Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

The kingdom of God is the power of God to readminister your life, rearrange your life in all sorts of ways. We’ve been looking at some of them, and now we look at one last way.
He doesn’t just have you live upside-down and inside-out, but also forward-back. What does that mean? Let’s take a look and see what he teaches us about the power of the kingdom; the practices of the kingdom, and last of all, the provision of the kingdom.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 18, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 4; The Kingdom of God". Scripture: Luke 12:32-46.
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 continuing to look at the various themes of the gospel of Luke. We’ve been looking at how the gospel completely changes the way in which we live.
In this parable, Jesus introduces us to a universal problem, the problem of righteousness. He gives us two guys, each of which represents a particular solution to the problem–one solution which does not work, one which does. Problem; a solution that doesn’t work, the outside-in approach; and a solution that does work, the inside-out approach.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 11, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 4; The Kingdom of God". Scripture: Luke 18:9-14.
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 gospel of Luke, but we really can’t leave it unless we look at this theme that is all through the gospel of Luke and all through Jesus’ teaching … the kingdom of God. We really can’t leave until we understand better what that is, and it’s not easy to get that across. Many of you have heard the term kingdom of God for a long time, but can you put in a nutshell what it is? It’s not that easy.
One philosopher says a kingdom is the range of your effective will. If tonight somebody gets into your purse and takes something out or somebody gets into your backpack and takes something out, you’ll be outraged. Why? Because there has been an intrusion on your kingdom, on a place where the way you want things to be ought to reign supreme. There has been a violation of the range of your effective will.
What does it mean, then, to put yourself within the range of God’s effective will? What does it mean to put yourself under his effective will? That’s what we’re going to be looking at, and this particular parable tells us it means at least four things. To live in the kingdom of God is to get a lasting identity that goes on for eternity and is marked by astounding liberality. Finally, we have to ask, “How do we get that?”
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 4, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 4; The Kingdom of God". Scripture: Luke 16:19-31.
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.

I believe it’s in the crucifixion account that Luke comes to us and says, “I’ve given you all of this information, but how will you respond to it? I’ve given you this information, but how do you take it in?” When Jesus says, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing,” what he’s saying is, “Father, they’re looking right at me, and they don’t get it. They’re looking at what we’re doing, they’re looking at your salvation, they’re looking at the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world, and they don’t get it.”
Here’s what Luke is asking. Do you get it? Luke is saying, “You have information, but is it real to you? Do you get it?” Everything you need to respond to Jesus in a life-transforming way is right here.
We see all of the people rejecting him, the whole sweep of humanity. We see both the leaders and the common people rejecting him. We see both the Jews and the Gentiles rejecting him. Everybody. Peppered through all this rejection are four parties who respond differently, and if we look at how they respond, we’ll learn how we should. Let’s notice three things: who gets Jesus, how they get Jesus, and why they (and, therefore, we) can get Jesus.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 27, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 4; The Kingdom of God". Scripture: Luke 23:33-56.
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 chapter 9 of Luke, Peter comes to realize, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is not one more in a row of prophets and teachers and sages. He says, “You are the Christ of God. You are the Messiah. You are the one who is bringing the kingdom of God, the ruling, healing, power of God, come back into the world.”
What’s interesting is the minute his identity is revealed, he immediately begins to say, “Follow me.” Chapters 1 to 8 are all about, “Who is Jesus?” but we’re going to find chapters 9 through 18 are all about, “If he is this, what does it mean to follow him? If he is who he says he is, what does that make us? If he is that, what does it mean to follow him?” The word follow is the key word for the next nine chapters, and this chapter lays out the basics of it.
This chapter tells us what it means to be a disciple, in the most basic way. That’s what the whole passage is about, and there are three sections we’ve taken out of this chapter, three basic principles that will help us understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It means setting a new priority, it means finding a new identity, and it means living a new mercy. All three are critical, and they all fit together.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 9, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 9:20-25; 51-62.
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 read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you’ll always find at the climactic, pivotal place in the narratives of each of those gospels, the transfiguration is the final answer to a question that is continually posed in each of their early chapters. That question is … Who is this? “Who is this, that the wind and seas obey him? Who is this who forgives sins?”
The transfiguration is the climactic answer in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So to look at the transfiguration is one of the key ways you’re going to know who Jesus is, what he came to do, and how to connect to him.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 2, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 9:28-36.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Jesus comes and heals what’s wrong within us and what’s wrong between us. We’ve talked about that previously. But now we ask, “What’s the ticket for that healing? How does that healing come into our lives?” The answer, of course, is a well-known answer. It’s faith, but what is faith? How does it come? How does it work?
This whole chapter is about that. The two people he mentions are at the extreme ends of the social spectrum in that time and place. You have a woman of the street. You have a Roman centurion. And yet, the bottom line of the very first story is great faith. And the bottom line of the second story in verse 50 is: “Your faith has saved you …”
In the strongest possible ways, Luke is saying, “No matter who you are, no matter what your condition, no matter what, faith is the key.” These stories, these accounts, have been given to us to teach us something about that faith. Here’s what we can learn. We can learn how it comes, what it is, and where it takes us.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 26, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 7:1-10, 36-50.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

In the first part of today's passage, Luke 6:12-36, Jesus tells us about the promise of a true human community. In the middle part of the passage, he tells us about the components of this true community. At the very end, he shows us where we get the power for it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 19, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 6:12-36.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

What you get all the way through the first four chapters of Luke is that there’s a Savior coming, but he’s going to bring a salvation infinitely wider and deeper, more magnificent, and more multidimensional than anything anybody expected. Starting here in chapter 5, we have Luke spelling out what that is. These three incidents will show us how all-comprehensive and how multidimensional and full the salvation of Jesus is.
In the first incident we see Jesus’ salvation transforms our relationship to ourselves. In the second incident it shows us Jesus’ salvation transforms our relationships with others. Lastly, the third incident shows Jesus’ salvation transforms our relationship with God. It completely transforms us psychologically, sociologically, spiritually.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 5, 2003. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 5:4-26.
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.

Life is a fight. Life is a struggle. How are we going to survive, let alone triumph over that?
The answer is in this very famous passage from the Gospel of Luke on Jesus’ temptation. Let’s ask three questions that will help us handle the fights of life. When is the fight? Where is the front? What’s our hope?
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 22, 2012. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 2:34-35; 4:1-13.
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.

The spiritual challenge of studying the incarnation is to hear the life-shattering, life-changing, enormous truths through the familiar texts and phrases read at Christmastime.
But I would propose to you that you can still hear it. You can hear the claims of the doctrine of the incarnation, that God became in carne, in the flesh. God became human. The claim of that first gets in your face intellectually, then it gets in your heart transformationally. What do I mean by that? Let’s look.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 15, 2012. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 1:26-45.
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 the life of Jesus in the book of Luke. We’ve said Luke claimed the things he was writing were true; they happened. That’s the first reason why anything is recorded in the gospel of Luke, because it actually happened. But there’s a second reason why he records these things. The second reason is that he wants us to have a relationship with God through Jesus.
Though Luke doesn’t record everything, everything he does record is there to teach us something about how to encounter Jesus, how to meet Jesus. These two incidents we’re reading, which are early in the life of Jesus and early in the gospel of Luke, have a common thread, and that is the sonship of Jesus.
We’re going to learn three things from these two incidents: the account of Jesus as a 12-year-old boy in the temple, and the account of the baptism of Jesus 18 years later, when he turns 30. We’re going to learn about the amazing sonship of the boy Jesus, the amazing sonship of the man Jesus, and the amazing sonship of the followers of Jesus.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 8, 2012. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 2:41-52; 3:22-23.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Right from the start, Luke immediately deals with what the average educated person wonders about. If someone comes along and says, “I’m going to tell you the story of Jesus,” the first question that comes up is, “Where did you get your information? How do we know it’s reliable?”
If you begin to explore Christianity, the premise immediately comes up: the accounts of Jesus’ life in the Bible and in the Gospels are not reliable. They’re basically legends, and therefore, we can’t really know who Jesus is. It’s said that we can’t really know what Jesus said or what he claimed or what he did or who he was, at all.
But Luke immediately answers the question, immediately confronts it, in a remarkable way, and basically says here, “I’m going to tell you the true story of Jesus.” In that are our three points. The gospel is about Jesus. The gospel is true. The gospel is a story.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 1, 2012. Series "The Meaning of Jesus Part 1; Understanding Him". Scripture: Luke 1:1-4; 24:18-27.
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.

When you see the word guidance, most of the time in the Hebrew Bible it comes from a word for rope. It’s derived from the word for rope because ropes were the method of navigation for sailors in those days. You would use ropes to lower the sails when the wind was in your favor or to move the sails when the wind changed or to raise the sails and tie them up when a storm came up. Otherwise, you would be blown totally off course, so ropes were ways of navigating.
The question is … How do you get God’s guidance? How do you get God’s navigation, so when you have all these choices, you know the right course to take? How does that happen? We’ll find out by looking at these proverbs and understanding, first of all, the guidance God does; secondly, the guidance God gives; and thirdly, the guidance God purchases for us.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 12, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 11:3; 12:5,15; 15:22; 16:1-4,9,25,33; 21:5; 27:1.
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 all at certain times have a lot of trouble understanding and dealing with the very deep, conflicting, confusing, powerful, sometimes warring dynamic impulses and feelings that just roll through our hearts. Sometimes we don’t feel we have any power over it. We feel helpless, and we don’t know how we got to feeling like that. We know there’s something deeply wrong with it. We don’t know what to do about it.
We’re taking a look at what the book of Proverbs says about the complex realities of the inner being, the inner life, the psychological life. I’d like to look at the passage under four headings. Let’s see what we learn from these collected proverbs. You’re not going to be wise unless you understand the priority of the inner life, the complexity of the inner life, the solitude of the inner life, and the healing of the inner life.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 5, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 12:25; 13:12; 14:10,13,30; 15:4,13-14; 16:2; 18:14; 28:1.
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.

Proverbs does not talk nearly so much about how to make right decisions as to how to become the kind of person who makes right decisions. We now come to self-control. A man or a woman without self-control is not going to live a wise life, not going to make wise choices, and is going to mess up their lives and the lives of people around them.
What do we learn from these passages in Proverbs about self-control? Three things. We learn the problem of self-control. We learn something about the principle of self-control. Then, last of all, we learn the practice of self-control, how we do it.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 28, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 18:10; 23:19-21; 25:28; Titus 2:11-14.
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.

A theme that anybody who reads the book of Proverbs through will see come up again and again is the subject of work. It talks positively about work under the heading of “diligence.” It talks negatively about work under the heading of “sluggard” or “the sluggardliness.” We live in a city where there’s probably more pressure on work—fewer boundaries to it, and less stability in it—than anywhere I know.
The book of Proverbs tells us if you want to have a fulfilled human life, you have to do four things with your work. If you want to have a fulfilled human life, you have to do your work, love your work, re-narrate your work, and redeem your work.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 21, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 8:1-4; 10:4-5; 12:10-11; 15:19; 22:29; 27:18.
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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Over and over and over again, the Bible, and especially Proverbs, says, “If you think you’re wise, you’re a fool; but if you are painfully aware of all of your foolishness, you are wise—or at least you’re on your way to becoming wise.” Chapter 16:19 says, “Better to be lowly in spirit and among the [poor] than to share plunder with the proud.”
Humility is more valuable than all the gold, silver and jewels that lay beneath the earth. So we’re going to learn three things by looking at these texts. We’re going to learn the diagnosis of pride, what it is; the destructiveness of pride, what it does; and the antidote for pride.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 14, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 11:2,12; 13:10; 15:25,33; 16:18-19; 21:4; 28:26.
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.

The book of Proverbs has been showing us that very basic to the development of wisdom is the ability to understand and redirect the deep currents of our hearts. We now come to a theme the Bible talks about as being very important to understand—both the reality of it and the power of it—and that is envy. I’d like us to notice three things: how to understand envy, why to deal with envy, and where to take your envy.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 7, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 23:17-18; Psalm 73:1-3, 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 gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do in the great majority of life situations the moral rules don’t address. One of the areas where you will have a mess of a life if you only follow the rules and don’t have wisdom is the area of money.
People who only look to the rules in the area of money are going to be destructively unwise in their lives. According to the book of Proverbs, if you want to be wise in the area of money, finances, wealth and possessions, you need to know three things. You need to know the power of money, the reasons for the power of money, and how to break the power of money and properly use it in your life.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 31, 2004. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 10:15-16; 11:1,4,24,26; 13:21,23; 30:8b-9.
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.