The Evil of Envy
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Many of the questions we face in life are complex and aren't directly addressed by the rules. So, do I say something now or do I wait? Should I take that job or stay put? That's why wisdom is so crucial for our lives. So how do we develop it? Today, join us as Tim Keller explores how we apply God's wisdom to the complexities of our lives.

After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel-changed lives as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. We'll be reading Proverbs 23, verses 17 and 18, and Psalm 73, verses 1 through 3, and then verses 20 through 26.

Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold, for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. This is the word of the Lord. We're looking at the book of Proverbs, therefore we're looking at the subject of wisdom. And the book of Proverbs has been showing us each week that very basic to the development of wisdom is the ability to understand, manage, let's say, and redirect the

channel, as it were, the deep currents of our heart. We've been looking at things like anger, sexual desire, and tonight we come to a theme that the Bible talks about as being very important to understand the reality of it, the power of it, and that is envy. Envy. And I'd like us to notice three things. How to understand envy, why to deal with envy, and where to take your envy. Envy.

Okay, how to understand it, why we ought to deal with it, and where we ought to take it. Now, first of all, how we understand it, by that I simply mean, well, what is it? What is envy? Do you know what envy is? We're told here, verse 3 of Psalm 73, I envied the arrogant. But of course, he wasn't envying them for their arrogance. He wasn't envying their arrogance. He was envying their prosperity.

And right after verse 3, the next part of the psalm, which we didn't print out or read for you, tells what some of that prosperity was. This man who was eaten up by envy was looking at people who, he says, their bodies are healthy and sleek. They had great bodies, great-looking bodies. He said they increased in wealth. They had lots of money. They do not seem to be plagued by ills common to humanity. They had a charmed life.

And therefore, what is envy? First of all, envy is wanting somebody else's life. You want somebody else's life. You see they've got something better than you, and instead of rejoicing in the good they have, you weep over the fact that you don't have it. Instead of rejoicing over the good that they have, you weep over the fact you're obsessed with, you focus on the fact that you don't have it.

So envy, to start with, is wanting somebody else's life or the aspects of somebody else's life. But secondly, envy is not just that. That wouldn't be good, but envy goes beyond that. Not only in envy, we don't just want other people's lives, but we resent their lives. We begrudge them their lives. In praise...

You notice that people have things better than you, or maybe they are better than you, and you rejoice in it. You say, wow, you're great, better than me. I could never do that. I could never be that talented. I could never get that accomplished. In praise, you recognize people who are better than you, and you just rejoice in it. But in envy, you recognize people who are better than you or have it better than you, and you resent it. You're angry about it. You hate it. And therefore, here's what envy is.

Envy is being unhappy at other people's happiness. Envy is weeping because people rejoice. And if you don't believe you're envious, keep this in mind. Envy works in reverse. When the people that are above you fall down, you like it. Envy is happy at other people's unhappiness, unhappy at other people's happiness. Envy weeps because

Because of those who are rejoicing. And rejoices because they're weeping. And if you want a perfect example of it, there's this wonderful little sentence out of John Gielgud, the great British actor, in his autobiographical essay. At one point he says, quote, when Sir Lawrence Olivier played Hamlet in 1948 and the critics raved, I wept. When the critics raved for him, I wept.

He was rejoicing, and therefore I was weeping. That's envy. Now, that's the first point. There's envy. Now, secondly, why should we deal with it? Why is it so serious? When you talk about greed, when you talk about wrath, when you talk about anger, when you talk about lust, you talk about these things. As a minister, I don't have to probably make much of a case that these are serious problems for us psychologically and socially. But envy? Envy?

I mean, I think almost all of us recognize that at some points we've experienced envy. But I guess it would be natural, I think, for most people tonight to say, but is it that big a deal? Why is it that serious? Is it that serious? Is it that pervasive? And the answer is yes. The Bible wouldn't warn us against it if it wasn't. But the answer is yes. And I'd like to give you four reasons why you must deal with envy, why you must come to grips with it, why you must see it in yourself. Four reasons. Number one, because it hides itself.

First of all, you've got to deal with envy because it hides itself. More than any of the other deadly sins, you don't want to believe envy is true of you. Joseph Epstein...

wrote a great book called Envy. Joseph Epstein is a secular man, as he says. He says he doesn't really believe in God. Brilliant writer, professor of English at Northwestern for many years. Recently wrote a book, nonetheless, even though he's a secular man, wrote a book on one of the classic seven deadly sins, which is envy. Oxford University Press. And in it, he says this. He said, most of us could still sleep decently if accused of anger or pride or lust or even greed.

But to be accused of envy would be by far the worst. So clearly does such an accusation go directly to character. The other sins, though all have the disapproval of religion, do not so thoroughly, deeply demean, diminish, and disqualify a person. But you see, the stigma of envy is its enormous pettiness. Now, here's what Epstein is saying, and I think he makes a great case. Nobody wants to be found guilty or be accused of...

having lost their temper or greed or lust or pride. But envy, to be accused of envy, is to be accused of being so small, so shriveled, so ungenerous. There is nothing more humiliating than to have to admit to somebody that you're envious. Nothing more humiliating than that. And because it's so humiliating, we don't want to admit it's true. In verse 21...

of this is near the end of Psalm 73. The psalmist is looking back at his envy and he's coming to grips with it. And he says, my heart was grieved. And that's how envy always postures itself, an aggrieved spirit over injustice. It's not fair. It's not fair. This isn't fair. Why do those people have this and this and this? It's just not fair. So you're aggrieved.

You're not envious. You're just aggrieved over the injustice and the unfairness of life. But he knows better. Underneath, my spirit was also embittered. I wasn't just sad. I didn't just want other people's lives. I resented them for it. I begrudged their lives to them. And he came to realize, eventually, what we don't want to realize. Envy hides itself because it's so humiliating. Now, if that's the case, will you please do me a favor?

And start looking at your life and look at some of the stress fractures in your life and ask yourself honestly, is it possible that at the bottom of the problems I'm having, that at the bottom of it is envy? Envy. So for example, you know a person in your life or a person at work or a person in the church or a person that you know that you just find so irritating. You're hypercritical of them. You may not even say it out loud, but you just find fault with them all the time.

They just get under your skin. Could it be envy? Think about it. Could it be envy? Do you need to see something wrong with them? Or I'll give you another example is some of us are just filled with self-pity, filled with it, just unhappy with the way our lives are going, always feeling sorry for ourselves, kind of sour about everything in our lives. But could that not just be a pervasive kind of envy? You're envying the lives of almost everybody else.

And as a result, it just soured your entire life. Can you see envy in yourself? Remembering what John Gielgud said, let me give you a little bit of a test. When you see really bad people...

who are powerful and rich suddenly fall down, of course it's natural to sort of feel what they call schadenfreude, to feel a little bit like, yeah, you know, serves them right. But here's the scary thing. Will you admit this about yourself? That people who you like, people who you admire, people who have a good reputation, people who've got a certain amount of influence, people who have got a pretty good reputation, people who have done well, people that you like,

when they really screw up, when they really mess up, it's comforting. Isn't it comforting? It's not all that bad. It's not all that sad. You listen to it. You like to hear about it. You think about it. It's comforting because that's what envy is. Envy rejoices when people weep. It really sours your life. So first of all, you need to deal with envy because it hides. Secondly, you need to deal with envy because it sucks. Joy out of your life.

Why didn't you wait for the end of the sentence? You started laughing right away. What's the matter with you? I was finishing my sentence. I didn't even pause. A little bit, maybe, but I didn't really pause. And here's why. Envy, of all the things you can do, envy is the one thing that most can suck joy out of your life. It's a vacuum pump on joy.

Joseph Epstein mentions this again right away. See, the whole idea of envy is you see other people around you who are better than you, are having better lives, and you hate it. And here's what Joseph Epstein says about the seven deadly sins. He says, giving into sloth and laziness, giving into sloth is rather pleasant. He says, giving into the loss of temper, losing one's temper, he says, entails a release that is not without its small delights. And lust, lust,

greed pride Bring quite a bit of pleasure for quite a long time only envy is absolutely no fun at all draining all joy From you from its very first moment. We have all felt envy's desperate deep soul-destroying lacerating stabs, it's kind of This the second reason we've got to deal with envy is if you look carefully you'll see an awful lot of the places that

where joy and happiness is draining out of your life. It's because of the holes that envy has stabbed in your soul. And let's move on. Why does it do that? Because, thirdly, envy poisons your ability to enjoy the life you've got. Envy poisons your ability to enjoy and be grateful for the things that you've got. Envy could be called comparison-itis.

There's nothing wrong with comparison, but envy is comparisonitis. And here's how you know envy's got you in its grip. Nothing's good enough. Your job's not good enough. Your body's not good enough. Your life's not good enough. Your friendship's not good enough. Your marriage is not good enough. Your love life is not good enough. Nothing's good enough. You're always finding fault. You're always critical. You can never just sit down and savor the moment. You can never just sit down and enjoy what's in front of you. There's always something wrong.

because you're comparing yourself to everyone else. And therefore, envy literally poisons us psychologically and socially. Do you not see it? For example, envy poisons and destroys your ability to appreciate your own body. We live in a culture that makes us envy the beautiful.

It needs for us to envy the beautiful. It's a marketing strategy. It just bombards you with pictures of beauty so that when you look in a mirror, you can't enjoy what you see at all.

They do that so that you'll buy all the various products and do all the various things, but it's pretty serious. There's a whole class of people, a whole class of fairly young people that utterly hate the way they look all the time. And you know, because some of you probably are like that. I don't know who they are, but I know in New York City, there's a lot of you that utterly hate the way you look. What's happened? Envy has poisoned it. It's poisoned you. Secondly,

Envy makes the average upper echelons, maybe I should say everywhere, but envy makes the average upper echelons of corporate New York City political hell. There's an enormous amount of envy in the upper echelons of every major corporation in New York City. It's the reason why it's so hard to work. The jealousy and the envy is horrible. Ah, you say,

Maybe I'll just get out of the corporate world. Whereas all this envy and backbiting and enormous envy and enormous jealousy, I will go into something like teaching. Well, before you do that, every professor I know, every professor I know in the academic world says you have no idea how the academic world is just absolutely twisted and distorted by jealousy. Scholars are utterly jealous of who gets published where.

There's enormous jealousy. We've got to bring, as soon as somebody becomes prominent, we've got to bring them down. We've got to attack them. And by the way, it's not just corporate America. It's not just academic America. What do you think is behind all the venom in our political culture today? You really think it's just people have different ideas? It's envy of power. Remember Vincent Foster?

the member of the Clinton administration that committed suicide? Do you remember what was in his suicide note? He says, I don't belong here in Washington. Here, ruining people's reputation is sport. But what he was talking about was envy. Whenever somebody gets to the top, we've just got to bring him or her down. Envy is destroying our political culture. It's destroying our corporate culture. It's destroying us psychologically. We can't look at our bodies.

And an awful lot of our personal problems, I know this is a bit of an overgeneralization, but I have to say an awful lot of our personal problems is that we just are unwilling. We're just so twisted with envy over other people's lives. We want their life, his life, her life, that kind of person's life. I hate the life I've got. And of course, it's going to create all kinds of deep emotional problems. Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon on envy, says, never underestimate the spiritual power of envy.

You know what happened? Adam and Eve. You know what happened? Paradise. They got paradise and it wasn't good. Everything. They had everything. Perfect, eternal life. No disease. No hunger. Beautiful paradise. Oh, one thing. You can't eat that tree. Don't touch that tree. Everything else is perfect and it wasn't good enough. I mean, envy turned the Garden of Eden into the world.

Never underestimate the power of envy. Now, there's one last reason why you've got to deal with envy. We've got to deal with envy, one, because it hides itself, two, because it drains all joy out of our life, three, because it poisons us psychologically and sociologically, and it is. But fourth, we've got to deal with envy because, as Joseph Epstein says, if you understand what you envy, you'll understand your own heart.

There's a place where Epstein actually says, if you want to, pardon me, he says, envy might be the greatest Rorschach test of all. Learn what you envy and you will know who you are. Wow. Now, why would he say that? Well, the answer to his question, I think, the answer to that question is to look at a little book by Søren Kierkegaard called Sickness Unto Death. I keep going back to that book. And of course, because I keep going back to that book, I keep taking you back to that book, too, if you've been around for a while, you know.

But Kierkegaard talks about envy too, and in this context. Søren Kierkegaard in that book says that God calls every person he's created, he calls all human beings to live before God. That's his terminology. Kierkegaard calls every human being to live before God. What does that mean? He calls every human being to build your identity on God, center your life on God, make God the main source of your happiness.

But Kierkegaard says human beings are offended, that's his term, by this invitation because they don't want anyone superior to them. And so instead of living before God, we live before other things. We live before people's approval or we live before money or we live before career or achievement. We live before popular acclaim. In other words, we build our identity on other things. And he says, if you want to understand...

what it is you look to instead of God for your identity. If you want to understand what you look to for your justification for your existence, figure out your envies. In the midst of life's uncertainties, where do you turn for wisdom? The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom to help guide us in all aspects of life.

In Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional book, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, you'll get a fresh, inspiring view of God's wisdom each day of the year from the book of Proverbs. This devotional book will help you unlock the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guide you toward a new understanding of what it means to live the Christian life.

This resource is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people. You can request your copy of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life when you give today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

See, he says in Sickness Under Death, he says, if you want to understand what I'm talking about, study human envy. An admirer who feels he cannot be happy by surrendering himself becomes envious of that which he admires. Admiration is happy self-surrender. Envy is unhappy self-justification. Now, what does that mean? Well, let me just give you a couple of examples. Let's just say you're a musician and you went to music school 20 years ago and almost everybody else you went to music school with you

is doing better than you producing more music producing great music got better connections making more money getting more acclaim putting out more albums and so on how will you feel about that kirkegaard says it all depends on your relationship to god kirkegaard says if you're living before god then music is critical music is wonderful music is important but you'll still be able to admire people who are doing better than you you'll be able to rejoice in them doing that

But if you are living before music, if music is the reason you get out of bed in the morning, if music is the meaning of your life, if music is the way you know that you're worth something, if you're living before music, you will not be able to admire anyone happily who's doing better than you. You will resent them. You will envy them. But he says if you want to know what your envies are, if you want to know what your self-justifications are, if you want to know who you really are, follow your envies.

You envy people who have the thing that you use to justify yourself. Remember Rocky? He says to Adrian, I just want to go the distance. Remember in the ring? He's a boxer. Remember Rocky? And Adrian says, why? And Rocky says, then I'll know I'm not a bum. Boxing was his self-justification. If I can just do well in boxing, then I know I'm not a bum. Would you please look yourself in the mirror? There's something that everybody in this room,

is pursuing someone or something, some achievement, some relationship, deep down in your heart says, if you have that, then you'll know you're not a bum. And if it's not God, if the love of God, your relationship with God, if knowing God delights in you, if that is not the deepest consolation of your heart, the greatest honor of your soul, if it's not God,

that convinces you you're not a bum, if it's something else, you are going to be drained by envy all your life. And because everybody in this room, including me, does not really wholly live before God, but is always looking to something else for self-justification, we're all filled with envy. We're all fighting envy. And we're all, therefore, drained of joy. Now do you see why we have to deal with envy? So that's how to understand envy. And secondly, that's why we have to deal with envy. So thirdly,

Where do we take envy? Where do we take our envy so that it doesn't strangle us and just suck all that joy out of our lives? Well, take a look at Proverbs 23, verses 17 and 18. Do not let your heart envy sinners. Okay, don't envy. So do what? But here they are. Look up, look ahead. Take your envy up into the fear of the Lord. Take your envy ahead into the future hope that is guaranteed to you as a believer. Or let's put it this way.

you must, if you want to deal with envy, you've got to take yourself up into an experience of the unenviousness of God. And then secondly, you've got to take your heart and look at the hope of what's going to come for you in the future that is the final destruction of all envy. Now, let me take a look at these two things. What is the fear of the Lord? It's not just thinking.

It's worship. Now, we talked about this four weeks ago, so I can't go all into this, but when the Bible talks about the fear of the Lord, it's not talking about being scared of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is awe and wonder before the magnificence and for the beauty of God. In verse 17 of Psalm 73, we hear that this man finally was able to get on top of his envy when we're told he went into the sanctuary.

He had a sanctuary experience. Now, what does that mean? He worshipped. He had an experience of God. See, anger, sexual desire, greed, many of the things we've been looking at for the last few weeks basically are dealt with with thinking. If you're materialistic, you're not thinking. Think about what money is for. Think about your relationship to community. Think about what God has done for you. Think, think, think, think. But envy is different. The solution to envy is not just know this and know that.

experience. The solution for envy is worship. He went into the sanctuary. Then he began to perceive. What's a sanctuary experience? Well, David talks about it in Psalm 63. In Psalm 63, David says, I have seen you in the sanctuary. I have beheld your power and your glory because your steadfast love is better than life. I will praise you as long as I live. My soul will be satisfied as with the

Here's what a sanctuary experience is. It's not just knowing God loves you. It's having a sense on the heart of God's love. There's all this sensory language. I went into the sanctuary, says David, and I saw your love. I went into the sanctuary. I saw your love with the eyes of my soul. I tasted your love. It was like food, he says, on the palate of my soul. I felt your love.

Now, what is he talking about? Did he see a brightness? Did he have a vision? Did he hear a voice? No. And besides that, that would never deal with envy. It's beyond that. To not just know about God's love, but to see it, to sense it, to taste it in your soul. It's not just like listening to a great song. It's like getting inside the song. It's not just like listening to a great, tearful, moving story. It's like getting inside the story.

Do you know what I'm talking about? If you don't, you just need to go to God and ask for it. You need to say, Lord, you have been at a concept up to now, but I'm never going to deal with my envy unless I actually experience your love. And not just your love in general. He had a realization of God's unmerited grace. Look, in verse 21 and 22 and 23 and 24, he says, my heart was grieved. My spirit was embittered. I was senseless and ignorant. I was as a brute beast before you, but I

I'm always before you. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel. After it, you will take me into glory. He realized he'd been foolish. He'd realized he'd been cruel to God. He'd been senseless. He'd been like a brute beast. He was embittered. He was terrible. And when he came to his senses, he saw that God had never let him go, that God was completely committed to him in spite of how he had lived, that God was completely dedicated to him in spite of how he'd live, unmerited grace. And because...

God did not begrudge him what he didn't deserve. Because God was unenvious with him, he suddenly realized how stupid his own envy had been against other people. So when he started to experience the grace of God and began to experience the love of God,

It began to give him freedom from his envy. Well, now somebody here says, well, that's great. I'm really glad that he is absolutely sure God will never forsake him. And he's absolutely God, absolutely sure that God is unconditionally committed to him and God will never let go of his hand. Well, maybe he thinks that, but I don't know that's true. And I don't know that I could know that. Maybe he knows it, but I don't know it. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

In fact, you can know that God is unconditionally, graciously committed to you with more certainty than the psalmist had. How? On the cross, Jesus Christ had the exact opposite experience as the psalmist here in Psalm 73. The psalmist had lived in a terrible way and yet found God had not forsaken him. But Jesus Christ on the cross...

had lived in a perfect way and found God had forsaken him. Jesus Christ turned to God for strength and all he got was thirst. Jesus Christ, as it were, raised a hand. And what happened? You know, I don't know why, but lately I've been noticing so many thriller movies end with somebody grabbing somebody's hand. Have you noticed this? There's somebody who's about to fall into some abyss.

And then somebody comes running up to the precipice and says, give me your hand. And then the camera always zooms in on the hands clasping. And then the music comes up. And the person's pulled up. And you just feel so good. I think I've seen about six movies like that recently. But when Jesus put out a hand, in the greatest agony, all he got was air. Here's the psalmist saying...

I have lived a crappy life, and yet I found when I turned to you, you had never let go of my hand. And here's Jesus having lived a perfect life, and when he put up a hand, God forsook him. He said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Now, why would that be? And the answer is the gospel. Jesus Christ came to earth to pay the debt that deep in our heart we all know we owe for all the wrongs we have done.

And because God would not take two payments for the same debt, it means since he's paid the debt, that no matter how you live, no matter what you've done, no matter what your record, no matter how much you've failed, no matter how senseless you've been, embittered you've been, how much like a brute beast you've been, if you reach out a hand to the Father, you will find he always had you by the hand. Unconditionally. Why? We have the hand because Jesus lost the hand.

We will never be forsaken because Jesus was forsaken. And when I see Jesus being the most unenvious person in history, Jesus didn't say, wait a minute, how comes they get the hand and I don't? Wait a minute, how comes they're embraced and I'm forsaken? He didn't begrudge anything. He didn't begrudge anything. We didn't get what we deserved. He didn't get what he deserved and he didn't care. He loves us. He delights in the differential between what we got and what he got.

And in the face of that soul-melting, moved to tears, melt-in-your-mouth grace and love of Jesus Christ, being the most unenvious person in the history of the human race, when you realize what he did for you, an experience of that, that will take away your envy. It will erode your envy. You've got to have it. As Kierkegaard said, unless you see...

that he is your portion, unless he is your justification, unless that is the thing that most captures your imagination, unless his love is the thing that you build your life on and that you live before, you're going to be eaten up by envy all of your life. But that's not all. You're not only supposed to take your envy up into the fear of the Lord.

You're supposed to look ahead, take your envy ahead, and see your hope. Well, what is your hope? Well, listen, the death of Jesus tells me that God is unconditionally, graciously committed to us. But the resurrection of Jesus tells us that in the future, we're going to have a new heaven and new earth. And why do you need that?

to deal with the discontent of your heart. Here's why. You know, a big part of envy is good. Remember Salieri in Amadeus? Salieri resented Mozart. He envied Mozart because Mozart could make such wonderful music, and he resented it, and that was terrible, of course. And yet, Salieri envied Mozart because he loved music, because he had aspirations of creating music that his ability couldn't realize.

I mean, he loved music, and what was so terrible was that he couldn't realize his aspirations. Is there anything wrong with wanting a decent body? Is there anything wrong with wanting a good family? And if you just want these good things, how are you going to avoid envy when you see how incomplete your life is and how broken your life is? But if you know that what's coming...

is the complete fulfillment of your deepest desires beyond your wildest imagination, then and only then are you going to be able to live with the incompleteness of this world. You know, J.R.R. Tolkien envied his friend C.S. Lewis. You know why? Tolkien and Lewis back in 1937 said, let's write fiction books of the kind we really want to see written. And so Tolkien

Over the next 20 years, C.S. Lewis wrote the Space Trilogy, book one, book two, book three, Narnia Chronicles, book one, book two, book three, book four, book five, book six, book seven, Screwtape Letters. He just churned them out and churned them out, and Tolkien continually wrote over and over and over again, rewrote, rewrote one book. All those 37 years, he just was working on one book, and he never got it done. He thought he would never get it done. And he envied Lewis because he had more problem with envy. If you read his biography, he had a great deal of problem because envy

He had aspirations. He had this great story that he wanted to tell. He desperately wanted to tell it. And he would rewrite, if you know anything about the history of how he would write, probably every chapter in The Lord of the Rings was written ten times. It was just rewritten and rewritten because he never liked it. It was never good enough. Nothing was ever good enough because it wasn't as great as what he aspired to. And in the early 40s, he actually got so frustrated with his own artistic incompetence

And his own envy, in a sense, that he got writer's block and he stopped working on Lord of the Rings completely. And one night he had a dream. And when he woke up, he wrote the dream down into a story. And after that, he was okay. And the story is called Leaf by Niggle. And it's a story about an artist named Niggle. And the town's father's

commissioned him to do a mural, a huge mural on the side of the town hall. And so they put this big canvas up there, and he worked on it for weeks, he worked on it for months, he worked on it for years, and he was trying to...

He had this idea in his head of a tree, a beautiful tree, and he was trying to paint a tree. But after years, all he had done was one leaf right down here in the corner of the canvas. And the town fathers came and said, we paid you all that money for a leaf. Look, it looks terrible. A leaf? And he said, well, I'm trying, I'm trying, but he could never realize it. And then he died. And he was on a train to paradise. And as he was getting close to paradise, he suddenly saw something up on a hill. And he said, stop the train.

And he ran up to the top of the hill, and this is what we read. Before him stood the tree, his tree, finished, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt and guessed but had often failed to catch. He gazed at the tree, and slowly he lifted his arms, and he opened them wide. It's a gift, he said. Suddenly Tolkien realized there is a real tree, and someday everybody's going to see it.

There's a story that I'm trying to tell, and of course I'll never get it out, but someday I will. And someday everybody's going to see that story. Tolkien was a Christian, and he believed in the resurrection. And when he realized that in the future, the deepest desires of his heart

We're all there, and we were going to get there, and we're going to get to them. He was able to handle the incompleteness, and he was able to handle his own envy. You have to go up. You have to go out. You have to take your envy into the presence of the most unenvious God, and then you must take your envy to the future, and that will destroy your joylessness.

Go to the most unenvious person in the history of the world, Jesus Christ, and to the degree you come into his presence, you will find rest for your souls. Let us pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us what we need to live joyful lives. We have lives filled with dissatisfaction and discontentment. We never seem to be happy with the way in which our lives are going, but it's of the essence of wisdom to know the fear of the Lord, to know an experience of your grace.

to know the future that God, you, Lord, have stored up for us. Until we're able to live lives with peace and poise and contentment, we want to be like Paul who said, I have learned how to be content no matter what my circumstances. So help us to that end as we worship you through the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 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 equips you to know more about God's Word. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at gospelandlife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel in Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

This month's sermons were recorded in 2004. 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.