The Sandals of Peace (Part 1)
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Each year we make a special free resource available during this season of Lent. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel in Life would like to send you a daily devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email at gospelinlife.com slash Lent. Now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place."

and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. That's God's word.

A quick recap, but also a way to another insight about this whole idea of armor. Paul is going through the various elements or pieces of equipment that a Roman soldier would wear, and he's going through it to tell you how to live a Christian life. The beauty of the illustration is that it perfectly captures a balance that is critical to understanding if you're going to live a Christian life.

If Redeemer is your first church, really, except for some childhood arrangements that you might have had with your parents, negotiations, if Redeemer is really your first church since childhood or since a long time ago, you may not have had to experience this, but most of us who have been to other churches and been in other parts of Christendom, other traditions, realize that one of the great problems

is a balance of understanding in the Christian life how much of it is your exertion and effort and how much of it is God's working in you. There are whole denominations, there are whole traditions that put all the emphasis on one or the other, and almost all of us have been in situations where you've heard one side or the other. You see, on the one hand, the reason for that is because you've got a whole series of texts that talk as if we've got... When you become a Christian, it's all over. I mean, you've got it. You've arrived.

The minute you become a Christian, you've got everything you need. So you have a place like Colossians 2. If I ever get through Colossians, you'll see that Paul was trying to refer, was trying to deal with a particular heresy at the time. But anyway, in Colossians 2, he says, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which is...

That's an amazing statement. And then he says, "And when Christ comes into your life, you therefore have come to fullness of life in him." See, all of the Godhead dwells in Christ, and Christ dwells in you, and therefore you have come to fullness of life in him. That's a strong statement. You've got it. Don't ask for anything more. Don't ask for more glory, don't ask for more power, don't ask for more strength. What more could you have?

It goes along, there's another text, which is a great text to study and think about, is 2 Peter 1, verse 3, where Peter says, In him we have received all things that pertain to life and godliness. Now, it's a strong statement, because the word life there, as many of you know, is life.

As many of you know, there's two Greek words that are used for the word, that translate the word life. There's the word bios, which means your biological life. It means your physical life. In a sense, it means your quantity of life. And you have the word zoe, which has to do with the quality of life. It has to do with love and with joy and with excitement, you see. And it says you have everything in Christ necessary that pertains to zoe and to godliness.

Now this means that you've been given in Christ everything necessary to be completely and thoroughly happy. That's what it's saying. And what it's trying to say, all things. For example, you feel guilty? You've got more than enough forgiveness in Christ. You feel lonely? You feel like you don't belong? You're adopted. You've got more than enough love and belongingness. You feel afraid of the future? You've got more than enough hope. You've got glory guaranteed.

And then, of course, it doesn't just say all things that pertain to Zoe or life or exhilaration or joy, but it says also all things that pertain to godliness. It says, "In Christ you already have everything you need to live right, to live a godly life." 1 Corinthians 10:13, a verse that both encourages and haunts a Christian all of his or her life. It says, "No trial has overtaken you except that which is common to man. God is faithful and he will not test you beyond your ability.

but along with the trial will always provide a way for you to endure it. Now, what that means is, on the one hand, you know, it blesses your socks off, you see. You say, wow, that means that God will always help me. God will always support me. It also means you never have an excuse. You never have an excuse to disobey him, ever. You can never say it was just too much. I couldn't help it.

You know, it blesses you and it haunts you, but it's the same as this 1 Peter 1:3. You have everything you need for godliness. You've got more than enough strength, more than enough forgiveness, more than enough hope, more than enough belongingness and love, because when you're in your right mind, the things you have are far greater than anything you could possibly face.

of a negative or combative nature. When a Christian is in his or her right mind, when a Christian is thinking about what you already have in Christ, a Christian says, give me a place to stand and I will shake the earth. What else do I need? So you've got all these texts that say, you've got fullness, you've got it all, it's all there, it's just there. Then you get all these other texts that say, run the race, fight the good fight. I am poured out like a libation.

Put on, therefore. Strive, fight. There's all kinds of references to exertion. And it depends. Some churches get a hold of one set of texts and they become legalistic churches. They say, it's all up to you. You've got to do it.

You have to work, you have to obey, you have to repent, get in there and fight. And they put a tremendous amount of emphasis on your own control and your own work, and you're making yourself a holy person. And so they're legalistic. There's another kind of church which is quietistic. Now that's a term that's been used that you might not be familiar with. The opposite of legalism is quietism.

And quietism, some of you have come up against this in some forms, maybe not in the extreme forms, but quietism says, if you're a Christian, then you're already victorious. Stop struggling. Stop fighting. Stop trying to overcome this sin. Just claim your victory. Just realize that you're already victorious. Just realize that you've already got it. It's already done. Let go and let God do it for you. Stop struggling. Stop striving.

Any of you come up against any of that at all? Maybe not in the most extreme forms, but that's quietism, and that's looking at another whole set of texts. Well, which is it? Well, you see, what you have in this particular illustration, an extended metaphor, the former of God is a perfect example of not just a balance. The right biblical approach is not really just a combination of the two, but a synthesis of the two.

And what you have in the example and the metaphor of the armor is just a perfect illustration of how you do have it all and yet you've got to put it on. You know, I tried to say something about this a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of you remember it. There's a sense in which when you become a Christian, you get your package in the mail.

It's a starter kit, in a sense. It's all in there, all the equipment is in there, and you say, "Oh, great, my armor, that's wonderful. It's all here, it's wonderful. I've come to fullness of life in him. Marvelous. It's not my righteousness, it's his righteousness. It's not my piece, it's his piece. I've got it all. Great." But then you realize, "Oh, now I have to get all this on, I have to assemble it." You get excited when you order one of these kits, and then they come in the mail.

And you open up, you know, I got one for one of my sons, you know, it's actually a microprocessor kit. What a micro, I've never even seen a microchip up close, I don't think. And sure enough, I open it up and the manual comes out like this, and it's all there. Obviously, you know, I should be able to do all kinds of things if I get the thing together. A tremendous number of things. We're supposed to be able to synthesize music. We're supposed to be able to play music. We're supposed to be able to do all sorts of

various mathematical calculations, and all kinds of stuff that we could never do on our own. On the other hand, it's still got to be put together. It's got to be used. It takes effort. There's a sense in which what Paul is saying here is, look, here's your chest. Your chest will never hold up to the arrows of the battles of life. You need the breastplate of righteousness, but you've got to put it on. In Christ, you've got it. Without Christ, you couldn't possibly, in your own efforts, do this. But you've still got to put it on.

They're there. You've got to work it out. You've got to put it on. You've got to work out your salvation. You've got to think through it, and you've got to grasp it, and you've got to put it on. And so what you have is this combination of both realizing that there is no way that you personally have got the equipment to handle the battles of life. You must do this. This is the armor of God. It's not your armor. It's not of your own making. These are privileges that have been accomplished for you.

But on the other hand, there is an exertion because there's an application of them. There's a taking up of them. There's a putting on of them. When you've got them on, you know, when you've got your breastplate on, it takes work to put it on. We've been talking about it for two or three weeks. What does it mean to continually pick up the fact that in Christ you're already holy and blameless? It'll revolutionize you psychologically. It'll revolutionize your relationships. We've talked about it. And yet once you put it on and you find it operating...

You don't sit there and say, "What a great, strong chest I've got." Man, I'll tell you something, those arrows just bounce off. You know, Superman's got nothing on me. You don't say that, of course not. When you get the breastplate on and you find that it's deflecting off the arrows, you don't say, "Wow, what a great chest I've got." You say, "Thank you, Lord, for that breastplate." And yet you had to put it on. So it's a marvelous and wonderful combination.

What is this particular piece of armor? The readiness of the gospel of peace. Shod your feet with it. Now, if we want to understand what Paul is trying to get at here, what aspect of the gospel benefits, what aspect of being a Christian he's talking about that we have to put on and practice, we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions if you want to interpret this passage. First of all, we need to ask ourselves, what was the role of the footwear of a Roman soldier? Maybe some of you are even surprised

that when Paul's thinking about the armor, he'd even list the shoes. He'd say, what the heck? Shoes are shoes. You know, why would you consider shoes part of the armor? Why would you consider shoes part of the equipment of a soldier? Well, the first question we have to ask is, what role did the shoes have? Shoes were not just shoes, especially from the time of Alexander the Great on. Shoes were extremely important for a soldier because good

Soldier shoes had to have three qualities one is they had to provide traction - they had to provide protection three they had to provide mobility Traction was this did you know these shoes were like cleats these shoes had hobnails on them these shoes had little spikes on them and they were they were really the original cleats and the reason that they were there was because for you to slip and

when you were climbing or when you were running or when you were maneuvering or when you were fighting, to slip, to lose your footing, was not just a, "Oh, whoops!" It wasn't like that. It wasn't even like in skiing, "Oh, I broke my leg." You're dead if you lost your traction as a soldier. And therefore, the shoes had to be specially made. They were the only cleats, in a sense, to give traction. They had to be gripping. And secondly, they had to be tough because

your opponents put spikes into the ground, metal or wooden sharp spikes. They weren't stuck up real high, but what they were was just up, you know, an inch or two above the ground, very often under leaves or other sort of debris. And the whole purpose behind that was so that when the other army came, you would step on them. If the shoes were not extremely tough and were able, in a sense, to absorb or deflect that,

What simply happened was the soldiers weren't killed by having a spike go up into their foot, but what did happen was they were debilitated, they were disabled. And so the shoes had to provide protection. Thirdly, they had to be light. Not only did they have to grip, I know some of you say, "Oh, this is like my Nikes," but not quite, right? Well, the same principle. They had to grip, they had to be strong, at the same time they had to be as light as possible.

And the reason for that was really from the time of Alexander the Great on, people suddenly realized... Alexander the Great won an awful lot of his battles through mobility. He was able to get his soldiers to march further and faster than anybody else. He surprised people all the time. He went around flanks. And it was the mobility of his army which was one of the great secrets for why he conquered the world.

From the time of Alexander the Great on, everybody tried to come up with a greater and greater footwear that would try to find material that was as gripping and yet as tough and yet as light as possible. Those are the three things. That's the first question: what was the role of the shoes? Those were the roles of the shoes. Second question, if you want to understand Paul's meaning: what do the shoes represent? And before somebody says, "Sure, they represent the gospel of peace." Uh-uh, that's not what it says.

The gospel of peace is the object of a prepositional phrase. The subject, or you might say the object of the sentence, is the word what? Readiness, or if you've got an old translation, preparation. It's a Greek word, etoimesia, and it comes from the gospel of peace. It's the readiness from the gospel of peace. And what is it? It's a word that means nimbleness.

It really means a nimbleness. It's a word that you would use for a dancer. It's a word that you would use for an athlete, someone who is nimble, someone who is light-footed, someone who is sure-footed. And it's the opposite of being sluggish, of being doubtful, of being inert. This is a quality of character.

And it's really not, you know, it's a little unusual because you don't usually find it in most of the lists of things that Christians are supposed to be. That's what's so intriguing about it. It's a spiritual character. It's actually a frame of heart, a readiness, an ability to take things, not easily surprised, quick on your feet, ready for changes, ready for action, a certain lightness of step. So you're willing and able, energetic,

If you think of the three things that the shoes are supposed to do, if you think of they're supposed to provide traction, protection, and mobility, they're supposed to be gripping, they're supposed to be tough, and they're supposed to be light. There's a sense in which this particular quality of heart that comes from the gospel of peace means that first of all, there's got to be an assurance. You see, gripping, sure-footed. There's got to be an assurance, a confidence. I know who I am. I know where I stand.

Then that's one part of this "etoi mesia," this readiness. Secondly, toughness. You can take spikes. You can take problems. One of the main effects of the gospel of peace is that you can take it. You're not anymore... Oh, by the way, Jesus cried all the time, but he wasn't a crybaby. What's the difference? Jesus cried constantly, but he wasn't a baby. That meant, you see, he didn't cry as he was shrinking back, he cried as he pushed on.

Big difference. You know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with crying a lot if you're pushing on. There's nothing wrong when you're crying a lot saying, that man hit me. There's a toughness that's part of this et tu amazing, this readiness. There's an assurance, there's a toughness, and then there's a lightness, there's a joy. Now, before we can see what those things are, we have to ask ourselves, where do they come from? And here it is again. It comes from using the gospel, but especially thinking about how the gospel brings peace.

This, again, is a quality of life and a quality of heart and a quality of character that only comes if you're using the gospel. Here it goes again, but in a particular way, picking up the gospel and recognizing the peace that comes from it, enjoying the peace, sucking the peace out of it.

deriving the peace from using the gospel in a radical way in your life. Now, what's the gospel of peace? You've heard us talk about the gospel in a certain way for the last two or three weeks when we talked about righteousness, but now we're going to talk about it in a different way. What's the gospel of peace? We've got to understand that. Then we can see how it leads to this readiness of heart. Okay, first, the main piece of the Bible, and this is a very important principle for counseling,

for counseling. It's a very important principle for you trying to figure your life out. The main kind of peace that the Bible talks about, the peace that is the basis for all other sorts of peace, there's a lot of different kinds of peace in the Bible, but it's the objective peace with God that comes from the gospel. The gospel is the message of what Jesus has done. And the gospel of peace means that if you are a Christian, you're at peace with God, the war is over.

Now, all other kinds of peace derive from that. And one of your problems and one of my biggest problems is that when we think of peace, we immediately think of subjective peace. We immediately think, I want that calmness in the storm. I want that fixedness. I want that, I want to be, I want, like some people who've got that calmness and that peace in the midst of confusion, that's what I want. And the world clamors for it.

It's probably the summum bonum of a lot of New Age and Buddhist thought. The whole idea is to get that centeredness. Isn't it called that? To always know where you're going, to not let anything distract you, to be placid, to be calm. We clamor for it. Some people have to go to take chemicals for it. Some people go to counseling for it. Some people certainly go to meditation and relaxation techniques for it.

And the Christians, I mean, Christianity provides it. Christianity calls it peace from God. There's a peace that comes from him. There's a lot of talk about that. But I don't want to talk to you about that because in the Bible, it says it's the peace with God that's the basis for your peace from God. It's objective peace that's the basis for subjective peace. And almost immediately when I talk to people who say, I'm coming to church or I'm trying to read the Bible because I don't have peace in my life.

Now, this is what I'm trying to get across here. You're probably looking at something that's too superficial. What you mean is that I've got problems in my life, I've been disturbed, I've got relationship problems, I've got economic problems, I've got self-image problems, I've got these sort of problems and I have an anxiety and I want God's peace. You're thinking of the peace from God. The Bible always says before you can deal with the peace from God or get it, you first have to have peace with God.

And the first thing the gospel gives you is peace with God. Romans 5, verse 1, since we are justified by faith, since we've been saved, we have peace with God. Or Romans 5, verse 10. See, Romans 5 is the big chapter on this whole subject. Romans 5, verse 10 says, when we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. Now, here's what I'm trying to get across. Until you see...

that you have been at war with God, you have been waging a war against God, you have been hostile to God, and you have been an enemy of God. And the most foundational, most basic piece you've got to have is the end of that war. Your heart has to be softened toward him, away from its hostility, and his heart and face has to be turned toward you. You have to be reconciled. Two people who were not on speaking terms, two persons

who are at war with each other in a sense, hostile to each other in a sense. I'm going to show you that our hostility to him is nothing at all like his wrath on our sin, but I'll show you this in a minute. I'm trying to show you that this is the peace that you need first. And you see, whenever, when most people say, yes, I want peace with God, they're not thinking about this. They're thinking about the subject of peace, and you're never going to get it unless you understand peace with God first.

Success, true love, and the life you've always wanted. Many of us have made these good things into ultimate things. We've put our faith in them when deep down we know that they cannot satisfy our longings. The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, gods that can't give us what we really need.

In his book, "Counterfeit Gods," Dr. Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals and our own hearts, and that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires.

Dr. Keller's book is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the power of the gospel. So request your copy of Counterfeit Gods at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. What is this peace with God? What is this war with God? It's a clear teaching of the scripture that until God changes your heart,

The basic and most root attitude you have toward God is one of enmity and hostility. Until you understand this, you're never going to get the peace from God. You know why? See, look, Romans, you can tell, I really want to get this across, but I don't, I'm not real confident I'm doing it. I mean, that's my insecurity. Romans 8 says, "...the natural mind is enmity against God. It will not submit to the law of God. Indeed, it cannot." That's a blunt statement.

Your natural mind, your mind apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, is not just hostile to God, it's enmity. You know, the word "enmity" is awfully strong. It doesn't just say you have enmity, it says you are enmity. Jonathan Edwards, the great congregational intellectual of the 1740s up in Massachusetts, wrote a tremendous treatise called "Men Naturally God's Enemies," and he proves from the Scripture

that in our natural state, we don't just disbelieve in God, we don't just disobey God, we're mad at him, we're hostile to him, we're against him. Now stop and think, isn't it true that every psychologist knows, and that virtually everybody in New York knows, that if you hate somebody and you can't come to grips with it, it will completely shape and distort your life? Isn't that true? Of course.

Isn't it true, therefore, if the Bible itself says from first to last that in your natural deep part of your heart you're mad at him, really mad at him, that this is something so deep you've got to find out this is true? Imagine if you really are mad at God and you don't know it. See, first of all, when you're mad at somebody and you don't know it, you always feel guilty about that person, always. Because as mad as you are, you somehow in another part of your heart feel like you shouldn't be this mad.

And so you always have a kind of ambivalent relationship. You've got an approach avoidance problem. On the one hand, you feel like, "I shouldn't be this mad," but on the other hand, you feel like, "I should." That's why I like to always quote, you know, I think profound psychology when C.S. Lewis says, "Originally, the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated them. Then they hated them because they killed them." Because you see, in other words,

First of all, they were mean to them because they were mad at them. Then they became mad at them because they'd been mean to them. There's always this feeling of guilt which then makes you more mad and you deal with the guilt by being more mad. It's also true that if you're mad at God, you don't trust him. You don't trust the person who you're mad at at all. Not only that, if they're nice to you, it doesn't matter. It's never nice enough.

You're mad at your father and he sends you a card on your birthday, and what do you say? Somebody says, "Oh, your father got you a card." You say, "Huh, where was he when..." In other words, your anger makes you unable to be grateful for anything from him. And so, your life is full of self-pity. Your life also...you can't deal with troubles that come into your life because you don't trust God loving you at all. You suspect him. Don't you see if it's what the Bible says is true, how that's going to distort your entire life?

is what the Bible says true? Maybe somebody is out there saying, this is ridiculous. I admit that I don't obey God like I should. In fact, I even admit that I don't really know if I believe it, and my faith is pretty weak if it's there at all. But I'm not mad at him. Yeah, you are. I know it because the Bible says so, but I know it because when the Bible said so, it helped me look at my own heart. And my own heart is the way to find out something about your heart.

For example, Jonathan Edwards in his masterful treatise, "Men Naturally God's Enemies," says if you want to understand your anger and hatred toward God, look at the different faculties. Look at your mind, your will, and your emotions. For example, look at your mind. A lot of you say, "Well, I believe in God. I mean, I don't hate him." Well, I find that when people talk about God, they mean the God they think about.

You know that very famous, I've mentioned it before, the famous, not famous, it's only famous because I saw it and I tell people about it all the time. It was a David Frost show in which he had, years ago, had Madeline Murray O'Hare, the famous atheist on, and they were debating about things and finally David Frost, he was so frustrated because she's smarter than he is, and she was beating him the whole time in her argument. She was just a smart atheist and she was just beating him up.

And he finally dealt with the thing in the American way, even though he's British, and he turned and he took a poll of the studio audience. And he said, "How many of you believe in God?" And about 80% of them raised their hands, so he turned and smirked, you know. But you see, I remember thinking this: What do you mean they believe in God? What kind of God? They believe in the God they believe in. But what if I got out the Bible and I started reading to them the God of the Bible? How do they feel about the God of the Bible?

What if we read what the Bible actually says God is like, what he says he's like in the Scripture? How about the place where he says, "Don't touch the Ark of the Covenant because that's where my glory rests." And one guy tried to touch the Ark of the Covenant when it was falling over him and the other, remember what happened to him? Struck dead. What about when God descends on Mount Sinai and says, "If anybody touches the mountain in which I am standing, which is holy, even if it is an animal, they must be put to death." What about all the great things that the Bible talks about and says about hell?

and about God sending people to hell, and the things that Jesus says when he says, "Fear not those who can destroy the body, but fear him who can destroy your body and your soul in hell." What about the God that says, "I will in no wise clear the guilty"? What about that God? What I would have liked to have done is I would have liked to have said, after David Frost did that, I would have liked to have gotten up and said,

Let me ask you this question again: Do you believe in the God of the Bible? The God who says, "I will know why it's clear that I'm guilty"? The God who thunders from Mount Sinai, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy"? Do you believe in the God who says, "I am holy, be holy as I am holy"? Do you believe in a God who reveals himself in the Scripture? How many of you believe in that God? I really don't know how many hands would have gone up. Not only that, but when you show people what God says he is, when you get them to read the Scripture and really see who God is,

They don't just say, I don't believe in that. What do they get? They get mad. They get mad. They say, this is repulsive. This is repugnant. I can't believe in a God like that. What they mean is, I'm mad at a God like that. Then Edwards says, look at your feelings. Not only can you see your hostility in your intellect, people are intellectually hostile to any real revelation of the true God of the Bible. Then secondly, look at the feelings.

I look at my own feelings. What amazes me is I read my own prayer journal from a month ago, and I look at it and I say, "Did I really feel like that?" My heart, and I think it's probably true of your heart, my heart is so cold toward God, the atmosphere of my heart is so cold that

My heart is really like a bucket of water that's outside in the dead of winter in Minnesota. You've got to break the ice on it every couple of hours or it will freeze solid. The atmosphere is such that unless you're constantly breaking the ice, it goes hard immediately. Any Christian knows that.

Even, in fact, not only any Christian, the best Christians know that. See, the reason a lot of you don't realize just how mad you are at God and when you become a Christian, that begins to change and that begins to go away, but there's a lot, there's residue. You see, the more you love him, the more aware you are of that residue. Some of you just don't break that ice very often. You know, once every six months you break the ice and you don't even realize how cold your heart is. If you were going to him every day, you'd have to break the ice. That's the way it goes.

Another way you can see your hostility toward God and your feelings is the ingratitude. If anybody came up to you and said, "Oh, look it, look it, you're 45 years old and you don't own a home. You don't own an apartment. How much will it take for you to own something? Well, how many, a couple hundred thousand? Here. Oh, you want to send all your kids through college. How many hundred thousand will that be? Well, you need 300,000, here you go." How would you feel to that person the rest of your life?

Would you forget that person the way we forget God? Would you break the promises you make to that person the way you break your promises and your vows every week to God? You don't treat anybody else like you treat God. Absolutely not. There's nobody else that you've broken so many promises to. There's nobody else that you go so cold over. There's nobody else who's given you so much and you're so ungrateful for it. You can see it when you present the gospel to somebody who doesn't really believe.

You know, you think about it logically, you look at the gospel and the reason, there's plenty of good reasons to reject it, but all those reasons are that it's too good to be true. I mean, look at what it promises you. Look at what it offers. I mean, it makes perfect sense to me when a person says, "I can't believe it." It's absolutely a rational response. "I can't believe it." Why? It's too fantastically wonderful. But that's not how people act. That's the rational response. But instead they say, "I don't like this."

I don't like people that believe this. This is narrow-minded. This is unfair. This is wrong. How can you believe this kind of thing? That's not rational. That's anger. I remember a minister friend of mine was playing golf with a man, and when the man found out the guy was a minister, they were sort of paired up in a tournament. He says, well, I don't go to church, certainly not anymore, because I don't believe in God. The minister friend said, oh, why not? He says, I can't believe in a God who would let my wife miscarry

And it's just ruined her emotionally and ruined us for the last two years. I can't believe in a God who would let that happen. And the minister very calmly said, your problem is not that you don't believe in God. Your problem is that you're mad at him. How can you be so mad at somebody you don't believe in? How can you be, if the person doesn't exist, how can you be mad? And then he sat down and he says, now, listen, let's be rational, rational. Let's be rational about this.

If there is a God, wouldn't he know a lot more about things than you? A lot more? I mean, a whole lot more? And, you know, when a father talks to a two-year-old daughter...

And the two-year-old daughter says, "I know what's got to happen." And the father says, "No, honey, it can't be that way." And the father can't explain it to the two-year-old daughter. Does that mean, you know, the two-year-old daughter gets really upset and really angry. Doesn't she somehow in the end trust her father because intuitively she knows, "My father knows a lot more about these things than me." And wouldn't, if there is a God, wouldn't you relate to the God, the way a two-year-old girl relates to her father, only actually a lot worse?

And wouldn't it be reasonable, therefore, if the God of the Bible really existed, since he knows more about these things that he's got a point? You see, there was no reasoning with the man. He says, if there is a God, he's wicked. Now look, rationally, if there is a God, wouldn't he be much smarter than you? Wouldn't you really not be in a position to analyze this? I mean, recognize, you know, here's a little girl. If there is a God, he's wicked. There was an anger there that blocks out reason. And the reason it's there...

As Jonathan Edwards said, he says, "The anger we have toward God sleeps deep. Like every anger and every hatred that really hurts your soul, it hides itself. The most pernicious and soul-destroying kinds of anger is completely hidden." But he says, "When God crosses your will, when he doesn't let things happen the way you want them to happen," he says, "the anger in your heart is like a bunch of sleeping vipers, but throw a stone in there.

and it'll be up hissing and spitting poison. Yes, the main problem we have, the main problem we have is that we're at war with them, that there's a hostility that distorts our life. And the main reason you don't have subjective peace is because you don't have objective peace.

The main reason you don't have peace from God is because you don't have peace with God. You want mastery of your life, you don't have it, and it doesn't matter what anybody tells you about how irrational it is for you to demand these things. God is not giving you what you want because you want what you want. There is an anger and there's an enmity that has to come there because you have his job and you know that you're unqualified for it. Is God mad at you? In a different way.

The wrath of God is revealed. Why? Think of this: What if a man -- we used this at the four o'clock service a couple months ago, or at the question and answer time -- what if a man decided to rob a bank? Now, he was a citizen and he had a good relationship with the government, but now he's got a lousy relationship with the government. He might as well not apply for Medicaid. He might as well not apply for government benefits. Why not? The government is opposed to him.

There is a new barrier. There cannot be trade. There has to be a reconciliation. He's got to show up and he's got to make it right. He's got to pay the debt to society, to the government. He's got to pay the debt to the state. He's got to get that straight. And until then, is the state mad at him? Yes. But it's an institutional anger. You see, there's a sense in which the wrath of the U.S. government is revealed against this man. It doesn't mean anybody's there getting cranky. See, the hostility.

of us toward God is nothing like God's wrath toward us. God loves us in his wrath. He wants to do something about it because it says, while we were yet enemies, God sent his son to die. The gospel is that God has reconciled us because God knew. You know, we're like this armed robber on the lam. There is no way. He's mad at the government, he's mad at us, and we're mad, and the government is opposed. He's against God and God's against us.

And there's no way that he's gonna turn himself in, that's us. God decides, "I'm gonna have to get him straight. I'm gonna have to pay the debt. I'm gonna have to reconcile. I'm gonna have to have the person do his time." And Jesus Christ comes and pays the debt and rectifies and turns... See, he deals with the peace in two ways. One is legally, the barrier between God and man drops on God's side. That's the first thing that happens. The barrier between God and humankind drops when Jesus dies.

God now can turn to us because the debt is paid and he's reconciled to us. Then he sends his Holy Spirit into us to wake us up, to show us our foolishness, to show us our anger, to show us the irrationality of our anger, to show us our ingratitude. Until that's begun to happen, you'll never get peace because until you can make this deep, unconscious anger toward God and your rebellion toward God conscious, you'll never deal with it.

You'll stay angry. Why don't you have readiness about your life? Why don't you have an assurance of where you're going? Why don't you have an assurance? Why don't you have that sure-footedness before God? Because you're mad at him. Why don't you have toughness? Why can't you handle the troubles of life? Because you think that they're punishments. You're mad at God for them. You don't have a readiness. You don't have a joy. You don't have a freedom. You don't have a confidence because...

You haven't taken the hostility you feel toward God, made it conscious. God's Holy Spirit, that's his job. Is it working on you? Is it working on you right now? Are any of you who maybe half an hour ago when you first heard the idea that you're angry at God and thought it was ridiculous, are you beginning to see that maybe it makes sense? Maybe it explains a lot of what's going on in your life. Until you understand that the gospel has given you peace with God,

You'll never have the peace of God. Once you have peace with God, then you begin to see that it develops readiness. That means once you see that every debt has been paid and God now loves you, once you become grateful toward him for what he's done for you instead of mad at him, once you begin to see that the real problem, hear this, when you finally get to see that the real problem is not why so many bad things happen to us, but why so many good things happen to

Until that happens, you haven't got peace with God, you haven't grasped the gospel. You know the book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? The premise of that book is that we're good. The only reason that you could be upset with all the bad things that come into our life is if you believe we deserve a good life. And if you believe we deserve a better life than we're getting, that shows underneath it all there's that anger. Underneath it all there's that feeling, God, you haven't done right by me. You see how that works?

But a Christian is somebody who says, I have been mad at God. I have been rebelling against God. I owe him everything. I've given him nothing. If he gave me what I deserved, I'd be wiped off the mat. The real problem of evil is not why so many bad things happen to me, but why so few bad things happen to me. And until you begin to think like that, you haven't grasped that you're in rebellion against God and God has freely and undeservedly

taken away the debt and reconciled you to himself. When that happens, you get a toughness because you can deal with the problems of life. You don't see them as all unfair. You get a certainty and a confidence because you know that you belong to him now. You know it. You see, as long as you feel like a lot of people, I'm not mad at God. I'm just trying to please him. He never really does right by me.

When I say to a person like this, "Are you a Christian?" you always say, "Well, I'm trying, but I don't know if I am." There's no confidence, there's no certainty. But when you get a grasp on the gospel, that Jesus has done it all for you, then you say, "I know that I'm righteous and my Savior." And that brings the readiness, that brings the traction. Why is it, for example, back in October 16, 1555, two men

were burned at the stake on Broad Street in Oxford for their faith, because they wouldn't recant, they wouldn't move away from their biblical faith and give into the status quo. It was Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, some of you heard this story, and as the flames were coming up, Latimer turned to Ridley and said, and everybody knows this because they wrote it down and it's a famous statement, he says, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man."

"For we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England that I trust will never be put out." Six months later, Thomas Cranmer, same spot, March 21st, 1556. Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop. He wrote most of the Book of Common Prayer, the original one. And he was asked to recant and to move away from his Protestant biblical convictions. And originally he did because he was afraid he was going to be put to death. And he signed it with his right hand.

Later on, he publicly got up and said, "I was wrong. I was a traitor." He took back his recantation. So he was put in prison and told if he didn't recant, he was going to be burned at the stake. When they took him out to the stake and the fire came up, he took his right hand and he put it in the flame because he says the hand that betrayed Christ ought to be burned first. A couple months later, another man was burned at the stake, John Bradford. He turned to his secretary who was being burned with him and he said,

His name was John Leaf, and he says, "Be of good cheer, Master Leaf. We will have a merry supper with the Lord tonight." Where do you get that kind of traction? Where do you get that kind of steadfastness? It's a certainty that comes from knowing that I'm right with him because he's reconciled himself to me. As long as you believe that being a Christian really means just trying to appease an insatiable God,

just trying to please a God whose standards are too high and unfair, and you never get anything for it. If you have that view of God, which is basically a matter of anger and enmity, don't you see

You've been trying to be your own master, and he has reconciled you to himself at the incredible and infinite cost of his son. When you see that, when your heart's melted, when you see you deserve nothing but you're getting everything, a Christian is somebody who knows that you don't deserve the least mercy, but you claim and expect the greatest blessing because in Christ you have as much confidence before God as if you were as perfect as an angel because he has paid all the price and debt for you.

You see, that's your mindset. There'll be a readiness. A readiness. Thanks for listening to today's teaching by Tim Keller here at Gospel in Life. We want to share a special free resource with you that we provide during the season of Lent. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel in Life would like to send you a daily devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email at gospelinlife.com slash Lent. That's gospelinlife.com slash Lent.

This month's sermons were recorded in 1992. 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. ♪