Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

The plot line of Jonah goes like this. Chapter 1: God says to Jonah, “Go and preach to Nineveh, the greatest city in the world.” Chapter 2: Jonah refuses and flees on a boat. Chapter 3: God sends a great storm on the ocean to reclaim Jonah. Chapter 4: Jonah is thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish.
The point of all of this is right here in this chapter, almost exactly in the very center of the book. The point is about God’s grace. This book says a religious professional, a preacher, and even more than that, a prophet who received direct revelation from God can be deeply and profoundly in the dark about God’s grace. Jonah’s deepest fears, his racial prejudice, and his lack of endurance are all tied to his blindness to the reality of grace. Let’s look at three questions that this passage answers for us: 1. What is the grace of God? 2. How do you receive the grace of God? 3. How do you know you have received the grace of God in your life?
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 12, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 2:1-10.
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.

Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh, the greatest city in the world, and warn the city about impending disaster and preach there. Jonah refuses, heads in the other direction, and gets on a boat. God sends a storm to hunt him down, endangering the lives of everyone on the ship. Jonah, recognizing this, offers to be thrown into the ocean so the lives of the other sailors will not be forfeit.
We’re going to pause and look at the sub-plot here: Jonah and his relationship and impact on the sailors and their impact on him. God uses the sailors to teach Jonah something about himself and the world. In doing so, let’s just take a look and see how God will teach us something about ourselves and how we are supposed to regard the world.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 5, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 1:4-16; Philippians 2.
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 Jonah and we’ve seen that one subject is sin and grace. Even though there are many places in the Bible that talk about those topics very theologically, the great thing about the book of Jonah is it presents these concretely. Sin is running away from God, and grace is God chasing us down, hunting us down in love, and intercepting our self-destructive behavior. 
We’ve learned that Jonah ran from God – he literally decided to get as far away from God as he possibly could. Then God sent a storm, and so the plot thickens. This chapter is about the storm God sent and about Jonah’s response to the storm. 
Until you see you are not competent to run your life, you are not competent to run your life. This is an intervention of God. Let’s look to see how God intervenes and uses the storm as a way of teaching Jonah about himself and about sin and grace.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on July 29, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 1:1-17.
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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The book of Jonah is a very simple story. It’s a book about a man running away from God and about God pursuing him, and as a result of that, this book is one of the very most concrete ways to learn what the Bible means by sin and grace. 
Almost everybody is familiar with the words sin and grace, but what they actually mean is another thing. Essentially (as concretely as you can put it), sin is running away from God and grace is God’s effort to pursue and to intercept self-destructive behavior. That’s it. Sin and grace. Running and chasing. 
In this passage, we’re going to see, first of all, Jonah is called to do something. Secondly, Jonah runs away from it. Thirdly, we’ll see how God pursues him.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on July 22, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 1:1-10.
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 have all faced these questions at some point or another: How can you live with both justice and mercy in the world? Can mercy and justice be combined? Can forgiveness and justice be combined? I’m not sure that immediately grabs you as one of the great problems in your life or in the culture, but it is.
We have at least two problems, and I’m going to show you it’s because of a third. We have a problem of public justice. In public justice, when one group has really wronged another group, should there be forgiveness? How can there be forgiveness and justice? On the other hand, personally, if someone has wronged you, how can there be both forgiveness and at the same time justice? 
Let’s break this down, and let’s show there’s a problem of public justice, there’s a problem in the area of private justice, and it’s all because there’s a huge problem with perfect justice.
This talk was given by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 27, 2000 as part of the Redeemer Open Forum series. Open Forums were specifically designed for skeptics or those wrestling with the claims of Christianity.
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 and the subject of wisdom. At the heart of what Proverbs says it means to live a wise life is caring for justice. “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” This little word for caring is way too weak an English word to get across what’s actually being said here. The Hebrew word here is yada`, which is the most deep and intimate and experiential word in the Hebrew language for knowledge. It is knowledge so passionate and so intense and so intimate that it’s a synonym for sexuality when used in the book of Genesis. 
This proverb is saying, “You’re not wise unless you are living an intensely passionate life, committed to justice.” What does that mean? Let’s look at this under four headings: Why do we need justice? What is justice? Who does justice? And how can we be one of the ones who do justice?
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 16, 2005. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 3:18-20, 27-32; 11:10-11; 19:17; 29:7.
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.

I read a treatise by Jonathan Edwards on the Christian’s duty to the poor. I was really struck by something: one of the marks of the church (not just urban churches) is care and involvement with the poor. That’s how Jesus designed it. Edwards said, “Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?” He is saying there is nothing clearer and stronger in the Bible than our duty for care and involvement with the poor — not just churches near poor areas, not just certain kinds; everybody.
The Sermon on the Mount — Jesus’ famous sermon on the principles of the kingdom — is clearly something he preached very often. We read, “Blessed are the poor; woe to the rich. Blessed are the empty; woe to the fool.” There’s no way to spiritualize this away. There’s no way to allegorize it away. There’s no way to “metaphorize” it away.
The Bible tells us the gospel, if you get it, does three things to you with regard to the poor. The gospel is an agent in us knowing the poor, becoming the poor, and loving the poor. Knowing, becoming, and loving. The gospel does them all.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 5, 1998. Series "The Church - How to Believe Despite Christians". Scripture: Luke 6:20-26.
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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’ve been looking at the Ten Commandments. We’ve said the Ten Commandments are without doubt the single most influential set of ethical directives in the history of the world. We now come to the tenth commandment, and it is perhaps the key, in some ways, to understanding all the rest.
This commandment expresses one of the most important principles to believing and practicing the Christian life that I know of. This theme is something that is part and parcel of what we talk about at Redeemer a lot. When we take a look at this text, notice verse 21: “You shall not covet …” If we meditate on it, we’ll see three things: what we need, why we need it, and how to get it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 19, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-6, 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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at the Ten Commandments, and today we’re getting to the ninth commandment. I always tend to hear all the commandments in Cecil B. DeMille tones. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” I don’t know if you remember it. There was sort of a little pillar of fire, and these little comments were coming out of it into the stone tablets in the Cecil B. DeMille movie, The Ten Commandments.
In spite of how famous these Ten Commandments are — by far, the most influential, ethical set of directions in the history of the world — most of us don’t know exactly what each commandment requires, and even fewer of us know how to get the power to be able to actually and practically live as the commandments require.
We’re going to take a look here at the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” As we look at what the text tells us, we’ll see three things. We learn what people need, why they need it so much, and how you can become the kind of person that gives it to them.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 19, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-6, 20.
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 Deuteronomy, which we have said is a series of sermons preached by Moses just before he died. The subject is: “Having experienced the salvation and grace of God, how should we then live? How should that concretely affect and shape the way we live?” It’s a very practical book, and no passage is more practical than today’s, because here we have some insights about how you handle suffering and pain and grief and difficulty. There’s nothing more practical than that.
We learn three things from the text. First, we can’t survive in the wilderness. Secondly, we can’t survive without the wilderness. Thirdly, therefore, we only have one hope.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 17, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 8:1-16.
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.

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.