Jesus Has A Home For Us: Tim Keller’s Take On Suffering

When we focus on heaven we can cope with the suffering we all experience on earth. Image Pixabay

I love Tim Keller’s approach to suffering and I have written a series previously about his book on the subject. He points out how bad our culture is at dealing with suffering. With the advent of woke culture and cancel culture things have only got even worse. We live in an age that encourages bitterness, unforgiveness and selfishness. People are told that if someone upsets you even just a little bit you can just get rid of them from your life. Perhaps partly as a result if this more people live alone than ever before. Even though sharing a home is much better financially, many end up living alone. The glorious good news is that God loves sinners like you and me!

TV programmes like Friends and Big Bang Theory appeal to people of all ages today because so many of us do not have groups of real friends who are with us in all our troubles. We see in these sitcoms friends together for the long term even though they regularly upset each other and are far from perfect. They support one another as best they can but sometimes make matters worse. These programmes are funny of course, but they also appeal to a deep-seated desire we all have to belong. Because so many of us do not feel like we really belong, then we hurt, and feel rejected. It is easy for us to become cynical, bitter and disappointed at what life has brought us, and I know I have been guilty of that at times.

When we focus on heaven we can cope with the suffering we all experience on earth

In a clip I found on Matt Smethurt’s X Keller explains how an elderly lady had a very different approach many years ago. In this clip you will find a secret which will help you let go of bitterness and unforgiveness. This a way to true joy, and it comes from us being sufficiently heavenly minded to be of earthly use. I couldn’t help thinking of how Keller himself is now experiencing his heavenly home after his own suffering:

When @TimKellerNYC was 24 years old, he was a new pastor in rural Virginia. Alice was an elderly Christian who had suffered enormously in her life.

More than four decades later, Keller still remembered her perspective. pic.twitter.com/nIIL8ccPxg

— Matt Smethurst (@MattSmethurst) July 19, 2024

TIm was preaching on John 14:1–3 which I share here in the ESV

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am

Using Logos Bible Software I was able to find the rest of the sermon this clip came from and thought I would interact with some of that for the rest of this article. If you have Logos you can find the sermon by clicking this link: “Confident in Hope,” in The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 2016–2017. New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

Or you can listen to the whole sermon right here or watch it on Keller’s ministry website.

Keller says:

“Later, in John 16:33 Jesus says ‘in this world, you will have trouble’ … there it is. So because you’re going to have trouble all the time, I want to give you something so that your hearts are not troubled all the time . . . in these verses . . . He gives us one of the things without which you cannot face life in an untroubled way, and that is, He says, “I go to prepare a place for you . . . I want to talk to you about home. . . . ”

There’s nothing on earth that actually satisfies the desire for home . . .Home isn’t just a house, home is a place where everything fits. Where things suit you, where you’re accepted, where you belong. Where you come as you are, always, well you don’t have to put on a face, you don’t have to, you know, adopt a role. It’s a place of deep breaths, a place of deep well being and peace, its harbor. It’s home . . .”

Do you feel homeless, rootless, like nobody truly loves and accepts you? Jesus says “Come to me!” He promises us that he is with us in the middle of our troubles, but even better than that he promises us that he will one day put an END to all our problems and welcome us into the true home he has prepared for us. Ideally the church you attend will feel like home and a family but whether by saying things that hurt you or just by not having enough time for you, people will always let you down one way or another. One of the ways many people let us down is by setting conditions on their love for us. If we do not meet up to their exacting standards they reject us. Jesus on the other hand loves us no matter what we do, and no matter how much we struggle. Keller continues:

“He doesn’t say, ‘and if you live a good enough life, maybe I’ll let you come to My home, My place.’ No! He says, ‘I’m going to prepare your place right now if you’re a disciple of mine, you’ve got that place, the place you’ve been longing for all your life. It’s there, it’s reserved, it’s guaranteed. I’ve got it ready for you. And you can live your life knowing . . . ‘Well, here’s your home. . . ‘”

Jesus wants to give you a home, and when you realise that you do not belong on this earth, the sufferings we experience will not surprise us. And whilst the pain will not go away, we can calm our hearts with this truth. Keller continues:

“The worst thing that can happen to you on this earth, is actually the best thing. The darkest thing that could happen to you, which means you get killed or you die, the darkest thing that could happen is actually the most brilliant thing . . .

The great poet George Herbert, what a lion, he says, “death used to be an executioner, but the gospel makes him just a gardener.” He said, “What does a gardener do? He takes seeds, plants, these little seeds, but then they become flowers, little seeds, and it becomes fruit . . .

Adam and Eve, turned away from God . . . what was the greatest punishment? Homelessness! They were cast out, alright? Of their home . . . The wages of sin is loneliness. Do you not know that about yourself?

The more selfish you are, the more proud you are. The more sinful you are, the more alienated you are from other people. That’s just natural. The more you sin, the more it tends to push you away from people and push people away from you. And therefore, the natural consequence, the natural and right punishment for sin, is homelessness, is loneliness. And that’s what Jesus took. Jesus says foxes have holes, birds have nests, this Son of man has nowhere to lay His head. He was a wanderer. And when He died, He was crucified outside the gate, outside His home . . .He said, “”My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He took the exile . . .”

Jesus took our loneliness. He wants to bring us back to him, fellowship with him even now and build us into beautiful communities of imperfect people. But this hope of a future home gives us hope in the most disastrous of situations. Our situation might not change, but we will be changed in our situation by this meditation. as Keller concludes his sermon:

“When Jesus says, ‘Don’t let your heart be troubled because of what I’m telling you . . . in some ways, what He’s saying is ‘I’m giving you a watchtower.’ Now a watchtower was something that you would put people up in to, to see the lay of the land. And let’s just say you’re up in the watchtower and there was a battle going on in the city but below you, and if you were down in the city it looked really bad. But up in the watchtower, you see reinforcements coming and you realize we’re gonna win. And Jesus is basically saying ‘every so often, you’re down here and it just looks terrible, every so often I want you to read John 14:1, 2 and 3 and get up in that watchtower and realize it’s going to be fine.’

I remember that one of the very first people I actually, in a sense, pastored into death, was an older woman. I was 24 years old. I had just taken this church in Virginia and she was dying. And she was an older woman in my congregation, and she’d had a terrible life. She’d had children die on her . . . I was told she had an abusive, tyrannical husband. But she had a wonderful attitude she taught me. Because when I talked about all the things that had happened wrong, people had abused her, and she says, ‘Well, you know, God knows what people will deserve. Someday He will judge the earth. And if those people need, they deserve something, that’s God’s job.’

And I would talk about the sufferings she’d been through, ‘well, you know, God’s going to come and take me and He’s going to make everything right and someday He’s going to make the whole world right.’ It was like she would get up in that tower and she was telling me ‘Come on, come on up. The air is fine up here. You know, you’re always bothered, you know, young man . . . come on up here. It’s really good.’

And I do remember, when, just the day before she died, she actually had a collapse. And I went to the hospital and she was on the respirator. It’s a horrible thing there. And, you know, her eyes were closed and I couldn’t tell whether she could hear me, but her face, she was all frowning and seemed to be in a lot of pain. I do remember I sat down next to her and I read to her. I said, ‘Alice, listen.’ I read her John 14:1, 2 and 3. ‘Don’t let your heart be troubled, don’t let it be afraid. I go to prepare a place for you, so you’ll be with Me where I am.’ And the frown went away and she nodded. Her eyes never opened, and I think what I did was I just helped her back, up in the tower, and she was able to die peacefully.

Have you got that tower? Do you know what it’s like to get up there? And don’t forget, since Jesus says, what makes Heaven Heaven is I’ll be there. Don’t you realize that even now, to a great degree, Jesus is saying have fellowship with Me, know My love. I am your shelter from the stormy blast and your eternal home. So the more you’re able to know Him, the more you get up in that tower and you realize everything’s gonna be alright. Don’t let your heart be troubled.

Let’s pray: Our Father, we just are meditating on something that is supposed to be a great, great comfort to us and it is. But we pray, Lord, in the midst of a lot of suffering and death and trouble that You would teach us how to take this medicine, to get to this vantage point, to remember all these promises, so that we too would live our life in confidence and strength and not let the troubles trouble us. So we pray Lord, that You would enable us to do that and make Yourself real to us now as we participate in your supper. We pray in Jesus’s name, Amen.”

What wonderful good news! No wonder Tim Keller famously said of the gospel:

“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.”

— Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, New York, NY: Dutton, 2008, p. 181.