always told me what I can't do and she said I hate to tell you this but when you were describing this I wanted that and yet I was getting angry because I said I can't have that I don't want that and that makes me mad see what the guy did was I don't know I don't know how the conversation in it but what that pastor did was this he came inside he didn't just beat on her from the outside he didn't even know he was preaching to her of course that's the romance of preaching but basically what happened was he didn't just say these are the things you mustn't do no this no this no that he came on the inside and he gave them gave such a picture such a vision of what marriage and sexuality could be should be can be is that everybody out there their mouths are watering and then suddenly she realized wait a minute if you want this if you believe in this then why are you doing this and she felt even though she was mad even though she I'm not sure she was convinced but she felt that she felt was a compelling argument she didn't just her eyes didn't glaze over saying one more bigot let me give you that's a macro example I may give you one more that's something of a micro example in fact I'm gonna tell I hate to use myself like this but let me just tell you something I had to do in a sermon recently at my church in in New York City and read you what I said and then I'll try to show you what it was it's a little bit of a pedagogical moment in which instead of telling you what I did I'll shut up I'll tell you what I did and then then try to help you see how it applies the principles we're talking about you know how there's a lot of modern people really wrestle with parts of the Bible where God just seems to suddenly get very vindictive and at the end of second Kings five namin remember the leper gets healed offers of leprosy of course Elijah he offers Elijah the Prophet a gift Elijah will not take the gift Neiman leaves Elisha's servant gehazi goes running after naman and says o my master does want you to give a gift not to him of course not to him but a couple of young seminarians from gordon-conwell prophecy school this is all there the Gordon Conwell is a bit of a contextualization but it says there's a couple of seminarians they're kind of impoverished and you know Elijah was saying oh that wealthy X leper who's going back to Syria I'll betcha he could help them with a couple of scholarships so would you mind giving us a couple of scholars oh absolutely since named and he gets out a couple of talents of gold or silver and gives and gauzy goes back and he thinks nobody knows and he goes in to see Elijah and Elijah says gauzy where have you been he says I've been nowhere and basically what Elijah says yes I know what you've been doing God has seen what you've been doing and in judgment you will become a leper now and it says he went and a Ghazi look left as white as snow with leprosy so he's stricken with a leprosy that naman had and that way he was a leper the rest of his life now the average modern person reading that says oh that's what I love about the biblical God always smiting people here and there why didn't you know do something it was terrible what he did was terrible but it was just it was just it was money give the money back you know do something else but to smite him with leprosy the rest of his life here's what I said I said one of the things that's so broken about this world is its many people with Souls and insides and hearts that are unbelievably ugly have incredibly beautiful and healthy outsides so a lot of people with incredibly ugly souls and ugly hearts are have these beautiful bodies and there's a lot of people who have absolutely gorgeous souls loving Souls just delightful Souls and yet they have broken or disfigured or just unsightly and unattractive bodies isn't that part of what's wrong with the world I mean beautiful insides ugly outsides ugly insides beautiful outsides I said if the world was put right wouldn't you feel like it would be right if the ugly and hard work were visible to all that's what they were on the outside and wouldn't it be just and fair if the beautiful at heart were the same is what God just did here harsh no God is putting the world right at one spot you see in other words he's Belling the cat he's taking somebody with the most unhealthy disfigured ugly soul and he's showing the world all he's doing is putting the world right at one spot you got a problem with that now what did I do you say I'm not sure but it it was kind of cool but I'll tell you what but here's what I did authenticity it's a it's it's too big a deal I mean in Western culture because we're individualist and because feelings are more important than thoughts and truth what really matters is authenticity and I got to tell you how I am other words I got to open up I got to come out I got to show people who I really am I can't hide who I really am I used it against them it's basically you do is you come inside you say you believe that you believe that well then what's wrong with this and that's how you do it now let me just give you five areas now for I'll give you four five areas in which you have to do this I'm just gonna basically name them because my time is running short charity and human love justice and human rights idolatry and human sin hope and the human future and what I mean by that is a Bill Edgar teaches theology and apologetics at Westminster seminary got minka he's a French speaker and lived in France for many years I got me on to a French philosopher named Luke favi who has recently written a book that was finally put it into English so I could read it called a brief history of thought what's interesting about Feli is that he's so fair-minded I think it's partly because as a French philosopher Christianity is such an absolute it's so unthinkable that he would ever become a Christian that he does that he's able to look at Christianity and not be threatened and admit a whole lot of good ideas came from it and for example in one place in the book he actually says this this isn't this is a paraphrase do you think it's generally a good idea to be kind to your enemies and to reach out to them rather than kill them he says if you think that's a good idea you need to know where that idea came from it came from Christianity and nowhere else there is absolutely it loving your enemy made no sense to shame and honor cultures no sense to Eastern cultures it just made it crazy where did it come from it came from Christianity and only from there and if you say oh well of course love your enemies and then he actually goes on and talks about being caring for the poor and human rights that's this is my second point of course now justice and human rights he says that the Greeks believed that the universe was moral and they believed in the logos and logos meant that there was a rational order to the universe there was a rational structure of the universe and they did believe in moral absolutes and they believed that there was a way to live that was in conformity to those moral absolutes they weren't relativists but they believed it was an impersonal thing it was a structure and when you died you went and you just became part of the universe part of that cosmic order but you didn't keep your personality you didn't keep your consciousness or anything like that fairy comes along and says John chapter 1 in the beginning was the logos and the logos was a human being as a person he says that changed intellectual history forever because what Christianity was doing was coming and saying love now personality the pertinent a person to know the meaning of the universe is to know a person to know the meaning of the universe you don't have to be an elite like the Greeks believed contemplating the rational order of the universe you anybody can know the rational meaning of the universe of the logos because you know all you have to do is have a personal relationship with Jesus a person he said the whole idea of human rights the whole idea that human beings and persons were of infinite dignity and inviolable dignity he says all of that came from Christianity all of it now one of the things I found in talking to people especially after Christopher Hitchens who says not just that religion is wrong but it's poison it poisons everything is you've got to go to places like this look it's not the same when you're talking to blue-collar people as it is when you're talking to you know academics from Harvard or something like that but the fact is you can't let people say you can't you've got to get control of the narrative again we've got to say look you may not believe the Christian basis the Christian doctrine but you whether you know it or not you have plundered all of our ethics all the best ideas human rights loving your enemies all these things they came from Christianity and then you want to come back and say now the reason you say well okay I that's what I believe I believe that's right I don't have to believe in Christianity yeah well I know but get this you press him a little further where did the idea of loving your enemy come up come from it's crazy it doesn't make much sense you know it's not very rational it's not very logical it it certainly doesn't seem very practical where did it come from it came from a view of reality and that view of reality was a Christian view of reality that God himself became weak that God himself became vulnerable that God Himself came and saved us not by taking up power and taking up a sword as my old friend Edmund clowny used to say Jesus Christ came not with a sword in his hands but with nails in his hands he came not to bring judgment but to bare judgment now when you believe that that's the meaning of the universe a God who defers a God who condescends a God who comes down willing to become weak to pay the price for our sin to bear the punishment you know - you know God basically taking the punishment we deserve he says that creates a rational basis for loving your enemy for treating every human being as equally inviolable on the Greek understanding of reality on the second understanding of reality it doesn't make sense now at some level everybody at some level like I said if you're if you're I had a blue-collar church where I would never say what I just said and yet that is the not not just out there you know you know I don't quote French philosophers and things like that but there has to be ways inside bars there has to be ways your reasoning with people that has to be a background there has to be a way of getting that a whole thing across the only other thing I'll say here at the very end is we should must not be embarrassed when people say listen when when the academics say substitutionary atonement Jesus Christ coming and propitiating the wrath of God and taking wrath of god that's primitive that's horrible that's offensive nobody's gonna want to hear that au contraire that's the only French I know the most compelling story possible is somebody giving his life for his friends giving his life to save other people nothing if you take away the idea of justice and wrath there's absolutely no reason why Jesus Christ would have to come and make a sacrifice it's silly and yet if it's there and only if it's there the idea of the wrath of God and justice on sin you know and and and and the punishment for sin then you have the most wonderful of all narratives which is the reason that JK Rowling had to come to finish her her Harry Potter series with Harry Potter dying to save his friends is because it is the most compelling story there is doctor I remember years ago I mean like that's like this is this is notes right out of my 1973 course syllabus with doctrine Roger Nicole on systematic theology at gordon-conwell and here's what he said if I remember correctly it's right here you're lucky and I could have gone on for oh yeah he says there are a number of different models there's a number of different models of the atonement or what he would call grammars of the atonement there's a language of the battlefield Christ fought against the powers of sin and death for us he defeated the powers of evil for us there's language of the marketplace Christ paid the ransom price the purchase price to bring us out of our indebtedness he frees us from enslavement the language of exile Christ was exiled and cast out of the community so that we who deserved to be banished could be brought in he brings us home the language of the temple Christ is the sacrifice that purifies us and makes us acceptable to draw near to the holy God he makes us clean and beautiful and the language of the law court Christ stands before the judge takes the punishment we deserve he removes our guilt and makes us righteous now if you said to dr. Niccole well those are interesting those are you know the language the battlefield there's a different model see atonement but you see there's multiple models of the automa substitutionary atonement is just one of the models the atonement he would never grant that because here's what he would say he would say don't you see the one theme the one irreducible theme the one common theme that runs through absolutely every one of those models is substitution substitution is not one model among many its the thread through all of them and he went he says Jesus fights the powers Jesus pays the price Jesus bears the Exile Jesus makes the sacrifice Jesus he does it for us in every place he's the one that takes it because the gospel is news it's not advice and that story that story in so many different forms where is the most compelling story there is I have never been able to you don't tell the story of the atonement without people no matter whether they're blue collar white collar whatever being compelled by it so don't be ashamed of it don't be afraid of it and don't take away the doctrinal furniture that makes it a story and the doctor'll furniture means the wrath of God and the need for the wrath to be propitiated so there is a gospel shaped ministry is it still compelling today sure it is sure it is I don't know how successful it would be that's up to God you know dr. Lloyd Jones years ago used to say that incense ministry was sort of like building an altar and then God could decide how much fire to send down the fact is that if there's no altar no fire if there is an altar it's up to God as to how much the what temperature but the fact of the matter is if we build this altar the way we're talking about right now there will be fire amen let's let me close with prayer our Father thank you for giving us these various scraps of ideas of how we in our time and place can really have a compelling witness keep us from being too discouraged by the hostility we experienced too discouraged by the trajectory of our culture but the same time keep us from triumphalism and overconfidence as well certainly keep us from smugness oh my goodness Lord keep us from the smugness it's often comes when people feel embattled and I still know that they have the truth we pray Lord that in all these ways you would make us more and more your ambassadors and your agents and your witnesses in New England and in this this world we pray Jesus name Amen you

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Keywords: Tim Keller, Center Church, Webcast, zondervan, book, author, Religion (Literary Genre), leadership, church leadership, The Gospel Coalition, Dr. Timothy Keller, church, Timothy J. Keller (Author), Christianity (Religion), Church (building), Conference, Forum, Community, Group, Zondervan

Id: oAWh7S3JfyE

Length: 62min 46sec (3766 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 19 2012