Gospel in Life

We’re looking at the Book of Jonah and we’ve seen that one subject is sin and grace. Even though there are many places in the Bible that talk about those topics very theologically, the great thing about the book of Jonah is it presents these concretely. Sin is running away from God, and grace is God chasing us down, hunting us down in love, and intercepting our self-destructive behavior.  We’ve learned that Jonah ran from God – he literally decided to get as far away from God as he possibly could. Then God sent a storm, and so the plot thickens. This chapter is about the storm God sent and about Jonah’s response to the storm.  Until you see you are not competent to run your life, you are not competent to run your life. This is an intervention of God. Let’s look to see how God intervenes and uses the storm as a way of teaching Jonah about himself and about sin and grace. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on July 29, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 1:1-17. 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.

The book of Jonah is a very simple story. It’s a book about a man running away from God and about God pursuing him, and as a result of that, this book is one of the very most concrete ways to learn what the Bible means by sin and grace.  Almost everybody is familiar with the words sin and grace, but what they actually mean is another thing. Essentially (as concretely as you can put it), sin is running away from God and grace is God’s effort to pursue and to intercept self-destructive behavior. That’s it. Sin and grace. Running and chasing.  In this passage, we’re going to see, first of all, Jonah is called to do something. Secondly, Jonah runs away from it. Thirdly, we’ll see how God pursues him. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on July 22, 1990. Series "Jonah". Scripture: Jonah 1:1-10. 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.

We have all faced these questions at some point or another: How can you live with both justice and mercy in the world? Can mercy and justice be combined? Can forgiveness and justice be combined? I’m not sure that immediately grabs you as one of the great problems in your life or in the culture, but it is. We have at least two problems, and I’m going to show you it’s because of a third. We have a problem of public justice. In public justice, when one group has really wronged another group, should there be forgiveness? How can there be forgiveness and justice? On the other hand, personally, if someone has wronged you, how can there be both forgiveness and at the same time justice?  Let’s break this down, and let’s show there’s a problem of public justice, there’s a problem in the area of private justice, and it’s all because there’s a huge problem with perfect justice. This talk was given by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 27, 2000 as part of the Redeemer Open Forum series. Open Forums were specifically designed for skeptics or those wrestling with the claims of Christianity. 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 the book of Proverbs and the subject of wisdom. At the heart of what Proverbs says it means to live a wise life is caring for justice. “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” This little word for caring is way too weak an English word to get across what’s actually being said here. The Hebrew word here is yada`, which is the most deep and intimate and experiential word in the Hebrew language for knowledge. It is knowledge so passionate and so intense and so intimate that it’s a synonym for sexuality when used in the book of Genesis.  This proverb is saying, “You’re not wise unless you are living an intensely passionate life, committed to justice.” What does that mean? Let’s look at this under four headings: Why do we need justice? What is justice? Who does justice? And how can we be one of the ones who do justice? This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on January 16, 2005. Series "Proverbs: True Wisdom for Living". Scripture: Proverbs 3:18-20, 27-32; 11:10-11; 19:17; 29:7. 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.

I read a treatise by Jonathan Edwards on the Christian’s duty to the poor. I was really struck by something: one of the marks of the church (not just urban churches) is care and involvement with the poor. That’s how Jesus designed it. Edwards said, “Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?” He is saying there is nothing clearer and stronger in the Bible than our duty for care and involvement with the poor — not just churches near poor areas, not just certain kinds; everybody. The Sermon on the Mount — Jesus’ famous sermon on the principles of the kingdom — is clearly something he preached very often. We read, “Blessed are the poor; woe to the rich. Blessed are the empty; woe to the fool.” There’s no way to spiritualize this away. There’s no way to allegorize it away. There’s no way to “metaphorize” it away. The Bible tells us the gospel, if you get it, does three things to you with regard to the poor. The gospel is an agent in us knowing the poor, becoming the poor, and loving the poor. Knowing, becoming, and loving. The gospel does them all. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 5, 1998. Series "The Church - How to Believe Despite Christians". Scripture: Luke 6:20-26. 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.

We’ve been looking at the Ten Commandments. We’ve said the Ten Commandments are without doubt the single most influential set of ethical directives in the history of the world. We now come to the tenth commandment, and it is perhaps the key, in some ways, to understanding all the rest. This commandment expresses one of the most important principles to believing and practicing the Christian life that I know of. This theme is something that is part and parcel of what we talk about at Redeemer a lot. When we take a look at this text, notice verse 21: “You shall not covet …” If we meditate on it, we’ll see three things: what we need, why we need it, and how to get it. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 19, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-6, 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.

We’re looking at the Ten Commandments, and today we’re getting to the ninth commandment. I always tend to hear all the commandments in Cecil B. DeMille tones. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” I don’t know if you remember it. There was sort of a little pillar of fire, and these little comments were coming out of it into the stone tablets in the Cecil B. DeMille movie, The Ten Commandments. In spite of how famous these Ten Commandments are — by far, the most influential, ethical set of directions in the history of the world — most of us don’t know exactly what each commandment requires, and even fewer of us know how to get the power to be able to actually and practically live as the commandments require. We’re going to take a look here at the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” As we look at what the text tells us, we’ll see three things. We learn what people need, why they need it so much, and how you can become the kind of person that gives it to them. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 19, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-6, 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.

We’re looking at the book of Deuteronomy, which we have said is a series of sermons preached by Moses just before he died. The subject is: “Having experienced the salvation and grace of God, how should we then live? How should that concretely affect and shape the way we live?” It’s a very practical book, and no passage is more practical than today’s, because here we have some insights about how you handle suffering and pain and grief and difficulty. There’s nothing more practical than that. We learn three things from the text. First, we can’t survive in the wilderness. Secondly, we can’t survive without the wilderness. Thirdly, therefore, we only have one hope. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 17, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 8:1-16. 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 Deuteronomy 7, we come upon a topic that is a very controversial topic and a difficult one for, I think, everybody actually. This word that comes up a couple of times in the first couple of verses, where it says, “The Lord your God chose you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people …” He chose you. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament say that if you believe, you believe because God has chosen you. He came to you, and he opened your heart, and that’s the reason you believe. People struggle mightily with this whole idea, and so we’re going to see how this text helps us — it text helps us struggle very smartly and wisely. It’s going to tell us three things. Being chosen by grace produces a deep humility and a radiant community, because it creates, at bottom, an absolute security. Let’s take a look at the first point. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 10, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 7:6-11. 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.

We’re looking at the book of Proverbs every week, and that means we’re looking at the subject of wisdom every week. Wisdom, while not being less, is more than being moral and good. Wisdom is knowing what the right thing to do is in the vast majority of life situations in which the moral rules don’t apply, that they don’t address. Today we come to a theme that runs all through Proverbs and, in fact, all through the whole Bible. That is, that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. There’s a place in Job where God actually shows how important the term is when he says, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him in all the earth; a man who fears God and shuns evil.” It’s obvious the term fear of the Lord is something that is a summary of everything we’re supposed to do and be. So why is it so important and what in the world is it? Today we’re going to see how the fear of the Lord is 1. beginning with God, 2. knowing God, 3. trusting God, and 4. discovering the grace of God. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 3, 2007. Series "Deuteronomy - Doing Justice, Preaching Grace". Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4-23. 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 https://gospelinlife.com/partner and making a one-time or recurring donation.