Welcome to Gospel in Life. The Bible isn't a series of disconnected stories, each one a little moral for how to live.

On the contrary, it's actually primarily a single story, an account of how the world was made and ruined, how it was rescued through Jesus Christ, and how someday it's going to be remade into a new heavens and new earth.

Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller is teaching on this central storyline of the Bible, and what that means for our lives today.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?

The woman said to the serpent, we made fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die.

You will not surely die. The serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.

So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cruel of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? This is the word of the Lord.

In this series of sermons, we're trying to get across that the Bible is not a series of disconnected stories, each one with a little moral for how to live, but it's actually primarily a single story about what went wrong with human race and what will put it right.

And figure out what went wrong with human race is actually really important.

Beatrice Webb, who is one of the architects of the modern British welfare system, she and her husband and some others founded the London School of Economics, she was a socialist and activist, British leader.

And she kept a diary, and in 1925, she went back and looked at her older diary, and she wrote this, in 1925, she said,

In my diary, 1890, I wrote, I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature.

I have staked everything on the essential goodness of human nature, but now 35 years later, I realize how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in us, and how little they seem to change, like greed for wealth and power, and how mere social machinery will never change that.

We must ask better things from human nature, but will we get a response? And without this, how will we be of any, how will, oh pardon me, no amount of science or knowledge has been of any avail, and unless we curb the bad impulse, how will we get better social institutions?

That's a remarkable statement from somebody who want to know, what she is saying, there's something so wrong with us that leads to selfishness and violence, at least the corruption in business,

and corruption in government, and at least the war and atrocities, and that's consistent across history.

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