Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

Today’s sermon is a continuation of a study on wisdom in the book of Proverbs. Throughout the book you’ll find that work is a recurring theme. It talks positively about work under the heading of “diligence.” It talks negatively about work under the heading of “sluggard” or “the sluggardliness.” It tells us if you want to have a fulfilled human life, you need to do four things with your work: do your work, love your work, re-narrate your work, and redeem your work.

This sermon was preached by Dr. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Today’s message comes from a series on the topic of wisdom in the book of Proverbs. We’ve defined wisdom according to the Bible as “competence with regard to the complex realities of life.” This means being wise is knowing something about the way the world works in order to make the right moral decision. It’s not enough to just know the rules, but we need to have wisdom so that we can apply the rules appropriately in all types of life situations. 

We are technically-oriented as a society, so generally we want a technique when it comes to rules. However, the book of Proverbs does not give you methods by which you can make wise decisions. Instead, it says, “Here's the kind of person you have to become who makes wise decisions.” Today we’re going to focus on pride and humility, and we’ll learn about three things: the diagnosis of pride (what it is); the destructiveness of pride (what it does); and the antidote for pride.

This sermon was preached by Dr. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

In 1 Kings 3, Solomon asks for wisdom. He asks for “a heart that can discern right from wrong.” The question is, “If he’s the king of Israel, he has the law of God. Why would he need wisdom? Doesn’t the Word of God tell you what’s right and wrong?” The reason is that it’s not enough to just know the rules, but you need discernment from God for knowing what decision to make when the moral rules don’t fit your situation perfectly. 

Last week we saw one of the important ways to develop a heart of wisdom is to understand and manage the power of anger. This week we will see that in order to be wise, we need to understand and manage the power of sexuality. To do this, we have to know three things: 1) why and how we tend to undervalue sex; 2) why and how we tend, at the same time, to overvalue sex; and 3) how we can solve that.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 24, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 5:15-19; 11:16, 22; 30:18-20.

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.

Today’s message comes from a series on the topic of wisdom in the book of Proverbs. What is wisdom? In 1 Kings 3, Solomon prays for wisdom, and he defines it like this. He says, “God, give me a heart that can discern right from wrong.” You might say, “He was the king of Israel. He had the law of God. Why does he need a heart to discern right from wrong?” The answer is that wisdom is more than just knowing what’s good and what’s bad. It’s knowing what the right decision to make is — what the right course of action is — in the vast majority of life situations the moral rules don’t address.

If you’re going to live a wise life, you need to understand anger. You need to be able to understand and handle anger, not only in yourself, but in other people as well. There are four things we’re going to learn about anger that you have to know to be wise: its power; its goodness;  why it goes wrong; and how it can be healed.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 17, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 14:29-30; 15:1, 18; 16:32; 19:11, 19; 24:28-29; 25:21-22.

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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Wisdom is more than being moral and good. Wisdom is knowing something about how the world works so that you’ll know what the right thing to do is in the majority of life situations in which the moral rules don’t apply. 

The book of Proverbs is one of the best places in the Bible to look at the topic of wisdom. There is a theme that runs all through Proverbs and, in fact, all through the whole Bible. That is, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Today we’re going to consider that the fear of the Lord begins with 1) knowing God, 2) trusting God, and 3) discovering the grace of God.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 10, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6; 9:10; 16:6; 19:23; 20:9; 23:17-18; 28:14.

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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Today’s message comes from a series on the book of Proverbs in which we’ve been looking at the subject of wisdom. Wisdom can be defined as: competence with regard to the realities of life. It is knowing the right thing to do in the vast majority of life situations in which the moral rules don’t apply or in which there are multiple permissible options. 

Why is it that so many religious communities want to make up new rules? One answer is that we won’t have to think. We want a rule to cover every single situation, so we don’t have to apply wisdom and think out the implications. But the truth is that you can never create enough rules to cover every situation. This is where wisdom comes in — you have to know something about the true nature of reality. Today we’re going to look at 1) the persistence of reality, 2) the problems with reality, and 3) how it gets healed. If you want to be wise, you have to know all three.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 3, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 5:16-23 and Revelation 21:1-5.

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 Proverbs is one of the best places in the Bible to look at the topic of wisdom. Wisdom is a lot more than just having high moral values. It is knowing what the right thing to do is in the majority of life situations where the moral rules don’t apply. The most right and virtuous word or deed done at the wrong time, done in the wrong way or in the wrong order, can blow everything up.

Wisdom is not having a technique that helps you make right choices and decisions, but it’s having character of the mind and the heart that enables you to make the right choices. So how do you get that character? Today we’re going to look at 1) how this character develops, 2) where it comes from, and 3) how it can be transformed.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 26, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 4:11-27.

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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Wisdom can be defined as: competence with regard to the complex realities of life. It has to do with understanding a particular situation and then knowing the right thing to do. For example, you might decide you really want to help a poor family to get out of poverty. That’s a noble thing, but you could do it in a way that actually ruins the family. You need to be conversant with the complexity of the realities of how things work in the world.

It’s not good enough to be a person of vision or of moral values if you’re not a person of wisdom. For most of the decisions you have to make, there are multiple permissible options and wisdom is the ability to know what the right thing is. So how do we develop wisdom? Today we’re going to look at 1) the path of wisdom, 2) the process of wisdom, and 3) the man off the mountain.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 19, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 3:1-12; 30:1-4.

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 live in a pluralistic society, which results in people continually fighting about morality. They’re fighting about different views on what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. In many ways this was different in ancient societies because on the whole, there was generally more consensus on morality in each society. There were spoken and unspoken rules that were necessary for the society to exist. 

If you’re going to not make an absolute mess of your life, then there is something very important that you must have. The secular culture talks about science and facts, and the moral communities — the churches and synagogues — talk about morality, but actually what we need is something that’s hardly talked about at all nowadays. It’s not identical to knowledge, and it’s not identical even to moral goodness; it’s wisdom. Today we’re going to look at 1) the importance of wisdom, 2) the definition of wisdom, 3) the problem of wisdom, and 4) a clue to its solution.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 12, 2004. Series: Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living. Scripture: Proverbs 8:10-16; 22-31.

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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Today’s passage is not an easy one. When you look through it, there’s a lot of obscurity. Nothing leaps up and grabs you, but if we do some mining, we’ll find all sorts of gems in here. This passage helps unlock one of the keys for understanding all of the Bible. Paul shows us how the Bible fits together with beautiful coherence. 

Paul is writing to a series of churches in Galatia that he founded. They had come under the influence of a group of wayward teachers, and Paul is at great pains to correct them. 

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 11, 1998. Series: Galatians: New Freedom, New Family. Scripture: Galatians 3:10-22.

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/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.