Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

Today's passage teaches us three things about gender roles. It teaches that there are roles. Secondly, it teaches why there are roles. Thirdly, it teaches what those roles are.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 29, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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 the Bible, the word flesh doesn’t simply mean your body. It doesn’t simply mean what the English word flesh means, which always means simply skin, sinew, blood, and guts. Actually, there’s a place in the Bible where God says, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh…” That doesn’t mean, “I will pour out my Spirit on everybody’s body.” It means, “I’ll pour out my Spirit on all people.” The word flesh means a person. When it says the two will become one flesh, it says you’ll be one person.
You’re really no longer the same two people, but you’re a third entity. This oneness is tremendously deep. It’s organic. It’s vital. It’s not mechanical.
How is it that this one-fleshness can be developed? Let me give you three ways it can happen and three reasons it doesn’t happen. If you do these three things properly, it develops deep oneness. If you fail to do them or if you do them wrongly, it creates what most marriages are–basically, business partnerships.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 22, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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.

Marriage is not romance garnished with friendship. It’s not in essence romance and attraction, and friendship is thrown in as a wonderful little option, a wonderful little plus if you can get it. Rather, marriage is friendship with romance garnishing and flavoring it.
Furthermore, friendship is not just a feeling of affection. Friendship is a deep oneness that comes from two people journeying toward a common horizon. First, the oneness; secondly, the walking together, the interacting; and thirdly, the common horizon or goal you’re going to.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 15, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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.

Marriage is many things. Marriage is glorious. Marriage is hard. It’s blood, sweat and tears. It’s defeats, and it’s victories. It’s almost everything except sweet. We’re going to see the Bible’s view of marriage is completely realistic.
The topic we now come to is the purpose of marriage. We’ve looked at the power and the definition, the priority of marriage. What’s the purpose of it? The purpose of marriage is friendship, companionship. Your spouse has to be your best friend.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 8, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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 marriage in this passage under six headings. We’re looking at the power of marriage, the definition of marriage, the priority of marriage, the purpose of marriage, the structure of marriage, and the mystery of marriage. So far, we’ve only looked at the first two. We now want to get to the third: the priority of marriage.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 1, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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.

A person who understands the gospel–who has the gospel in his her blood–is a person who is strong and yet humble, and therefore, out of reverence for Christ submits and is able to serve other people, putting the needs of other people ahead of their own. That’s the power of marriage. That is the basis. Paul here gives us not just the power of marriage, but also its definition. That’s what we’ll now look at.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 25, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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.

Marriage, contrary to what a lot of people say, is not something a bunch of people around a cave-fire in the Late Bronze Age suddenly thought up. According to the Scripture, marriage is a divine invention.
In this passage, we’re going to see first that the essence of marriage is a covenant, secondly, that the purpose of marriage is companionship, and lastly, the priority of marriage has to be number one.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 18, 1991. Series "Marriage". Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33.
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 we’re now looking at is a psalm about how to handle life in general. It in a sense gives you the key approach to handle all of life’s circumstances, no matter what they are. The principle is applied in different ways to despondency and fear and anxiety, all of the things we’ve been looking at, but in here what you actually have is David laying out the basic key to dealing with all conditions, all circumstances of life, any situation. It’s the basic way to handle the problems of life. That’s what this psalm is about.
David is calling for something far deeper than mental recall, and he’s dealing with something far more transforming than just counting your blessings. He’s not just saying, “Oh, count your blessings.” It’s something else. What is it? Remember. What is that? We’re going to learn here why we need to remember, where we need to remember, what we need to remember, and 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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

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.
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.

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.