God With Us: In the City
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Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller shows us how a life of faith in Christ is the key to facing the challenges and adversity in life. After you listen to today's teaching, we invite you to go online to gospelinlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly journal and other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelinlife.com.

The passage on which our teaching is based is printed in your bulletin. Again, it's from Hebrews. Again, it's from Hebrews chapter 11. Let me read verses 8 to 16. Hebrews chapter 11, verses 8 through 16. By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

And so from this one man, and he as good as dead.

came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.

If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Indeed, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. This is God's word. Now, we've been looking at Hebrews 11 all fall and in the context. And one of the main characters is Abraham. And Abraham...

is a lot like many or most of you sitting in front of me in this room. Most of you are not from where you live. Most of you are not from New York area. Most of you are not from here.

You've been brought here for various reasons from elsewhere. Now, Abraham's the same, you see. It says here in verse 8, he was called to leave his home community, which was Ur of the Chaldees. He went out, and look, verse 9, he was like a stranger in a foreign country. He was an exile.

And the Bible tells us repeatedly in the New Testament that God sees every Christian, and Christians ought to see each one of us, we should see ourselves as exiles. And we should live where we're called to live as exiles. What does that mean? What did Abraham actually do in his exile? We're told, verse 10 and verse 16, he looked for the city of God. He looked forward to the city of God.

Now, I would like to just spend some time this morning talking about what the Bible says about how Christians are supposed to relate to the cities to which they've been called. Three things we learn from this text and from the Bible, that God builds cities, God sends people to cities, and yet, at the same time, God frees us from cities.

God builds cities. God sends us to cities. God frees us from cities. All in the text. Let me show you. First of all, verse 10 says God is a city builder. See, it says he looked forward to the city whose architect and builder is God. Now, this text teaches us that God is in the business of being a city builder. God, may I put it this way, is an urban planner.

Now, many Christians don't like the very idea. One person once said, one guy once said, God built the country. God made the country and humans made the suburbs, but the devil made the city. And I'm sure that that was intended to be a joke. But theologically, we are not amused. Why not? Because the Bible says here is

briefly what it tells us in detail in Revelation 19 and 20 and 21, and that is God is preparing a new heavens and new earth, but it's going to be an urban one. Ah, somebody objects. Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is a metaphor. God's preparing a city for us. It's just talking about heaven. It's just talking about the new heavens and new earth. It's just a metaphor. It means nothing at all about earthly cities at all. Oh, really? God calls himself a father. That's a

When God calls himself a father, he is telling us that he invented the family. The family is not just a development, a human development. It's an institution that was invented by God. And though the family is tainted with sin, though because of sin it's sometimes a place of pain, because God invented the family, the family points to something eternally real.

And the family is something that gets things done with us. And therefore, it's our job to redeem and rebuild the family and to harness the power that God put into the family. It's not our job to say, who needs families? Look at how awful they are. Sin has made them a ruin. Let's get rid of them. A lot of people say that Christians don't. Why? Because they know God's a father. OK, what about cities? We're told that God is a city builder.

In Revelation 19, the last picture we have of God in the Bible is what? The last picture we have of God in the Bible is God cleaning up the world after Judgment Day, cleaning up the toxic waste after the fires of Judgment Day and rehabbing a new world. And that new world is a city. The new world is urban. The universe starts in a garden, but it reaches its full flower in a city.

In the early part, in the beginning, God takes Adam and Eve and he says to them, I want you to build a civilization that glorifies me. I want you to build a world that glorifies me. And of course we know that Adam and Eve sinned and they didn't do what God asked them to do.

And so we also know that God sent for the second Adam, Jesus Christ. And we've looked at that, you know, this fall. And Jesus Christ helped God accomplish, through Jesus Christ, he accomplishes what Adam and Eve should have accomplished. When we get to the very end of the book of Revelation, when we see God getting to the place that he wanted to go to to start with, with Adam and Eve, we see him building a city. When he does, through Christ, what Adam and Eve were told to do, he's building a city. And you know where God's going to live in that city?

downtown. Read Revelation. God lives right in the middle and we all live around. He does not live in the suburbs and come into work. He lives downtown. Why? And here's the reason why. Just as because God is a father, therefore the family is something God invented. There's something about us that needs a family. So God invented the city.

Well, what did God invent the city for? Well, let me ask you to imagine all the great things that can happen in cities that just don't happen in small towns or out in the country. Imagine it's in cities where different kinds of people living in very close quarters enrich each other and interact with each other, you see, and cooperate with each other and learn from each other. And it's only in cities where all of our talents, when they come together as a magnifying glass, focuses the rays of the sun

to get things done. So the city brings all of our talents together and they stimulate each other and they collaborate with each other and the city creates an explosion of human creativity.

The city creates an explosion of human achievement. It's the city where our talents are brought together and the best is brought out of us. I mean, that's what the city does. That's why we're so exhausted in the city. That's why we have to get out every so often because the city brings that out in us. It brings out what God has locked in the deepest recesses of the heart, the giftedness, the talents, the brilliance of the human being.

It comes out. So the greatest achievements of art, of science, of technology, and so on, there they are in the city. Well, you say, of course that happens in the city, but you say, in an ideal world. It says those of you who are skeptical, in an ideal world, sure. But just as the city helps us to pool...

our talent and human diversity, the city also pools our greed, our cruelty, our evil. And that's what makes cities bad places. Exactly. Whenever you go to a, just about whenever you go to a wedding that I do, I like to point out that because God invented marriage, it's got a power. And because God invented marriage, it's got a power to set the course of your life as a whole.

And some of you have heard me say it this way. If everything around you in your life is weakness, but your marriage is strong, it doesn't matter what happens in your life. You move out into the world in strength. And if everything, on the other hand, everything around you is strong, everything else is going well in your life, but in your marriage, there's weakness. It doesn't matter what's going on out there. You move out into the world in weakness. God invented marriage with that kind of power. It sets the course of your life as a whole. You've heard me say that?

God set, invented cities with the power to set the course of society as a whole. In your personal life, as your marriage goes, so you go. In the corporate life, as the cities go, so goes the society. That's the reason why, which we continually mention around here, if you read the book of Acts, you will see that Paul, when he was trying to do his best business for God, when he did his missionary work, he ignored the countryside, he ignored the small towns, he went into the cities.

And historians will tell you, after 300 years, the cities of the Roman Empire were largely Christian. The countryside was pagan. But what happened? The Roman Empire was taken over by Christianity because as the cities go, so goes the country. As your marriage goes, so goes your life, your personal life. As the cities go, so goes the culture, so goes the society. God invented cities with that kind of power.

And it's our job, just as we're supposed to take hold of families and redeem and rebuild them and harness that power for God, it's the job of the Christians to go to cities and to rebuild and redeem them and harness its power for God as well. God is a city builder, number one. That's what it tells us. So should we be. God is a family builder. That's what the Bible tells us, and so should we be. Secondly, we're not only told that God builds cities, but that he sends people to cities.

Well, now somebody says, wait a minute, where does it say that? In fact, a lot of people say, I think you're preaching off the wrong text on this one. Here is Abraham, and it says he was a stranger in a foreign land, yes, but it says he dwelt in tents. So Abraham is a model for rural living. Abraham shows that Christians ought to get out into the country. And, of course, if you think that that's what Abraham is a model of...

you haven't gone far enough. If you say, well, yes, I was following what the Bible says. Abraham left the city and he went out into the country. And so that's the reason why I have bought a home in upstate New York, you see. And the problem is, if you think that that's what this particular model proves, you haven't gone far enough because it doesn't say you should buy a house. It says you should live in a tent. And that means really Christians should all be campers, not people who live in the rural areas. But you see, you're missing the whole point.

There is a very profound theme here, very profound. And that theme is Abraham, because he was committed to God, was an exile. We as Christians, we're told in the New Testament, go to 1 Peter 1, verse 1, go to James 1, verse 1, we are also exiles. And let me tell you what an exile is. An exile is someone who does no longer determine where he or she lives on the basis of comfort or safety or familiarity.

but you now live wherever you can best get the business of God done. Let me say it again. I'll put it another way. What does it mean to be in exile? That's what Abraham is. That's what Abraham is a model of. An exile is somebody who does not choose where he or she lives on the basis of it being familiar, a place where you're safe, a place where you're comfortable, a place where you understand what's going on, a place where you're in control. No. An exile is someone who goes wherever

You can get the business of God done. You no longer make your decisions on the basis of what makes you happy and what makes you feel good. And as a result of that, Christians, if you think of yourselves as exile, that suddenly changes the way you make all your decisions. It changes the way in which you decide where you're going to live, where you're going to work, what you're going to do with your life. Utterly changes you. It doesn't turn you into a camper. It turns you into an exile. Now, let me apply that to two kinds of people.

Let me apply it to people who are in cities and people who are not. Christians who are in cities and Christians who are not. First of all, many of you have been brought to New York, job, career, all sorts of reasons. What are you, as a Christian exile, supposed to do in relationship to the city of New York? What does it mean to be an exile in your understanding and your heart? What impact will that have on your relationship to the city?

Now, we have a perfect case study in the Bible already. There's a great case study of a group of believers who are brought to a city against their will. We read what God tells them should their relationship be to the city where they are in exile. We read it. Peter Sotoff read it. It's from Jeremiah 29. Let me explain to you the situation.

If you go back and read Jeremiah 27, 28, and 29, you will see that the numbers of the children of Israel had been brought to Babylon. Babylon was the New York City of its day in more ways than one.

Babylon was the city, it was the city of city in the world. And Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the city, had conquered Israel and had brought a whole lot of its best people to Babylon. And you know why? Because the whole idea, the way in which you would conquer a group, is that you would bring many of its best people into Babylon. And there they would take up the values of Babylon and intermarry and lose their identity

and essentially be subsumed into the dominant culture. There's no greater hope for you today than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In fact, His resurrection is the key to understanding the whole Bible and the greatest resource we have for facing the challenges of life. Discover how to anchor your life in the meaning of the resurrection by reading Tim Keller's book, Hope in Times of Fear, The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter.

Hope in Times of Fear is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's redemptive 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. And therefore, when the Israelites originally got to Babylon, they hated it. They saw its paganism. They saw its idolatry.

They saw its cruelty, and of course they've been brought there against their will. And as a result of that, a number of prophets sprung up inside the group of exiles, and they were false prophets. And these prophets said the sort of thing that probably most of us would expect them to say. They would say, God says, don't settle down here. Don't have anything to do with these awful pagan people.

Stay in a little enclave. Stay on the outskirts. Stay over on the riverbank. Stay away from Babylon. Have nothing to do with it because God is going to judge us. Going to judge us if we become part of this group because God is going to judge this city. Someday God will judge this city. And we will get out of here. Until then, let's have nothing to do with it. When Jeremiah heard what the exiles were told was the will of God for them in relationship to the city of Babylon,

God came to Jeremiah and said, tell them the real truth. Jeremiah sent them a letter, and that's the section that was read to you. And it's one of the most startling letters you can imagine. It's counterintuitive to what at least the typical modern Christian would think. God says to them through Jeremiah, number one, he says, yes, I'm going to judge that city, but I want you to have a gloriously positive view of that city.

He says, do not listen to what these false prophets are saying. It's weird. These false prophets were concerned about the honor of God and they were concerned about the integrity of the people of God. But if you preach the honor of God and if you preach the integrity of the people of God in such a way that it makes you hate or fear or loathe or withdraw from the great city, it's bad theology. This is what Jeremiah told them and this is what God told them. Build houses and lands.

and homes, settle down, raise families, become part of the community, seek its peace and prosperity, and pray for it. Now, let's break that down. This is an amazing thing. First of all, it says, build homes, raise families, and settle down. That means be part of the community. But it also says, and if you go home and I want you to look at that, it's printed in your bulletin. It also says, increase, do not decrease. This is the great balance. God says, I'm

I do not want you to take up the idolatries of Babylon at all. I do not want you to get into Babylon and intermarry with those people and take up their values and be assimilated. No, I want you to increase there. I want your families to grow strong. I want the values of the people of God to get strong. I want you to propagate yourself there, but I don't want you to do it by withdrawing. I want you to identify with the community. I want you to seek the peace of that city.

Now, when it says peace and prosperity, the reason that the translation that we read from says peace and prosperity is because what God actually says is, I want you to seek the shalom of that city. And shalom, of course, means peace. But in Hebrew, that is the richest possible word. He is saying, don't you dare take upon yourself the values of that idolatrous city, but I want you to get into its guts.

And I want you to be committed to that city, and I want you to work for its peace and prosperity in every way. That means spiritual peace and prosperity. I want you to bring people to know God. But it also means social peace and prosperity. I want you to help the races and classes get along. And it means economic prosperity. I want you to see that there's warm housing and safe streets and decent livings available there. I want you to seek the peace. And then it says pray for it, which means it's not enough just to do what I'm telling you.

You have to love that city. Don't idolize the city and just embrace it uncritically, but don't get disgusted. I want you to love that city. Do you think as exiles in New York City, you're supposed to simply huddle together in little enclaves of Christians and stay here just as long as you have to stay here and to get your career to where it needs to go or get the degree that you want and then get out of town?

Listen, there are people today, I guess I won't call them false prophets, but they're saying that Christians need to get out. Here's the great irony. Okay, look, first, I said I was going to apply this to two kinds of people. The first is, if you're in a city, God's called you to be in the city, and you're a Christian, you now have a blueprint for your relationship. You should stay here as long as you can. You should become as much a part of the actual neighborhoods and the communities in which you're living. You should be seeking not just to win people to Christ, but for the whole peace and prosperity of that city.

You should be loving it and caring for it. There it is. And yet you must not in any way take in the idolatrous values of the city. You say that's pretty hard. That's what you're called to do. That's the adventure. That's the gospel. Is it counterintuitive? Sure. It's not legalism and moralism. It's the gospel. It's Christianity. But it's not paganism either. It's the gospel. It's Christianity. Your attitude toward the city is unique.

But then, what about those of you who don't live here? Now, there's not that many of you here, but the interesting thing about the Tate ministry is lots of people listening to this are going to get this, and they don't live in cities. Let me ask you something. What is the Christian church most concerned about today?

that is wrong with the United States? Well, they usually say the cultural elite are secularized. So our cultural institutions and our power centers and our academic centers are too secularized. Isn't that terrible? That's one thing they're concerned about. Then the second thing they're very concerned about is the increasing virulence of poverty and crime.

amongst the poor segments of our society. And then the third thing they're concerned about is as the nation gets more and more diverse culturally, as people come to this land from all sorts of other countries, how do we keep e pluribus unum? How do we get out of the many one? How can we still be one country, though we're so ethnically and culturally diverse? These are concerns that people have.

And then the churches and the Christian organizations, filled with these concerns, writing about them in their magazines, they hightail out of all these cities into homogenous, ethnically homogenous, suburban and rural areas of the country. And they write their magazine articles and they say, isn't it terrible? What's going wrong? That's awfully close to what the false prophets were saying. And let me ask you this.

If you're in exile, it means you do not live, right, where you're the most comfortable, where you're the safest. You live where you can get God's business done the best. All the things you are most concerned about, oh, Christian friends, is in the city. You get upset with how terrible the movies are nowadays. They don't believe in absolute truth. Where are you ever going to talk to one of the people that makes those movies? They're going to be in the cities.

You're concerned about the issues of poverty, but the people and the concerns, they're in the city. You're concerned about all these things that are in the city. And so you leave. You're not thinking like Abraham. You're not exiles. You're choosing where you live on the basis of your own comfort, your own control, your own safety, instead of saying, where can I get God's business done?

Now, the last thing we said we'd talk about, God, one, he builds cities. Number two, he sends people to cities. He sent you to cities, and maybe he's sending an awful lot of other Christians to cities, and they don't want to hear it. That's my point. If you're in exile. Okay, but last of all, God frees us from cities. The last point I'd like to make is this. Do you know where you're going to get the strength to live here?

and to do the things that God told us to do through Jeremiah. I think a thoughtful person listening to what Jeremiah said, what God said, would say, this is ridiculous.

On the one hand, you're saying, have nothing to do with the values of that city. Look out for the idols. Oh, there's so many idols in New York. So many. Your feeling. In New York, everybody says, follow your feelings. So your feelings are an idol. Image is an idol. Beauty is an idol. Smarts are an idol. You see that Waylon Jennings song, Too Dumb for New York, Too Ugly for L.A.?

You know, these are the idols of the big city. You've got to be smart. You've got to be beautiful. You've got to follow your feelings. The idols of the city of New York are no different than the idols of Babylon. You must have nothing to do with those idols. You better get the stars out of your eyes when you come to New York. It's seductive, but you should live right in the heart of it. Now you say, how in the world? If that's what Christianity is calling us to do as exiles, how can we do it? It's pretty simple, I think.

and hard. It's simple to understand, it's hard to execute. What you have to do is you have to see that you are free from the city. It says this isn't your true country. Now here's the secret, and if you want more details on this after the service, we have our classes downstairs, and one of the things I always do is a question and answer, and you can come and ask me more questions about this right after the service. But now listen, people say the reason I have a lot of trouble

living in a place like New York City is I just see all the filth and I see all the evil. I'm really a small town guy. I'm from a small town in North Carolina. You know, I'm really not from here. That's the reason why I have a lot of trouble living here. But the Bible says, no, if you're a Christian, you're not from North Carolina anymore. You're not from a small town anymore. The reason not just Abraham, but all these men, you see the verse, it says all these died in faith and

Why were they able to do the great things they were able to do? All these people were living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. Why? They were thinking not of the country they had left. Because if that was true, they'd try to get back there. Instead, they were longing for a better country. And that's the reason they were so effective in exile. Do you see what he's saying? The true country...

A city being prepared for them. When you become a Christian, you're in exile. That means if you understand the gospel, you understand the evil and the sinister sin of small towns and rural areas, and you see the evil and the sinister sin of cities. You're lifted up. You no longer idealize anything here at all. You don't say, ah, the idyllic situation. I love cities.

I love the country. I love the suburbs. I love the north. I love the south. That's the only place for me. You're not from there anymore. And if you understand what God's got in store for you, if you understand what the Bible says is in store for you, real peace, real prosperity, real safety, it's vouchsafed for you. It's guaranteed for you. That will make you able to live anywhere.

You won't say, how can I live in a place that's not safe? Okay, if you live in a city, you might be a crime victim. If you live in a city, you might find it very inconvenient. If you live in a city, you may not save very much money. But the real wealth is guaranteed. The real safety is guaranteed. The real comfort is guaranteed. And if you have your heart set where true joys are to be found, you can live anywhere and you can live in the place where God's business is best to be done. Don't you see? It was so ironic.

is the more heavenly-minded you really are, the more earthly good you will be. The more heavenly-minded you really are, the more effective you will be here. You will be courageous. You won't be afraid of anything. You'll live anywhere, anywhere that God's love is needed. But lastly, look, you say, where do I get the power for this? You have to look at Jesus. Jesus

became, he was the word that became flesh. See, it's Christmas and we always talk about the incarnation and behind the idea of exile, behind the idea of being so free from earth that you can live anywhere and you go to the most important and strategic places in the world to do God's business. The whole idea behind that is the incarnation because when it says Abraham was empowered because he longed for the heavenly city, he was empowered to actually be a stranger in a foreign land and

And he was able to be effective as a stranger there. Behind that is Jesus. He was the ultimate stranger in a foreign land. You know what it means to go cross-cultural? You know what it means to go... It's to be... If two people can't speak a language, one person, in order to connect, has to learn the language. And when you do that, it's arduous and it's hard. And you become vulnerable. And you have to check meanings all the time. And you are the one with the funny accent. And you're the one who doesn't sound very right.

In other words, it's tremendously exhausting to go across a cultural barrier into somebody else's framework, into somebody else's language, isn't it? Some people actually get culture shock. They completely break down. It's so hard. You know why it's so hard? It's the work of incarnation.

If two people who are very different, if there's going to be a connection, somebody has got to become vulnerable. Somebody's got to relocate. Somebody's got to be stripped. Somebody's got to become a person who could be a crime victim. Somebody's got to move into unfamiliar territory where you can be taken advantage of. Somebody's got to become incarnate. Jesus Christ is calling us to do such little incarnations. We can do it if we look at the big one. He was the ultimate stranger. He made the ultimate relocation.

He experienced the ultimate vulnerability. He was the ultimate crime victim. You know why? When he saw the city, he wept over the city. And he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew the things that pertain to your peace. But now they're hid from your eyes. He went to the city, he wept over the city, and he died in the city to redeem the city. That's the ultimate incarnation. He was the ultimate exile. And if you know that he did that for you,

so that someday he could build the perfect city. He lives downtown, and we're going to live in all the wonderful townhouses around Center Square. If you see him doing that for you, you'll be able to do that for other people. Look to the city whose architect and builder is God. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, that you sent your Son into not just the world, but into the city to weep over it and to die in the heart of it. Father, we know that you're not calling us

You're not calling us to go through the great stripping. You're calling us to go through little strippings. You're not calling us to go through the great incarnation, the great exile. You're calling us to go through the little incarnation, the little exiles, which can hurt, but they're nothing compared to what your son went through. And because he died, he was raised, and he's exalted. And if we go through the little deaths that it takes to be exiles...

the little death that it takes to follow our incarnate Savior, we will also find tremendous glory, tremendous love, tremendous joy, the joy of the ones who say, not my will but thine be done. Let that be true of all of us in this room, all of us hearing this sermon, all of us hearing these words. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the wisdom of God's Word to your life. For more resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. There, you can also subscribe to the Gospel and Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other helpful resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1994. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.