Audio Transcript

Today we say farewell to our friend, pastor and author Tim Keller. Tim passed away in New York City at the age of 72. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020.

Over the years, Dr. Keller graciously appeared as a guest on this podcast, leaving us with nine rich APJ episodes on topics like vocation (or work) and on the themes of prayer and solitude. I’m thankful for the time he invested with us.

Cancer, for Dr. Keller, was an old nemesis. Back in 2002, he was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a battle he would fight between 2003 and 2004. God would heal and restore Keller, but not before thyroid surgery knocked him out of the pulpit for three months. A decade later, Keller preached a sermon on boldness in the face of death and recounted what he learned during that first cancer battle, opening up about his fears as he was rolled into the operating room. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of something otherworldly. He saw the sheer magnitude of God’s glory and God’s joy beyond this world of pain and suffering and cancer and death.

I want to play for you a sermon clip that comes to my mind on this day, celebrating his life, knowing he has passed into the presence of God and into God’s incredible, unspeakable joy that the rest of us are left longing for. Here’s Tim Keller, in 2013, answering this question: Where do we find courage for life’s scariest moments?

To me, my favorite version of this example of what real courage is comes out of this little passage near the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’re one of the three or four people in the world who has never heard of The Lord of the Rings, it’s a story. There are these two little heroes. One is the master, and one is the servant of the master. Sam is the servant, and he loves his master. They’re on this terrible quest, and at one point, his master is imprisoned in a tower. Sam rescues Frodo, his master, largely by screwing himself up and saying, “You are not going to hurt him. I’m going to do this. You can’t stop me. I’m the great . . . here I come.” He does rescue him.

After that, they’re still on their terrible quest, and the danger is still very real. One night, Sam looks up into the sky and sees a star. This is in the book, not the movie. This is what the passage says:

Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart. . . . For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now . . . his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him . . . [and he fell] into a deep untroubled sleep. (922)

The author, Tolkien, is trying to say there’s a difference between defiance, in which you screw yourself up (“I can do it!”) — that’s still, in the end, not the courage you need, because you’re looking at yourself. Courage, on the one hand, is not looking at yourself and banishing fear. No, it’s just letting the fears play their role, and not letting the fears play too much of a role by looking away from yourself. “Okay,” you say, “but then to what?” It’s even in the text I just read. It was defiance, not hope. Hope.

When Paul met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, “‘Who are you, Lord?’ [I asked.] ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 22:8 NIV) — the resurrected Jesus. When we were going through Acts 9, the first account of Paul’s conversion, we talked a little bit about this. When Paul realized that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, suddenly everything broke open. Suddenly the meaning of his death made sense, and the hope for the future made sense.

If Jesus Christ really died on the cross, taking our punishment, and he’s now raised from the dead, now when we believe in him, not only are our sins forgiven, but now we have an incredible hope about the future. We’re going to be raised, and everything in this world is going to be put right, and there is not going to be any suffering or death. That is an astonishing hope.

As I said, the first part of courage is looking away from yourself. The world tells you, “Look at yourself and banish fear.” The second part of courage is looking toward hope, getting a hope. Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy — so much joy that the fear plays its proper role. Well, how do you get that joy?

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.”

Before we get to that, let me just tell you there is a second way out there in the world that people are counseling each other to get courage. I think the primary way is this sort of “self-esteemism.” The primary way the world tries to tell you to get courage is this: “Just tell yourself, ‘No fear — you can do it!’ Summon up the blood and go do it.”

I do think there’s an alternate discourse out there, and it’s older. It’s more ancient. It goes back to the East. It goes back to the Greeks. Cicero, for example, who was one of the Roman Stoics, wrote a very famous couple of treatises on why you shouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially not death. You shouldn’t be afraid of death. He says, “Courage makes light of death, for the dead are only as they were before they were born. It encounters pain by recollecting that the great pains are ended by death. Others we can usually control, if they are endurable, but if they are not, we can serenely quit life’s theater when the play has ceased to please us.”

What he’s saying here is, “There is no reason to be afraid of anything, including not of death. Why? Because when you die, that’s it. It’s like before. You’re just not there.” What is he saying? You shouldn’t be afraid of anything, because you tell yourself, “I’m going to lose it all anyway. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. When you die, that’s it. I’m enjoying things, but everybody loses things.”

What are they doing? You’re still deadening your heart, aren’t you? There is a way of getting courage, not by deadening your heart to fear, but by deadening your heart to love. And it’s not just Cicero — I’ve read it in the New Yorker. So many smart secular people today say the same thing. “There’s no reason to be afraid of things. There’s no reason to be afraid of death. When you’re dead, that’s it. There’s no reason to be afraid of death.” Oh no?

What is it that makes your life meaningful? Is it your health? Partly. Is it your wealth? Partly. Is it your success? Partly. But what if you had those things and you didn’t have love? What if you had nobody in your life to love you, nobody in your life for you to love? It would be meaningless. What makes your life meaningful are the people you love and the people who love you. That’s what makes your life meaningful.

Now you’re going to stand there, Cicero (or whoever), and you’re going to tell me I should not fear a future state in which the one thing that makes life meaningful is taken away? All love and all loved ones are taken away. That’s the state. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t be afraid of that? Are you crazy? Of course we should be afraid of that. I’m sorry, but deadening your heart to love is just like deadening your heart to fear. It kind of works, partly, but I don’t know. It’s certainly not good for your heart.

Here’s a better way. George Herbert, a seventeenth-century Anglican priest — incredible poet. One of my favorite poems in the history of the world is his little poem called “A Dialogue-Anthem.” It’s a dialogue between a Christian and Death. Christian starts.

Chr.Alas, poor Death! where is thy glory?Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?

Dea.Alas, poor mortal, void of story!Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.

Chr.Poor Death! and who was hurt thereby?Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accursed.

Dea.Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die;These arms shall crush thee.

Chr.     Spare not, do thy worst.I shall be one day better than before;Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

Do you want to be fearless? Do you want to look out there and say, “Nothing can really hurt me because of my infallible hope”? Do you want to look out there, saying, “Even the worst thing that can happen to me — death — can only make me better”? “Spare not, Death! Come on. All you could do is make me better than I am now.”

George Herbert has a great line where he says, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.” All he can do is plant you, and you finally come up into the beautiful flower that you were meant to be. You’re just a seed, and death just plants you, and then you finally become who you were meant to be. That’s not courage the Ciceronian way. “Just kill your heart. Just say, ‘Well, we’re going to lose everything anyway.’ Just deaden it.” This isn’t Hercules. This isn’t King Arthur. This is Jesus.

“Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage.”

How can you be utterly, utterly sure you have that hope? How can you say to even death itself, “Spare not, do thy worst”? I can tell you how. You have to believe in the only God. There are a lot of religions out there, and they all claim “God, God, God,” but Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage. Why? Because when God became Jesus Christ, he became vulnerable. He became human. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when everybody was asleep and it was dark and there was nobody there and he realized what he was about to face.

I actually think the garden of Gethsemane is the place where you see the greatest act of courage in the history of the world, because by the time he got nailed to the cross, even if he wanted to turn around, it would have been too late. There he was, nailed to the cross. But that night, he could have left. In fact, he even thought about it. He says, “My soul is overwhelmed . . . to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). What do you see in Jesus Christ? You see courage.

You don’t see him saying, “Bring it on.” The bloody sweat showed he was feeling fear. He wasn’t saying, “Come on.” What was he doing? We’re told all about it in Hebrews 12:1–3 (NIV):

Therefore . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

There it is. He looked away from himself, and what did he look toward? Joy. What was the joy? The joy of pleasing his Father and redeeming his friends. The joy of that enabled him to have courage. Listen: if you see him courageously dying for you like that so you can say to death, “Spare not, do thy worst,” then you can have courage.

One of the few times I needed courage, God was very happy to give it to me, and it was very nice. When I was going under, being wheeled in for my only cancer surgery — I had thyroid cancer years ago — I do remember (it was so nice) I suddenly had this sense that the world is wonderful and the universe is this big ball of the glory of God, and we’re just trapped in this little tiny speck of darkness. And even that’s going to be taken away eventually. Therefore, no matter what happens now, whatever happens with the surgery, I’m going to be all right. My family is going to be all right. The world is going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right. It was very nice to have a moment of courage.

“By looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.”

I have to tell you, I haven’t had many of those moments. I can’t hold on to them. But guess what? The courageous Jesus Christ holds on to me and holds on to you. And if you look at him and the joy of what he accomplished through his courageous act — by looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.” A moving testimony of the sheer magnitude of God’s glory. A clip from Tim Keller’s sermon titled “The Gospel and Courage,” preached on May 26, 2013.

A couple of years later, Dr. Keller took this story and wrote it into his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (2015). I want to read his published version.

There have not been many times in my life when I felt “the peace that passes understanding.” But there was one time for which I am very grateful. . . . It was just before my cancer surgery. My thyroid was about to be removed, and after that, I faced a treatment with radioactive iodine to destroy any residual cancerous thyroid tissue in my body. Of course my whole family and I were shaken by it all, and deeply anxious. On the morning of my surgery, after I said my good-byes to my wife and sons, I was wheeled into a room to be prepped. And in the moments before they gave me the anesthetic, I prayed. To my surprise, I got a sudden, clear new perspective on everything. It seemed to me that the universe was an enormous realm of joy, mirth, and high beauty. Of course it was — didn’t the triune God make it to be filled with his own boundless joy, wisdom, love, and delight? And within this great globe of glory was only one little speck of darkness — our world — where there was temporarily pain and suffering. But it was only one speck, and soon that speck would fade away and everything would be light. And I thought, “It doesn’t really matter how the surgery goes. Everything will be all right. Me — my wife, my children, my church — will all be all right.” I went to sleep with a bright peace on my heart. (318)

I trust that in his last days Tim was given this courage and this vision again of the magnitude of God’s joy enveloping everything else.

Dr. Keller escaped this speck of darkness for the high beauty forever beyond the Shadow’s reach and entered into the boundless joy of his master at the age of 72. Farewell for now, Dr. Keller.

Audio Transcript

From dating (last time) to marriage (today). Marriage is a beautiful institution, designed by God to point the world to Christ and to his bride. One wedding at a time, marriage exists for us because God decreed that Christ would purchase his bride, the church. And because of sin, that church, that fallen bride, must be redeemed from her ugly sin and be made beautiful in holiness. It’s an amazing drama played out in history, and in our lives, and it’s a drama played out in harmonious marriages and one played out even in hard marriages too. Painful marriages are no less reflective of God’s plan. And so, we have several episodes now on marriage challenges, which you can see. I gathered up all those APJ episodes and summarized them into one digest in the APJ book, one whole section just on this topic of hard marriages on pages 197–221.

And today, Pastor John joins us over the phone for a question from a perplexed father who wrote us anonymously. “Pastor John, hello. I write to you because my adult son wants to get a divorce from his wife. They have been married for two years and have a one-year-old son and a newborn baby girl of only ten days old. I’m totally perplexed by the timing. I don’t understand why he feels unhappy, but he claims he is ‘no longer in love’ with his wife anymore. What would you say to someone who has ‘fallen out of love’ with their spouse, and why that’s no grounds for divorce?”

Well, what I would say to them face to face would depend partly on their demeanor. But I don’t have him face to face, and so I’m just going to say what I think he probably needs to hear. Whether I would say it exactly like this, I don’t know. But here we go.

Embracing Realism

We would be naive, I think, to suppose that people — young or old, our own children or those of others — will act on the basis of reason and biblical truth when it comes to justifying divorce. I would guess that in 95 cases out of 100 people do what they want to do and then find reasons to do it. Especially those who claim to believe the Bible will find biblical reasons to do it. They just know what they’re going to do. They want to do it. They do it. So, we should be realistic as we talk to people, and we should pray. I think that’s the greatest realism — pray and fast that God would do what our biblical arguments and reasonings by themselves could never do.

But having said that, I totally believe in speaking the truth in love because it’s God’s way, it’s God’s design, that people should know the truth and the truth would set them free (John 8:32). (And that context is free from sin, like leaving your wife.) So, I would hang my thoughts on three words: joy, significance, and ownership. I would try to make those three words as compelling and winsome as I can, but also as forceful as Jesus and the apostles did, for the sake of staying married. So, let me say a word about what I mean by joy, significance, and ownership.

Joy

Joy. I would say to this young man who wants a divorce because he’s not in love, “Oh, what joy lies ahead for those who do not break their covenant even when their hearts are broken.” And here’s what I mean. I believe that most couples who stay married for fifty or sixty years fall in and out of love numerous times. And I say that with not the slightest hint of trying to be funny. It is, in my judgment, almost ludicrous to think that we experience “being in love” for the entire sixty years what we felt at the beginning of that relationship. That’s just utterly crazy. It is naive and immature to think that staying married is mainly about staying in love.

“You are free to break your marriage covenant when Christ breaks his covenant with his bride.”

In a relationship between two sinners, forced to live as close as married couples live, it is naive to think that every season will be one of warmth and sweetness and sexual romance. That’s just contrary to almost the entire history of the world and contrary to every makeup of fallen human nature. Staying married is not first about staying in love; it’s about covenant-keeping, promise-keeping, being a man and woman of your word, a man and woman who keep the vows to be committed for better or for worse, a man and a woman of character. That’s what it’s about.

This covenant-keeping relates to being in love the way gardening in the fall relates to roses in the spring. This is why I said a minute ago, “Oh, what joy lies ahead for those who do not break their covenant even when their hearts are broken.” The modern world of self-centeredness and self-exaltation and self-expression has taken the normal fifty-year process of falling in and out of love and turned it into a fifty-year process of multiple divorces and remarriages. That pattern has not and will not bear the fruit of joy. It leaves a trail of misery in the soul and misery among the generations.

Marriage is the hardest relationship to stay in and the one that promises glorious, unique, durable joys for those who have the character to keep their covenant. So, that’s what I mean by joy.

Significance

Now, here’s what I mean by significance. God offers to husbands and wives the highest possible significance for their marriage relationship by showing them what its greatest and most glorious meaning is — namely, the replication in the world of the covenant relationship between Christ and his bride, the church. That’s what the highest meaning of marriage is. There is no higher, more glorious, more significant conception of marriage than the one that Paul portrays in Ephesians 5, a parable of the greatest, strongest, deepest, sweetest, richest relationship in the universe — the blood-bought union between Christ, the Son of God, and his bride, the church. That’s the meaning; that’s the significance of marriage.

And I would just say to this young man that you are acting, or about to act, on one of the lowest views of marriage — not one of the highest, but one of the lowest, views of marriage. If you divorce because you don’t feel love anymore, there is nothing noble, nothing great, nothing beautiful, nothing high, nothing truly significant about such a motive. What does it say about Christ, the model of a man’s commitment in marriage? What does it say if he forsakes his wife because he doesn’t feel like staying anymore? What does it say about Christ? That’s the issue.

Marriage is an act of worship. It’s a display of the price and the preciousness of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Covenant-keeping in marriage glorifies Christ and the blood he shed to possess a bride forever. We cannot even conceive of a greater significance of marriage than the one God has given.

Ownership

And lastly, the word ownership. What do I mean by ownership? What I mean by ownership is that the union between a man and a woman isn’t theirs to break. They didn’t create it; they can’t break it. It’s not theirs. Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6).

It’s another sign of the man-centeredness and contemporary self-centeredness of Christianity that a young couple would have the mindset that they created the union called marriage, and therefore they can break it. They didn’t create it; they can’t break it. God made it; God breaks it with death. Or as I think Paul would say, “You are free to break your marriage covenant when Christ breaks his covenant with his bride.”

So, for the sake of maximum long-term joy, and for the sake of the deepest and highest significance, and for the sake of the Maker and Owner of your union, keep your covenant. Oh, what joy lies ahead, beyond anything you can presently imagine, for those who keep their covenant even when their hearts are broken.

This past summer, a giant deposit of phosphate rock was discovered in southwest Norway. Why does that matter? Well, this one area in Norway now “contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years.” A mining company discovered the jackpot of “up to 70 billion tons of the non-renewable resource [phosphate], . . . a key component for building green technologies” that “currently faces significant supply issues.” Supply issues no more. And just two months later was announced the discovery of 40 billion tons of lithium found inside the McDermitt Caldera, a supervolcano on the Nevada-Oregon border here in the States. That discovery sparked headlines like this one: “Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found.”

These are jackpots for the future of solar and battery power. And they should feed our worship. But they typically don’t. Instead, we are conditioned to see headlines and go man-centered (“This is all corporate greed!”). Or we go Luddite (“This is all of the devil — I’m ignoring it!”). Or we go political (“Electric vehicles are a liberal fad!”). Or we go greedy (“How do I get stock in this!?”). Our minds don’t naturally move from mining discoveries to the Creator. And they will not, without a reshaping of the heart first.

And so now most of us find it easier to celebrate God’s glory in unseen, spiritual realities. By faith, we see his glory in the gospel and in our Intercessor, Christ, our ascended and enthroned Savior in heaven, interceding for us right now. Glorious! And we easily celebrate God’s glory in untouched creation, too. Mountains, oceans, beaches, the northern lights, and the Milky Way galaxy on a dark night. But when it comes to the elements buried deep inside the earth that we excavate and make into shiny new things, God’s glory diminishes. Deposits of phosphate rock and lithium are ho-hum. And by the time we take those materials and make batteries and solar panels out of them, for many believers, God is rendered irrelevant.

A Nation-Sized Gift

The Bible gives us new eyes to see the material world around us in places like Deuteronomy chapter 8. Deuteronomy 8:1–10 is where I want to go this morning. Here Moses shapes the hearts of God’s people, getting them ready to live fruitfully in the promised land. They are a people redeemed from a 430-year bondage in Egypt straight into a 40-year desert wandering. A hard life. But now God’s people are being readied to enter the promised land. A new land. A good land, furnished with everything they could possibly need, even for their future innovations. But their hearts are not yet ready.

So, we’re simply going to walk through the text, beginning in verse 1, where Moses says,

The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. (8:1)

Lasting life for true obedience. That’s the deal. A verse that beautifully sets up the gospel and the obedience of Christ. But for now, if Israel upholds their end of the covenant, God promises that his covenant people will flourish in this new land. They will live and multiply. They will become a strong nation.

The small-cap Lord frames everything else we will study. The great “I am.” The great all-sufficient, self-sufficient “I am who I am.” This self-sufficient Lord promises to give his people the promised land, a promise repeated 23 times in Deuteronomy alone. This sworn land is fundamental to their national identity. This land is their national identity.

And while they will flourish if they obey, the land itself is pure gift. The Lord made the world from nothing. He laid the foundations of the world. Before any creature existed, God prepared this ground for his people. Pure gift. Not a payment for holiness. In chapter 9, this point will be made very clear. Israel is not earning this new land by its self-righteousness. It comes as a gift.

“See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers.”

This promised land belongs to the Lord. He designed it. He owns it. He’s giving it as a gift of love. Israel will take possession of it by faith and flourish in it by obedience. So Israel is warned. Don’t think that you’re morally superior to all the people who lived on the land previously to you. This land is a perpetual reminder of God’s abundant kindness to undeserving sinners, the lesson they should have learned in the desert.

Testing Hearts Through Stomachs

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. (8:2)

For forty years, God has been humbling his people. Bringing them low. Testing them. Because when you are brought low, your true self comes out. Pressure squeezes out what is inside the heart. So, God sends adversity to prove the faith of his people. Like a furnace that burns away whatever is trivial and false and fake, God “tests hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). Testing proves our trust in God. Do we really trust God or not? This whole text is about the heart. So, God works in the hearts of his people, humbling them, even down to their daily food.

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know . . . (8:3a)

Food’s hard to find in the desert. Manna was a miracle food. It looked like coriander seed and appeared in the desert, on the ground, every morning for forty years. God’s people woke up, gathered it daily, ground it up, and boiled manna cakes — cakes that tasted oily. And a little like honey. Not bad actually.

So, where’d this daily manna come from? No one knew. It was a miracle food from God. “The grain of heaven” made into “the bread of the angels” and eaten “in abundance” (Psalm 78:24–25). A gracious, sustaining gift from God that was sweet and pleasant. A daily gift to prove a bigger point:

. . . that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (8:3b)

A glaring contrast. Our hungry mouths are needy. God’s mouth sustains all things. Farmers don’t keep us alive. Safeway or Costco or Walmart doesn’t keep us alive. We are kept alive by divine miracle. Manna was a miracle food to remind Israel, and to remind all of us, that life is a sovereign miracle. If you are breathing right now, it’s because God says, “Live!” And so we live! Groceries are just a means he uses. Manna is just a means. He cares about the means, but the means point to him.

The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of his mouth. God says, “Live!” And by it, he upholds our lives “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). By miracle. One of many tangible miracles.

Providence and Preparation

Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. (8:4)

Forty years in the desert, wearing the same old clothes, same sandals. They never wore out. God involved himself down to the level of how fast their clothes wore out! Amazing providence on display down to the most mundane material provision of Israel’s life. Footwear. God’s generosity in the most basic provisions.

Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. (8:5)

God has brought discipline — training human behavior. For forty years in the desert, God was disciplining his people, resetting their behaviors, and preparing their hearts for a new home. Preparing them to trust and obey him in a materially prosperous land. Why?

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. (8:6)

The basic point of verses 2–6 is this: arrogance is unfitting for people about to inherit the gift of God’s land. For forty years, God was humbling his people, testing their hearts, and training their gratitude for a good land. And all this prep builds up now to the promised land itself, and that’s where I want to focus. So, what’s so special about this land?

The Good Land

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land . . . (8:7a)

The Lord is bringing them. God’s people are being led by the hand toward a gift. Have you ever bought someone a gift so big you couldn’t wrap it up? What do you do? You blindfold them and lead them to the gift by the hand. That’s God here. He’s leading his people by the hand to the gift of his land. Again, his kindness frames this entire story.

Not just any land. “A good land.” That’s its name. We typically call it the promised land. You could literally call it “the good land.” It has everything they will need to flourish. The land is useful and productive. The land is abundant and beautiful. And that means, of course, for any desert people, water:

. . . a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills . . . (8:7b)

The good land is rich with water flowing deep under the ground. Water breaks out from deep springs into fountains and flowing rivers, and God made it this way. Long ago he cut deep fountains into his creation. Descriptions of flowing water recall God’s original work. Into the promised land, God pre-cut channels into the rock for fresh water to flow. Long ago, this land was readied for God’s thirsty people, before God’s people even existed. And where water flows, grains and fruit abound.

. . . a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates . . . (8:8a)

Remember when the spies took their first peek into the promised land? The evidence they took back was grapes, pomegranates, and figs. What more do you need, right? A land of amazing and delicious fruits. Fruits to make jams and wines flow like rivers.

. . . a land of olive trees . . . (8:8b)

Not just olives — literally, “oil-rich” olives. The best olives. This land flows with olive oil. Oil for worship sacrifices. Oil to anoint. Oil for cooking and baking. Oil for skin care and hygiene. Oil for medicine to treat wounds. Oil to fuel lamps and give light. Olive oil was abundantly useful for all of life, and it was already there for God’s people.

. . . and honey . . . (8:8c)

A land of honey. The land flows with milk and honey. And you cannot have honey without bread.

. . . a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing . . . (8:9a)

That’s the punch line. It’s the chief characteristic of the promised land itself: here, all scarcity and all shortage is completely negated. There’s no lack here. Why? Because the land is loaded with everything you could materially imagine. God is comprehensively aware of the entire scope of our material lives and made a creation to meet it. And so the land abounds.

Loaded with Ore

And that means — and here’s where I want to camp — it is

a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. (8:9b)

This land lacks nothing because its rocks and hills are loaded with bronze and iron. Mentioned together, bronze and iron symbolize power and military might. Power and might already in the land. Iron could be taken from stones. Iron meant wealth. It could be traded. And iron was immediately useful in all areas of life. Iron-made tools for soldiers, tools for stonecutters, tools for carpenters, tools for farmers. Iron was used for axles, reinforced wheels, and chariots.

Even more diversely useful was copper. Copper could be excavated from the hills. It would be the most common material used for jewelry. It would be polished into mirrors. Copper mixed with tin made bronze, a hard and durable metal. Farmers would use bronze for plowpoints, threshing sledges, axes, pruning shears, yokes, and sickles. Soldiers would use bronze for chains, chain mail, armor, helmets, shields, javelins, bows, and arrows, as well as to fortify city walls and gates. Stonemasons would use bronze tools to cut and shape rock. God’s worshipers would use copper and bronze musically to make symbols.

“If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable.”

Most importantly, David would prepare for the temple by acquiring iron and “bronze in quantities beyond weighing” (1 Chronicles 22:3). Then his son Solomon would take that iron and “bronze beyond weighing” and build the temple (1 Chronicles 22:14–16) — one to dazzle the world with shiny copper things: pots, shovels, basins, furniture, altars, entire doors. Bronze hardware would be everywhere — all by God’s design.

God’s nation has been handed all the iron and bronze needed to build a temple that gleams in the sunshine to attract all the nations to God. It is within God’s redemptive history that iron and bronze and human inventiveness find their home.

Israel’s unweighable abundance of iron and copper and bronze is as much a gift from God as the manna flakes they ate daily in the desert. All these weapons, all these tools, all these decorations to beautify God’s house — all of it God coded into the promised land at creation — by design. One reason the good land lacked nothing is because it was designed with all of Israel’s future “tool and technologies” needs in mind. All of Israel’s future tool needs were met and pre-coded into the good land by God, from the beginning of time — a gracious gift of the Creator’s design given in order to shape Israel’s material future.

There are staggering realities here, linking God’s sovereign plan for a nation’s future to its available natural resources. So, who’s getting the praise for these shiny metal things in Israel’s technological future?

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. (8:10)

There again is its name: “the good land.” A land without lack. So, praise the Creator of this good land. When you have all this prosperity, thank God for it! You have it by his design.

How Faith Receives Technology

The full implications of these few verses deserve a book. But here are four statements only people of faith can make.

1. Follow human inventions back to the Creator.

The One who laid the foundations of the world is the One who dug deep channels for water. And the One who channeled the water infused into his creation of iron and copper to inspire his people’s future inventions. So, where does material technology come from? The Lord. God’s sovereign plan for each nation unfolds according to the available resources he has given. It was he who determined, “Let’s put 70 billion tons of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway and another 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada for them to use in 2024.” That’s one way the Creator sovereignly guides the future of nations.

If you think that’s only true for Israel and not Europe, I’ll add our friend Spurgeon into the chat. I can’t talk tech without a Spurgeon quote. He got it. And it would be unforgivable to speak here without a Spurgeon mention. Here he is landing a sermon illustration about coal. Spurgeon said this:

A man, looking at the coal mines of England, naturally considers that God made that coal with the intention of supplying the world’s inhabitants with fuel, and that he stored it, as it were, away in those dark cellars underground for this favored nation [England], that the wheels of its commerce might be set in motion.

God made coal — made it for man to discover and burn — then hid that coal until just the right moment to reveal his generosity to England and to fire her economic engine. That’s how Christians view the material world, through the lens of Deuteronomy 8.

Our inventions unfold according to the discoveries we continue to make into God’s creation, in God’s timing. And so, Israel was positioned to discover and invent and build, “being gratefully aware” that all the “material resources, imagination, planning, skills, energy” — all of it was given to them by God. God governs the unfolding story of nations by governing the story of human inventiveness by how he designed his creation. True for Israel, Norway, Nevada, England.

2. Marvel at God’s glory exposed in our mining discoveries.

We won’t go there, but Job 28:1–11 is all about mining. An amazing “hymn celebrating human technology,” specifically of man’s “technological ability” to excavate what’s in the earth. That text led theologian Abraham Kuyper to say this, long before the digital age:

Man was designed and intended for digging up what God has hidden in the earth and for glorifying the greatness of God through doing this. . . . God enclosed gold and silver, all precious metals and precious stones, in the heart of the earth, and if there had been no human beings to bring these treasures to the surface, and to let the luster of the gold shine and to bring out the brilliance of the diamond by cutting it, then God would never have received the honor and praise for these, his more delicate creations in the mineral kingdom. (Common Grace, 2:97)

Amazing. True of gold, silver, diamonds, the brass on the temple, coal, and high-grade phosphate and the resources that feed our economies. Miners continue to set free the otherwise unseen creative brilliance of our God.

3. Enjoy the Creator in your inventions.

We so easily miss the main point of why mining exists. Kuyper just said it. Many previous nations have failed here. We will too if we’re not careful. We must also heed God’s warning in Deuteronomy 8:17–18. So, what’s the safe way to go here? Should we, God’s people, just diss on material things? Hate on technology? Scoff at EVs? Ignore the Norway discovery as vain worldliness? Let’s find out.

Beware lest you say in your heart . . . (Deuteronomy 8:17a)

Here it is again. What our industries do with all that high-grade phosphate rock in Norway or lithium in Nevada is one thing. What our heart does with all that phosphate rock and lithium is the concern of God. The heart of his people is the far bigger issue. Do you see God’s generosity or not? What does your heart do with all this culture-making and city-building and human tech-making? The temptation is to say,

“My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (8:17b)

To say that is to utterly fail! Israel, when you’ve settled into this land, you’ll stand back and enjoy the skyline of your cities. You’ll look at all the houses you have made. The new shoes and new clothes you wear. All the copper and brass and iron tools you invented to make you strong, prosperous, and wealthy. Your temple will shine in the sun. You will see oil and wine flowing from your industry. You will see farmers hauling carts of grain. You will see bakeries full of bread. Your markets will be full of food. You will make banks and financial systems and succeed in international trade. And if you fail to see God’s generosity in it all, you are an idolater.

The only explanation for why anything in the world works — why tech works, why our cars work, our computers, our phones, our batteries, why we generate wealth — is owing to the power and generosity of God. So instead,

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. (8:18a)

God claims the glory for every penny of Israel’s wealth. He claims credit for the ultimate, final product of Israel’s industry. All the economic momentum of Israel is all because of God. He claims credit not merely for the iron and copper — or the phosphorus and lithium — but for the power to excavate these materials, and then he claims credit for wealth generated by turning those raw materials into solar panels and batteries. Why? Because all industrial wealth is traced back to its first cause: God’s generosity in creation. The God who gives out manna day by day in the desert is the same God who plants mineral deposits to spur Israel’s creativity and to spur us forward in our batteries and solar panels. Same God. Same generosity. Do you see it? Do you see him?

Every nation is held accountable here, as verses 19 and 20 suggest. Everything we make spotlights God’s abounding generosity. So, build houses. Burn coal. Make batteries and solar panels. Build economic systems. Engage in international trade. Grow trees for lumber to build homes. Harness the lightning and electrify your cities. Replicate the sun in nuclear fusion. Listen as the Creator helps you max out your farm yields. Make new things out of metal. Make new cars. Make EVs if you want. Make more comfortable clothing materials. Make new gadgets. And when you do all of it, people of God, enjoy God in it.

“The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of God’s mouth.”

God never assumes his people will do this well! Deuteronomy 8 assumes that God’s own people will grow blind to his generosity in the shiny metal things they hold in hand. If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable. This world will condition us — us Christians — to see mining headlines and to think man-centered thoughts. We’re wired to do everything but move from mining discoveries to the iPhone to the Creator’s generosity. Deuteronomy 8 corrects us.

4. Employ your inventions to reach the nations.

We often make the mistake of thinking technology is outside of redemptive history and inconsequential to the church. Silicon Valley is just humans doing human things. It’s Babel. It’s rebellion. Ignore it. And then we open our Bibles to find the story of human innovation woven right into redemptive history, as God claims credit for everything we make out of metal — our gadgets, cities, temples, homes, economies. Technology is there, not as some intruder into God’s redemptive plan, but as a servant within God’s redemptive plan. We have tech because we have a mission.

There’s a world of lost sinners to reach, so the temple needs brass and the missionary’s bush plane needs gas. And God is the first cause of both the brass and the gasoline. The best of our inventions is missionally useful. Israel’s iron and brass was meant to attract the nations.

In the story of the church, we could talk about the history of metallurgy and the iron nails used in the cross, or the invention of the Greek language to codify a far-reaching tongue, or the brilliance of Roman roads, wooden ships, the codex Bible, printing presses, steam trains, steamships, fossil fuels, combustion engines, off-road trucks, bush planes. Everything needed to pull off a Spurgeon sermon and then a Billy Graham revival meeting, or to show the Jesus Film in a dark village, or to broadcast the gospel on AM/FM airwaves, or for digital media to enter closed and remote countries through smartphones. Tech exists because the church exists. Tech exists because the Great Commission exists.

Here’s the bottom line: In 70 billion tons of phosphate in Norway or 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada, never grow blind to God’s glory and generosity on display. Marvel at the Maker. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket fire through the sky and marvel at man. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket launch and diss on man. See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers. And marvel in your heart at the foresight of a Maker whose creation would produce rockets and cars and gasoline and batteries and solar panels and iPhones, and thousands of innovations we’re using right now and take for granted every day. God claims it all.