The Two Great Tests – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

tonight scripture is from the book of Proverbs and is found on page 8 of your bulletins honor the Lord with your wealth with the firstfruits of all your crops then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine my son do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in blessed is the man who finds wisdom the man who gains understanding for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than

gold the wages of the righteous bring them life but the income of the wicked brings them punishment when the storm has swept by the wicked are gone but the righteous stand firm forever if you falter in times of trouble how small is your strength rescue those being led away to death hold back those staggering towards slaughter if you say but we knew nothing about this does not he who weighs the heart perceive it does not he who guards your life know it will he not repay each person according to what he has done this is

God's Word okay we're talking about wisdom again hey you know why cuz I'm really I'm still looking for it you are wisdom is as we've said each week is so much more than just being good and moral and ethical wisdom is choosing always the right person to work with choosing the right person to date or marry choosing the right job choosing the right project never being surprised by how people respond because you understand people never being surprised how you respond because you understand yourself why is how do we get wise now do we do it

through learning great education do we have to find a guru do we have to find we have to become worldly wise and world-traveled and sophisticated no not according to the book of Proverbs and a perfect illustration of that by the way in modern literature is Miss Marple Agatha Christie's fictional sleuth hero of many of her mysteries her whodunits Miss Marple and she's a frumpy elderly little lady who sits in the sits around knitting and yet she always saves the day she always knows ahead of everyone else who done it because she understands people and she

understands human nature and she nothing shocks her and nothing surprises her and everything happens the way she expects I was just watching by the way the the twelve BBC TV movies that were made with Jones Hicks and playing Miss Marple are just marvelous I was watching one the other day and there's this elderly and that means he's a retired Scotland Yard inspector and he's talking with one of his friends about a murder of course and this Scotland Yard inspector says you know I know it's hard to believe with a little lady downstairs in the hotel

waiting room knitting is the greatest criminologist in all of England and the other you know his friend says what and he says oh yes and then he says this is an inspector says there she sits an elderly spinster sweet Placid or so you'd think yet her mind has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all in a day's work she has lived all her life in a little rural village of st. Mary Mead aches extraordinary she knows the world only through the prism of that village and its daily life but by knowing the

village so thoroughly she seems to know the world now she would Agatha Christie is doing in this in her novels as she's making a statement it's very very close to what proverbs says here's here is the greatest criminologist in all of England but she's not a world traveler she's not sophisticated in any way she's not particularly well educated the secrets of wisdom are locked in your ordinary experience your common experience if you knew how to learn from it and she did and not many people do now according to book of Proverbs there are two particular

fairly common experiences two particular situations that happen with a certain amount of regularity and that when you're in either of those two situations you are in a moment of great spiritual danger and a moment of great spiritual opportunity there are tests and if you pass the test you'll become wiser about yourself and about the world and about human nature and you'll know how things work but if you fail the test and you don't respond properly in those situations you actually become more of a fool more hard more bitter more out of touch with how things

are and who you are there are two great fairly common ordinary situations that come upon us and they are moments of test and if we've passed the test we can become wise even if we are frumpy what are those two tests why do they work and how can we pass them okay what are they why do they work how can we pass them okay first of all what are they well take a look here at chapter 3 of the book of Proverbs and and early in chapter 3 earlier in chapter 3 we have a very

classic statement of wisdom most many of you know it it's proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 & 6 it says trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths and that's that is wisdom because our lives are just a set of branching Forks in the road are they not you come to a situation should I take this job or this job should I go to school or do this should I take about this person or not you know you have

all these these Forks in the road and the Bible says wisdom when you have God's wisdom when you have wisdom your wisdom guides you to choose the right path over and over and over again so it's talking about wisdom but how do we get wisdom now you get to verse 9 10 11 12 and there's two situations brought before us and they're juxtaposed deliberately they seem actually like they don't they don't belong together but they're juxtaposed in verse 9 and 10 we have the experience of prosperity honor the Lord with your wealth with the firstfruits

of all your crops and your barns then will be filled overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine now if we just had these two verses sitting there as they are it sure looks like it's saying that if you honor God if you have a good relationship with God and so on you'll have a prosperous life and that what it looks like honor the Lord with your wealth and your barns will be filled with overflowing your vats with the brim over with new wine but then deliberately verse 11 and 12 seems to be

a complete non sequitur something that seems there's a complete disconnect suddenly it talks about something completely different it says and my son do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in I will get back to this in a second but the word discipline means among other things pain when you discipline when I discipline one of my children because one of my children say lied to me and I say go to your room you can't play with your friends

you can't go to the party or whatever I'm bringing pain into the child's life I mean discipline is pain and this is not say that God allows pain in the lives of some people it doesn't say some helos receive this pain it says those he loves that's verse 9 10 11 and 12 are deliberately putting in front of you this fact that no matter who you are even if you are as close to God as you possibly can be you will experience prosperity adversity success suffering everything going your way nothing going your way now most

of the time we don't experience a great deal of either there's a kind of balance going on but we will have times of great success we'll have times of great suffering we'll have times everything going our way we'll have times which nothing seems to be going our way and those are the two moments of tests there is nothing more spiritually dangerous than to be succeeding there's nothing more spiritually dangerous than to be suffering there's nothing more spiritually dangerous than prosperity and then adversity because those two experiences bring out stuff in your heart that you did

not know is there there's bad stuff in your heart that you don't believe is there you don't expect to be there you deny that it's there but those two situations bring them out and then you can either accept what you see embrace what you see build your life on this new insight repent and change transform your life and become wiser and wiser about life and a human nature and yourself or you can deny it you can repress it you can blame it on other people and become more more of a fool but you will not

stay where you were these are the two tests hmm CS Lewis tells us in a gives a great illustration he says now if you want to know whether there's rats in your basement don't do this don't walk to the door your basement door and clear your throat and say oh I think I'll go down to see if there's rats in my basement and jiggle the knob a little bit and open the door and very very leisurely in a very leisurely way you turn on the light you clear your throat and you walk down the steps

loudly and slowly when you get to the bottom you look around and you'll say I have no rats in my basement if you want to know whether you have rats in your basement you sneak up to the door you very silently open the door and then you click on the switch and you jump to the bottom of the steps and you look around there they'll all be scurrying away and then you'll know prosperity and suffering adversity success and suffering prosperity adversity both jump you to the bottom of your heart and you will see stuff that

you never thought was there and what are you going to do about it that is what will make you either more of a wise person or more of a fool but you will not stay where you were there's a place in Lord of the Rings and not the movie but in the book when the king is going through the houses of healing and the house of healing where all the poor people are dying and they've been wounded and they're sick and he comes to a little mariya dock the hobbit and he has experienced great evil

and he's been wounded and he's a you know lying sort of in a in a coma and he's experienced very very great pain and suffering and yet the king looks down and says this suffering will not darken it heart but rather will make will bring him to wisdom it will not darken his heart but it will bring him wisdom and by the way that's the only two alternatives success and suffering prosperity and adversity will either dark in your heart or will make you wise but it will not leave you where you were so there the

two tests now why do they work I mean why are they tests why do they do what we said let's move on down a little bit to middle of the page let's take a look at chapter 10 verse 16 and 25 the wages of the right just bring them life but the income of the wicked brings them just punishment when the storm is swept by the wicked are gone but the righteous stand firm forever now verse 16 is really pretty striking it's kind of surprising it income wages that's prosperity your investment you're you're getting your

dividends you're getting your return here comes the money what a righteous what a wicked remember we talked about this last week in the book of Proverbs the righteous by definition are those who disadvantaged themselves for the community and the wicked by definition are those who disadvantaged the community for their own interests and what this is saying is if you are wise unselfish person prosperity will make you more wise and unselfish but if you are a foolish selfish person the worst thing that can happen to you is that you get all your dreams coming true the

worst thing that can happen to you is success because it will just simply confirm you in your path you know the book of Romans chapter 1 in a pretty startling spot Paul says that the worst thing I can do to people who are turning away from him and resisting him what is the worst thing he can do for those people who are resisting his will he gives them up to their desires you know what that means the worst thing God can possibly do to you if you are selfish person is let you have a good

life nothing worse than that but then the next verse say so the point is prosperity is bad for you if you don't know how to process it and then the next verse it says when the storm has swept by the wicked are gone but the righteous stand firm forever now this is saying and by the way somebody this morning said when the right the storm has swept by the wicked are gone and somebody said in one of our morning services so that's why our numbers are down today and I said don't flatter yourself or I

said you know I just don't think this is a proper application of this text but what here's what here is a proper application of the text adversity shows reveals the foundations of your life it reveals who you are if you are already moving in the direction of foolishness and selfishness it's going to make it far worse it'll reveal you for what you are but the way you know that you're wise person is you can take suffering it doesn't overthrow you the way you know you're on the path toward being like God in wisdom and knowledge

and grace is that you can handle trouble it doesn't overthrow you it doesn't decimate you that's what it's saying okay now why our prosperity adversity both such tests here's why because they do two things one is they show you the evil of your heart in general and secondly they show you the idols of your heart in particular they'll show you the evil of your heart in general and the idols of your heart in particular and you can either deny what it's that what these things are showing you and and become one and become a fool

even more out of touch with how things are or you can embrace it and accept it even though it's painful and grow so for example success now you might might find it surprising but what success will do is well let me give you some extreme let me give you two extreme examples first all right I was reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly it's actually published two years ago April 2002 by Jonathan Ralph and he wrote an article called seeing around corners and he talked it was a very chilling article because part of it talks

about research on how mobs start to rampage you know in the Balkans in the in Rwanda in Indonesia and even in inner cities of New York and and and other American cities over the last 50 years we've had examples where large groups of people hundreds and sometimes thousands of people who were normal people's you know mentally stable people law-abiding people would go on a rampage and they not only would do looting and they would not only do pillaging and and they would do burning and sometimes they did beating and sometimes that did killing why would

several thousand people who are sort of normal people find that some kind of spark turned them into a mob and they began to kill other people thousands of other how does that happen now in the past we've tried to say I rationalize the fact that that can happen by attributing it to something called mass hysteria or some kind of group madness that people just snap and they there's a hysteria and they don't know you know what they're doing but the research shows that that's not true follow up in research and accounts and interviews with people

after these awful incidents interviews with people that were part of it show that even even if they're embarrassed now even if they're completely humiliated and filled with remorse and regret over what they did they knew what they were doing when they did it they were perfectly themselves they were perfectly rational they weren't out of control you know they weren't they weren't they weren't drunk or something like that so why do they do it and the research and this is what's very frightening the research goes like this if you get into a situation in which something

that you always known was wrong like robbing or rape or pillaging or killing if you get in a situation where something you've always known was wrong and you've always lived in situations where to do it would bring you bad consequences what if you're surrounded by so many hundreds and thousands of people that are also doing it that you know there cannot be any consequences to doing it in other words what happens when behavior you've always thought of as bad suddenly there is no consequences there would no way will you ever be caught not you will

never ever have any consequences for this bad behavior and suddenly you find they said they say many many people find when favourable circumstances make bad behavior consequence lists to their shock they find themselves wanting to do it they say here's how genocide starts there's 10% of people or maybe just rampaging and pillaging there's 10% of people you can call bad eggs who start it and there's 10% of people you could call good eggs who just won't do it even when the crowds doing it but the vast majority of people find that when there's no consequence

to doing bad behavior stuff that they always thought they would never be capable doing they do it anyway and they're shocked and this is one of the reasons why you know that I know that's an extreme example but do you know what happens when success begins to happen to you the first thing that happens is you take credit for it you just start doing well financially you start doing well and love you start doing well and things are going well and the first thing you do deep inside is you start to say yeah because you

know somebody says well you were brilliant and you say no no no but inside you're saying yeah I rely on other people I am harder working other people I am wah times I'm more savvy than other people you take credit for it it's a frog in the kettle thing it's a very very very slow thing but do you know what what this means have you not seen it what happens extremely wealthy people they make a billion dollars in widgets they know all about widgets and they probably know a lot about investing but they make a

billion dollars in widgets and all about widgets and yet you very often find that they think they know about everything because they made a billion dollars in widgets they feel like they know more than the psychiatrist about therapy they feel they know more about the minister about theology they feel they know more about everybody than everybody why because they've been telling themselves how great they are for such a long time it's very very very slow eventually they trust their insights they trust their hunches they trust their views way too much because they've been successful with

it but they become fools because anyone who's wise in his own eyes are wise in her own eyes according to the book of Proverbs of cool slowly as time goes on as you become more and more willing to take credit for it something goes wrong deep down inside and you start to be able to be cruel you start to be able to be haughty you start to be able to be arrogant and yet more it's very very gradually you start to become capable of doing things that you never thought you would have been capable of

because of favorable circumstances now you're able to get away with things and maybe to your shock you say oh my gosh I didn't think I could do such a thing like that but what most people do is they rationalize it and so they go on down the path now let me give you the other example as I said success brings out the evil in your heart brings out the worst in you but certainly so does adversity let me give you another extreme case I know when I talked about Rwanda that's an extreme case but I'm

going to talk to you about something else adversity Ray van Luwan wrote one of the commentaries on proverbs that I use every week he's a teacher at Eastern College in Philadelphia he's written a really good commentary on proverbs and as you can tell from his name he's Dutch and he is the parent he's about my age I think and he is the the son of Dutch immigrant parents who lived in or and many of their or many of his relatives lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and one of the things that happened during

that time was this and he by the way mentions this in his commentary on the verses I wrote in the bottom I put on the page here in the bottom where it says rescue those being a led away to death hold back those staggering towards thought slaughter if you say but we knew nothing about this does not he who weighs the heart perceive it he says during World War two during the Nazi occupation Dutch families had Jewish neighbours and next thing you know the Jewish neighbors started being taken away and at one level you knew

they're being taken away to be killed but if you would speak up if you would say no stop doing it or if you tried to hide them if you try to help them in some way you might be killed your family might be taken away and so people check out in droves but they didn't do it but they did they didn't do it in a way that was they denied it so what they said was after the war we had no idea they were taking people away to be killed we just thought they were taking

them somewhere we had no idea about those death camps we had no idea of course they had an idea but under stress when is extremely hard and there's great consequences to being good most people will not be good just like we said when there's no consequences to being bad all kinds of people will be bad and when there is real bad consequences to be good all kinds of people will not be good they will you know they'll chicken out and then they'll deny it and they'll find all sorts of ways to say well we didn't

know under stress you will see the worst in you you can see this even in small I know I've given you extreme examples I given you Rwanda I've given you nazi-occupied in the Netherlands but can't you see what happens this week when things go wrong for you and you start to fall apart you can see the weakness of your heart you can see your anxiety you can see your your anger you can see your selfishness you can see your pride can't you see it adversity and prosperity will bring out the worst in you it'll bring

out the ego it'll bring out the self-centeredness and the worst thing you can do is rationalize it is say we knew nothing about it is to blame others or to find some way to rationalize it because they will darken your heart instead of teach you wisdom so the first thing we see about these tests is that they bring out the evil in your heart the second thing that we learn about these tests is they show you not just the evil in general but they show you your idols in particular so let me let me just

cut to the chase and give you a practical example that a lot of people will be able to relate to if you because most people have been through something like this says let's just say you're dating somebody do you really love and you really hope something will happen and that person breaks it off that person drops you what's going to happen well with there's only two things that can happen everybody both some people will be just filled with sorrow and they will be just take weeks and months to get over it but they will get

past it because they will become more they will learn how to depend more on other people like their friends they'll learn how to depend more on God they'll they'll debrief themselves and say I didn't do some things right in this relationship I see certain flaws in my own character I see certain ways in which I don't know how to conduct relationships like I should and when it comes out to the other end you'll be wiser you'll get through it you'll process the adversity and you'll get through it and you'll become wiser for it and the

other response that people give to it is they never get over it they hardly ever get over it they stay bitter against the opposite sex they start where they get bitter against themselves they feel like I'm a failure I must be something pretty bad nobody was ever going to love me they begin to look around they become bitter toward life they become cynical about love they've refused to ever completely trust somebody else they never get over it what's the difference here's a difference if you break up with somebody at you and you're sad that's one

thing if you break up with somebody and you've lost all meaning in life and you feel like you don't even want to live that's because that person has become an idol and we've talked about this a couple times during this series have we not that person has become more important to you than God or Jesus or anything else a more a greater source of your significance and security than anything else and that person has become a pseudo God a pseudo Savior right an idol and it's the suffering of losing this person that will show you

the inordinate attachment you give to love or to romance or to that person and there's only two things you can do with it you can either admit that half my sorrow is the normal sorrow that comes from the brokenness of life and losing love but another half of my sorrow comes because of an ordinate attachment it becomes because it comes because I don't rest and enjoy Jesus Christ anywhere near like I should I may believe in him but he's really not the emotional center of my heart and you can say there is an idol here

and then you can turn from it or else you cannot admit that's the problem and blame the person and blame people around you and blame the way that people the opposite sex are and blame you know the society and and and just become harder and harder and more cynical and less in touch with who you are and less in touch with human nature and more distorted in your views of things you're becoming a fool less and less likely to make those right choices when you come to the forks in the road will you do that

don't you see adversity will show you the idols of your heart it will scream them at you and you can either admit what's happening or else you can like most people just deny that that's what's going on getting refused to see the ordinate suffering and the inordinate suffering that come from normal kinds of suffering and the inordinate attachments that come because my heart has been too attached to something but it's not just adversity they can show you the annals of your heart so can success I love this quote from Cynthia hi mo who used to

write for the Village Voice I find every excuse I possibly can every year or two to get it out and read it to somebody because I love it so much she being having lived in New York City for many years and in the village she knew a lot of people when they were struggling artists and struggling you know actors and actresses and then afterwards they became they hit it big and they became celebrity so she knew a lot of people before and after and here's what she says about celebrities she says I pity celebrities no

I really do Sylvester Stallone Bruce Willis and Barbra Streisand were once perfectly Pleasant human beings but now their wrath is awful I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you he grants you your deepest wish and then giggles merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself you see Sly Bruce and Barbara wanted Fame they worked they pushed and the morning after each of them became famous they wanted to take an overdose because that giant thing they were striving for that Fame thing that was going to make everything okay that

was going to make their lives bearable that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness had happened and they were still them the disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable now here's what she's saying and she's right not about God shoot playing this playing a trot and dirty trick on you but certainly she's right in saying the worst thing I can do to you because the Bible says that is give you the the desires of your heart here's what she's saying very few of us get the ultimate success but the few who do are

absolutely appalled I've got a not bringing it I have stuff to read you I'm not going to take time to read that talks about the fact that there's a remarkable amount of dysfunction unhappiness amongst the very elite and as all sorts of studies that prove it well why would that be the few of us who do make it to the very top suddenly see something that's appalling there is something so wrong with the human soul there is something there is there is a vacuum in the human soul so big that you can put in three

billion dollars ten billion dollars you can you can become the greatest star celebrity in the world and you're still not going to be happy it still won't fulfill you it won't be enough and when you realize that you begin to say oh my gosh what am what in the world will ever satisfy me how dysfunctional am I well of course the Bible says it's because the hole is God shaped and therefore success screams that you you need God and adversity screams that you you need God adversity and prosperity scream at you here is the way

to wisdom will you hear it or will you just hunker down will you despise it will you neglect it will you rationalize it all right so that that is what the tests are and why the tests work how can we be sure that we pass them when they come to us and the answer is there's two things you basically need to do according to these texts and let's look at the top of the of the those first four verses again and here's the two principles the two principles are you have to humble yourself out of

the spiritual danger of success but you have to affirm yourself out of the spiritual danger suffering with the gospel you have to when you're in success it's a spiritually dangerous situation you have to humble yourself with the gospel in order to become wise but when you're in suffering and adversity and everything's going wrong you need to affirm yourself with the gospel in order to become wise and I got that from actually a little verse in James chapter 1 verse 9 and 10 where James says the brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his

high position but the one who is rich should take pride in his low position because he will pass away like a wild flower isn't that interesting you see think of what the gospel is if you're religious if you're a moralist if you feel like if I live a good life God owes me I mean there's a secular kind of moralist who says I lived a good life and if there is a god he owes me a good life and then there's a more religious moralist who says I have gone to the Bible and I've gone

to church and I've try my very best and God owes me a good life so if you're religious or you're moralist then you're either feeling like I'm living up which makes you confident but not humble you look down at other people and when suffering happens you get mad at God or you feel like you're not living up so you're down at yourself you're humble but not bold and confident and when suffering happens you get mad at you you feel like you're a failure you something has gone wrong with you you're just nothing but what if

you believe the gospel and the gospel is that I am wicked and yet loved I'm not saved because I'm a good person I'm saved because of what Jesus has done I must say because of my record I'm saved because of his record which means that right now I am very flawed and I'm very messed up in many ways and yet I'm completely loved which means when I succeed I can remind myself of the humility of the gospel and when I am in adversity I can remind myself of the affirmation of the gospel here's how you

do it first of all when you go into a success red alert immediately we're told honor the Lord with your wealth it doesn't say honor yourself with your wealth when the wealth starts coming in make sure you admit that it's not you don't take credit for it in your heart don't take credit for it at all red alert don't get that process started that can take you down the paths we were talking about tonight now the way you do that is you use the gospel and it's actually quite quite you know it's quite strong medicine

listen here's what the gospel says I don't care how much the world sucks up to you I don't care how beautiful you are I don't care how rich you are I don't care what your credentials I don't care your resume I don't care what your accomplishments you are a sinner before God and you are lost without the grace of Jesus Christ and you are in God's sight absolutely no better then then then anyone else in this world no matter how ragged no matter how degraded no matter what a failure you're no different when it comes

before the before the throne of God no different at all do you believe that use that on yourself that's what it says use that on yourself it's your only hope so you have to humble yourself in the spiritual danger of success in order to become wise but on the other hand you have to affirm yourself in this in this in the spiritual danger of adversity in order to become wise and here we see that in verses 11 and 12 my son did not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord

disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in ah well here's a little bit on this you have got this says when everything's going wrong to not let your suffering knock you off of your certainty that God loves you in fact do you know how in the old days when there before there was antibiotics and things like that you know when you're out on the frontier if you had a wound you had a rub salt in the wound as a way of keeping it from festering as a way of keeping it from

getting infected oh it hurt like crazy but you put salt in the wound okay just like you put salt in meat so that wouldn't go bad right out on it you know you didn't have a refrigeration you have got to rub into your suffering absolute certainty that God loves you or your suffering will go bad in your soul it will putrefy now how do we do that well first of all we're told here you have to understand that the Bible says if you have a relationship with God then the bad things that come into your

life or discipline now what does that mean well I started alluding to this but here as a parent there was always two issues I faced when I was facing a child who needed discipline if my son would say to me you know five-year-old son daddy I'm gonna do this and I found out he lied to me he lied to me he deceived me well I say I have to bring some pain into this child's life if I just let that go a child is going to become a liar it's the worst thing for him so

for the child's sake I say you can't go to the party or you you can't play with your friends you have to go to your room I've got to do something for that child to be saved from being a liar so one of the reasons I want to bring pain in his life is for his sake but there's another reason I want to bring pain in his life for my sake because he humiliated me or he had dare that little snotty five-year-old do that to me and so the other reason you want to discipline a

child is you actually want to discipline a child in the Bible the word discipline is never ever ever used to mean punishment it's never used for example when God punishes the nation's for their violence never ever never says that God disciplines them is very interesting it's a Hebrew word that really means pain for the sake of the person just enough pain not to pay them for their sins that's not the point the whole point of it is enough pain to make the person a better person the trouble is that as a parent sometimes I want

to punish my children to pay them back for the inconvenience for the humiliation for the egg on my face just sometimes I want to put pain in their lives for my sake not for their sake and of course I struggle with this over the years and I never made perfection but God has this bite this text says God is a perfect parent and you if you have a love relationship with him have to live in this knowledge we live in a world that's broken there's all kinds of bad things have to everybody because we live

in a world that is broken by evil and sin someday God's going to fix it but for now there is disaster there is sickness there's disease there's death there's all kinds of suffering and everyone is involved in suffering but we're told this if you create through faith in Jesus Christ to love relationship with God God arranges your suffering so that's discipline do you hear me he's you're gonna have suffering but he's going to arrange the suffering so that nothing comes in your life except that which is for you you need to be humbled you need

to learn wisdom you need to know if there's all sorts of things that you'll never learn never learn about yourself you'll never be wise without this and God says I want you to realize that anything bad that comes into your life is through my arrangement because I love you I love you I delight in you and to the degree you understand that to that degree your suffering will not putrefy but to that degree it'll make you wise instead of darkening your heart do you believe that do you understand that you know if a little child

comes up and throws his or her arms around you and says you're the best I love you he's just a child what does a child know and you have feels so good because you know that it is that is what we need more than anything else adoration you know we need it you know it's it's like it's like water it's like food it's like air for us but if if you know how much that that builds you up do you know that God loves you like that do you know that God delights in you like

that do you know that as is that through Jesus Christ he delights in you to the degree you live in the joy of that to that degree suffering and adversity will make you something great that's what it's saying that's the reason why CS Lewis actually says it to say Lord don't let anything bad happen to me is really a way of saying don't love me because his he says he says we might have learned even from the poet's that love is something more Stern and splendid than mere kindness kindness merely as such cares not whether

its object becomes good or bad provided only that it escapes suffering but if God is love he is by definition more than mere kindness he has often rebuked us and he's often condemned us but he has never regarded us with contempt God has paid us the Intolerable compliment of loving us we are therefore not metaphorically but in very truth a divine work of art now over a sketch made idly to amuse a child an artist may not take much trouble but over the magnum opus of an artists life the work which the artist loves the

most the artist will take endless trouble and would doubtless thereby give endless trouble to the picture if we're alive one can imagine on a live picture after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time wishing it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute and not in magnum opus in the same way it is natural for us to wish that God had designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny but then we are wishing not for more love but for less you asked for loving God you have

one not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way but the consuming fire himself the love that made the world's persistent as an artist love for his work it is certainly a burden of glory not only beyond our deserts but also except in rare moments of grace beyond our desiring well somebody says how do I know God really loves me and this is only discipline and not punishment I'll tell you why because Jesus Christ came into this world and passed these tests for us he was the most successful person

ever but he didn't let it go to his head and he suffered horribly but he trusted his father in it and you see Jesus was the one son who didn't need punishment or discipline did he he was perfect so I didn't need discipline and he didn't sin so he didn't need punishment but he took our punishment the punishment we deserve so you can know that whatever comes into your life is only loving fatherly discipline because he delights in you that's why the tests work that's how you can pass the test by trusting the one who

passed the tests for you so that through him you can begin to let these things turn you into someone who is let us pray thank you father for giving us some insight into how to be wise help us to apply it to our hearts by your Holy Spirit we pray this in Jesus name Amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit