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Welcome to Gospel and Life. The book of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were weary of troubles, struggling with fear and discouragement. Sound familiar? Today, Tim Keller is preaching from the book of Hebrews, showing us how fixing our eyes on Jesus is the only way to truly deal with the challenges we face in our lives. Tonight's scripture reading is from Hebrews 3, 13, 10, 24, and 25, and then 13, 17 through 25.

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon.

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will. And may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Brothers, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written you only a short letter. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you. Greet all your leaders and all God's people. Those from Italy send you their greetings. Grace be with you all. This is God's word. Every week we've said that Hebrews is written to people who are beaten down and

persecuted, lives filled with difficulties and problems. And every week we've said that the book of Hebrews, the writer of the book of Hebrews, gives us another way to deal with the brutal realities of life without falling apart. And tonight we come to the final passage, the end of the book of Hebrews, and we see one more thing.

that the writer says you have to have in your life if you're going to make it and deal with the brutal realities of life. What you've got to have is you've got to have shepherds in your life. You've got to have shepherding in your life. Now, let's notice that the text tells us our insulting need for shepherds, the surprising identity of shepherds, and the secret power of the shepherds we need.

There's an insulting need for shepherds. There's a surprising identity of the shepherds we need, and then there's the secret power of those shepherds. Let's take a look at those three things, the need, the identity, and the power. Number one, at the very end, practically, of the book of Hebrews, Jesus Christ is called the great shepherd of the sheep.

Now, he hasn't been called a shepherd any other place in the book. He's been called a whole lot of other things. But this is the first time he's called shepherd. And it's not an afterthought because this is a chapter, chapter 13, about living in a community in which there is a structure to it. Notice verse 17 says, Obey your leaders and submit to their authority for they're keeping watch over your souls.

That's a shepherding action. And so suddenly in this last passage, we are confronted with the fact that we are sheep. Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. We are his flock. We are sheep. Now, have you ever reflected on what the Bible is telling us when the Bible calls us sheep? All over the place it calls us sheep. Have you ever thought about, have you received what the Bible is saying when the Bible calls you sheep?

Well, if not, I'll force you to right now. Look, you and I, most of us are urban, suburban. We really don't know much intimately about sheep. So when we see the image of sheep and we think of sheep, you know, our imagination goes into soft focus. We think of green hills and pastures and beautiful waters, and we think of downy, fluffy little creatures and

Little lambs, whittle whams. But, you know, John Stott, who is the British pastor, well-known British pastor, has a cottage in Wales, in Pembrokeshire. And one of his neighbors is a sheep herder, farmer. And one day he said to John Stott, quote, Sheep are not at all the clean and cuddly creatures they appear to be at a distance. On the contrary, they are dirty, subject to nasty pests...

and need to be regularly dipped in strong chemicals in order to rid them of lice, ticks, and worms. And in addition, they are extremely unintelligent and obstinate. And John Stott says, I hesitate to describe the people of God as dirty, literally lousy, and stupid, but that's the force of the image. Why do you think the Bible calls us sheep? Why?

You take other domestic animals, you take any other domestic animals, you know, and you take them out, take dogs and cats or horses, you take them out and you let them loose and they'll do one of two things. They'll either go out into the wild and live in the wild or else they'll find their way home. But sheep can't do either. They are too helpless to fend for themselves or defend themselves in the wild and they have absolutely no sense of direction. Sheep will die without a shepherd. They will die without a shepherd.

They can't be their own shepherd. Now, let me, my wife says, never mix your metaphors under the same point, but I'm going to anyway. Another metaphor that gets across this idea, though it's a completely different metaphor. You know the story, the great Greek epic, the Odyssey. It's the story of Odysseus, and Odysseus is trying to get home, and he's commanding his ship. He's the captain of his ship, and they're trying to get home. And he goes by the island of the Sirens. Now,

He hears, or he understands, that when he hears the song of the sirens, he's going to go insane. He's going to lose his mind, and he's going to seek at all costs to get to the island, and he will drive his ship toward the island and destroy it on the rocks, unless he finds a way to resist. And so what does he do? Well, what he does is he ties himself to the mast, he sets the course, and

And he puts wax in the ears of all of his sailors. And before the wax goes in, he says, I have set the course. Now get me there. I'm going to go crazy. I'm going to yell and scream. I'm going to do all kinds of things. Ignore me. Get us home. Now what did he do? Odysseus knew that if he kept absolute individual control of his ship, he would lose his ship. Odysseus knew he would never stay the course. He would never get home unless he shared control with his men.

He was making them, as it were, into shepherds. Or, what does this mean? If you know yourself, you should know that you will never stay the course all of your life. There will be times, spiritually speaking, in which you will lose your mind. And you will never make it home unless there are some people around you that you have authorized, deputized, to share control with your life, of your life, to whom you should be accountable, to whom you must be accountable.

without which you will never get home. There'll be times in your life, unless you have authorized people to come and say, we're not going to listen to you. We're going to get you to the course that you know you should be going on. We are going to get you to the destination that you want to get to. The true you, not the new you right now. You're kind of out of your mind. This is the direction. Do you have anybody who can talk to you like that? If you don't, some point you're going to run your life into the rocks. We need shepherds.

We are sheep. We will die without a shepherd. So the first thing we see here in the whole Bible, whenever it calls us sheep and says that we are the flock, it means that we need a shepherd. When I call it an insulting need, when the Bible calls you sheep, it means well, but it's a huge insult. Have you received it as such? An absolutely true, well-meant, crucial-to-believe insult.

So first of all, we see our need for shepherds. Now, the second thing we learn here is the surprising identity of the shepherds that we need. Who should the shepherds be? Now, before we jump into what the text says, let's consider something, and that is there are two equal and opposite mistakes you can make about shepherding. We've already just dealt with one. One great danger is own shepherding, being your own shepherd.

not being accountable to anybody, not letting anybody into your life, not giving anybody the right to tell you how to live. I'll call that being your own shepherd, own shepherding. It's a disaster. It won't work. But on the other hand, there's over-shepherding. On the other hand, there's seeking human beings as shepherds in an unhealthy way. Notice verse 17 says, "'Obey your leaders and submit to their authority.'" Now, that's interesting.

It means that you need someone in your life with authority. Authority is a good thing, but authoritarianism is not. Now, what is authoritarianism? Well, let me give you a couple of examples. Let's talk about emotional authoritarianism. Emotional authoritarianism is when you look for the great shepherd of your life in some human relationship, someone who will come in and fix everything, someone who will make everything all right. If you look at any human being

Whether parent or child, whether boyfriend, girlfriend, whether friend, whether spouse. If you look at any other human being and say, because this person loves me, I got meaning in my life. Because this person loves me, I know I'm not lousy. I know that I'm worth something. This person's love gives me meaning in life. If you look at anybody like that, you've made that person the great shepherd of your soul. The person will fix everything. That person will ruin you. You will ruin the person. You're an emotional slave. The dependency, the obsession, the

The problems that are going to come from that are tremendous. Emotional authoritarianism. There's also leader authoritarianism. Now, there are a lot of people, evidently, who are so empty on the inside that they get strength by attaching themselves to some very charismatic leader. And then they give, they cede to that person or that person takes or a combination of the two and

way too much detailed authority over every single part of the person's life. Now, we know that there are the famous demagogues. Hitler, for example, somehow pulled off with an entire nation. How he ever did it, we're still trying to figure out. But then, of course, you have the religious, not the political. You have the religious demagogues like David Koresh or Jim Jones who

you know, horrible situation where they led their followers into death. But in most cases, of course, we're not talking about any people as demagogic or as deranged as that, but we have lots of people, lots of people, who in politics and in religion and other situations give themselves to very authoritarian leaders that exercise way too much control over every part of their lives. Well, why don't we do that? Here's why. Own shepherding and over-shepherding actually fuel one another. They stimulate each other.

People who got too little shepherding growing up, parents who neglected them, parents who gave them no standards, parents who actually gave them so much freedom that they had a kind of spiritual vertigo, very often people who have had to be their own shepherd completely rush into overshepherding. Or you might say they can be sucked in somehow to overshepherding. Or

If you've been a victim of overshepherding, if you've come up in a very authoritarian home or a very authoritarian church or some other culture or some situation or institution, you can overreact to that. You know, the average American says, I'm spiritual, but I don't like the church. And very often it's because they've been burned by authoritarian or abusive churches. But you know what? What does that mean? Now you're into own shepherding. You're not going to be accountable to anybody. You're not going to cede control of your life or share control of your life to anybody else, and that's just as much of a disaster.

And so an awful lot of us go, you know, as Martin Luther says, human beings are like a drunk man on a horse who, having fallen off the horse on one side, leaps up to promptly fall off on the other. And that's how a lot of us are going. But when you see what the Bible says about who our shepherds should be, you see this astonishing balance, this astonishing comprehensiveness. Who should the shepherds be in your life?

Three answers. First, your peers in grace. Other people who've experienced the grace of God who are no smarter, no more mature, no really better than you are to be your shepherds, and you're to be theirs. Look at the very first verse. It's way…it's actually…the first verse on the page is chapter 3, verse 13, where it says, "'Encourage one another daily, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.'"

Now, that is a much more significant saying than maybe it looks. If you go down to verse 22, this is sort of the end of the book, and notice something. The Hebrews writer, who has just written this enormous theological treatise, extremely sophisticated, very deep, a book of the Bible, all right, extremely authoritarian, calls his book a word of exhortation. The Greek word is paraklesis.

It means to give direction. It's a shepherding word. It means to give direction. It means to direct people, to guide people, to coach people, to counsel people. And he says, I have been trying to shepherd you with this book. But guess what? Even though you can't tell it by the English translation, it's the very same word he uses in chapter 3.13 to describe what we're supposed to be doing with each other. It's the same word, parakaleo, one another. Parakaleo.

He doesn't say, I am the authority, I am the great theologian, I am the great minister. Let me be the one who guides you alone. He doesn't say that. He says, you should be shepherding one another. What does this mean? Look at the verse with me. This means this. There shall be some other people who are your peers, other people who have experienced the grace of God. There should be some other people that you're letting into your life pretty far.

Your life together is so intense, notice the word daily, that they can see the sins that you tend not to see because they're deceitful. They're the sins that hide themselves. There's got to be some people who you actually say, my private life is your business. I'm going to tell you everything I can about what's wrong with me, about what my sins are, what my flaws are, what my weaknesses are, what my temptations are.

But I want you to get to know me well enough that you can actually see me and you can show me things that I don't even see. I give you the green light. I give you a hunting license to come into my life and to tell me, call me into account, to live the way Jesus wants me to live. And then, of course, they do that for you. It's mutual shepherding. Is there anybody you're doing that with? Do you realize, by the way, if you come to church every single week and take notes, that's not fulfilling this verse.

That's not active enough in a Christian community. Are you exhorting one another daily lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin during this service? No, absolutely not. It's not happening. Where does that happen? And you say, now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Shepherd one another? Open up my life to other people who are no smarter? They're not counselors, they're not therapists, they're not ministers? What's, why? Why?

What qualification have they got to help me live the way I should live? And the answer is, ready? They're not you. That's their main qualification. They're not you. See, there's all kinds of things that almost any not you that you spend enough time with will see that you won't see. You don't know what you really sound like. You don't really know what you look like. You don't know. Have you ever listened to yourself on tape? Isn't it awful? Why is it awful? You say,

Oh, I don't sound like that. And everybody around you says, yes, you do. Yes, that's okay. Well, why don't you know what you really sound like? You don't know what you really sound like. Evidently, they say, because you actually hear yourself through the bones in your neck. And that's the result. Your voice, to you, sounds much more filled with gravitas. It's just far more, you know...

beautiful and mellifluous when actually it's not. And any not you can see. You right now, it's a nature of sin to deceive. We all long for a home, for a place where we can truly flourish and belong. In One With My Lord, a new book by Sam Albury, he shows how the Bible promises that there is a place like that for all of us, but it doesn't have a zip code. Instead, the

The key to home and the very heartbeat of the Christian faith itself is that we find ourselves in Christ. For the New Testament writers, this phrase was so important that instead of using the term Christian, they referred to followers of Jesus as those who are in Christ.

Jesus is not only our Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend, He is also our home and our location. Each chapter of One with My Lord is short enough to be read as a devotional, and in it, Aubrey examines what being in Christ means, giving us a fresh lens to view the gospel and all that it means for our hope, purpose, and identity.

We believe this new book will help you grow in your relationship with Christ. To request your copy of One With My Lord, visit gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. You know, I read a sermon years ago by Charles Spurgeon on this and said, you know, Adam and Eve, when they were perfect, were deceived by sin. Do you think you are going to do better than them? First of all, you have got to have faith.

peers in grace that you authorize not just to be your buddies, not just to hang out with you, but stay away from any private stuff. Don't talk to me. Don't hold me accountable. Don't ask me the reasons why I'm making this decision. Don't talk to me about how I spend my money. Don't ask me anything about my sex life. That's my job. That's for me. That's private business. If you live like that, you have no shepherding in your life. You have to deputize them. But you know what? Look at this. This is not individualism or authoritarianism because you're their shepherd too.

You're into their life the way they're into your life. So first of all, the first answer to who are the shepherds, it's your peers in grace. Secondly, who are your shepherds? It's Jesus himself. Verse 21, Jesus is the great shepherd. What does that mean? The great shepherd of the sheep. He's your ultimate shepherd, and oh, this is so important. Jesus Christ, as it were, looks at you and says...

Let your parents be your parents. Let your children be your children. Let your spouse be your spouse. Let your boyfriend, girlfriend be your boyfriend, girlfriend. Let your friend be your friend. But don't make any of them your savior. Don't make any of them the main thing in your life. Don't revolve your life around them. If there's any human being you look at and say, because of this person's love, I've got meaning in life. You've turned them into the great shepherd and you are a slave and you will destroy them and they will destroy you and it's your fault.

See, the only way that you're going to stay away from leadership abuse over shepherding, emotional abuse over shepherding, or a lack of accountability, which is own shepherding, is if you've got Jesus Christ in your life as the ultimate shepherd and bishop of your soul. Otherwise, you're going to be too afraid or you're going to be too needy of authority.

And then if you do this, if you have every member shepherding, you might say one-on-one shepherding, and on the other end you have Jesus as the shepherd, then it's safe to do verse 17, chapter 13, verse 17. Then it's safe to obey your leaders and submit to them, to their authority, for they're keeping watch over your soul. Now that you've got the balance of one-on-one shepherding and you've got the balance of Jesus shepherding, now you must find some leaders in the world

find some church leaders, find some Christian leaders, and you have to join the church where they're leaders. You see, unless you're a member of a church, I'm not really sure how in the world you can obey chapter 13, verse 17. Have you ever thought of that? It says, obey your leaders and submit to them, their authority. Well, who? Any Christian leader in the world? No, that would be pretty stupid. In fact, you can't just, there's a Christian leader walking down the street. Hey, you know, I'm submitting to you. Who are you? Says the Christian leader. I mean, you have to find a

A set of Christian leaders that you trust. You know, this is up to you. You have to find the ones that you trust. And where they are, shepherds of the flock, you have to join the flock. What do you think these membership vows are about? What do you think it is? It's a way of saying to a group of leaders, I give you the right to call me to account to live my life as I should be living it, to stay the course, even if sometimes I lose my mind so I won't take my life into the rocks.

if Jesus is your shepherd and your peers are your shepherd, then you've got the power, the right, the balance to make a group of human beings your shepherds. But I think the only way I know how to do that is to join a church. If you can think of some other way to do it, you tell me. But you certainly aren't, you're certainly under no one's authority unless there's a covenant, unless there's an agreement, unless there's some kind of mutual contract in which the person says, I am responsible for you and you say, I'm responsible to you.

But when you put all those things together, isn't that amazing? Not individualism, not authoritarianism, not own shepherding, not over-shepherding. See the surprising identity of the shepherds that you should have in your life. Now, lastly, we see the insulting need for shepherds. We see the surprising identity of shepherds. But last of all, we see the unique power of Christian shepherding. Now, what do I mean by that? Well...

What does a shepherd do? Well, you sort of see it here in chapter 20, verse 20 and 21. The great shepherd of the sheep equips you for everything good, for doing his will. He works in us what is pleasing to him. That's what shepherds do. Shepherds tell you how to live. They guide you. They shoo you. You know, sheep don't have a good sense of direction. It's the job of shepherds to say, there, that way, that way. That's how you should live.

And there's a whole lot of people out there who say, well, you know, that's the great thing about Christianity. I've had many people say, the way you know Christianity is true is change lives. And there are great testimonies, aren't there?

I know a criminal who's become honest through Jesus. I know drug addicts, alcoholics who've become sober through Jesus. I know licentious people who are now faithful family men and women through Jesus. So, you know, I've seen people start living the way they ought to live through Jesus. That's how I know Christianity is true. True, but…

If you're really going to say, that's how you know Christianity is true, just keep this in mind, that every single religion, every moral community in the world can produce changed lives, and they do. See, every moral structured community that has shepherds and has a set of rules on how you live can shape people, can take dishonest people, make them honest, take addicted people and give them self-control, can produce changed lives. In fact, C.S. Lewis, let me confuse you a little further, C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Abolition of Man,

compares the kind of lives that Jesus wants you to live, Moses wants you to live, Confucius wants you to live, Buddha wants you to live, you know, Muhammad wants you to live, and he says, you know what, they're not that different. If you look at all the various shepherds of all the moral communities of the world, they're basically trying to get you to love your family, be sexually pure, not be materialistic, care for the poor, be unselfish,

Be a servant, love one another, forgive, share what you have, tell the truth, live lives of integrity. They're all there in every one of the religions. All the shepherds are saying, here's how you should live. Of course, so is Christianity. We have shepherds saying, here's how you live. But superficially at least, externally at least, all the different shepherds are saying, are basically shooing the sheep in the same direction.

Oh, you say, well, okay, you've confused me. Is there no difference? Oh, yes, all the difference in the world. Why do Christians live the way they do? Not how do they live. Basically, they live like other good people. But why do they live? What is the dynamic of the shepherding? Why do we live the way we do? What is the dynamic by which the shepherd lives?

Jesus Christ gets you to live in the way he does. It's utterly different than the way the shepherding goes on in any other moral community, in any other religious community. Utterly different. And it's crucial for you to see that. Well, you say, well, what is the difference? All right. Take a look at verse 20. May the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, brought back from the dead. Now, in English even it sounds awkward, but in the Greek it's very awkward.

Usually, whenever the Bible talks about the resurrection, it talks about Jesus being raised from the dead. Here it says God brought him back from the dead, and the actual Greek word is the word that means to return from exile. To return from exile. It's very strange, and it's deliberately made to make you think, what do you mean return from exile? How's the resurrection return from exile?

Now you're beginning to think the way the Hebrews writer wants you to think. Well, let's think about this. The Bible, in the Bible, exile is one of the main metaphors for what's wrong with us. When you put yourself ahead of others, when you put yourself ahead of the community, when you put yourself ahead of God, that's sin. When you put yourself ahead of others, that always results in alienation, aloneness, homelessness, and exile. So in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve...

decided to be their own saviors and lord. They lost their true home. They were put into exile. When Cain killed Abel, he lost his home. He went into exile. When Jacob deceived his father, he lost his home. He had to go into exile. But the most interesting of all, the children of Israel in Egypt were exiled from their homeland. They were in bondage. But eventually God brought them back to home. How? Through the death of a lamb.

See, it's a very strange story, isn't it? And you've heard it. In Exodus chapter 12, we're told God comes to the children of Israel who are exiled. They're away from home. And God says, I'm going to bring you back. I'm going to, in a sense, resurrect you. I'm going to bring you back to your homeland. I'm going to bring you back out of Egypt, out of bondage. But you're going to have to kill a lamb. And I want you to eat it tonight with your family and put the blood on the doorposts so that the angel of justice will pass over you.

But through the death of the blood of the Lamb, you'll be brought out, brought back to your homeland. Well, that's what happened. It's called the Passover. And everybody was very, very mystified. Who knows? It was very mysterious until centuries later when Jesus Christ, the night before he was going to die, stood up at the Passover meal he was observing with his apostles. Now, can you imagine? The apostles must have thought this was the weirdest Passover meal they'd ever been at.

because there was bread, like in all Passover meals, and there was the cup, like in all Passover meals. But there's no indication, if you read the text about the Lord's Supper, the Last Supper, there was absolutely no indication that there was any meat there. Now, what kind of supper is that? Bread? Okay, thank you. Drink? Okay. Where's the lamb? And Jesus stood up and made it clear. You see, what Jesus was saying that night was,

Yes, there's shepherds. There's shepherds. There's lots of shepherds. There's good shepherds, many shepherds all over the world who come and tell you how to live. But I am the ultimate shepherd because I'm the shepherd who becomes a lamb. I'm the shepherd who become a sheep. I'm the lamb of God who take away the sin of the world. I am the ultimate Passover lamb. What's going to happen to me tomorrow on the cross is the ultimate exile.

I'm going to experience the exile. I'm going to experience the alienation that your sin deserves. I'm going to take it in. I'm going to experience it. I'm going to pay the penalty. And when God brings me back through the resurrection from that ultimate exile, having paid the price, you will know that I didn't just bring you out of political and social bondage the way Moses did, but I have destroyed sin and death itself. Now, here's what Jesus is saying.

All shepherds tell you, here's how you have to live, shoo. But I'm the only shepherd who became a sheep. I'm the only shepherd who doesn't just tell you, here's how you have to live. I'm the only shepherd that came to live the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died in your place. So that when you come to God in my name, God delights in you now. Now, I want you to think of what this means. Religion says, if I try real hard to live right, God will accept me.

The gospel says, because of the incredible sacrifice of Jesus Christ, because you're already accepted, now live right. Okay? Religion, if I live right, God will accept me. Gospel, because I'm already accepted in Jesus Christ, now I live right. In religion, you live right out of the anxious hope that if you try hard enough to live right, you'll move God to bless you and take you to heaven.

But in the gospel, you live right out of the glorious joy of knowing that God himself has moved heaven and earth to pay the penalty of your sin so that he'll never have to ever lose you again. Religion says you better live right or God will reject you. The gospel says because at infinite cost to himself, God will now never reject you. Don't you want to live right? To delight him, to please him, to resemble him. So here you have it. Two different people

A person who's shepherded out of fear, shepherded by fear. A whip is what's moving that person to live right. And here's the gospel, the gospel dynamic, which is the true staff of the true shepherd that moves you to live right out of joy. Now, which is working in your life? Which shepherding dynamic is at the heart of your life? Have you ever thought about that? Let me close by giving you three signs to tell you

Whether you've got the gospel shepherding dynamic in your life or you're just afraid, you're just living a good life out of fear, out of insecurity, out of a desire that hopefully that if I live a good enough life, God will bless me and take me to heaven. You see, all moral people, including Christians, live right. But the difference is can be seen when people don't live right, when circumstances don't go right, and when you don't perform right.

Number one, when people don't live right, religious people look at folks that aren't living right and they feel superior to them. They look down upon them. They bash them and they condemn them. Why? Because religious people say the difference between me and you is I'm making the effort and you're not. But in the gospel, a Christian looks at people who aren't living right and you know the only difference between you and them is the grace of God. You're just a sinner saved by grace. How can you feel any better than they are? You can't if you bash people who

who believe differently than you, if you are harsh and condemning and self-righteous to people who don't live right, that shows that you don't have the shepherding dynamic of the gospel, the joy, the love of Christ that constrains us. Remember how Paul says, the love of Christ constrains us. That's shepherding. Okay, secondly, the difference comes out when circumstances don't go right. See, when things go wrong in your life,

The religious person says, I have lived a good life, and therefore God owes me a good life. See, that's how religious people think. I've lived very hard, so God owes me. So when things don't go right, you either get incredibly bitter toward God and you give up on him, or you get incredibly guilty and you feel like I mustn't be living a good enough life. You either say, I hate thee, or I hate me, or go back and forth between both.

When your circumstances don't go right and you're a religious person, you're shepherded by the whip of fear, you don't know what to do. You know, you're just all screwed up. But if you have the gospel that is the way in which you're living, if the gospel shepherding dynamic of joy is in your life, when things don't go right, you know this, it can't be punishment because all your punishment fell into the heart of Jesus.

And you also don't think, how could God let this happen? Because Jesus lived a pretty good life, a lot better than you, and he had a lousy life, yet God used it redemptively. And therefore, because of the dynamic of the cross, you're not overthrown by when circumstances go wrong. But most of all, you can see the difference between a religious person and a Christian, a person who is driven by fear and a person who is shepherded by love and joy.

You can see the difference when you don't perform right, when you fail, when you fail in some moral way. The religious person, the foundation of their identity is destroyed because their identity is based on the idea that they're a good person. But if you're a Christian and you fail, you're driven further into your foundation because your foundation is the grace of God. Your foundation is this. You're a sinner, and you can dare to be a sinner, and you can dare to admit that you're a sinner.

but God loves you anyway. And there's a freedom that comes from that. And when people who know that all get together and shepherd one another, with that knowledge of grace, it's not abusive shepherding, but it's also direct. And then you will start to grow, and then you will be directed in the way that you should go. You'll get home. You'll stay the course even when you're kind of out of your mind because your friends will help you. They won't abuse you. They'll be your shepherds. My dear friends, do you know

the shepherd who was a lamb. Jesus Christ was the shepherd who became a lamb, so we stupid sheep and lambs could become shepherds. We could become the kind of people that could help one another grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that the great shepherd Jesus Christ lifts up his arms to us and says, I am the shepherd who became a lamb. So trust me. Trust me with all your heart.

And if you receive my grace, then you will have a new way of right living that doesn't abuse you, that doesn't drive you into the ground, but that moves you from strength to strength and transforms you from one degree of splendor to the next. I pray, Father, that you would help us to understand what it means to have Jesus as our shepherd and to have the shepherding of Jesus and the Christian community in our lives. We pray that you would help us to receive this, both the insults and the affirmations.

with joy and to apply this to our lives by your spirit. We ask all this through Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com slash partner. And thank you.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2005. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.