Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

If you’re trying to evoke God’s blessing through the goodness of your record and your life, you are psychologically unable to admit dark, intense, turbulent feelings. You can’t admit who you are. You can’t look and see what’s really in your heart; not if the whole basis for your understanding of who you are is, “I’m good. I’m a good person. I have to get it all together. That’s the only way I know God will listen to me.”
We’re now looking at guilt and shame–having your heart broken under a sense of failure, liability, and general unworthiness. This particular psalm has eight verses in it, and yet, in these wonderful few verses, we actually see guilt and shame likened to a hole, to something we’ve sunk down in. We here have the sinkhole of guilt and shame, the rope that’s given to a person sinking in guilt and shame, and something about the climb out of the hole. The sinkhole is in verses 1–2, the rope is in verses 3–4 and 7–8, and the climb out is in verses 5–6.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The religiosity approach to emotions is to stuff them, deny them, and act like they’re not there. We’re uncomfortable with these strong emotions. We need to get control of them quickly. On the other hand, in secular circles there is this sort of love of just expressing our emotions as if it’s a good in itself.
The Psalms don’t do either. The Psalms do not say we should be under-aware of our emotions or over-awed by our emotions. We shouldn’t be stuffing our emotions or bowing to them. We should be praying them. We don’t mean by praying them that you put them in nicely manicured and managed little theologically correct confessional prayers, but you pre-reflectively pour them out into the presence of God and you process them there.
In this passage, David is really at the bottom in fear. He’s saying, “I’m scared,” but he’s going to do something. He’s turning. 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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

If you open the Psalms, which is the divinely inspired prayer book, the first page of the Psalms is not a prayer. Interesting. The very first page of the book that tells you how to pray is not a prayer, but actually a meditation on meditation. It’s a call to meditation.
Meditation is not the same as studying the Bible, because in studying the Bible you’re just learning the truth of it. You’re just learning information. What meditation does is it takes what you’ve learned and does something with it. He says that actually it’s a way of deliberately affecting your mind and your heart and moving it to love and humility and wonder at what you have just learned.
Let’s take a look and see what Psalm 1 tells us about meditation. We’re going to learn about the priority, the promise, the products, the practice, and then the problem and solution of meditation.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 23, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Psalm 1:1-6; 2:1-12.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

The Lord’s Prayer is quite a workout. You’re asking for a whole lot of things: daily bread, deliver us from evil, temptation. There are a lot of things you’re asking for, but at the end, you rest in God. You enjoy God. You’re not asking for anything; you’re enjoying God. In fact, you’re realizing that all of the things you’ve been looking for, all the kingdom and the power and the glory are already there in him, and if you have him, you have everything you need. Therefore, at the very end, the last part of the prayer is the prayer of repose.
Our example of this is one of the most famous psalms in the Bible, Psalm 27. We’re going to see that this is exactly what the end of the Lord’s Prayer embodies. This is a psalm of David, telling about something that happens in his life, and the best way to get through it is to notice that in the very beginning he talks about what he’s facing. We learn what he’s facing, then what he does about it, then how he does it, and why he’s confident it will work.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 16, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Psalm 27:1-14.
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How do you pray when you’re embattled? How do you pray when you feel like there are bad things inside you, bad things outside you, and you’re just spiraling down? You’re confused. You don’t know what to do.
So this is the prayer that Jesus says, “When you’re in the battle, when you’re in the trenches, when you feel like you’re falling, it’s through prayer that you get yourself out.” What does he actually do in prayer? There are four things. I’d like to spend our time looking at these four things. They all can only be done in prayer. Those four things are: he admits the worst, he sees the whole, he grasps God’s grace, and he reorders the loves of his heart.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 9, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Psalm 73:1-3, 13-26.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

What if I told you that there was a process and no matter how much you blew up your life, if you used this process, there would be a way to come out the other side, to get through it. Or no matter how broken your life is, if you used this process, there was a way for you to come out whole.
Would you be interested? Well, here it is. It’s what the Bible calls repentance. Here’s how you do it: Psalm 51. You say, “Repentance? You mean just saying I’m sorry?” When you say that, you have revealed that you do not understand the power of this kind of prayer, if you know how to do it. This kind of prayer, if you do it in an ongoing way, will finally enable you to change deeply from the inside out.
What we’re going to do is mainly look at the first five verses, and we’re going to ask these questions. What one thing must you stop doing? What two things must you start doing? Where do you get the power to do those two things? What to stop, what to start, and how to do it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 2, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Psalm 51:1-19.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We now get to a particular kind of prayer in which people are very interested–what some call a “give me” prayer. “Give us today our daily bread.” This prayer is the reason why most people even get involved in prayer. They have a need, and they want God to meet it. They have a situation, and they want God to change it.
But notice, “Give us today our daily bread” happens dead in the middle, dead smack in the middle, of the Lord’s Prayer. It is surrounded by all sorts of other statements and ideas and concepts. You cannot understand how what we call “petitionary” prayer works unless you see, “give us today our daily bread” in all of its relationships to the rest of the prayer.
I think the Lord’s Prayer tells us petitionary prayer only works if you get confident (knowing his power), if you get perspective (knowing his glory), if you get humble (knowing his wisdom), and if you get reconciled (knowing he is God and letting him be God).
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 14, 1995. Series "The Lord's Prayer 1995". Scripture: Matthew 6:9-15.
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Today, we’re going to look at what it means to pray, “Thy will be done.” We’re going to need every bit of help we can get to learn how to pray this, because this goes right into the teeth of our culture.
American culture says that the more free we are to decide what is right or wrong for ourselves, having no one else tell us how to live our lives, the happier we’ll be. But here, Jesus Christ says every time you pray to God you need to say to him, “Thy will be done.” This goes right into the teeth of probably everything you’ve been taught, if you’ve grown up here.
So what does it mean? To understand that, we look at Jesus’ own prayer, and we see that he prays it in the midst of terrible agony. We’re going to first reflect on the magnitude of that agony, then the immediacy of that agony, and then see how that helps us understand what it means to pray, “Thy will be done” in a life-transforming way.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 19, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Matthew 26:36-46.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re now looking at the phrase “thy kingdom come.” What does it mean to pray this? We’re going to look at this passage in Luke where he talks about the kingdom of God and the blessedness of the kingdom. “Blessed are you, for yours is the kingdom.”
These passages both tell us a lot about the kingdom of God. I want to show you what the kingdom of God is, what it’s not, what it’s like, how you enter it, and then we’ll apply it to how all that helps us pray, “Thy kingdom come.” What it is, what it’s not, what it’s like, how you enter it, and how that relates to prayer.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 12, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Luke 6:20-26, 46-49.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

“Hallowed” is an old English word that means to treat something as sacred, to treat something as holy. “Hallowed be thy name” means to praise and adore. It means to be captivated, astonished, to be melted with grateful joy for who God is and what he has done.
So we’re looking at Psalm 63, a very famous psalm about praise. It tells you quite a lot that is very specific about praise. We’re going to look at five aspects to praise and adoration: thinking, expressing, appraising, beholding, and resting. You have to do all five if you’re going to praise him, if you’re going to hallow his name.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 5, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Psalm 63:1-11.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

In this series, we’re going to take one phrase each week from the Lord’s Prayer and then go to some other place in the Bible that gives us access to the strain of biblical doctrine and teaching that is required if you’re going to pray that part of the prayer.
What does it mean to pray, “Our Father”? What’s intriguing to me about this passage is that in verses 4–5, when it describes everything Jesus Christ came to do, the reason he came, the purpose of his salvation, was that we might receive adoption to sonship. We can pray “Our Father” because we’ve been adopted into the family of God.
Let’s look briefly at the gift of adoption, the meaning of adoption (what it means to be adopted), the reason we can be adopted, and then how it applies to prayer.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 28, 2014. Series "The Prayer of Prayers". Scripture: Galatians 3:26-4:3.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

This is a testimony and teaching about three stages in my own prayer life–my growth in prayer, my growth in understanding in prayer, my growth in the practice of prayer. So I'm going to go back through my whole Christian life and ministry life and give you some ideas. I would say there's three layers or three lessons I learned over the years. The first one was prayer as helplessness. The second was prayer as work. The third was prayer as love.
This talk was given by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church during a conference on Prayer.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’ve already asked, “How do you become a believer?” and “How do you know you have become a believer?” We looked at the great story of Naaman the Syrian and his conversion. We’re now going to ask, “How can we be sure we are formed as believers?” How do we make sure the beliefs we have in our head actually form and shape our entire lives?
The general answer over the centuries that the church has given is prayer. And the more specific answer to, “How do we know how to pray?” has been the Psalms. What we’re doing here by giving you the first psalm and the last psalm, the bookends as it were, is I’m about to give you a crash course in prayer and particularly prayer as it’s given to us and taught to us in the Psalms.
Ready? Fasten your seat belts. Very few of you brought your helmets, but that was my fault. I didn’t let you know last week. So the three headings are the way into prayer, the way through prayer, and the way all true prayer must end: in praise.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 23, 2012. Series "Gospel in Life: Grace in the Case of Naaman". Scripture: Psalm 1:1-6; 150:1-6
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One of the reasons we’re looking at this guy, Naaman, is because he is a lot like the typical New Yorker. He met God. Now let me ask you … Have you met God? Have you really met God? If you say, “Well, here I am. I’m in church. I go to church,” yeah, but that’s what the second half of this narrative, this historical account, is about.
Naaman, who was a pagan, who knew nothing about the Bible, who had absolutely no (what we would call) religious background is converted. He gets a changed heart. But Gehazi, who lives with the prophet, who is probably an apprentice to the prophet, who lives at the very heart of Israel’s biblical religion, who probably knew the Word of God inside out, doesn’t have a changed heart. Naaman meets God with no religious background; Gehazi misses God with all the religious background.
How do you know you’re not missing God? Have you met God? That’s what we’re going to look at. So first let’s look at the marks of a man who has met God. That’s Naaman. Secondly, let’s look at the marks of a man who, in spite of all his religious background, has missed God. That’s Gehazi. Then thirdly, we’ll say how you can be sure to meet and not miss God.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 16, 2012. Series "Gospel in Life: Grace in the Case of Naaman". Scripture: 2 Kings 5:2-3, 15-27.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

In this passage, a Syrian general, Naaman, goes to the God of Israel to get help. As we’re going to see, there was an astonishing amount of hatred and disdain between these two nations. But Naaman, the sophisticated, powerful Syrian, goes to Israel and to the God of Israel to get some kind of help, and it’s shocking that such an unlikely person would do that.
What brings a Naaman and what brings a typical person who lives in Manhattan to start to seek the God of the Bible? That’s what we’re going to look at. Let’s notice what we’re taught here: why people seek, how people find, and why people can seek and find.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 9, 2012. Series "Gospel in Life: Grace in the Case of Naaman". Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’ve been looking at the ways in which an experience of the grace of God creates a new inward character and a new interior character of the heart. We now come to the end of the series and return to the same passage on which we started, 1 Corinthians 13.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the end of this passage in which Paul tells us that the key to developing that interior supernaturally changed heart is to look to the future, to look to something that’s going to happen in the future.
This passage, in verses 1–6, tells us about a problem. Then, verses 8–13, at the end, give us the remedy. Then, verse 7, right smack in the middle, gives us some insight for how to use the remedy. So there’s the problem, the remedy, and how to use the remedy.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 24, 2002. Series "Practical Grace; How the Gospel Transforms Character". Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, said it is possible to live a completely ethical life without any love at the root of it, but rather, fear, pride and power. What we’re doing is we’re taking a look at the traits of a life that’s not just morally restrained externally, but supernaturally changed from the inside.
This passage is not like the other passages, because every other week what we have been doing is looking at one trait each time. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, integrity, courage, humility, self-control.” Instead of focusing on one trait, this well-known passage from Saint Paul shows us how to know and grow all of the fruit of the Spirit.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 17, 2002. Series "Practical Grace; How the Gospel Transforms Character". Scripture: Galatians 5:16-25.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’ve been looking underneath ethical behavior to the marks of supernaturally changed character, a heart that’s changed at the root in its fundamental desires and motivations. Today, we come to a term that’s very important in Greek philosophy and in Greek language. It’s the word self-control.
Think of how much misery there is in our lives because we can’t control our tongue, our time, our thoughts. We make impulsive decisions or use impulsive words, then we wish we could take them back. What’s the solution?
In this passage, Paul says, “I’m going to tell you the secret.” We’ll first look at this subject of self-control in this passage under what I’ll call principles and then under practice. We’ll first look at principles about what the nature of self-control is. Then, secondly, practice some very, very specific ways of going about increasing it in our lives and carrying it out.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 10, 2002. Series "Practical Grace; How the Gospel Transforms Character". Scripture: 1 Corinthians 9:23-27; 10:11-13.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We’re looking at what the marks are of a heart that has been changed at its very core. We now come to a trait that is hard to summarize in any one English word. A supernatural heart has its relationship to the truth changed. In 1 Corinthians 13, it says the mark of a heart that has been changed by the supernatural love of God is that it rejoices with the truth.
Paul is talking about something more than ethical honesty. There’s a place where Jesus Christ speaks of his followers as people who are of the truth, sort of made of truth, swimming in truth. Truth is your very element. We’re talking about something really different. What is this?
A supernaturally changed heart has an attitude and a relationship to truth no other kinds of hearts have. Let’s notice in this passage the problem of truth, the encounter we need to have with truth, and something about the practice of truth.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 3, 2002. Series "Practical Grace; How the Gospel Transforms Character". Scripture: Ephesians 4:15-25.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Up until the twentieth century, the traditional cultures have always believed too high a view of yourself is the real root cause for most of the evil in the world. This is still true in most cultures of the world. Why do people abuse others? Why are people cruel? Why do people do the bad things they do? Traditionally, pride–too high a view of ourselves–is the reason why we misbehave.
In the modern Western culture, particularly in the United States, we have an utterly opposite cultural consensus. The basis of our education, the way in which we treat incarcerated prisoners, our legislation, and certainly the basis of our counseling is exactly the opposite of the consensus of all the other societies that have ever lived. Our belief today is people misbehave for lack of self-esteem, because they have too low a view of themselves.
What’s intriguing about this passage is it gives us an approach to self-regard, a way of seeing yourself, that is utterly different than traditional cultures or modern, postmodern contemporary culture. The three things we’ll learn here and that Paul shows us is the natural condition of the human ego, the supernatural condition–the transformed sense of self and identity Paul discovered–and lastly, how to get it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 24, 2002. Series "Practical Grace; How the Gospel Transforms Character". Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:21-4:7.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.