Considering the Great Love of God

It's possible to believe in God and yet not understand who he really is. Scripture provides a multifaceted description of who God is, a father, a friend, a spouse, and a king. When we reduce him to just one of these, we end up with a flattened self-made version of God rather than the true God of the Bible. Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller begins a new series exploring God's multi-dimensional character and how understanding his complexity can bring us into a deeper relationship with him. The passage on which the teaching is based is Psalm 107. The Psalm, this Psalm is a whole. You can't just take a little piece out of it. Though we are leaving off part of it. But you have to see the main structure of it. It's a long piece and it will be easier to understand the structure if you have multiple readers so we are going to do something a little different than we usually do. And so we are going to read Psalm 107 verses 1 to 31 and then the summary verse at the end, 43. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love and dewers forever. But the redeemed of the Lord say this. Those he redeemed from the hand of the foe. Those he gathered from the lands from east and west from north and south. Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners, suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel the most high. So he subjected them to bitter labor. They stumbled and there was no one to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron. Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. He sent forth his word and healed them. He rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. Let them sacrifice thanks offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy. Others went out on the sea in ships. They were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the Lord, his wonderful deeds in the deep. For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. He mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths. In their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunken men. They were at their wit's end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper. The waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm and he guided them to their desired haven. Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord. This is God's word. Now we live in a time in which there's all kinds of spiritual searching and everybody seems to disagree about almost everything about God and almost everything about spirituality. There's one interesting thing that in our modern society today, the polls show at the research shows it. There's almost, well, not unanimity, but the tremendous consensus about God. There's one thing, almost everybody agrees with. Almost everybody. Even the people who don't believe in God say, "If there is a God, then everybody agrees that if there is a God or whatever else God is, God is a God of love." That's the reason why tonight I want to show you a song which is unbelievably relevant for us today. Here's the reason why. Three reasons, really. Number one, it starts. This song starts at a place where everybody today already believes and already agrees on that is, this song is about the love of God. That's what the whole theme is. The unfailing love, the great love of God. But look at verse 43. He says something very surprising. He says, "Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord." Nowadays, we don't think like that. We don't think of the love of God as something to be considered. If you understand the word consider, you'll see them nor it. It's more even more interesting than that. Because the word consider means to puzzle, to stare at, to ponder, to figure out. Now you say, "Well, what do you need to figure out?" That's the point. You have looked at the love of God to the point that it makes you puzzle and you see the richness of it and to the point where if the love of God has never moved you to ponder it deeply, you don't understand it. But there's a promise. Verse 43 says, "Whoever is wise, let him heed these things." Now, another way to translate this, literally it says, "The wise ones heed these things." And what that means is, the word wisdom, wisdom in the Hebrew worldview is not dated. Wisdom is not just lots and lots and lots of information on your C drive. That's not wisdom. Okay. No matter how many gigabytes you stick on that C drive, that C drive is not getting any more wise. And in the Hebrew worldview, no matter how much information you've got in your head, that doesn't make you wise. Your wisdom in the Hebrew worldview is transformed character through encounter with the living God. And therefore, he's promising something. He's saying, "If you ponder the love of God, if you puzzle over it, if you consider it sufficiently, rightly, properly, if you consider it deeply, your life will be changed, your heart will be transformed." Now, that's quite an invitation, isn't it? In fact, the Psalm is an invitation to do that. The Psalm is a guide to doing it. And so let's take the invitation up. You say, "Do I have a choice?" Well, not corporately, but individually, you could just snooze, but come with us. Okay? And well, here's what we learn. Where do we ponder the love of God? What do we ponder about the love of God? And how do we ponder it? Where is he calling us to ponder it? What are we pondered to call to ponder and how? Now, first of all, where? And that might sound like an area I'd question. I want to. Let me put it to you like this. Where does the idea of the love of God come from? Where does the idea of a loving God come from? What is the source of that idea? Where can we go to ponder it? Now I know from experience and I know therefore some of you are thinking this. A lot of people find that an irritating, at worst, or irrelevant question at best. And you scrunch up your brow and you say, "Wait a minute, what do you mean where?" Because the idea of a loving God come from. It doesn't come from someplace. It's common sense. It's something I just know. I just know it. I just believe it. What do you mean? Where did I get it? This is not the. I didn't get it from somewhere. I just know it. And people just know it. Well, let's test that thesis out. It's a thesis. Let's test out the thesis that this idea of a loving God didn't come from somewhere. It's just something we know. The polls show that vast majority of Americans believe God is a God of love. Do they just know what? Where did they get the idea? So thesis goes, it's just common sense. Everybody knows it. You didn't get it from anywhere. Let's try the thesis out. First of all, let's look at history. If you look at history, do you see that people historically have just known that there's loving God? It's just commonplace. It's something that you see coming up through ancient cultures and history. And the answer is no. Rudolf Otto, who was a very well-known historian of religion, I guess you might call him even though he worked quite a long time ago. A sociologist of religion, I think you'd call him that now. And he wrote a very famous book called The Idea of the Holy, in which he studied ancient cultures. And I think I don't think anybody would really overturn this now. He says, "When you take a look at ancient cultures, you see almost one commonality." And that is that they all experience. People experience when they came into what they considered the presence of the divine. They experienced no-menace fear or even terror. And all ancient cultures, we actually talked about this a couple of weeks ago. When we talked about the temple, all ancient cultures believed that the presence of the divine had to be mediated, that there was. It was threatening. That you needed priests. You needed rituals. You needed sacrifices. You needed changes of consciousness. You needed something. And the idea that is completely prevalent now, the idea that's completely prevalent now. And that is that if you want to talk to God, well, he's just a loving being and you just lift your eyes to the sky and you lift your mind to the sky and you just speak to him. That's an utterly new idea. You don't get that from history. People have not just known that. So where to come from? Well, you say, let's take a look at the world religions that come from the religions of the world. Is this common sense among the religions of the world? Now, Christians, I think Christians under, well, not just, I think Christians are insensitive to the riches in other religions. And I don't want to encourage that kind of insensitivity, but I have to ask this question. Is the idea of a personal God with whom you can have a loving relationship come from, is it common, or it is a come from just the great religions of the world? And the answer there is absolutely not. And if that surprises you, I'll tell you why. It probably surprises you. It probably surprises you because in this culture, people desperately want to believe, desperately want to believe that all religions are the same. I haven't completely figured out why, but I'll tell you what the effect is. One of the practical effects of believing that all religions are alike is that you don't actually have to listen carefully to any of them. You don't have to really listen, but they're saying, "I know it. You see, we all believe in a loving God, and if you just live in a certain good way and all that, you can find you're all going up the mountain in different paths." And so we want to believe that desperately. So we don't have to listen. So we don't have to listen to their voice. So we don't have to listen to what they say. And if you do, if you listen, here's what you're going to find out. Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, they don't believe in a personal God. They don't believe in a personal God. In fact, in original Buddhism, love itself, not just they don't believe in a loving God, but love itself is part of the illusion of individual selfhood that you have to get beyond to get to enlightenment. And if you go to Islam, and over the years I always thought, "Well, Islam, like Christianity believes in a loving God, a merciful God." And I was in a dialogue back in the 80s with a number of Muslim people. And my Muslim friends tried to show me, they actually said, "You're not listening." Remember, I had a, it took me quite a while to figure this out. They said, "You're not listening. You're pushing us into your mold." I said, "God is almighty." In our understanding, they said, "God is almighty, but he is not a friend or a father." And God is merciful, but you cannot have a personal love relationship with him. Listen. And so the point is, the idea of a personal loving God that you can have a personal relationship is absolutely not out there amongst the world religions either. Well, somebody says, "Did we get it from, perhaps people we just got it from, from just, modern people get it just from reflecting on life, reflecting on the world. You see the stars. You see the heavens. You see the ocean. You see the streams. You see the rivers. And when you look out there and you see all that beauty, you just know that, you see all that beauty, you know that there's a loving God behind it." Oh, really? Better look more carefully. One very, very intelligent and brilliant actually woman writer did that once years ago and won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Annie Dillard wrote a book called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, it's a fascinating book. And she lived by a stream in the mountains of Virginia and she just wrote what she observed. And she says actually that she had originally expected that she was going to learn the ways of nature and conform her life to it. That she was, you know, she's my age, you know, so she's baby boomer and maybe a little older. And of course, we all had this idea in college. And she wrote this like when she was 27 or something like that, that somehow she was going to get back to nature and just get in tune with nature and get in step and in sync with nature and what she found appalled her because she did look and she did watch and she did observe nature. And she saw nothing but violence, absurdity and waste. I'm sorry. By the way, this is why not bashing environmentalists here. Just listen, will you please. When she saw a praying mantis, a female praying mantis as she was mating, eating the head off her mate while they were mating. And that's something they always do, by the way. She was particularly shaken. When she saw a giant water bug latch itself onto a frog, inject it with a venom that literally turns the inside of the frog to mush and then suck it out. And she watched the frog just collapse, saw the eyes go dim and then saw the skull collapse, as his brain turned to broth and out it came and she never got over it. She never got over it. And she started studying what the books say about evolution and she figured, you know, she saw it, she'd seen it and then she studied it and this is what she wrote. She says, don't believe them when they say how economic and thrifty nature is. Say you are the manager of the Southern Railroad, you figure you need engines for a stretch of track. That's a mighty steep grade. So a fantastic effort and expense. You have all your shops make 9,000 railroad engines. And you send all 9,000 out onto the railroad tracks without switches. So they crash, collide, D-rail, jump, jam and burn. And at the end you have three engines left, which is all you really needed. So you go to your board of directors and you show them what you've done to get those three grade engines. You know what they're going to say? Is this any way to run a railroad? She says, but is that any way to run a universe? Because that's how the universe is run. Evolution she says, loves death more than it loves you or me or anyone. I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow. I've got this. But I seem to have reached a point where I must draw the line. I must part ways with the only world I know. Look, cock robin may die at the most gruesome of slow deaths and nature is no less pleased. The sun comes up, the creek rolls on, the survivors still sing. But I cannot feel that way about your death nor you about mine nor either of us even about the robins. We value the individual supremely and nature values him not a wit. It looks as if I might have to reject this creek life unless I want to be utterly brutalized. What she's saying is, if you look out at nature, if you look at the world, if you just look at the world, look at disease and death, look at wars, look at the world, she says, you might perhaps discern with unated reason and reflection. You might discern a power behind it, being a powerful creator. You might discern that, but you're never going to discern a loving God. So if you look into history, if you look into the world, and if you just look at nature and the world around, you would never come up with the idea of a loving God. Where did it come from? I will tell you where it comes from. It tells you right here. If you want to ponder the love of God, consider these things. What are these things? Over and over, you heard us say it. One of the reasons why we had the multiple readers. His wonderful deeds in history. The deeds of God as they revealed in the Bible. See, the Psalmist is saying, he doesn't say ponder the great love of God by looking at nature, ponder the love of God by looking at history. Ponder the love of God. No, what does he say? There is a God who has revealed himself to Abraham and to Moses. There is a God. And by the way, you can read this. This is great art. This is great art. You can read who are these four groups of people. Well, in some ways, these four groups of people, the wonders, the prisoners, the people who are sick, the people on the sea, there are all of us. They're the kinds of situations we all face. We'll look at that in a second. But they also are what the children of Israel had to go through. In other words, they were literally wandering, but God appeared to them in clouds and fire and took them to the promised land. They were in prison, but God parted the Red Sea. In other words, only in the Bible does the original idea of a loving God come into human consciousness. I'm not saying that the only place you're going to find a God of love is in the Bible. I don't mean that everybody today who believes in love of God must have gotten in front of the Bible, I'm saying that the source for human thinking of the very idea of a love of God would not have occurred to people. It wouldn't have come from other sources. It came from the Bible and here's why. Because the Bible gives us a framework. In the Bible, God says this. He says, "I created the world good, but the world has sinned and therefore fallen and nothing works right. Nature is read and tooth and claw. People are each other's roots. I created, but the good creation has fallen, but I'm breaking back into the world to heal it and redeem it." Okay, you got that? Creation, fall, redemption. The Bible says that is the framework through which you need to understand everything that happens. Good creation, sin and fall, in breaking redemption. Here's why you have to do that. Only in that framework does the loving God make sense. Why was Annie Dillard so confused? She talks anyway. I just don't have the time here tonight, maybe later on in the fall, I can get back to it. She's very confused. She says, "God did this? Well, here's the point. If you only have a God who created the world, if you have creation, not fall, if you just, if God created the world this way, he's not loving God. If you take the idea of a loving God out of the framework of creation, fall, redemption, it just doesn't make sense. Or, if you don't just have creation, but you have creation and fall, what if God created things good and things have fallen, but now God has just left us go? God's just let us do it. God's just let it go on. God hasn't come back in. God hasn't come back in the person of his son. God has not re-engaged. God has not involved. He still doesn't have a loving God. If you have a loving God, then you have a loving God. Only creation, if God just created the world this way, he can't be a God of love, makes no sense. Or if he created the world and it fell and he's not breaking it in some miraculous way, if he's not coming in the person of his son, for example, he's not breaking in and speaking and revealing himself. If he's not doing that, you see, loving God makes no sense. But here's what we have today. Where did the modern Western world get the idea of loving God came from, the Bible? But it's taken the idea of loving God out and it's just spread it everywhere. Everybody believes it. But they've left everything else behind. The Bible, of course, isn't the way the Western world thinks of things anymore. So there's this idea of loving God and you pull it away from the framework of the Bible. And no one, everybody's so bummed out. If God's a God of love, why doesn't He answer my prayers? I pray and pray and pray. I'm still not married. I pray and pray my child died of cancer. I pray and pray. How could God be a God of love? Everybody is sold to spill of goods. It's plundered from the Bible. It's taken out of the Bible without the rest of the framework. Oh, it's hard to believe in a love of God even inside the framework. Inside the framework, it says, I created the world. It has fallen. I'm breaking back into redeeming it. Well, there's still a lot of questions like, OK, all right. Well, why haven't you done it yet? Why are you taking so long? Why are you doing it in a particular way? But at least in that framework, it explains why the world that nature is read and tooth and claw. And it also proves that God is not away from all the suffering. So if you don't believe in Jesus, if you don't believe in the incarnation, if you don't believe in the Bible, if you don't believe in the God of the Bible, then the idea of a loving God makes no sense at all. Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In the meaning of marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage. Whether you're single, considering marriage or have been married for a long time, the meaning of marriage will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. The meaning of marriage is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com/give. That's gospelandlife.com/give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Take it away at framework and you'll never ponder it. Now what's that mean practically? It's very simple. If there's anybody in this room who's been trying to find a loving God by communing with your own heart or communing with nature, if you said, "Well, the Bible's full of sort of fables. We can't accept that anymore, but I want to believe in a loving God." You're doomed. I am not able at this point. I'm not trying to prove that the God of the Bible is true. And I'm not even saying that apart from the Bible, you can't find any kind of God and nobody believes in God unless you believe in the Bible and nobody knows anything about God. I'm just trying to say, only in the Bible do you have a framework that makes sense of a loving God, a loving God. Only if you look at his wonderful deeds, only if you look at his self-revelation, embedded in history, only if you heed these things. How are you going to find that loving God? So what am I making a case for? Am I proving that the Bible's true? No, I could try to do that some other time, I suppose. But what I'm trying to prove is that you need to try the Bible. You need to come here and listen to a taught or go to a small group or come just to go to some other church where it's taught. You need, though, to ponder the love of God in the Bible or you're not going to find, you're not going to have an encounter with the God of love. That's the first point. It's pretty critical. It's actually a good point to make at the very beginning in a sense of a new year, if you consider September beginning of the new year. Why do you need to stick with the Scripture? Why do you need to read the narratives? Why do you need to take heed to these things? Even if you're not sure about them, you have no alternative. If you want to find a loving God, number one, number two, much more brief. Where do you ponder the love of God? In the Word, actually. In the scriptures, in the narratives of His great deeds in His self-revelation, what do you ponder? Now, I thought, and I still believe, that the best way to understand what the psalmist is trying to show us is you have to look at the poem as a whole. And it's really brilliant. You have to look at the artistic structure of the poem. Now, what is the artistic structure? Two things you see, you've got four utterly different groups of people, and yet every single one of them gets the same treatment. The beginning of each stands, you see, some one or didn't-- were homeless, right? And what do they need? They need a father. You say, what do you mean? It says, talks about a city here. The homeless people, they need a city. Well, you've got to remember something. Nowadays, people go to cities to get away from their families. But back then, you couldn't have a family unless you were in a city. You looked for a city to have a family. What do you mean? Well, you couldn't have a family. You couldn't have a home without stability, without safety. You had to get behind walls. Otherwise, the animals would come get you. Otherwise, the marauders and the robbers would come get you. And these were people who were looking for a city, but what they really were looking for was a home. They were homeless. And they needed stability and safety. And God loves them as a father. That's the first answer. The second answer, some sat in darkness in the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains. OK, now, what do you have here? Prisoners, condemned prisoners. What do they need? They don't need a father. Father come and hear some sandwiches. What do they need? They need a gang. They need a liberator. They need a general. They need someone at the head of an army. And that's what they get. OK? That's what they get. It cuts through the bars of iron. OK, that was a good third group. Some became fools through the rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their inequities. Now, these people are sick. That's a little interesting. It's very interesting, actually. Because these people, it says they're sick. They load all food, verse 18. And that means that they are dying. They are wasting away physically. But it's as a result of foolishness, verse 17. These are more like people who've ruined their lives, ruined their bodies, through overwork or addiction or something. And look what heals them. What they need is a healer. But what they're actually getting in a sense is a counselor. Because what heals them? Look carefully. He sent forth his word. They get some kind of word. They get some kind of advice that heals them. They get some kind of loving healing counselor. So the first group needs a father. The second group needs a king. The third group needs a loving, a nurse, a counselor, a person at the side. And the fourth group, of course, they go out to see and they're in the perfect storm. OK? Because others went out to see and ships and look carefully. You see? It says they mounted up the heavens and they went down to depths. That's the 100-foot wave. They need an omnipotent creator who's also their friend. They need an omnipotent friend. Now what's intriguing about this? Look at this. Father, king, lover, creator, friend, someone who's got power over the hurricane, Lord of the Storm. Incredibly different, and yet the same words give thanks to the Lord for His unfilling love and His wonderful deeds for men. Every time extreme diversity, and yet the same unfilling love, what's the point? The point is this. These different love personas. You hear that term? Father, king, lover, friend, extremely different. But they are equally basic. They are equally ultimate. They are equally essential to who He is. They are equally unfilling love. Now you say, so, so. This is what you're supposed to ponder. And this is very, very difficult. This last year I was in a Bible study with a woman who is at the time in a searching mode. And at the end of one of the studies, the question was, what did you learn tonight? What did you learn during the study? She closed the Bible and she closed the book and she said, well, I've learned tonight that God is a complex character. Now because she's a literary critic and an art critic, I believe in what I can tell. She was talking actually more technically. She wasn't just saying, boy, he's confusing. Oh no. Here's what it would mean. You go to a movie in the summer, Brockbuster movies, and all the characters are cartoon characters. The good guys, the bad guys. They're all stereotypes. They're getting blown away. And you just laugh. Why? Well, you're not engaged with them because they're not realistic characters. They're one-dimensional characters. You know, I mean, they're not portrayed as complex characters. Real people are complex. Real people have all kinds of apparent contradictions in them. And when you have art-- it's not necessarily bad art. It's just everybody knows it's a cartoon. In a cartoon, you have one-dimensional characters. And what she thought when she got into the Bible, she expected a one-dimensional God. She expected either a God who-- you know, the God that some people say is in the Bible who just loves everyone and accepts everyone, no friend, lover, or more likely she expected to find the king who smites those who disobey him. But she found out he was both, or he was neither. Or he was all of those things. He was really It was a real, it was a complex character. And this is the second point. The Psalmist is saying, "But we have a tendency always to do is to reduce God." We have a tendency to think of him as a friend mainly, and a lover mainly, and not as a king and as a sovereign. We don't like the idea of punishment. We don't like the idea of hell. We don't like the idea of eternal punishment. We get rid of that. He's a lover, he's a friend. Or some people, plenty of people. See God as a king, as a sovereign. He's very majestic. He's very holy, and the idea of a friend is sort of secondary. I mean, you know, it's not really the main thing. Nobody holds these things all together, and this is what this man is saying. It's what the Psalmist is saying. He is saying, "You have to see them all equally ultimate. Do not prefer one over the other." Andrew Greeley in the mid-80s, a very, very interesting and famous extensive research on what people's views of God were. Andrew Greeley said that 75% of Americans said they greatly prefer to think of God as a friend rather than a king. Now, I'm not bringing that up to say, "tut, tut, tut." You know, about the fact that, you know, why don't you see him as a king? The whole point is they prefer. Everybody prefers, and the Psalmist is, "Don't you dare." Because that you reduce them. He'll never be real to you. He'll never be someone you encounter unless you let him be complex. And what that means is when you do read the Bible, you can't throw parts out that you don't like. Because then you have a cartoon God. I God that you're not going to be engaged with. You're not going to be any more engaged with him than you are. And the next Sylvester Stallone film. You know, everybody, you don't say, "Oh, the poor villain he got blasted, oh, the poor." You know, you say, "Ha-ha, you know, look at that. Wow, special effects." They're cartoon characters. And that's one of the reasons that's one of the things he's saying. If you ever want to actually encounter the living God, you're going to have to actually let him be the complex character he is. Do not make anyone of these love personas. You see, father, king, lover, friend, don't let any of them become the ultimate. Now lastly, now you say, "Well, what does that mean? Let's get practical. How is pondering God like that really change you?" And here's the answer. First of all, if you let that happen, and almost none of us do, all of us fall off the horse on one side of the other, all of us fall off the beam on one side of the other. None of us keep that all together. But if you do, the first thing that's going to happen is you'll start to see the impossibility of God's love. God's love will never change your life until you see it as impossible. Let me show you what I mean. The typical way in which we try, why do people not hold on to all of these personas? Why do we tend, for example, to see him more as a king and as a power or more as a lover and a friend? Why is it nobody holds a together? Because we sense there's a contradiction. We sense that there's an impossibility. We sense that it can't be all of these things. And we try to solve the contradiction ourselves. So the typical traditional values approach, the typical conservative approach is to say this. And say, "Well, God is a king, and if I live a good life, then He'll love me." There's no impossibility about that kind of love, right? And it also won't transform you. It also won't amaze you. It won't lead you to say, "You thanks to the Lord, there won't be no praise, there'll be no gratitude." Oh, no, not a bit. Because you'll say, "Well, of course He loves me. I've lived a good life." That's where you've made the king and the power and the creator more than the grace and the love and so on the other side. There's the liberal post-modern approach. And the liberal post-modern approach will say, "Well, if there is a God, He accepts everyone. We don't believe in hell. We don't believe in judgment day." Now that approach also says, "I've got love. I've got the love of God." That's not impossible love. There's nothing impossible about that kind of God loving us, right? But it won't transform you. It won't lead you to thanks and praise. It won't lead you to amazement. It won't lead you to say, "Oh, that men and women would see the grace of God." That's what this song is all about. It won't happen. Until you see that His love is impossible, because He's all these things. Until you see the contradiction, until you say it's impossible, until you're troubled by it, until you're perplexed by it, you'll never be changed by it. You say, "What do you mean?" Well, let me just give you one example. A perfect example of how this psalmist refuses to choose one side of the other and seize the impossibility of it. Look at the second, it stands up. Some sat in darkness in the deepest gloom. Prisoners suffering in iron chains. Okay. And they cry out, hooked down here in verse 13. Then they cry to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness in deepest gloom, broke away their chains. You say, "Okay, so what's so weird about that? This is an astounding passage. Whose bars are these? Whose gates are these? Whose chains are these? Look, they sat in darkness in deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains, but why are they chained? For they rebelled against the words of God. And they despise the counsel of the most high. They're in prison. Now you start to realize, they're in prison immediately beginning to realize that this is looking at a spiritual condition. They're in prison because they broke the word of God. And look, so He subjected them to bitter labor. They're in His prison. They're behind His gates. They're behind His bars. And they cry out to Him, and He cuts through them. What do you mean? He cuts through His own bars. He cuts through His own gate. He say, "Wait a minute, this is really weird." Yes, it is. Here's why it's so weird. If He was just a friend, if He was just this big loving God, if He was the liberal God, He never would have put Him in. He would have said, "Well, you're my friends, and you did wrong, but I'm sure. Let bygones be bygones." And besides that, everybody has to find out what's right or wrong for them. And He never put Him in. But if it was a conservative God, if He was a king only, He'd put them behind bars, and they cried, and they say, "What are you talking about?" He would say, "You're guilty. I can't let you out." If He's only a king, He can't let them out. If He's only a friend, He would never put them in. But He puts them in, and then He cuts through His own bars. Now you say, "How could that be? That's impossible. That's a contradiction." Now you're on the road to change life until you see the contradiction, until you see the impossibility. You'll never be amazed at His love. If you work it out yourself, if you resolve it toward traditional values, or you resolve it toward liberal kind of relativism, if you resolve the love of God in one way or the other, you'll never be changed by it. Don't you see? You'll never be amazed. The psalmist is amazed that he would cut through his own bars, that he would do all this. Of course, He's amazed. Of course, He can't believe it. Until you see the impossibility, He'll never be changed. Now somebody says, "Well, I don't get it. How could He be both a king and a friend? How could He be both the one that puts them in the jail and the one that cuts them out? I don't get it. How could that be? You're lucky. You're so lucky. You're living the right age of the world. Because you know the psalmist had no idea how could be. And he was still transformed by it. He just knew that this is God. This God gives us an impossible love. A love that's utterly impossible. A love that it can't happen. A love that we've got to have. We've got to have His unfailing love, but it just can't happen. And yet He does it anyway. And that was enough to change the psalmist. Even though He doesn't know how that could be, but you and I do. We know how. We ought to be much more changed than He is. We ought to be much more godly than He is. We ought to be much more happy than He is. We ought to be much more joyful than He is. Why? We know how. We know how. How? The reason He can take us out of the darkness and deep gloom is because on the cross darkness and deep gloom came down on His Son. The reason He can take us home is because Jesus said, "Foxists have holes. Birds have nests. The Son of Man doesn't replace to put His head." The reason that we can be healed in our affliction is because He has born our infirmities. The reason that we can have the calm, the still storm is because He was the great Jonah who was thrown into the belly of wrath, the belly of justice of God. In other words, Jesus Christy, on the cross and only on the cross do you have a complex God, do you have a real God, do you have a non-cartoon God, a God who gives you impossible of the transforms your life. You get that? If you don't believe in the cross, you say, "I don't believe in this idea of blood and wrath and Jesus having to die on the cross." All right. If you don't believe in the cross, then either you think God is a king and if you're good enough, God will take you to heaven. All right? So it's a one-dimensional cartoon God of the conservative brand. Or else you believe, "I don't believe in God. I don't believe that He needed anyone to die. I believe He just loves everybody." That's, you see, one-dimensional cartoon God. Have a liberal brain. Only on the cross is God allowed to be complex. Only on the cross is God allowed to be real. So the first thing is, do you see the impossibility? And do you see how Jesus Christ made the impossible possible? Do you see how Jesus Christ cut through the bars? He was our lover, but He is our king. He is the stiller of the storm. He is the wonderful counselor. He is everything. And once you see that, how do you receive that love in your life? It's very simple. Every single time all they do is cry. You notice that? The first group, it's not their fault that they're homeless and the last group, it's not their fault that they're on the high seas, right? And they're in the storm. They're blameless, but they cry. The second group are guilty. The third group are stupid. They're idiots. And all they do is cry. Because now the love of God does not come on the basis of your merit. It doesn't come on the basis of your pedigree. It doesn't come on the basis of whether you're from the east, the west, the north, or the south. That's what verse three is all about. It doesn't matter who you are. Now comes to who? The only requirement now for the love of God, the only requirement is that you see you can't possibly fulfill the requirements. All you need is nothing. If you come with something, you'll never get it. All you need is need. If you don't think you're a Christian, you don't know you're a Christian. If you're not a Christian and you know it, this is how you do it. Consider the great love of God. See the impossibility of his love. See it resolved in Jesus Christ. Let that dawn on you. Find it in the biblical narratives of what God has wonderful deeds through Jesus. If you're a Christian tonight and you find that you yourself are not people of praise. If you say, "There's not much joy in my life. I'm not like this Psalmist. Go back to the sources." Maybe you have a cartoon God. Maybe you're not looking at life in terms of creation, fall and redemption. Maybe you're not looking at life and seeing God as both a friend, a father and a king and a friend and a lover. Maybe you're missing one of those. Maybe you've got a cartoon God. In the next four weeks, we're going to look at each one of those. God is father. God is lover. God is king. God is friend. And that'll probably strengthen us. Okay? We're the great love of God. Let's pray. Give us, Father, what we need tonight for these next few minutes to pray, to grasp this deeply. Help us to see that everything that ails us, everything. Whether we're in a problem that we didn't have anything to do with or whether we're very, very guilty for the mess we're in, whether we're merchants on the high seas or whether we're poor nomads. No matter who we are, we need the same thing, the unfailing love of God. And that will not come to those who believe that they are owed it. It will not come to people who believe that they can merit it. It will not come to people who believe that it was costless. We'll come to those who see the impossibility and the freeness of your love and the complexity and richness of it. So we ask now that you'd help us to see these things and grasp these things and be changed by what we see. We ask that now in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it and to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime visit GospelAndLife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermon and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.