Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

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.

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.