Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

According to the Bible, generosity is not less than being generous with your money, but it’s quite a bit more. In a place like Isaiah 32:8, it says, “The generous make generous plans, and by generous deeds they stand.” There’s no talk of money there, because generosity is something much more radical.

Generosity should be something so deep in us that it is completely pervasive in all parts of our lives. Money is only part of it. What I’m talking about is radical generosity. We’re going to ask three things about this text. First, what is the source of radical generosity? Secondly, what is the sign or mark of radical generosity? Thirdly, what is the key to becoming radically generous?

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 30, 2012. Series "Generosity: Studies from the Gospel of Luke". Scripture: Luke 18:9-17.

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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.

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.

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.

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.