Scripture

Welcome to Gospel and Life.

“Where do you turn when you need clarity or strength in a difficult situation?”

In Luke's Gospel, we see how Jesus confronted his own temptations and trials through scripture in prayer.

Today, Tim Keller explores how we can claim these same powerful resources and how we can live with hope and resilience in a difficult world.

[MUSIC] The scripture reading is taken from Luke chapter 4 verses 1 through 13. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for 40 days, he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them, he was hungry.

The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written, man shall not live on bread alone." The devil led him to a high place and showed him in an instant, all the kingdoms of the world, and he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor.

“It has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to.”

If you worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered, "It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, "Through yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command His angels concerning you to guard you carefully.

They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." Jesus answered, "It is said, do not put the Lord your God to the test. When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. The word of the Lord." Now, this very famous passage about the temptation of Jesus and the wilderness.

He is assaulted by the devil and then how he deals with it through the word of God, through the scripture, the use of the Bible. This is what we are going to look at here tonight. We are going to be looking at how the scripture actually functions in our lives, but there's way more to say about that than we can do here.

In fact, I'm glad that later on, actually later this spring, we are going to get back to this subject, but here, we learn in a very practical way when you are being assaulted, when

“you are in the wilderness, how do you handle the trials, the difficulties, the temptations?”

And we are going to see how Jesus uses the scripture, how we can too, so let's look at this this way. We are going to learn here the depth and complexity of evil. Secondly, some of the strategies of evil and thirdly, how to defeat it, using the scripture. The depth in the complexity, the strategies and the defeat of evil.

Now, first of all, the depth in complexity, this story, this account, is about the devil.

It says in verse 2, "Where, for 40 days, he was tempted by the devil." And I think we are in New York City, and third for some of you who are listening, you're saying, "Do you really expect that we should today believe in the actual existence of a devil?" Do you really expect that? And my answer is, "Yeah, I wish you would believe in a devil."

In fact, I would go so far, I would stick my neck out so far, that I would say it's dangerous not to believe in the devil. To illustrate what I'm trying to say, I'm thinking about it, pretty sad, chapter in American history in World War II, our president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. And FDR, like most people, especially most leaders and most educated people in middle of

the 20th century, had the modern view that evil was always the result of some kind of psychological

or sociological condition. That evil always had a natural explanation. That if people were, or nations were violent, were cruel or evil, it was because either they were desperate for better living conditions, or it was because they were mistreated, and that if you wanted to deal with evil, what you needed to do was having light and social

policy education, you needed to bring about economic prosperity, you needed to create a justice society, and then people would live together peacefully, and they would live together generously. And because of that view of evil, FDR and many other American leaders did not believe the early reports of the Holocaust, or what became the Holocaust.

see it was true, and they didn't take any steps at the time.

“Near the very end of FDR's life and at the very end of the World War II, of course, there's”

a story, true story about how, when FDR would go up to his weekend house up on the in Upper New York State, he went to a church on the weekends, and he spoke to one of the young ministers there about the fact that he was reading Christian theology. He was reading Kyrgygard at least, and some other Christian philosophers and theologians

about original sin, and about the devil, and he said to the minister that finally he was

coming to understand, because he said he didn't understand how the most educated country in the world practically, a culture that gave us the research university that invented modern scholarship to a great degree, so culture, so education, how could they do such evil? It just seemed impossible, but then he actually said, by reading about original sin, about

spiritual and supernatural evil, he was beginning to understand, whenever you get into a place, where you think you can reduce evil to biological sociological and psychological factors, and therefore we can fix it, we can control it, we can manage it, there is altered deadly,

“because there are aspects to evil that go beyond things like the economics, they go beyond”

the social, they go beyond the psychological. It's not manageable, it's not controllable, and when you think you can do it and you can fix it, you're in for not just a appointment, but in many cases, tragic, tragic missteps. So the biblical doctrine that there are demons and that there is a devil is actually not naive, but frankly, it avoids naivete about evil, but not only does it teach us about

the depth of evil, but we also learn here about the complexity of evil, I said. You see, there's many people who think that if you really believe in a devil like the Bible

says, then you have a simplistic view of evil, that you always think the devil made them do

it, that you're not understanding all the nuances, and I would like you to see no. The way the Bible understands the demonic, the way the Bible understands the devil actually brings you into a more nuanced and more complex and more sophisticated understanding of evil than I think modern people have. How so?

Well, even take a look here, we're going to look at these temptations in a second, but in every case, you don't see Satan trying to put Jesus in a headlock and say, you are going to obey me. No, no. He's going inside.

He's using psychological factors.

He's using physical factors.

He uses his hunger. Aren't you hungry? That's turn he stones into bread. He's using the fact that he had come in order to be king. Jesus came into the world to be king of the world.

He's the rightful king of the world and Satan saying, I can arrange that. He's going inside and using psychological factors. He's using physical drives and he's trying to create a kind of alliance between himself and those inner things. In other words, evil even here in this text, you can see it's complex.

“So for example, it's this is not simplistic, when in Luke chapter 23 verse 2, I think it”

is, yeah, in Luke chapter 22 verse 3, it says that Satan entered into Judas. I was reading this the other day and it said, Satan entered into Judas and then he looked to betray Jesus. What does it mean Satan entered into Judas? Now if you think the Bible's simplistic, you think, well, he was possessed.

Like in the movie The Exorcist. So I guess three or four days later after Satan entered into Judas and he was trying to betray you, I can imagine a couple disciples walking along saying, hey, have you noticed anything different about Judas lately? And the other disciples says, yeah, you know, sometimes his head turns completely

around and he vomits green stuff at you and he talks and he's all these strange voices. You know, the other disciples says, yeah, what's up with that? And is that what happened? Of course not. That's not what you see in the text.

What you see is that Judas's envy and resentment that he gave into on the inside became a foothold for something quite evil on the outside and took him someplace that maybe he didn't even really want to go. See Ephesians, listen, Ephesians 427, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Don't give the devil that kind of foothold.

No, he's not a strange statement. To let the sun go down on your anger means to hold a grudge. It means not to deal with your anger. Let the sun go down on it means to hold a grudge. He say, well, that's not so bad.

maybe wouldn't be so bad.

“But what we're told here is that if you nurture spiritual darkness in you, even by just”

holding on to the grudge, it gives an opportunity for the supernatural darkness outside to create an alliance and to take you places you may not want to go. A lock your emotional dungeon, sort of double locked and doubly deep, and you might find yourself surprised that you just can't see the let go of the anger. And you find you let it let's you do things that you wouldn't really want to do.

First Timothy 3 says, don't promote a new believer too quickly in the leadership why.

Because it says he might become conceited and fall into the trap of the devil. Not just conceited, not just he kind of gets a big head, but that's used by the forces of darkness in the world. Or Hebrews chapter 2, 14 says, as long as you're afraid of death, as long as you're afraid of death, you're under the power of the devil.

Interesting. Anyway, here's the point. The point is, according to the Bible, evil is not simple at all. It has a physical aspect, it has a social aspect, it has a spiritual aspect, it has a sociological aspect, you know when the Bible talks about the world, the flesh and the devil, the world

the flesh and the devil, the world means you're sinned against, that's a social aspect. You're sinned against by all sorts of individuals and classes and systems in society, but at the same time the flesh means you also have a self-centeredness. So you're sinned against and you sin, and those things are bad, but then there's not just sin inside you and sin outside you, there's sin above you, there's someone orchestrating

it all. There are forces that are trying to intensify and complexify and make the relationships between the various aspects of evil, magnify the whole. See, I only believe, unless you bring in the demonic, you can really come to grips with how it is so often that the whole of evil is greater than the sum of its parts.

“Anna Arret went to see the trial of Adolf Heikman in Israel, in early 1960s, I think”

it was 1961, I think it was. Adolf Heikman had been one of the, you know, had been a major Nazi work criminal who was hiding out and they found him and they brought him back to Israel and he had done tremendous evil. And when he was being tried, Anna Arret was there and she was shocked at what she saw and

she wrote a book, I mean a book, an essay about it called The Banality of Evil. How Banal this man was, is that this guy doesn't seem like a monster, but he is as he's a kind of a small-minded little guy and he just, you know, he didn't really, he wanted to do well, he didn't care about other people, all he was trying to do was move ahead, but he was small, he was cowardly, you know, all he did was he said, I see nothing,

I know nothing, that kind of thing. And as her, and yet he didn't nor receive one, he didn't seem like a monster.

No, the sum of evil is always greater than the parts, you know, if you were part, if you're

old enough to know a very evil social system, like racial segregation in the south of the United States, if you're old enough to have been there and know that and know the kind of devastation that it caused so much, so many people. And yet, if you actually talked to the individuals who are in the system that supported

“the system, none of them seem like such bad people, why?”

The magnification. There is a chaos in your heart and there is a chaos in the world, there is a spiritual darkness inside and there are super, is supernatural darkness around and the supernatural darkness, personal, supernatural evil of the demonic magnifies the evil inside of us. And makes the world a much worse place than it would be otherwise.

Do you understand the depth and the complexity of evil? The Bible does. Okay, number one, number two, I hope you have the world view of the Bible, I'll get back to it. Number two, we're also learning here when you look at what happens, you're all getting

very serious. Okay, I'd better give you some hope. Let's figure out what the strategies of evil are. Now one of the things that's interesting about this passage, it's very famous, but if we look at it, we're going to see some of the strategies of evil.

How does evil mess you up? How does it take you down? How does it ruin your life? How does it happen? How does the demonic work?

Well, first of all, I'd like to show you one main strategy and then a couple of, you might

say weapons that evil has, a main strategy and a couple of weapons.

They all have in common that they are good things that are being held up to Jesus, not bad

things. Satan is not asking Jesus to break one of the ten commandments. He is not saying, I want you to commit adultery, I want you to lie, I want you to steal. You know, Martin Scorsese thought that the last temptation of Christ was Mary Magdalene. Satan didn't get the memo, or even if he had got the memo, he would have known, give me

a break. I know how to really destroy the Messiah, I know how to really destroy a person, don't give me that. No, I'm not trying to say adultery is fine, and I'm not trying to say that lying is fine, but notice he is not going after Jesus in that way, he's not saying I want you to do bad

things. What is he doing? He's taking good things and holding them up. What are the good things?

Well, first of all, he says, aren't you hungry?

Let's use your miraculous power to turn these stones into bread. Is there anything wrong with bread? Is there anything wrong with bread? Is there anything wrong with food? No.

Then look at the second thing. He says, I can give you all the kingdoms in this world, now maybe you and I, that wouldn't be quite fair, right? I'm not sure you and I are cut out to be king or queen of the world, but Jesus was. Let me, in fact, Jesus had come to be king of the world.

And so the second thing he offers him is also for Jesus, a very good thing. And the third thing, of course, is what he's asking for, as he says, I want you to trust God for your safety. And I want you to see the whole world, I want the whole world to see how you trust God and how God is faithful to you.

So he takes them up to the top, he says, throw yourself off this pinnacle and let the world see the miraculous way in which God bears you up. Are these bad things? No. But in each case, Jesus would have to disobey God to get those things.

“So first of all, you say, what's so disobedient about turning the stones to bread?”

Does not, if you read the gospels, you know, that Jesus never did anything like that.

He never said disciples, oh, it looks like it's raining that watch, and then he snaps and suddenly there's a roof over their head or something like that. Jesus never uses his power for himself. He only uses his power and sacrificial service for others, because that's the mission. That's what he came to do.

He came not to a crew power, but to give it up. He came not to be sir, but to serve and to give his life. And therefore this is a complete denial of that way in which he was supposed to use power. Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth. And his story has been told through books, movies, and articles in hundreds of different

ways. Can anything more be said about him? In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal,

calling each of us to take a fresh look at our relationship with God. During the month of March, we'll send you a copy of Jesus the King as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in life share the transforming love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give.

That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

“Secondly, what's wrong with going up to, you know, getting all the kingdoms of the world?”

Well, the only problem is, Satan is saying, "I can get you the kingdoms of the world without you going to the cross. I can get you the kingdoms of the world without suffering." And of course, that was part of the mission. And so what he was saying is, "I can give you this, but you have to disobey God, of

course." I can give you this after disobey God, of course. And even the last thing, where he's saying, "I want you to see, I want you to be a spectacle. I want you to show the world how great you are and all that sort of thing." Again, what he's really trying to do is he's trying to knock Jesus off of his mission.

And so here is the point. And of course, those of you who come to Redeemer know that this is one of the main themes of the Bible, it's one of the main themes of the preaching. And yet I think that this is the most stark way we can put this. You've heard me say this before, I think this is the most vivid and stark and almost frightening

way I can put it.

“Any good thing that becomes more important than God, that's what Satan is trying to do.”

He says, "These are good things. Don't you want these things, but of course, if you have to disobey God to get them, what you're making them is more important than God." Any good thing that is more important than God, to you, will become a demonic force. In your life.

If you take any good thing and you elevate it, so it's really more important than God.

For example, I've had plenty of people say to me over the years. I believed in God and I went to church, but then I asked for this and I asked for that and he didn't give it to me and I said, "What good is it to serve God if he won't even give me those things and I walked away," in other words, "What are you saying?" I had this in my life and I had God in my life and when I couldn't have both what went,

I decided to get rid of God. I mean, if God's not going to let me get to this, what in other words, this is more

“important than Him and honestly, friends, everybody does this.”

Unless you realize you do this, unless you stop doing this, I'm not talking to people say some of you who are really messed up, you know, you might fall into the clutches of devil. I'm saying that this is the trajectory of all of us, unless you see that you're in this trajectory, you're going to be giving demonic forces free play in your life. If you put your children over God, if your children are more important than you than

God, if a spouse is more important than you than God, if a career is more important, but I mean, if even some great political or social cause, it's a great social cause, but it's more important than God. If you don't have success in it, you know, see, here's how it becomes demonic. Anything that's more important than God, it's going to ruin your life, it's going to drive you, you're going to be coming in addict, you're actually

“already enslaved. See, you have to have it. You know, if career is more important than”

God, my Chris got to go well, if my children are more important than God, they've got to be okay, they've got to and you'll do anything to make it so, including stepping on people, breaking the law, doing things immoral or illegal, you'll be filled with anger and bitterness or anybody who gets in your way. Oh, my. Anything more important than God, and that's a good thing, maybe more important than God becomes demonic, and that you can see in

the way in which Satan assaults Jesus. Also, we learn here two weapons that Satan uses, two specific weapons, and the two weapons are temptation and accusation. Temptation and accusation. Now, one of the problems I think is that the English word here that translates the Greek word, that probably should be translated test. It says 40 days, he was tested by the devil, and the Greek word here really means to put pressure on somebody, real pressure,

to try to break them. But the fact is that the things that Satan is doing to Jesus are not strictly only temptations. Jesus is being subject to both temptation and accusation. What is that? Well, temptation is what you think. It's an enticement to do something wrong. And generally speaking, temptation works through over confidence. The devil tempts you by saying, hey, everything will be okay. Just do it. It'll be okay. Nobody will know or if they do

know you can do this, you can do that. God will accept you. It'll be all right. You know,

it basically temptation is over confidence, and playing down the holiness of God. Well,

yes, it's probably wrong, but who knows? Other people believe this and that about it. Do it. Our cast temptation. Accusation is completely the other side. In accusation, Satan comes to you and said, look what you have done. Look at what a failure you are. Look at how awful. God cannot love you anymore. How can you even look at yourself in the face in

“the mirror? So what you have to do is realize that these two things are almost opposite.”

In one case, you're being made over confident. God is seen strictly as love, but not as holy. Oh, God will accept you. Go ahead and sin. In accusation, God again is being made one-dimensional. He's being seen only as a holy judge and not as a forgiving father. And, actually, Thomas Brooks, 17th century Puritan, who wrote a great little paper back, which you can get very inexpensively, by the way, it's out there. It's called precious remedies

against Satan's devices. Nice long sins. Title. That's a title. And then it he talks about the fact that very often temptation and accusation go hand in hand. And it works like this. It's a one-two punch. Like that. One-two punches are very devastating. See? The temptation goes like this. On your way into sin, Satan is saying, don't worry. Don't worry. God will forgive you. God will forgive you. And the minute you sin, he turns and says, and you call yourself

a Christian. God will never have anything to do with you now. One time too many go find some

little hole somewhere you shameful thing and just curl up in a ball and die. See? So first, everything will be fine. You're fine. It's okay. Don't worry about it. As soon as you sin, you wretch. And some of you know what I'm talking about. Some of you know very very well what I'm talking

And he's doing them to Jesus because on the one hand, he's saying, don't you want this?

I can make you king. On the other hand, he keeps saying, what? If you're the son of God, huh? twice as as if you're the son of God. What do you mean if you're the son of God? Well, are you sure God really loves you? How do you know? Don't you think you're out of prove it? I'm not sure. Are you really sure? He uses both temptation and accusation on Jesus who will use both temptation and accusation on you. But the main thing you'll try to do is try to get

you to take something good and make it a supreme thing. Make it a God substitute. And then it will become demonic in your life. So lastly, what are we going to do about this? But actually my time is up and maybe I should just, you know, I have to get up town and maybe I should just give you

“some further reading. No, what you should do about it and what's clear and I told you we actually”

get back to this sometime later on in the preaching cycle later on this spring actually. It's obvious what Jesus does in every case. He uses scripture every time. It's very striking. And I want you to see why the way to defeat the devil, the way to defeat evil, is through the means and the message of scripture. The means and the message. The means is the scripture itself. Jesus quotes scripture every time and he uses the scripture to answer the things that Satan is saying.

I'll get to that in a second. He quotes Deuteronomy 8 and Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 6.

Very carefully, he quotes them. And he's always doing this when in times of extremity,

when in times of crisis. Whenever he's in times of crisis, he always gets out the scripture.

“And the most obvious place is when he's on the cross and he's dying on the cross.”

Do you know that he quotes scripture from the cross? "My God, my God, what has to offer second be?" is a quotation from Psalm chapter 22 verse 1. And the last thing he says, according to the Gospel of Luke, the last thing he says, "Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit is actually a quote from Psalm 31-5." Now, thought experiment for a second. Most of the time when you're with people, you are aware of who you ought to be and how you ought to be and so you pull yourself

together, right? And you try to be the person you ought to be or the person you wish to be or the person you're expected to be. Don't you? As much as you can. But if you're an agony, if you're in pain, if you're in a crisis, if you're looking at death in the face and you're screaming and crying out, you're not trying to be whoever you think you ought to be, you are just being who you are. At that point, whatever is in you is just coming out, that real you. There's nothing

out. There really is coming out. And when Jesus Christ was in these times of crisis and especially when he was in his astounding crisis, when he was screaming in the agony of pain, what was coming out? Scripture, which means he was completely and thoroughly permeated with and saturated with Scripture. It shaped his life. It was nurtured him. It was his meat. It was his drink. It was his blood almost.

“He was literally bleeding Scripture when he was spared and nailed. It was that crucial to who he was.”

It was that crucial to how he thought. It was that crucial to how he felt.

And that's the reason why he just automatically, when crisis hits, he goes to the Word of God. And it guides him at an empowers him. And that's Jesus. But he doesn't simply, by the way, it's not just the means of Scripture. It's the message of Scripture. See, Jesus is not just waving the book at Satan and Satan backs off like a vampire, hissing. It's not like there's nothing magic about the book. It's not like, well, if I want to be okay with, if I want to be safe from Satan,

I'll just put Bibles all around me and I'll stand there and then the Satan can't get to me. If he comes near and he tries to get in there, you know, he starts to burn there. You know, it's like, you know, there's all those harm movies, you know, fright, night and things like that. I want to, you know, so what? No. No. Jesus Christ knows, it's the message of the Scripture. That's the reason why, for example, in verse 8, he says, "It is written, worship the Lord,

you're God, and He's serve Him only." He's not just quoting any old Scripture. He's not just waving a book at Satan. He's saying, "You're lying. You're telling me that if I put this thing ahead of God, everything would be okay." And I want you to know that idolatry will destroy

Unless he can get into your heart, false beliefs and lies. What makes you what you are,

“what determines how you think and how you feel and how you act, is what your main beliefs are”

about God, about yourself, your main commitments and hopes, about life, about right and wrong. Whatever your most fundamental beliefs are, the things you believe, that is what determines who you are. And you know that to some degree. If you're as a go, you know, your father said,

"You're never going to amount to anything." You may think, well, I don't believe that. I'm trying

to make me, and yet you know to some degree, you're driven, why you're driven and you're upset, and you get upset about this and that, why? Because you know that belief is down in there, and you haven't been able to get it out. And that's having an impact on your, on how you live. Right? Nobody can hurt you. Unless they can get some belief, some main belief down, some some idea down into your heart that your heart believes. And Satan can't hurt you a bit,

unless you believe as lies. See, if he comes along and he whispers to you, if you're thin, and if you have a great career, then you'll be okay. Otherwise, you know, you're going to hate yourself and people are going to look at you. I mean, otherwise, he comes and he puts these things down and you're in deep into you. And you are not able to do anything about them unless you do what Jesus Christ did, which is, he was so saturated with a

scripture that the scripture went down in there and showed those lies to be what they were. And the number one lie is this, that you can save yourself, that you can prove yourself.

“Why is it that Satan did not try to get Jesus to break the moral law or the 10 commandments?”

He didn't mind if Jesus Christ was a moral example. He didn't mind if we look to Jesus as our example and say, "I'm going to live like Jesus and then everything will be okay." Because as long as you're trying to save yourself, as long as you're trying to say, "If I do this and if I do that, then God will bless me." And then I'll feel good about myself as long as you, as long as Jesus is only your example. Satan's got your right where he wants you.

It'll be insecure. You'll be afraid. You'll always be trying to prove yourself because deep

down inside. You're going to believe the lie. And the lie goes something like this. I'll only be lovable. I'll only be significant. I'll only be secure if I get this or I accomplishes or I accomplish this. The thing that Satan wanted to stop Jesus from doing at all costs was to go to the cross. He said, "I'll give you the kingdom, but don't go to the cross." But he did go to the cross. And because he went to the cross, he that was the big test. The real

test was in the garden to get somebody when it was dark and it was nobody around. And he knew he was about to have to drink the big cup of divine wrath and he was supposed to take our punishment for us. And that was the test. He didn't want to do it. But he said, "I will be done and he went to the cross." And if you see him not as your example, but as your savior, dying for you. See, that's the one thing that devil does not want you to see and doesn't want you to understand.

“Because if you see Jesus Christ going to the cross for you, that ends your temptation. Why?”

Because you see, your sin is so serious that Jesus had to die. His sin is not a light thing. Jesus gave us life. Why? He had to. Why? Because sin is so serious. See, Satan knows if you see that and it gets down deep into your heart, it's going to be hard for him to tempt you. But also, when you see that Jesus Christ died

for you, so that even when you screw up, God still loves you. He'll never, ever, there's no

condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. Oh, then that's the end of the accusation, too. If that just sinks down into your heart, the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, who's passing the test, not as your example, but as your substitute as your savior. Three things. Number one, are you somebody who actually doesn't believe in the devil or supernatural evil and you think all evil is basically a matter of natural conditions, social

and psychological conditions. I urge you to change your worldview. Number two, if you say, I'm a Christian and yet basically you haven't seen the radical costly grace of Jesus Christ. It hasn't sunk in how completely accepted you are because of what Jesus Christ did. And what enormous cost that he bore in order to save you, then you are still going to find the temptation accusation. It's still got an awful lot of power over you. And number three, friends,

if Jesus Christ did not think he could handle life without knowing the scripture, do you think we can?

the scripture just dominate his thoughts, he knew it inside out, it knew him inside out. And if

“Jesus didn't think he could handle life without it, what makes us think we can? How are you doing here?”

Jesus Christ said, "Have it in earth and may pass away, but my words will never pass away."

Let's pray. Father, thank you for helping us. Thank you for giving us what we need.

“You've given us your word, you've given us your spirit, you've given us everything we need in order to”

handle the assaults of evil, but we are not using them as we should. We pray then you would help us,

because we'd heal our hearts and we'd glorify you. And we'd bring honored your name. So,

“please accomplish this in our lives. For your name's sake, we ask you through Jesus and his name we pray. Amen.”

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel of Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel Center teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership connects people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The

sermon's in talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017. Well, Dr. Keller was seen your pastor every deem of Presbyterian Church.