Faith and Work
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. This month on our podcast, we're doing something a little different. We've curated a collection of sermons and talks from across the 28 years that Tim Keller preached at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The messages featured this month explore a range of topics that show us how the gospel affects every aspect of our lives, including vocation, friendship, and the mission of the church. Because as we believe, the gospel can change everything.

Tonight's scripture reading is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 60, verses 1 through 11, and verses 18 through 21. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples.

But the Lord rises upon you, and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look about you. All assemble and come to you. Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip.

Then you will look and be radiant. Your heart will throb and swell with joy. The wealth on the seas will be brought to you. To you the riches of the nations will come. Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah, and all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. All Keter's flocks will be gathered to you, and the rams of Nebooth will serve you."

They will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple. Who are these that fly along like clouds, like doves to their nests? Surely the islands look to me. In the lead are the ships of Tarshish, bringing your children from afar with their silver and gold. To the honor of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor. Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you.

Though in anger I struck you, in favor I will show you compassion. Your gates will always stand open. They will never be shut day or night so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations, their kings led in triumphal procession. No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you will call your walls salvation and your gates praise forever.

The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you. For the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more. The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end.

Then all your people will be righteous, and they will possess the land forever. They are the shoot I have planted, the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Just two things for me to underline that...

I emphasize that Aaron's already said. One is, please do make use of this thing this week. This is a way for you to think through how you're going to participate in the Rise campaign. Be a great help. And also, sign up to pray on Saturday for our future, for the whole thing. Kathy and I are going to be praying at our slotted times. Find a slot at the time and commit to it and pray with us. Now...

The Rise campaign is about our 10-year future. And so what we've been doing during these weeks is we've been looking at what the animating principles of ministry have been for Redeemer in the past and should be in the future. Because what we call our core values, our vision, these principles stem from the gospel itself.

And so we've put our core values into a statement, which is on our website and elsewhere. It goes like this. As a church of Jesus Christ, Redeemer exists to help build a great city for all people through a movement of the gospel that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice, and cultural renewal to New York City and through it, the world.

Now, those four phrases that went right through there, the last one is cultural renewal. And what we believe, one of our core values is that Christians are not supposed to only be Christians in their private life, but Christians are supposed to integrate their faith with their work in their public life. And we're supposed to let our faith transform our work so that it actually ends up having an effect on how human life is lived in the world, i.e. culture.

Now, the passage you just had read, it's an interesting place to look to talk about work, is it not? And faith and work. When you first read through it, it seems like it's talking about the return of Israel from exile.

that the exiles are coming home to Jerusalem from all corners. And of course, this happened a couple of times. The Jews were in exile. The Israelites were in exile in Jerusalem and they were brought back into the promised land. Pardon me, they were in exile in Egypt. And they were brought back into the promised land. They were in exile in Babylon and they were brought back into Jerusalem.

But if you actually read the thing carefully, and probably you notice this, what is being described in Isaiah 60 not only never really happened in human history, it can't happen in normal human history.

First of all, you know all those names that you don't really know what they mean when it talks about Sheba. Sheba was as far south as anyone who read this knew. And Nebaioth and Kadar were as far north as anybody knew. And what we're being told here is that all the nations on the earth, all the nations on the earth are coming to Jerusalem and bringing all their wealth,

their silver and their gold and their flocks and their grain, and bring all their wealth, not because they've been conquered. This isn't because of tribute, which is the only way during human history that all the nations bring in all their wealth to one place. It's not because they've been conquered. It tells you why. They're attracted. They're

And we're told they come in verse 6. It says they're proclaiming the praise of the Lord. In verse 7, they're bringing offerings. Verse 9, it says, to the honor of the Lord our God. And therefore all the nations of the earth...

are bringing all their wealth into Jerusalem in praise of God. Not only did that never happen, how could that ever happen? And also, if you get down to verse 18, maybe you notice it near the end, it says there will be no more violence. There's no more violence now. Verse 20 says there's no more sorrow. And of course, verse 19 says there's no more sun and moon. And now you realize what's really being described here is the new heavens and the new earth. It's looking to the end of time when God makes everything right.

And what it's actually describing is paradise restored. See, in the book of Genesis, we're told that God made the world a paradise, but that human beings decided we were going to live for ourselves and we've ruined it. This is the restoration of that paradise. And the only way to really understand Isaiah 60 is

is to read it in light of Genesis, in light of Isaiah 60 shows us the promises of Genesis fulfilled and the curses and the breakdowns of Genesis reversed. So there's many things I could look at with you in Isaiah 60, but I'm just going to look at one. And it's actually so big that it kind of, it's like a lot of things that are so big, you don't notice them.

Have you ever noticed when you walk along 68th Street, there's actually a huge inscription on the back of Hunter College. I think I was preaching here for about five years before I noticed it. It's enormous. It's huge. I go into a door right underneath it, and I never noticed it. I think I was in here five years. I said, what?

What's that? It was so big we don't notice it. There's many things sometimes too big to notice. And here's the biggest thing about this passage. What is this about? It's about the fact that all the nations of the world are bringing their work products. What is gold and silver? What is the flocks and the grain? It's the products of their work to God as offerings to God. And this means that just as there was work in the original paradise, there will be work in the future paradise.

And what does that mean about work? A lot. Let's break that down. Let's just notice what we learn here. And these are just hints, but they're tantalizing hints. Three things. One is about the goodness and dignity of work. The goodness and dignity of work. Secondly, what's wrong with work? And then thirdly, how can it be healed? Right? The goodness and dignity of work, what's wrong with it, and how it can be healed. Okay, first, the goodness and dignity of work. Do you know...

Almost all ancient creation accounts, there's lots and lots of ancient legends, different cultures about how the world was created and how things got started. And do you know that if you look at them, almost virtually all of them, in virtually all of them, work is a bad thing. Work is an evil thing or at least a demeaning thing.

So, for example, remember the old story about Pandora's box? There's a Greek myth about the fact that in the beginning, I guess everything was fine, and the gods gave Pandora a box, and they said, don't open this box. And Pandora opens the box, and out come all the things that are wrong with the world, including work. Work is one of the things that's wrong with the world, according to that. Or, for example...

There's a story of the creation of the world called the Enuma Elish. And the Enuma Elish is a Mesopotamian story, myth. And the gods were told that the gods created the world. And then they realized, oh, my, this is going to take a lot of work to keep up. It's a little bit like buying a home in New York. And they created the world. And now, oh, my goodness, it's going to take a lot of work. So they decided to create human beings.

Because work is too demeaning for higher beings. We gods, of course, can't do work. And Marduk, the leading god in the story, he says this. Marduk says, let us bring into being a lowly primitive creature, man. That will be his name. To him shall be charged all the labor so that the gods may have their ease.

So the idea that gods would take place, you know, do manual labor. Oh, no, no, we create human beings for that. So in every one of these old accounts, work is always a bad thing. It's a demeaning thing. It's not something that higher and nobler beings have anything to do with. It's one of the things that's wrong with the world. And then you get to the Bible and it's a completely different story, completely different. Because in the very beginning, we have God working. You know, in John chapter five, Jesus actually says, my father has been working and I'm working.

Here's God working, not only working, but doing manual labor. His hands are in the dust making us, you know. And when he creates a paradise, the Garden of Eden, where everything is beautiful and everything is blissful and everything is perfect, he puts work in there. In other words, as far as God's concerned, as far as who we are is concerned, you can't have bliss. You can't have perfection without work. That's how high a view of work we have here.

Work was put in the garden. That is to say, Adam and Eve were told that they were supposed to take care of the garden. God actually says, I want you to work it, he says, and cultivate it.

And even here, by the way, in the new heavens and new earth, paradise restored, we have, look, where do you get gold and silver from? Mining. You get dirty doing mining. And craftsmanship. What about the flocks? That's shepherding and the grain. That's farming. Manual labor. And this is not only with something that God is doing in the very beginning and he creates us to do and it's a noble thing and it's a good thing. It's part of paradise when nothing is wrong with it.

But it's part of the future somehow. It's incredible, is it not? In other words, years before Karl Marx, God was already a manual laborer. And when God came into the world in the form of Jesus Christ, he did not come like a Greek god would as an aristocratic philosopher, nor did he come as a Roman god would as a military general. He came as a carpenter. He came as a working stiff.

You know, Kathy, my wife, likes to always say when we're talking about this, she said, you know, Jesus didn't go right into ministry. He didn't go into ministry until he was 30 years old. Before that, he made tables and chairs or whatever carpenters did. He had two careers. How much more dignity can the Bible give to plain old-fashioned work? Martin Luther, of all the Christian ministers and teachers, Martin Luther, I think, was maybe the best at drawing out the radical implications of what the Bible says about work.

And they really are radical implications. So for example, Martin Luther notices in the Bible, it says that God feeds every living thing. So as in Psalm 145 and other places, God feeds every living thing. Okay, well, how does he feed you? He's feeding us. He feeds us. The food we have to eat, he's giving us. But it doesn't just appear on our plate. Then how does it come? The farmers grow it and the drivers bring it to market.

And Martin Luther very famously said, the simple farm girl who's milking the cow, she is one of the fingers of God. God is feeding you through her. God is loving you and caring for you through her. You are being loved and cared for through other human beings' work. And through your work, as simple as it is, God is loving other people through you.

Here's another place where Martin Luther goes and points out. There's a place where, I guess it's also in the Psalms, where God says, I strengthen the bars of your gates. Now, you know, a city gate was...

was uh really a city wall was necessary in those days to have a civilization to have jurisprudence and to have you know rule of law and that kind of thing you needed you need a city a wall and you needed a gate and strong bars but what god is saying is every society that is uh socially sound and secure i'm making it that way well martin luther says

How is God doing that? He says, through people who make good laws, people who enforce the law, through government officials, through politicians. These are the fingers of God. And see, all kinds of work, even the simplest kind of work, is the way that God is loving you and caring for you through the work of other people. Or if you're doing that work, God is loving other people through you. So for example, here's the simplest kind of work. Listen, even though it's menial work, is it not? It's menial work and not particularly pleasant work.

Somebody's got to clean your apartment. Either you're going to do it or you're going to pay somebody to do it. But either way, somebody's got to do that menial work or else what? You're going to die. If nobody ever cleans your apartment, you're going to die. You're going to get a disease. Bad things are going to happen. And so as menial as it is, it's one of the ways in which God is keeping you alive. See, the Bible says God sustains your life. But how is he doing? He's doing with whoever's cleaning your apartment, even if it's you.

God is caring for his creation through work. And therefore, oh my goodness, the implications is all work, all kinds of work is God's work and work that God is using to love his creation. Now, what are the implications of this? Some of the implications, let me give you four really quickly, real quick, but they're really important. Number one, we live in a city in which

The kind of work that we valorize, we honor, it's the kind of work that everybody, the kind of job we always want. And that is high paying, lots of talent and technical skills required, changing the world. We don't want a job unless it's changing the world. Oh, we don't want a clean job.

We don't have clean apartments. We don't do stuff like that. And yet if your theology is screwed on straight, and I hope it is by a little bit tonight, all that class snobbery, all that, I have an educated professional job and this person just has a blue collar job, that snobbery should be gone. If you understand what the Bible says about this, it should be absolutely gone. Jesus wasn't a professional exactly. He was a carpenter. He was a working guy. He was a blue collar person.

And all that kind of snobbery ought to be gone if you're a Christian, number one. Number two, a lot of us, because of our own fears and anxieties or because our family is pushing us, a lot of us take jobs for the status and for the money, not because it's a way of really using our gifts well or helping other people. No, no, we need the status. We need the money. We want the good job.

And of course, a lot of us are pretty unhappy because we've been pushed by our own fears or by social pressure or by our families into jobs that are high status but actually don't fit us very well. If your theology is screwed on straight, you'll see that you shouldn't do that. Number three, here's another thing. If it's really true that God is actually loving people and loving and caring for his creation through the simplest kind of work,

How, if in your work, whatever it is, how then can you please God? How can you do the most God-pleasing way of working? How can you do that? As a Christian, how can you work in a most Christ-pleasing way? The answer is just do your job really, really, really well. You know, if you don't clean the apartment well, the person dies and you're frustrating the purpose of God for that work. You've got to, you've got to,

Do your job well. Or my favorite illustration, some of you know my favorite illustration is, let's just say you're a Christian and you're an airline pilot. And you say, how can I be the best Christian airline pilot possible? How can I be the most God-honoring airline pilot possible? And the answer is, land the plane. And land the plane in such a way that it can be used again. I mean, that's helpful. Yeah.

Right. Somebody told me the pilot has two goals. One is to land the plane so that nobody dies, and the other is so that you actually can use the plane again for another return trip. And I'm not saying there's nothing more to it than that, but I'm saying just to do your job well, to do it really well. That pleases God. Here's one more, and it's very important. If it's true that what the Bible says about the dignity, importance, and goodness of work

is means that blue collar jobs and white collar jobs, we're not supposed to as Christians honor one over the other. We're not supposed to see the goodness and the dignity of all. But it's also true of religious and so-called secular jobs. There are plenty of places, plenty of churches that give you the impression that if you really are sold out for Jesus, you're going to go into the ministry.

Now, there's a whole lot of reasons why people don't go into the ministry and they don't go and they don't go into missions or they don't work for churches and Christian organizations. One of the reasons is because it's not a good way to get rich. It's not a good way to have high status. And that's wrong. That's that's that motivation should be changed by what I'm telling you right now. If you get your theology screwed on straight. On the other hand, you've got to know this. You shouldn't go into the ministry because now I finally honor Christ, because honestly, you can honor Christ in every kind of work.

God has worked through Tim Keller's teaching to help countless people discover Christ's redemptive love and grow in their faith as they learn how the gospel is the key to every aspect of life. This month, we're featuring a brand new book by author Matt Smethurst titled Tim Keller on the Christian Life. In it, he distills biblical insights from Tim Keller's nearly 50 years of sermons, books, and conference messages, including each of the sermons we've highlighted on the podcast this month.

The book explores foundational theological themes from Tim Keller's work, like grace, idolatry, justice, prayer, suffering, and more. It's a resource that we hope will help you apply the gospel more richly to your everyday life.

We'll send you a copy as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the good news of Christ's love with people all over the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give to request your copy. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. In John chapter 16, it says the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin.

So when I'm preaching the gospel to you, the Holy Spirit's working through me to convict you of sin and bring you to Christ. But Psalm 130, Psalm 130 verse four, no, excuse me, Psalm 104 verse 30 says,

I remember it now. Psalm 104, verse 30. It's a little bit like the addresses in Queens, you know, avenues. Okay, that part of the Psalms is hard to get around in. Psalm 104, verse 30 says that the Spirit of God waters the face of the earth. God so cares for his physical creation that the Spirit of God is out there keeping it new. And that means the Spirit of God not only convicts people of sin, but also waters the face of the earth. And that means that...

God can use me if I'm a preacher and if I'm a gardener or a farmer. Dick Lucas was a minister in Britain some years ago, was a great preacher in London. And I was listening some years ago to a recording he made of a sermon on Joseph. Now, you know, Joseph was a great hero of the faith. We learn about him in Genesis 50, right? In Genesis chapter 37 to 50 in there.

But he was not a minister or missionary. He became a great leader in the Egyptian government. He was a municipal leader. He was a civil magistrate. And this is what Dick Lucas said about it. I wrote this down because it was so striking. Dick says, quote, if you were to go up to a book table at a church and see a biography with the title, The Man God Uses or The Woman God Uses,

you would almost immediately think that it must be the story of a missionary or a minister or some specialist in Christian work like pastoring mission, leading Bible studies or something like that. That is because the church conditioned you to think this way. But in fact, what you have here in Joseph is a highly successful manager. He's not a preacher. He's not a missionary. He's not leading a Bible study group.

In some ways, being a preacher, missionary, or leading a Bible study group is easier because things are black and white. You know if you're doing it right or not. Out in the world, very often, there's a lot of gray. But here's what's important to know. It is hard to get Christians to see that God is willing to greatly use men and women in medicine, in law, in business, in the arts. This is the great shortfall today.

Now, when he comes, so in other words, the importance and the greatness and the dignity of all work is enormous. But number two, point two, and three, they're going to come closer together here now, is there is something wrong with work. Having said all that, there's something wrong with work. We find work exhausting. We find work frustrating. We find work difficult. Why?

And to answer that question, we can actually, again, look at our text in which we see something fascinating. And that is in this, in the new heavens and new earth, everyone's bringing the fruits of their work, but it's interesting. All nations are doing it. I said, even though we don't know much about these names, but when the young camels of Midian and Ephah and Sheba and Kedar and Nabioth, this is all the Tarshish. These are all the nations of the world. And you know what this is?

This is a reversal. Again, I said everything in Isaiah 60 is either a reversal or a promise from Genesis. It's a reversal of Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel. Now, if you go back to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, this is the story. Genesis 11 is about work. We often don't realize that. People came together to build this building, to work really hard, to build the highest tower, skyscraper as it were.

And they came together to build it and to work. But why? Their motivation was, you can read it in Genesis 11 verse 4, to make a name for themselves. They said, let us make a name for ourselves. We're going to build the biggest building in the world. And we'll make a name for ourselves. Now that's crucial. Because what they were doing was they were choosing a motivation for their work. A reason for their work.

They're going to build the biggest building. It's like we're going to do a killer app, or it's going to be the very, very best new software program. It's going to be the largest of this, the best of this, the greatest of this. We're going to change things. Everybody's going to realize nobody's done anything like this, and then I'll know I'm somebody. I'll have status. I'll have power. I'll have identity. I'll be the best. And that's Genesis 11. That's the Tower of Babel. Human beings decided to work for themselves, for their own glory.

for their own name, for their own identity. And remember what the result was? They came together. But here's the thing. If the reason for your work is your own personal advantage and your own personal advancement, I mean, of course, everybody who does a job, you do it for multiple reasons. You say, oh, I just love doing it. But what's the bottom line? Why do you take a job or not take a job? Why do you stay in a job or not stay in a job?

If the bottom line, your main motivation is it helps me, it advances me, it advances my status, it advances my income. If that's the main reason you work, the result is fragmentation because you can only make work the means of personal advancement by working. What you're actually doing is you're working over against other people.

You're working against other people. You're working, in other words, I want my name to advance. And you're doing that against other individuals, other groups. And the reason why Babel, when people said, I'm going to work for myself, I'm going to work for my own name and glory, everything fell apart. That's where the languages were confused. The various ethnic groups, the various classes, the various races, the various people, they couldn't work together. What this means is here is different. The world is unified now.

They're all bringing the products of their work together. It's the reversal of the curse of Babel. Why? It's the reason they're working. I already read this to you. Verse 6, the reason why they work is to proclaim the praise of the Lord. The reason why they produce their wealth is in order to make an offering to God. The reason is to bring honor to the Holy One. When I see my work not as something I'm doing for myself, but...

for God, then that brings everything together. There's a healing. You say, how does that work? The best illustration I know of this, and by the way, I'm going to let you know, I don't know much about this man. I haven't read his biography. I need to read about him. So I don't really know much about what he's like, but I do know what he said in this really crucial quote is right on and very important. John Coltrane, one of the great jazz saxophonists, maybe the greatest. His great album, A Love Supreme,

has liner notes that he wrote. And listen carefully to what he wrote. He says, And he said, wait a minute. Wasn't he trying to make others happy through music before? He might have told himself that. But now listen.

Let me start over. So important. During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music, to inspire them for living meaningful lives because there certainly is meaning to life. All praise to God. Now, profound. What is he saying? He's saying that before he had this incredible experience of God's grace, the music was basically about him.

See, if you try to find your ultimate meaning through your work, if you say, well, I know I'm great because I'm great at my work. He says, what that does is that it means the work is about you. But when he found he was so filled with God's love that he could make his music an offering to God, suddenly his work wasn't about himself anymore. The music wasn't about himself. The work was about the music and it was about the listeners and it was about God.

And when he offered up to God, because he wasn't getting a self and a sense of identity and self-worth out of his work, suddenly the work didn't become a way of salvation, a way of identity, a way of getting a name for himself, it became a way of serving other people. And if everybody in the world was working like that, it would be a radically different world. A radically different world. But basically, the curse of Babel lies on all of us, including it lay on him until he experienced that.

And that is, what was he doing? He was doing it to make a name for himself. And because he was making a name for himself, he says, in hindsight, he wasn't doing it to make other people happy. He was doing it to give himself a self. He said, by the grace of God, when I realized my meaning is in God and not in my music, ah, it made the music a way for me to make other people happy. It became a way to serve people instead of, in a sense, use people.

Oh, you must applaud me. And then I feel good about myself. No, I've got the applause of God. And now I'm here for you, not to use you to feel good about myself. And I got to tell you, even though, listen, I don't want to, I'm not trying to pick on musicians, musicians, by the way, we're not talking about just musicians within this situation. All people are like that. All people are like this. And it's only when you can turn that offering into your work into an offering to God that

And stop trying, in a sense, to earn your salvation. That work actually becomes something that doesn't enslave you. Mark Sluka, who is a professor at Columbia University, some years ago in Harper's Magazine, wrote a fascinating article about the fact that many of the early settlers of America, especially New England, were Puritans.

And the Puritans taught about the fact that there were two ways to live. One was to live by the grace of God. That's what Coltrane was talking about. The other is to live in a covenant of works. And Seleucus says the covenant of works meant you earn your salvation, you live a good life, and you work hard, and you obey the Bible, and then God accepts you because you have earned your way.

And what Sluca said, of course, is that there was two ways to live. The Puritan said, one is you earn your salvation. One is you get it by grace. But here's what's interesting. Sluca goes on and says, today we're secularized. Today we don't believe in heaven. Well, at least a lot of people don't. Or even God. But, he says, Americans are still locked in a covenant of works. This is what he says. He says, today's version of the covenant of works has substituted a host of secular pleasures for the idea of heaven.

But nevertheless, we believe that the work of our hands will save us. And we believe it, and we repeat that daily catechism, and we sing in that choir until we are exhausted. See, the only way that work will not keep on ruining people, because, you know, it's the curse of Babel. If you work for yourself...

You're actually working in a self-serving way and you're not using your work to serve other people. And it fragments the world. The only way that work becomes a way of serving other people instead of just your personal advancement. And the only way that you yourself can find work not actually really harming you on the inside. When success in work is the meaning of your life and your identity, you realize what happens. That when you are successful, it goes to your head.

And it gives you a big head and makes you arrogant. But if you're not successful, it goes to your heart and just devastates you and totally devastates you. So the only way that work's going to be healed and the only way that work's going to become a healing factor in the world is what? You're going to have to be able to get a sense of your identity, a deep sense of your worth apart from work and then come to work with that fullness, not an emptiness. And then and only then can work become a way of serving others. Well, how can that happen? Well, like this.

I told you in the very, very, very beginning that when you first read this through, it seems like it's talking about people coming home from exile, doesn't it?

And of course that happened when the Jews came back from Babylon, when the Israelites came up from Egypt. It talks about lift up your eyes and look about you. All assemble and come to you. Your sons come afar. Your daughters are carried on the hip. It's talking, it also in verse 9 talks about that. It's like your sons and your daughters, it seems like the exiles are coming home. But we've said that this is not just looking at the Israelites or the Jews coming home. Every nation is coming home.

Now, in the Old Testament, when God says to the children of Israel, I'll bring you out of exile into the promised land, he always says, I will bring you home and I will give you rest. Home should be a place of rest, right? You're out working, you go home to rest. And so when God says, I'm going to bring you out of exile into your homeland so you can rest, he's talking about deep repose. He's talking about fulfillment. He's talking about peace, right?

But here, this isn't the Jews coming back to the promised land. This is all human beings coming home. And what is this talking about? This is not talking about the Babylonian exile or the Egyptian exile or any other exile. It's talking about the human exile. Back to Genesis. I told you, Isaiah 60 can only be understood in the life of Genesis. In Genesis, in Genesis chapter 3, God exiled the whole human race from the Garden of Eden. When we decided to live for ourselves instead of for him, what was the result?

Exile. And what God said was to Cain, for example, he says, you're homeless now. You're going to be a wanderer on the earth. And the other thing he said, by the way, about work specifically is he says, you're still going to work. I made you to work, but now work will be exhausting because when you work for yourself, it'll be exhausting. And he actually says, by the way, God, you know, the place where God says, you're going to try to till the ground, right? You're going to still try to work in the ground, but thorns and thistles will come up instead of grain and flowers.

And the thorns and thistles represent why work is so hard and why it's so exhausting. And if you do work for yourself, and if you do work to try to make a name for yourself, and this is the way New Yorkers are trained to work, by the way, it will be exhausting. You will feel like a wanderer. You will feel in a way like, I don't have any rest. There's an exhaustion, a spiritual exhaustion, of trying to kind of earn your salvation. Even if you don't believe in God, according to Sluca, we're all still trying to earn our salvation through our work.

And it's exhausting. It's so exhausting that no number of vacations will ever heal it. But I can tell you what will heal it. When Jesus Christ came to earth, he came as a worker. We said a working stiff, but not only that, he came as a wanderer. He said, foxes have holes, birds have nests. The son of man has nowhere to lay his head. But more than that, when he went to the cross, he got the thorns. He got the thorns. They were just driven into his skull.

And he got an emptiness. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He didn't have rest on the cross. He didn't have peace and fulfillment. He had emptiness. He had cosmic restlessness. Why? What was he going through up there? What was he going through? What was he going through was he was getting what we deserve. He was taking the exile. He was taking the thorns. He was taking the homelessness, as it were.

He was taking the rest. He was getting what we deserve for living for ourselves. He was taking our penalty for us so that when we turn to God and say, Father, I see what Jesus Christ has done for me. I rest in that. Accept me because of what Jesus Christ has done. You know what that means? You get your salvation apart from works. You get it as a gift. You get it as grace. And that's where you get the rest that you need to transform your work. You say, how? Just like this. Listen.

Almost imagine Jesus coming and talking to you about your work. And here's what he's going to say. He'd say something like this. He says, if you work for yourself, you're going to be ground into the dust. You're going to be so exhausted. You're going to be always anxious. If you're not successful, it's just going to kill you. If you are successful, it's going to kill you too, because it's going to puff you up and make you arrogant. If you work for yourself, it's going to grind you into the ground. But I want you to know that I worked myself to death for you, for your salvation.

But I love you. I love you. It was worth it. Now work for me. Don't not work, but don't work for yourself. Work for me. Because I'm the only master. I'm the only boss that won't grind you into the ground. Because you'll be working for me out of gratitude. See, when you know that Jesus Christ did that, he went to the cross and took the thorns and he did that for you, that, and if you believe it, and you have to believe it, and you have to pray it into your heart, and when that love begins to envelop you, finally you'll be able to say,

By God's grace, I had this experience of God's love and my work is not about me anymore. It's an offering to God and therefore a service to other people. And it's a joy. That will transform work and that will transform the culture and that will transform the world. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that our work's so important. We also know why it's broken, why it's hurting. And we also see that it's only because of salvation by grace, not by our works, but

that our work can be transformed. It's only by seeing the love and getting that affirmation deep in our hearts that we know who we are before we go to our work, that our work no longer drives us and ruins us. So we thank you for salvation by grace apart from works. That is what changes our work.

And through it, that is what will change the world. And we pray that you would make us into people whose work is not a matter of self-service or personal advancement, but all of our jobs are vocations by which we're serving the world and being the fingers of God and loving the world and letting your love, O Lord, come into other people's lives through our work. And we pray that you'd help us to do that.

So thank you for giving us this part of our vision. Thank you for this fruit of the gospel. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged you and helped you have a deeper understanding of God's word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2016. The sermons 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.