Tim Keller: Disciplines of Distress

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Steve Shackelford: Hello everyone. My name is Steve Shackelford, and I have the privilege of serving as CEO of Redeemer City to City. I'm very grateful for technology and how it's provided a way for us to be together. Thank you so much for joining us in this unusual time we're navigating. In just a moment, we're going to hear from Tim Keller. As you may know, Tim and his wife Kathy, started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1989, and Tim is chairman and co-founder of Redeemer City to City. In the mid-1990s, when pastors from the Netherlands and China heard how Redeemer Presbyterian Church was growing and reaching urban professionals in New York, they reached out to Tim and they said, “We want to know what you're doing. We're able to start churches in the suburbs, but we aren't successful in planting sustainable churches in our cities. Will you help us?”

And that's how Redeemer City to City got its start. Tim stepped out of the pulpit in 2017 and joined Redeemer City to City full time. For many years now, we've been helping local leaders, pastors, start and strengthen churches all over the world to advance the gospel together in their cities. At Redeemer City to City, our vision is to see the gospel of Jesus Christ transform lives and impact cities. I'm so glad you joined us for Tim's devotional on Psalm 11, and we hope it will be an encouragement for you. What a gift to be able to turn to scripture as we navigate these circumstances we find ourselves in. As Peter said in the book of John, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” You have the words of eternal life and so we turn our gaze to our great Savior. May you experience his infinite grace and faithfulness today. Tim, I'm turning it over to you.

Tim Keller: Whenever you are in a time of stress, you should go to the Psalms. They have a medicine for everything, they depict every situation that a human being can be in, and they've addressed every emotion you could ever have. They also tell you how to process that emotion or about that situation before God. 

Probably the most famous and eloquent of all the psalms concerning times of stress and fear like we are in now is Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, a very help in times of trouble. We won't fear, even if the mountains would fall into the midst of the sea and so on. With the virus shutdown, economic fear, physical fear, fear for our health we need this Psalm.

However, my own favorite Psalm, because it's so short and practical for dealing with fear and distress, is Psalm 11. Let me read it to you quickly. It's short. Psalm 11 says, 

“In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me, ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain. For look, the wicked bend their bows. They set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord sits on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth. His eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion. On the wicked, he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur. A scorching wind will be their lot. For the Lord is righteous. He loves justice, and the upright will see his face.”

This is a Psalm of David. David is speaking to his counselors, and his counselors are saying, "Flee to the mountain. Look, the wicked bend their bows to shoot from the shadows. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" One of the reasons I like the Psalm so much is the first three verses let us hear the voice of panic. They give words to the kind of fears that you might be feeling. 

We don't know exactly what the situation is. David was a king, and it looks like there had been some kind of rebellion in his administration. His counselors are saying, “Look, your enemies have somehow infiltrated. One of them might assassinate you. They might be actually in the palace. The social order, it's crumbling because the ... it looks to me like ... the enemy has actually been successful, and they're going to overthrow you.”

So the foundations are being destroyed. And the word foundations here means the social order. That's what the term means. It's when you feel like the things that you need for just an ordinary life are no longer dependable. You can’t just go to the store and get what you want. You are in danger if you go outside. When the social order is strong, the foundations are strong, and you can have a normal life. But here, verse 3 says, “The foundations are being destroyed.” And what can we do? So let's just flee. And of course times of plague, times of war, at times of a coup d'état or other upheavals, those are times in which the social order seems to be shaken.

Now what's interesting here is, if David leaves, that only makes things worse. If the king flees, then the social order fully collapses. Therefore,  what David does, as we will see, is he stays put. That's his way of honoring God and also loving his neighbor. Because the most loving thing he could have done for his neighbors was to stay there and not just run away. He doesn't panic.  give us three disciplines that David used to stabilize his heart. I would call them the disciplines of distress. And if we do them, I think we might be able to not panic, honor God, and love our neighbor in the midst of great disruption and great distress.

So what are those three things? I'll name them like this. We must stop ruling the world. We must start taking the tests and we must seek his face. Three things. Stop ruling the world. Start taking the test. And seek his face.

Let's start with stop ruling the world. What do I mean by that? The difference between [verses] 3 and 4 is incredible. It's a complete change of tone. Verse 3 is panicky: when the foundations are being destroyed, what can anybody do? But verse 4: the Lord is on his heavenly throne. That’s David speaking. The Lord is on his heavenly throne. David is reminding himself of something. 

When we human beings think we are in control of the world, and then when the world gets out of our control, then we think the world is out of control. But actually it was never in our control. The foundations of the order of the world are the throne of God. God's got a plan. God is governing. God is ruling. It's always been the case.

When I was a kid, I don't know if they do this anymore, but when I was a kid, you could buy a little plastic steering wheel, a toy steering wheel, and then you could attach it to the car over the glove compartment so that when you were sitting in the car as a five or six year old and your father, your mother was actually driving, you would sit there and you would think you were driving the car. Human beings are very much like those children with that steering wheel. We think we're in charge. We think the reason the world is moving forward is because we are in control. We're doing it well. We've got it sorted. We're doing it right. And what happens is that when it gets out of control, which it inevitably does during times of stress like the one we're in right now, then we feel like we’ve lost control. But David says, “No, God is on his throne.”

Romans 8:28 is a very well-known passage and it says, “All things work together for good for those who love God.” It's a verse that is thrown at people a lot when they're scared. And the Bible shows us two places where that principle—that God always has a plan and that plan is going to work—is actually at work. It shows us that whatever happens is happening for his own glory and our benefit long term. That's what it says in Romans 8:28. 

There are two case studies where you see that working out, case studies which make it a little easier to see this truth in action. One is in Acts Chapter 4:27,28 where Peter says this, (he's praying by the way, not preaching). He says, “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”

Imagine you were one of the apostles. Imagine. You think that Jesus is Messiah and he's going to put everything right. And you know he can do it because you've seen him heal people and raise the dead and you realize that he can do anything. He can really solve all our problems. And then you watch him being crucified and not doing anything to stop it. As you watch him die your world falls apart. It makes absolutely no sense. None at all. The wicked have bent the bow and shot the Messiah, and it looks like everything's out of control. 

Acts 4 is saying that of course, it's easy for us to understand now because we have the whole Bible to explain it, but while that terrible thing happened it was devastating. Can you imagine people watching Jesus Christ being crucified and going home saying, “I don't see how God could bring anything good out of this.” Maybe they lost their faith, looking at the greatest thing that God ever did for the salvation of the world. It was terrible, but it was God’s plan, and the fact is that every situation is like that. We have an entire book, it's called the Bible, that explains why that horrible tragedy happened. We do not have a book explaining why a particular pandemic happens or a war happens or even just a tragic early death happens. We don't know. And yet what we do know is God is on his throne. He's wiser than we are.

Another case study to consider is Genesis 50 verse 20 where Joseph says to his brothers, near the end of his life, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” That's a very famous passage because if you read Genesis 37 all the way to chapter 50, everything goes wrong for Joseph. His brothers sell him into slavery and then he's falsely accused of sexual assault. He goes into the dungeon and year after year after year after year, everything goes bad. But of course, it was how God was going to save not only Joseph, but his family and a lot of other people. And so, in the end Joseph looks back and says, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

So here's why I said stop ruling the world. Verse 4 says that the Lord is ruling the world, and when it seems to be out of control, it's not out of control. I'm thinking about the famous friendship between Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. Luther and Melanchthon were friends. They were both reformers. Luther was doing a very dangerous thing, starting the Reformation in Europe, starting the Protestant church. Philip Melanchthon was younger than Luther. He was smarter in many ways than Luther, at least he was more of a scholar, but he was also a worrier. Very often he would be panicking. He would be saying, “Flee to the mountains. The Reformation is over. It's not going to work.” And we're told that Luther would look at Melanchthon and say, “Let Philip cease to rule the world.”

And let me tell you how I've used that in my own mind and heart. When I worry, it's because I know that God's ruling the world, but I'm afraid he's not going to get it right. Worry is always a deep sense in the human heart that we know better than God how life ought to go and that we should be ruling the world instead of God. And Luther defines worry as trying to rule the world, a job for which we are clearly under qualified!

So the first thing is you have to stop ruling the world. Here's the second thing: start taking the test. What I mean by that is if you stop here and just say, well, when there's fear and distress, just tell yourself God's got a plan. I've seen people use that to emotionally distance themselves from the suffering, from the fear, to basically short circuit it and not really let themselves feel it and not really learn what they should be learning from it. 

I do remember many years ago, a young Christian couple, who hadn't been married very long and the wife was killed in an auto accident. I remember the husband afterwards walking around saying, “I know God's got a plan. I'm just trusting the Lord. No, I'm not that upset because I know God is working. He's got a plan.” And he did that for about a year and then went into deep depression because he actually hadn't come to grips with the sorrow. 

What's interesting here is it says, “The Lord is on his heavenly throne.” Then it says, “He observes everyone on earth. His eyes examine them.” And the terms there mean he's testing people. What that means is you don't just emotionally distance yourself. Yes, you must stop ruling the world, but you can't emotionally distance yourself saying, “Well, I'm sure God's got something that he's trying to do.” Yes, of course, he’s got something he wants to do in you, and you need to come to grips with what's happening in your own heart. That is to say, all disasters are tests, tests of you. They are ways for you to understand yourself, to grow in faith, to maybe put a finger on priorities that shouldn't be there. It depends on, if you go through the Bible, you'll see that whenever troubles came on, God did different things with different people. There's a Jonah test. Sometimes trouble comes on you and it's a Jonah test because, obviously Jonah was a prophet, a preacher, and when God called him to go to Nineveh to preach, he didn't want to preach to those dirty pagans. So Jonah had a racial attitude problem, and God lets a lot of bad things happen to him to put his finger on something very specific, and sometimes troubles come on you. And I said, all troubles are tests. It's not enough just to distance yourself and say, “God is working in it.” You should be looking at yourself. You should be asking yourself, what is God trying to say to me? Is there something I should be changing? Is there a priority I should change? Is there a sin I should stop doing, or is there something too important to me?

In 1991 when Redeemer [Presbyterian Church] was very new, there was a recession here and a lot of people lost their job. A lot of young people started coming to the church, recognizing the fact that their career had become their god and now that their god had died, they needed another god. 

But then there's the Job test. And Job is interesting because in Job you've got God allowing terrible things to happen to Job. And Job starts looking around saying, “Is God trying to get me to repent for a sin?” In fact, Job's friends think so too. Job's friends think, “Hey, you must be doing something wrong here.” And yet the test for Job actually is revealed in the beginning of the book. When Satan comes to God and says, “You like Job so much. Does he really serve you and obey you out of love for you? Or does he really do it because you've just blessed him so much?” And at the end of the book, even though Job has struggled enormously, God vindicates him. Even though he has grieved and cried out and accused God, God still vindicates him.

But in the end, Job never finds out there's any one particular thing that he needs to be doing. Instead, what he learned was how to love God for himself, how to rest more in God than anything else, which of course when the troubles are over, it means that you're a lot stronger than you've ever been before. A lot more stable, a lot happier.

Have you heard the story about the lumberjack who went into a grove of trees and he was about to cut the trees down over the next couple of weeks. And he saw a mother bird trying to build a nest in one of the trees, up where she was going to lay her eggs and raise her chicks. The lumberjack knew that if she did that, then in a couple of days they might all die because somebody would come in and take the tree down. 

So what he did was he struck the tree with the side of his ax and rattled the poor bird until she went to another tree... and then he followed her and he hit that tree, and the next tree, and the next one.. I'm sure that bird was wondering, “What is the matter with this lumberjack?” Finally she flew up into a rock and started to make her nest there. And knowing she was finally safe from the danger she didn’t even know was coming, the lumberjack was satisfied. 

You see, every tree in this world is coming down. Anything you trust more than God, you will lose. In fact, even the mountains will perish. Psalm 46 says even the mountains are going to come down. Only God lasts.. And the test always in every trouble is, “Find your rest in me. Let my everlasting arms be under you or you have no security at all.”

And the third and last thing... First: stop ruling the world. Second: take the test. And then last: it says, the upright will seek his face. In the Bible when it talks about seeking God's face, it doesn't just mean to pray. It means at least to pray, but it means something a lot more than that. It means communion with him. It means intimacy with him. It means coming into his presence. It means a sense of his love and his reality in your life.

Martin Luther wrote to his barber, “How to Pray.” (You can easily find it online.) He explains meditation, where you take the Lord's Prayer or a verse of the Bible and you think about it until you begin to sense God's reality. That's seeking his face, and you cannot get through troubles unless you do that. 

You notice it says at the very beginning of Verse 4, “The Lord is in his holy temple.” In Psalm 27 David says, "I go into the temple to see the beauty of the Lord." But think about this, in those days in a temple, yes, you could go to the temple, but actually only the high priest could go back to the Holy of Holies and be in the presence of God and only once a year. Because the sins of the people created a barrier between God and the people. So you might want to see his face. You might want that fellowship, but it really wasn't that available. 

And then Jesus Christ shows up, and he says in John chapter 2, when he goes into the temple and casts out the money changers, “What are you doing here?” And he says, “Tear this temple down. And in three days I'll build it up again.” The text says that he meant his body and when he died, the veil in the temple, that barrier between God and humanity, was ripped. Here's what Jesus is saying, “I'm the bridge. I’m the temple. I'm the bridge between deity and humanity. I'm the high priest. It's my blood that has opened the way in, and now you can come right into the presence of God. I punched a hole in that concrete slab that sin had created between you and God and now through me, you can really see his face. You can know him. You can sense his presence.”

John Newton has a little hymn. It ends like this, “By prayer, let me wrestle. Then he will perform. With Christ in my vessel, I smile at the storm.” 

Okay, let me pray. Father, we thank you for the Psalms. We thank you for this particular Psalm, and we thank you for its direction. And Lord, I can hardly imagine anyone who's not being affected almost anywhere, at least in our country and in most countries of the world by this epidemic, this pandemic, this virus. We're being affected in so many different ways. And therefore we're afraid. We are afraid. We get up and we look at so many things in the newspaper that create fear. Help us to use these disciplines, these disciplines of distress. Show us how to stop ruling the world, to remember that you're on your throne. Show us how we should be examining ourselves as you are and letting this drive us more into your arms. Lord, troubles like this can just drive us like a nail more deeply into your love, and we pray that that would happen, and let us do that as we seek your face. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.