Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

In public places, Christmas is generally seen as meaning that if we really work hard we can make the world a better place. That’s the meaning of Christmas. If we hold hands and breathe in unison, if we really get together, we can make the world a better place.

It’s like a song they sang in the Live Aid concert in 1985. Afterward, Bob Dylan, who was one of all those rock stars who were singing, said to the press he was very uncomfortable singing the song. Somebody said to Bob Dylan, “Why were you uncomfortable?” He said, “I’ll tell you why. Because man cannot save himself.”

So we look today unto Bob Dylan for the true meaning of Christmas, because he got it right. The Bible says Jesus Christ came because we cannot save ourselves. There’s a problem. He had to do something about it. God and sinners need to be reconciled. This little passage shows us our need for reconciliation with God, the way of reconciliation, and the results - the radical, thorough results of the reconciliation Christ affects.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 24, 1995. Series "Advent: God and Sinners Reconciled". Scripture: Colossians 1:19-23.

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.

We’re looking at Colossians 1 during Advent, which is probably the loftiest, most penetrating view of who Jesus is. And Paul tells us here that Jesus is a king.

One paragraph tells us about the kingship of Christ that is. The other tells us about the kingship of Christ that can be. The one is the cosmic kingship of Christ. The other is the personal kingship of Christ. He is King of the cosmos, but he needs to be, he can be, King of your personal life.

First of all, let’s see what he says about the fact that Christ is the cosmic King. It’s a very deep subject, but we will only take a look at it briefly. Then we will turn around and see what Paul means when he says, “Since Christ is the cosmic King; therefore, he must be your personal King.” We’ll then see what that means and how that works out.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 10, 1995. Series "Advent: God and Sinners Reconciled". Scripture: Colossians 1:9-17.

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

It’s one thing to have the gospel presented to you. It’s another thing to drop in. It’s another thing to have it come to you. According to this passage in Colossians, it is very easy to miss the gospel.

How do you know if the gospel has come to you? How do you know if the gospel has been presented to you, and if you’ve listened? How do you know? I’m going to give you four tests. They’re all here. There are four things this passage tells us. They’re four tests so you can know if the gospel has come to you or not.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 3, 1995. Series "Advent: God and Sinners Reconciled". Scripture: Colossians 1:1-8, 28-29.

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.

One of the problems with Christmas is that we think we’re getting meaningfulness too easily. You go to a Christmas service or even a Christmas party, and a couple of people say a couple of words. You come and you sing Christmas carols. While that’s good, we settle for too little, because the meaning of Christmas is inexhaustible. But it’s filled with theologically powerful, life-changing truths.

We’re going to look at John 1, because while the beginning of Matthew and the beginning of Luke tell you about the facts of Christmas, tell you what happened (shepherds, angels, baby in the manger, and all that), John 1 doesn’t mention any of those things. What John is concentrating on is what all those things mean, not so much what happened at Christmas but what Christmas means.

What we’ll do is simply meditate on three aspects of the most pregnant part of this famous passage. It’s in verse 14, where it says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us [so we could see his glory].” I just want to break those three things down and talk about them tonight to see how powerful the meaning of Christmas is.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 13, 2009. Series "Christmas 2009". Scripture: Hebrews 2:14-18; Mark 2:5.

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

We’ve been looking at the Gospel of Luke and seeing what it says about the theme of generosity. This particular text looks again like it’s about being generous with our money, and of course that’s very much a part of it. But the Bible is primarily not about money, power, and everything else; it’s primarily about Jesus. Once you see what the text is telling us about Jesus, then in light of Jesus we come to understand everything else, including money and power.

What we’re actually learning about is the fact that the only way to really know Jesus Christ is to get converted. Zacchaeus doesn’t only get information. He doesn’t only get inspiration. His whole life gets revolutionized. Why? Because he is getting converted. So let’s look at the necessity of conversion, the circumstances of conversion, the key to conversion, and the sign of conversion.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 11, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 19:1-9.

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.

Jesus calls us to be relationally and emotionally generous, generous with our homes, generous with our time, our talents, our gifts. While you can be financially generous without being generous in heart, you can’t possibly be generous in heart without being shockingly generous with your money.

We’re looking at what Jesus says about the subject of generosity with your money, and now we come to a text which can be a little distracting. What can be distracting is Jesus comes up with a parable. He comes up with a story, he makes it up. Then he says, “I want you to be like this person.”

This is about how Jesus calls his disciples to use their worldly wealth, and there are three things I want to show you. The three things are we are stewards of money that is not ours, we are in need of a love that is not here, and we are the recipients of a friendship that cannot be equaled.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 4, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 16:1-14.

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.

Generosity is way more than just giving away your money. Generosity needs to be pervasive in your life. There needs to be a generosity of spirit, a generosity of heart, a generosity in relationships, an emotional generosity.

And yet, in order to be thoroughly generous, it also means being generous with your money. We now get to one of the more famous places in the Bible where Jesus talks about that. This is in his interaction with the rich young ruler. In Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler, we are going to learn three things: the danger of money, why money is so dangerous, and how we can escape that danger.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 28, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 18:18-30.

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 talking about the fact that there are different currencies of generosity, and the currency we now get to is a very important one. It’s a non-financial currency, but it is a way for you to give value to other people.

Every believer should be not just a ministry consumer coming to get your needs met–but a ministry provider. You’re here to serve. But where does that come from–a generosity that’s so deep that it’s pervasive in every currency of life, in every area of life?

Generosity of service means we give away ourselves to other people, but it’s based on generosity of discipleship. We won’t give ourselves away to other people unless we’ve first given ourselves away to Christ. So let’s see the generosity of service, the generosity of discipleship, and then finally the generosity of costly grace.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 21, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 9:49 -10:2.

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

The Bible considers generosity to be radical, deeply unselfish living in every area of life. It’s possible to be technically generous––writing big checks. It’s possible to be generous with your money, but not be a generous-hearted person. There are many currencies besides money, and we’re looking at those other areas of our lives in which we should be generous.

We now come to one that is very underestimated in importance: hospitality. If anyone says, “Oh, that doesn’t exactly sound like an awesome subject,” give me a chance. The three sections in our passage are about these three subjects: First, the inner ring. Secondly, the open home. Thirdly, the pauper’s feast, the feast of the poor. Let me show you what they all have in common.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 14, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 14:7-24.

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.

As soon you hear the word generosity, you say, “Oh, a series on money.” No, not necessarily. It is possible to be technically generous with your money and not at all generous in your spirit or in your heart. There are plenty of people who are actually quite generous with their money, generous with their time. They volunteer their time. They help. They’re charitable, yet they’re not relationally generous at all.

There’s a specific form of relational generosity we want to talk about because it’s something that must characterize all Christian believers. And that is forgiveness. Forgiveness? Yes, because there are people out there who relationally owe you. They owe you because of how they’ve treated you. They owe you.

Matthew 18 and Luke 17 are parallel passages in many ways, and they are masterful passages that talk a lot about what it means to forgive. Let’s notice what it teaches us here about the enormity of forgiveness and then the practice of it (exactly how you do it), and then the key to forgiveness (the only way you will actually ever do it). There’s the enormity of it, the practice of it, and the key to it.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 7, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 17:3-10.

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