The Unbelievable Way Tim Keller Rings in the New Year (Rant)

All right, just a quick comment, and then I'm out your way. That's how the cool kids talk, so that's how

I talk now too, because I'm cool and simple as that. Anyway, just a quick video today.

I do have an interview, a conversation with the CEO of Lore, Marcus Pittman, about Christian investing and things like that.

I'm working on it right now, we did the interview, I'm just getting it all together, so that's coming this week for sure, but I did want to comment on this.

This is so interesting, and I think it's important, guys.

I talk a lot about the woke church movement and things like that, and just kind of like the general pro -Ukraine, pro -pronouns, all that kind of stuff, all the nonsense.

This is a more theological topic than I typically do a whole video on, but it's very important.

I think this impulse is one of the most damaging impulses that we have in the evangelical church in America, and I honestly had no idea that Tim Keller was just pushing this year after year after year.

It's either in January or April, it looks like. He must have some kind of automation on his

Twitter feed, which makes sense, because he sounds like a robot, you know what I mean? Tim Keller sounds like a nonsense robot.

You plug in nonsense, and then the robot just spits it out on schedule. This is unbelievable.

Here's the basic message, right? He says this. It's a shocking message. Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.

Motivation matters. Carefully observing

God's law is a strategy for rebelling against God's law.

Motivation matters. That's the idea. This is one of those things that,

I've talked about it before, where there's a truth here, but it's the opposite message that we need to hear.

The most popular video I ever did where I kind of explored this idea in evangelicalism had to do with John Piper and the vaccine article, where he talked about how it was an article directed at all the people that knew that their morality, their

Christian morality told them, the witness of the Holy Spirit in their souls told them that they needed to get the vaccine.

It was the right thing to do. It works. It protects people. It loves your neighbor, but they weren't getting the vaccine because of peer pressure from people to not get the vaccine.

And this was during the time when the peer pressure and the propaganda was so intense to get the vaccine.

In fact, this was during the time when people were getting fired from their jobs. People close to me, man, had to make the decision.

Do I lose my job or do I get this vaccine that I don't trust? I don't think

I need, I'm suspicious of, and that was a heart -wrenching decision for some people because not everybody is in a position where they feel like they can get any job.

You know what I mean? Some of us are lucky enough that we know that if we lost our job, we could probably get another one very quickly, but not everybody is in that position.

And I had people very close to me that had to make that choice, and I'm not going to tell you what they made. It doesn't even matter. But this was at that time, and John Piper decided that his big article, his big contribution was going to be the opposite of what was needed.

He was addressing it not to the people that were being peer pressured into getting the vaccine. No, he was going to address his very important article to all the people that were being peer pressured to not get the vaccine.

All two people, I pointed one, but two people. The exact opposite article of what we needed.

It was like the article was fine, I mean it wasn't untrue necessarily, but it was worthless.

It was subversive. In fact, I titled that article, Farewell John Piper, because this was one of the most subversive things

I've ever seen. People ask me, do you know what you're saying when you say, farewell

John Piper? I know exactly what I'm saying when I say, farewell John Piper. Do you? Anyway, so Tim Keller, it's the same thing, because if there's a problem in our culture right now, it is the problem that is summarized in the psalm where it says this.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel against the

Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

If there was a problem in the Western world, in the United States where Tim Keller, and especially in New York where Tim Keller ministers, the problem is that we feel like we can do whatever we want.

We think of the law of God and we're like, screw that, I know how to make myself happy, I know what's right,

I know what's good, I can decide for myself. That's the big problem right now. But Tim Keller decides to devote his energy and his automated nonsense robot to the people, all the people that are using careful obedience to the law of God as a strategy to hate

God. All those people. Now, is it possible to do that? Yes, it is possible to do that, to think that you can earn your way to salvation, right?

That you can earn your way. If you do just enough good things, you'll be just as lovable enough that God will be put in your debt.

In other words, God will have to let me in because I've done enough good things. That's not the problem in evangelicalism right now.

That's not the problem. And the thing is, and what's so evil about this is, and look, look at this, every year, sometimes twice a year, he'll put out this message that it's like, look, careful obedience to the

God's law is a strategy for disobeying God. It's a shocking message. It's shocking. Someone went through and looked at all every year.

It's like clockwork. It's either in January, it's an early part of the year, you know, it's in Q1. He wants to set the tone for the year for you in Q1.

You know how everyone's kind of trying to set the tone? Well, he decides he's going to set the tone by saying, you know, if you, if you're carefully trying to obey

God's law, you know, you better be careful because you might, you might actually hate God. Again, it's like, there is a truth there, sort of,

I guess some people can do that, but is that the message we need to hear? Because here's what ends up happening when you, when you push this message too much.

Now it's like every single person that's out there and as a preacher of the law, right?

You know, you've got the people that are preaching righteousness, you know, like Jesus did, right? Jesus preached righteousness.

And so we're emulating Jesus. We love the Lord, right? We're not trying to earn our salvation, but we are trying to emulate what

Jesus did. And what did Jesus say, right? If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

If you love me, Jesus is saying this, if you love Jesus, you will keep his commandments.

What does he say? He says, abide in my love, right? How do you abide in his love? I've done this experiment before where I'll ask people, how do you abide in the love of Christ?

And you know what people tell me? People that have been influenced by Tim Keller, you know what they say?

They say, well, you know, you do your quiet times every day, your quiet time with the

Lord, just you and the Lord, and you read the Bible and then you pray. That's how you abide in the love of Christ.

Am I against quiet time? I'm not against quiet time. Am I against praying? I'm not against praying.

But that is not what Jesus says about how do you abide in the love of Christ. That's not what he says.

Jesus is very explicit. This is the thing about the Bible. It is way more explicit than you've been made to think it is.

God is clear about things. He's clear about his law. He's clear about the whys behind the law very often.

And it's like, he didn't have to do that. He didn't have to explain himself, but he does so often.

And he says, how do you abide in the love of Christ? Abide in my love, he says. If you obey my commands, you will abide in my love.

If you do what Christ says, you will abide in his love. And he actually explains further.

He gives us more. He says, just like I obey what my father commands and abide in his love.

Just like that. Just like Jesus meticulously obeyed, carefully obeyed. It was careful obedience to God's law because he loved the

Lord. Careful obedience. That's how he was abiding in his love. He was abiding in the love of the Father. And just like that, if we want to abide in the love of Christ, careful obedience to Christ, careful obedience to God's law.

It's the same law. Christ is Lord. Christ is the King of Kings. Christ is the Lord of Lords. There's no divided

God. It's the same law. Careful obedience to God's law is how you show your love for Jesus Christ.

It's how you abide in the love of Jesus Christ. That's how you do it. And the thing is that this message that Tim Keller and his buddy set the tone every year, every year like clockwork, this message, it now throws shade at people that say, you know,

I'm not so sure that that's actually part of God's law. Like, that's not loving. That's not biblical. And now all of a sudden, because you've set the tone that careful obedience is a strategy for disobeying

God, well, you're just a Pharisee now. You're a Pharisee. You know, you ask 10 people what the problem with the

Pharisees was. And most of them will probably say that they obeyed the law too perfectly.

They were too focused on the law. That's not what Jesus says. Again, Jesus doesn't leave us high and dry with what the problem with the

Pharisees was. What does Jesus say? Jesus says the Pharisees were lawless.

They were lawless. They weren't law, careful obedience. He doesn't say, Pharisees, you're using your careful obedience to the law as a strategy against me.

He doesn't say that. He says they were lawless. Lawless means that they weren't obeying the law.

They weren't carefully obeying the law. They were picking and choosing which laws to obey, the ones that made them look good.

And they were hypocrites, and they were disobeying the law at every turn. They weren't carefully obeying the law.

They were carefully obeying their little system, their little cartel, the religious cartel.

That's what they were carefully obeying. It reminds me, quite frankly, a lot of Big Eva. They've got their little religious cartel as well, where the repentance is never necessary.

I saw somebody in a private message say this. I'm not going to put them on blast. It's a known name.

It's a known name. I thought it was so good. Big Eva doesn't think repentance is necessary.

They just think that if you change direction, you know, course correction, that's enough. So you don't apologize.

You don't repent of the things you did wrong in the past. You don't say, yeah, man, I was wrong, and now I'm going to change my view because I was wrong, and here's why

I was wrong. No, you don't do that. You just sweep it under the rug, pretend it never happened. It never happened.

I don't have to apologize for that, but change direction. They've got their own religious cartel.

This is why I named my book Social Justice Pharisees, because the Social Justice Big Eva types, they've got their own rules, their own system, and they are carefully obedient to their own little guild.

They're carefully obedient to their own little system, and even if it overturns the actual law of God, they don't care.

They're carefully obedient to that, and that, my friends, is a method, a strategy, a way to rebel against God.

Carefully obeying God's law will have you loving God. Carefully obeying God's law won't, the motivation is part of God's law.

I love the Lord with all my heart, my soul, my strength, my mind. That's part of God's law, loving your neighbor as yourself.

That's part of, that's in Leviticus. That's in Leviticus. See, God was smart. You know, he put all the stuff that people, that modern people don't like right next to a few verses away from love your neighbor as yourself.

You can't, you can't deny it. You can't run from this section of scriptures. All the stuff about how you can't be gay, it's right next to love your neighbor as yourself.

All the stuff about, it's just amazing. It's amazing.

So Jesus tells us, he says, look, it wasn't their careful obedience. It's that they were lawless. They did not obey.

In fact, he says they're hypocrites. He tells his people, Jesus Christ, if you're going to follow

Jesus Christ, what does he say? What does he tell you? When it comes to the

Pharisees, Jesus says to his followers, he says, do what they say. He says, do what they say, don't do what they do.

Because what they do is lawless. What they teach is good. But how does it come into modern times when a guy like Tim Keller, who's so popular, he's so revered and respected, when he pulls

Jesus' teaching on the Pharisees into the future, what does it have you saying? It has you throwing shade at the people that are teaching

God's law. It has you throwing suspicious glances at those who are carefully trying to obey

God's law. They say, you know, maybe we shouldn't have gay ballet dancers during worship. Maybe that's not right.

Whoa, whoa, hold on. You're trying to carefully obey God's law. That's a strategy, I know. That's not what

Jesus said. Jesus tells us what the Pharisees were up to. They were hypocrites. They were teaching the law correctly, but they were not doing the law.

He says, do what they say, don't do what they do. That's what Jesus says. But Tim Keller, every year like clockwork, usually in January, he wants to set the tone, right?

And that tone that he wants to set is anyone who's telling you to carefully obey God's law, good chance they're a

Pharisee. Good chance that they're rebelling against God. Tim, you've been at this for decades now.

And the chaos in the evangelical church, the chaos in the culture are the receipts, are the fruit of your influence.

You've got people that are pro -abortion in your church, and they're just comfortable being there. And you know what?

They probably really got this message where it's like, well, careful obedience, thou shalt not murder.

That might be a strategy. If I don't support murder, that might be a strategy for me rebelling against God.

Tim Keller, his influence. Guys, I suggest you go over to John Harris's YouTube channel,

Conversations That Matter. I haven't said anything about this. I haven't watched all of the videos yet, but the stuff he's been doing on Tim Keller, it's thorough.

Let me say that. And I honestly don't know really what to do about it, what to say about it.

That is actually a shocking message. It's a shocking message not to obey Christ. No, that's not the shocking message.

The shocking message is how negative Tim Keller's influence has been on the church, how horrible his teaching is, how liberal it has been the entire time, the entire time.

And so many of us didn't see it. And so many of us still don't see it. And the question is, has it been a net negative, a net positive?

And this is the guy that his book kind of got me on the path to coming back to the

Lord. Like Tim Keller's book, in fact, the book where this idea comes from.

So it's not easy for me to be like, oh yeah, his negative influence. Because if not for Tim Keller's book, I don't know how

I would have found the Lord. I mean, obviously the Lord has his people and he works the way he wants to work. I get that, I'm a Calvinist, I'm a good

Calvinist. This just really struck me, man, how it's just like, this is how

Tim decides to set the tone for the year. Careful obedience to God's law.

That's our big problem. We gotta set the tone, you guys. It's not what

Jesus said. This is not what Jesus said. Jesus did not say this.

Jesus did not say this. He says, if you love me, you'll keep my law. If you wanna abide in my love, you do what

I say. Just like I abide in the Father's love and do what he says. The Pharisees do what they say, don't do what they do.

They weren't using careful obedience to God's law. They weren't doing anything carefully with God's law.

It was all about their cartel. And to be honest, Tim Keller's in that same cartel right now.

This is the spiritual fruit of the Pharisees. They've created their own system.

They've created their own law. They've created their own mortal sins and venial sins.

You know what I mean? They've got their hierarchies. Yeah, if you're a racist, there is no mercy for you.

But if you're, you know, Black Lives Matter, of course, it means nuanced. If you're an abortionist, nuanced, of course.

You're a kinnest, no mercy for you. They've got their own system that has nothing to do with the law of God.

And they're not trying to obey God's law. They're trying to obey their little cartel. They overturn God's law a lot with Corbin -like laws.

I've documented all of this. I've documented all of this. These are the new

Pharisees. It's the Gospel Coalition types. It's the ERLC types. It's the Tim Keller disciples, unfortunately.

Hope you found this video helpful. God bless. You know, my content these days is very lighthearted, usually, and I still rant every now and then, but obviously, the tone of this video is very serious.

And to be honest, like, I do feel serious about this because I get messages all the time about this man's influence.

I know how influential he is. This man has damaged so many people's view of God and his law and who

Christ is, even. This guy has done a lot of damage. And a lot of it is, like, he's got a hold on people.

Like, this guy, if you ever wanna cause problems, I'm not saying you should wanna cause problems, but if you ever did wanna cause problems, just say, yeah,

I'm not so sure about Tim Keller. That's all you have to say. You don't even have to say that you hate him. You don't even have to say that he's bad.

All you gotta say is, yeah, I'm not really so sure about him. And this guy, the emotions that people conjure up when you don't revere

Tim Keller as, like, this great sage, it's intense, it's intense.

And so I am, this does bother me. And I didn't know this. This video just shook me up, man.