Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

In Deuteronomy 7, we come upon a topic that is a very controversial topic and a difficult one for, I think, everybody actually. This word that comes up a couple of times in the first couple of verses, where it says, “The Lord your God chose you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people …” He chose you. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament say that if you believe, you believe because God has chosen you. He came to you, and he opened your heart, and that’s the reason you believe.
People struggle mightily with this whole idea, and so we’re going to see how this text helps us — it text helps us struggle very smartly and wisely. It’s going to tell us three things. Being chosen by grace produces a deep humility and a radiant community, because it creates, at bottom, an absolute security. Let’s take a look at the first point.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 10, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 7:6-11.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the book of Proverbs every week, and that means we’re looking at the subject of wisdom every week. Wisdom, while not being less, is more than being moral and good. Wisdom is knowing what the right thing to do is in the vast majority of life situations in which the moral rules don’t apply, that they don’t address.
Today we come to a theme that runs all through Proverbs and, in fact, all through the whole Bible. That is, that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. There’s a place in Job where God actually shows how important the term is when he says, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him in all the earth; a man who fears God and shuns evil.” It’s obvious the term fear of the Lord is something that is a summary of everything we’re supposed to do and be.
So why is it so important and what in the world is it? Today we’re going to see how the fear of the Lord is 1. beginning with God, 2. knowing God, 3. trusting God, and 4. discovering the grace of God.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 3, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4-23.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The book of Deuteronomy is a series of sermons Moses preached just before he died. In it, he lays out, in the most comprehensive and practical way, how you should live if you experience the grace and salvation of God. If you experience God, how should that actually affect the way in which you live your life? It’s a very, very practical book and an incredibly comprehensive book.
Today, we get to the Ten Commandments. This is one of the most influential texts in the entire history of the world. Let’s take a look and see what we’re taught about it. It’s awfully basic, but it’s awfully basic because it’s awfully important. There are four things we’re going to learn here about God’s Law: 1. the origin of the Law; 2. the substance of the Law; 3. the problem of the Law, and 4. the solution to that problem.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 27, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:6-21, 24-29; James 2:10; Luke 19:41-42; 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the book of Deuteronomy, and there’s probably no single book of the Bible that is more comprehensive in showing us how we should live if we’ve actually met God. 
The primary concept of the book of Deuteronomy is the concept of covenant. The Bible says you can only relate to God covenantally. Right away, we say, “What’s a covenant? Is it a contract?” We’re going to see our relationship with God is far more personal and intimate than a contractual relationship. At the very same time, far more binding and solemn and accountable than a friendship. It’s covenantal.
In this chapter there are three awesome terms — awesome images — Moses introduces for us to understand what it means to have a covenantal relationship with God. Those three terms are jealousy, idolatry, and the fire of God.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 20, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 4:15-24; 33-36.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Deuteronomy is a series of sermons by Moses just as he was about to die, giving the people of Israel a comprehensive look at, now that they had received God’s grace, how they should live. It begins with this story about the children of Israel who had come to the border of Canaan actually 40 years before Moses is preaching these sermons. Because of the report of the spies about the size of the inhabitants and about the danger of going in, they had failed God. They had failed to obey him and listen to him and turned away. It was a great disaster.
This passage teaches us some basic things about who we are and who God is. Here’s what we learn from this passage: 1. what’s wrong with the human heart, 2. two forms wrongness can take, and 3. God’s solution for it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 13, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 1:26-28, 34-36, 41-46.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Each week we're taking a look at a piece of the vision of Redeemer and this is it: As a church of Jesus Christ, Redeemer exists to help build a great city for all people through a movement of the gospel that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice and cultural renewal to New York City and through it, the world.Today, we're looking at social justice.
We're doing it this week, partly because it's Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday that Jesus Christ was declared the King and rode into Jerusalem. In the Bible, one of the primary things that kings did was to administer Justice. And this morning we're going to  look at how Jesus Christ fulfills justice and how he does justice in the world. 
First, we're gonna learn about the startling importance of justice. Secondly, the fulsome nature of justice, and thirdly, how we get the ability to do justice in the world.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 20, 2016. Series "Where We are Going: The City and the Missions". Scripture: Isaiah 58:1-14.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the book of James, which is a book that asks and answers this question: If you really believed the gospel of Jesus, if you really believed what Jesus said he came to do, what would that mean for the way in which you live your life every day? What does that look like on the ground? What practically does that look like?
Every single week, we’re looking at another part of the book of James, in which he’s showing us how belief in the gospel affects the way we actually live day to day. James is contrasting God’s wisdom with the world’s wisdom or with what the Bible calls foolishness. 
Let’s look at it under four headings. What he’s telling us here is about 1. a problem we have, 2. the reasons it is a problem, 3. the thing that can make the problem worse, and 4. the thing that can make the problem better or solve it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 17, 2010. Series "The Gospel in Community: The Book of James". Scripture: James 4:13-5:6.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The book of James is a practical book. James, unlike Paul, doesn’t so much break the gospel apart to show you what it is; James assumes the gospel and shows you what your life will look like if you believe it. 
Today, we’re going to see 1. what kind of community you ought to be, 2. why you ought to be it, and 3. how we can become that kind of community.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 6, 2009. Series "The Gospel in Community: The Book of James". Scripture: James 2:1-17.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The book of Psalms is the preeminent place to see how to deal with your emotions and the conditions of the heart. Psalms, in a certain sense, is almost God’s counseling case book — not his counseling textbook, but his case book. Not a place where you have lots of principles laid out, but lots of actual cases of people struggling with anger and loneliness and doubt and emptiness and grief and fear and anxiety and shame and guilt, every condition the human heart struggles with and wrestles with.
Yet, in the Psalms, you occasionally have a psalm like this — it shows us how to handle life in general. David lays out the basic key to deal with all conditions, all circumstances of life, any situation. It’s, in a way, the basic way to handle the problems of life. That’s what this psalm is about.
We’re going to learn here 1.why we need to remember, 2. where we need to remember, 3. what we need to remember, and 4. how we need to remember. This is the key to handling life.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 19, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 103:1-22.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The Psalms give us a unique way to deal with our emotions and feelings. It’s unique because, on the one hand, in religious circles, amongst religious people, there is a fear of admitting and facing our feelings. In secular circles, there’s the opposite mistake, which is there’s a tendency to simply see expression of feelings and discovery of feelings as a good in itself, and once you’ve found what those feelings are, that’s who you really are. The Psalms say it is very bad and dangerous to either deny your feelings or vent your feelings — to either stuff your feelings or bow down to your feelings.
The Psalms tell us we’re supposed to pray our feelings. Not just pray about our feelings, but to actually take them before God and pour them out in a pre-reflective way and process them in the presence of God, in the light of who he is and who we are, in the light of the realities that come to us, that bear down on us, as we’re in his presence. 
Today we look at a psalm about guilt and shame — having your heart broken under a sense of failure, liability, and general unworthiness. In these eight verses, we actually see guilt and shame likened to 1. a hole, to something we’ve sunk down in, and 2. we’re shown a rope you throw a person, that’s available for a person who’s in that hole of guilt and shame, and 3. we see a little bit about the process of how you climb out with that rope.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 12, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 130:1-8.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The Psalms are deeply emotional prayers. If you’re a modern person, a modern New Yorker, religious or non-religious, you have a tendency to say, “Now David, we mustn’t be angry at our enemies. We must control ourselves.” But the Psalms are too real for that. The Psalms give us a unique approach to emotions.   
David is being deposed as king, and there’s an army after him to literally imprison and kill him. But David is not just simply being attacked physically; he’s being attacked psychologically and spiritually. His very identity is under attack and assault as well.
David is really at the bottom. So what’s he going to do about it? The four things he does, the four steps out of the pit, are all there in verses 3–8. I’ll tell you what they are, and then we’ll go through them: Follow your thread, relocate your glory, see the substitute, and remember the people.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 5, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 3:1-8; Genesis 15:1,8.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

As you can see, these psalms are about weeping, suffering and grief. Religious people, by and large, want to deny the power and the depth of their feelings. On the other hand, secular people tend to see discovery and expression of your feelings almost as a good end in itself. To bow to your feelings or to stuff your feelings, to be over-awed by your feelings or under-aware of your feelings are both dangerous. 
The Psalms give us a gospel third way of dealing with your feelings. The Psalms do not say to deny or vent, but to pray your feelings. Pray your deepest feelings. Bring them before God and process them. There are three things these texts tell us. Expect tears, invest tears, and pray your tears.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 27, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 39:12-13, 126:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Psalm 16, Psalm 17.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The Psalms are not so much about lofty, high doctrine as they are about how the human heart works, the deep recesses of the motives and emotions of the human heart. And what we’re now going to look at in Psalm 73 is doubt. 
Doubt always masquerades as more intellectual than it is, but doubt is a condition of the soul and the heart. Here’s a person filled with doubts, struggling with doubts about God and about faith. Let’s see what the condition is, what the cause of the condition is, and what the cure of the condition is.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 20, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 73:1-3; 12-26.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the life of David, and this episode in 2 Samuel 6 is a strange one for modern readers. One of the very first things David does after he becomes king is he wants to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. To do so meant putting, in a sense, God’s worship in the very center of the national life and in the very center of David’s life. 
Two fascinating incidents happen first; one is the death of Uzzah, a man who simply tries to keep the ark from falling off the cart. David is frightened and angry, thinking, “This God is more holy than I thought.” Secondly, the ark is given to Obed-Edom, the Gittite, and there the ark actually doesn’t do anything but make them prosper, showing God is more gracious than he thought. 
Let’s notice three things when David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem: David is a changed man. Secondly and thirdly, the first thing that changes him and the second thing that changes him.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 31, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 2 Samuel 6:1-23.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re going through the books of 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, which tell the story of King David’s life. Each week we look at a new episode, and each week the episode ties us into another major biblical theme. This week, this particular story talks to us and tells us quite a bit about what it means to love people who have wronged you.
What I’m going to do is kind of recount the story, and as we recount the story, we’re going to see what it tells us about loving a neighbor, loving an enemy or someone who has wronged you, loving a fool, and where you get the power to do so.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 24, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 26:7-14, 21-25.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the life of David, and the life of David is a little bit of a challenge for a preacher because we have more information in the Bible about the life of David than about any other figure. Therefore, the narrative arcs are longer in this part of the Bible than normal.
If you’re going to follow David’s relationship with Saul or David’s relationship with Jonathan, you have multiple texts, so we did something a little unusual today, and we gave you four texts. We’re going to show you how they tell us about the rightly famous friendship between Jonathan and David; and what these texts and what the Bible tell us about the importance of friendship.
Let’s take a look at what we learn from the relationship of David to Jonathan about the 1) absolute importance of friendship, the constituent elements of friendship — what it’s made of — and 3) the requisite power in order to be a friend and to have friends.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 17, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 18:1-4; 19:4-7; 20:40-42; 23:15-18.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the life of David, and it’s interesting how this ancient text every week yields so much insight about very current problems (you could even say perennial problems), and this week we get a portrait, a simple portrait of something that is a lot bigger problem than most of us think of it as being. Saul’s life is being destroyed by envy.
Envy. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of people come to me to talk about issues like anger and despondency, but almost never does somebody come to me and say, “I have a problem with envy.” I’ve had lots of people say, “You need to preach on this issue,” or “You need to preach on that issue. These are important issues.” Never, I want you to know, has anyone ever asked me to preach on envy.
Yet, Aristotle … Not just the Bible but all of the ancients understood envy is one of the deadly sins, one of the things that destroys people’s lives, one of the things that’s making the world such a miserable place, so let’s look at what this passage tells us about envy: what it is, what it does, and how we can escape it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 10, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 18:1-14.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Of all the episodes in the life of David, his encounter with Goliath is the most famous, it’s the most dramatic, it’s the most often told, and it’s probably the one that deals with the most fundamental question of all … How do you deal with fear? How do you have the courage to face life?
The ordinary way this text is read to answer that question is kind of like this. Goliath represents your fears. Look at them. They’re intimidating, but David is your inspiring example to show you how to handle those fears, which is to go right at them. Banish the fears. Face your fears, and the bigger they are the harder they will fall.
I’m here to say that’s a shallow understanding, even a deceptive understanding of how to read the text, and it has a lot more in here to answer that question if we read it a little differently, so let’s, first of all, ask the question, “What is this telling us?” I think it’s going to give us two answers. It’s going to show us the problems of counterfeit courage, but it will also show us the way to true courage.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 3, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:32-50.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the life of David, and it impresses me how each week each time we look at a new episode we not only are getting ancient history, but we’re always getting some question addressed that has quite modern, contemporary … I should actually say perennial … relevance. For example, I think the question we’re going to be helped to answer today is … What do you really look like? Am I ugly? Am I attractive? What do I really look like? This passage helps us answer these questions.
There are a number of ways to read a passage, so let’s read this one while keeping that question in mind. Let’s notice what it teaches us about 1) the importance of true beauty, 2) the source of true beauty and 3) the secret of both detecting and developing true beauty.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 26, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1-13.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the life of David, and today we get to a text that actually gets us to address one of the most urgent and important questions you could ask: what’s wrong with the human race? The problem is we know how we should live, and we aren’t able to do it. Why do we do the terrible things we do when we basically know how we should live? One answer is in this passage from 1 Samuel. It’s not the only answer, but it’s an extremely important one. It’s a small but important subject I want to bring to your attention. To get at it, let’s ask these questions: How did Saul fail? Why did Saul fail? How can we escape the thing that destroyed him?
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 19, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 15:10-23.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.