Gospel in Life

When you’re about to die, you don’t make small talk. You talk about the most crucial, important things. And on the night before Jesus is about to die, he’s talking about the Holy Spirit.  Why is Jesus so constantly talking about the Holy Spirit? I think we see at least two reasons. One is a hard reason, at least it’s hard to hear. And one is a wonderful reason.  I think the two reasons that Jesus thinks the Holy Spirit is so important to talk about, so crucial to understand, so important to have, is because 1) without the Holy Spirit there’s no remedy for our spiritual blindness and cluelessness, but 2) with the Holy Spirit, we can be taken into realms of experience and transformation that we can’t imagine. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 26, 2017. Series: Jesus, Mission, and Glory: New Power. Scripture: John 16:5-11. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

There’s no more important issue, spiritually, for people than the question of innocent suffering. We don’t struggle much with the suffering that comes to people who’ve brought it on themselves. The real problem is innocent suffering.  We’re looking at Old Testament narratives because in them, profound truths are depicted concretely. In the New Testament, authors explain these truths with rational propositions. But in the Old Testament, they’re depicted. And there’s probably no place anywhere, beyond the book of Job, where you have the problem of innocent suffering so profoundly depicted.  We learn three things about suffering from the story of Job: 1) from Satan, we get an understanding of suffering, 2) from the early Job, we learn how to face suffering, and 3) from the later Job, we learn how to overcome suffering. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 9, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Job 1:8-22. 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.

Exodus 33-34 remarkably depicts, in the most concrete way, how to find God. And not only how to find God, but how to find him when you’ve lost him.  The Bible often talks about our relationship with God as if it’s fire. It comes down into our lives. But the second you stop tending a fire, it burns down. See, if you’ve never found God, or if you have but it’s been a long time, for both, this passage tells you the path. Because basically the path of “new-al” and the path of renewal are the same.  How do you find God the first time? How do you find him again and again? We learn here 1) that we desperately need renewal, and 2) how we get renewal. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 2, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Exodus 33:4-9, 15; 34:1-7. 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.

When we hear the word “sin,” we think we know what it means. But we don’t—not really.  If we don’t understand sin, then Christianity makes no sense. But even more so, if we don’t understand sin, then the knowledge of God’s love and grace won’t really transform or heal us. So how do we find out what the Bible means by sin? By looking at Jonah, who’s said to be very religious, and seeing how he falls into terrible sin, we can then get a good idea of what sin is.  In the story of Jonah, we see him doing four things. And each one of them tells us something about the real nature of sin. We see Jonah 1) running, 2) sleeping, 3) sinking, and 4) rising. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 26, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Jonah 1:1-5, 2:1-10. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

It takes tremendous courage to leave the land you’ve always lived in and permanently move to another land. People don’t usually do it unless they expect a better life. In the book of Ruth, we have the story of two immigrant women—Naomi and Ruth—who forge an amazing interracial sisterhood. But these women immigrate expecting to have not a better, but a worse life. Naomi’s an old widow without hope, because in that society, she’s bereft of everything that could give her meaning. So Ruth goes with her to Israel, despite knowing that because she’s a Moabite, she’ll be hated. And yet, at the end of chapter 4, there’s joy. Why? Naomi has been redeemed.  If you look carefully, there’s an ambiguity in the text that points us to the secret of the story and the secret of our lives. To see this, let’s look at three redeemers in this story: 1) a formal redeemer, 2) a surprise, hidden redeemer, and then 3) a real redeemer. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 19, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Ruth 4:13-17. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Forget the heroes. These days, we want authenticity. We want personal vision. We’ve done away with hero worship.  In the story of Samson, we see that the Bible doesn’t give us hero worship, but it also doesn’t give us hero hatred or deconstruction. Some people have called Samson an old-fashioned hero, like Superman—but he’s not. I’ve been waiting for people to call him the anti-hero—he even makes jokes when he’s killing people. Samson is physically quite strong and morally quite weak. But in spite of this, God actually judges Israel with him. What does it all mean? In the story of Samson we see that 1) hero worship does not help, 2) but hero deconstruction doesn’t help either, and 3) we need something else. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 12, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Judges 15:9-20. 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.

If you don’t yet, you will soon sense an acute need for wisdom. You’ll take a job you never should’ve taken, hire somebody you never should’ve hired, date somebody you never should’ve dated. Often, the older you get, the more you worry. Because the older you get, the more you see how important wisdom is, how difficult it is to gain, and how your life absolutely blows up when you make choices without it. Many centuries ago, Solomon became king of Israel at the age of 20. When he did, he got wisdom, and he exercised wisdom in a way that can teach us a great deal about how we can get it ourselves.  If we take a look at this narrative, we’ll see 1) the need for wisdom, 2) the anatomy of wisdom, and 3) the essential principle of wisdom that runs all the way through it—the heart of wisdom. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 5, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: 1 Kings 3:16-28. 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 story of Joseph tells us something awfully basic, and yet probably all of us will recognize that the problems in our lives are due to a lack of orientation to this thing that’s so basic. This story tells us God is a God both of truth and of love—equally, together. And what does he want for us? He wants us to forgive the way he forgave us. To see this, we need to look at the very end of a very long story that goes from Genesis 37 all the way to Genesis 50. This is the end of the story, and in many ways it looks back and recaps the rest of the story.  We’re going to ask two questions about the narrative: 1) Why did Joseph weep? 2) What did Joseph say? This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 28, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Genesis 50:15-21. 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.

How do we find God? We’re looking now to, I think, probably the strangest of all narrative accounts in the Bible of a human being encountering God. It’s a long story. All of Jacob’s life, he’s been wrestling with his twin brother, Esau. He’s been away, but he decides to come back and finally have it out. He sends a bunch of gifts ahead of him, he divides his own family up, and he gets ready to meet Esau alone. And there in the dark when Jacob is alone, a mysterious man—not Esau—attacks him, and he wrestles him all night. Finally, as the day is about to break, Jacob realizes this is the Lord himself—that he’s wrestling with God. Jacob meets God, and the encounter tells us how we can meet God and how we can check our own hearts to find out if we’ve met God. Four things: 1) an encounter with God is personal, 2) an encounter with God is personal wrestling, 3) an encounter with God is always losing, but 4) an encounter with God is winning through losing. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Genesis 32:22-32. 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’re looking at laughter and bitterness by looking at a particular experience, and that is a woman laughing because her only child has been born. It’s an incredibly old woman we have here: a woman who’s 90 years old. We’re told in the Bible that this laughter is a clue to who God is and what he has done and how you find him.  This passage is actually the key, because all of Abraham and Sarah’s lives and all of their fascinating incidents can be understood in terms of the name of their son. The name “Isaac” means laughter. You can understand all of their lives, and actually I think eventually you’ll be able to understand all of your life, through the word “laughter.”  There’ve been three kinds of laughter in the story of Abraham and Sarah. They had to go through the first two to get to the third. Let’s look at these three kinds of laughter: 1) the laughter of scoffing, 2) the wild laughter of addiction and fixation, and 3) the laughter of grace. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 14, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Genesis 21:1-7. 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.