There’s one guy who is so preeminently an example of a life of faith that three religions look to him as the paragon of faith. That guy’s name is Abraham. Here’s the story of Abraham’s life: God said, “Get out!” Abraham said, “Where?” God said, “I’ll tell you later. Just go.” The Lord said, “I will give you this land.” Abraham said, “When?” God said, “I’ll tell you later. Just wander around in tents.” The Lord said, “I will give you a son.” Abraham said, “How?” God said, “I’ll tell you later. Ju...
Apr 14, 2025•34 min•Ep. 1210
Abraham had greatness in the face of a completely uncertain future. He had no idea what was coming, and yet he lived a life of greatness. How can we? The writer of Hebrews is writing to a group of Christians whose lives were going very badly. And in chapter 11, he says to them, “You don’t understand. The great men and women of God have never had designer lives. Yet they lived great lives.” And Abraham is perhaps the greatest case given. How we can live life with greatness, with stability, with c...
Apr 11, 2025•37 min•Ep. 1209
Enoch is a very mysterious Old Testament figure. God took him right to heaven without him tasting death—because he walked with God. What’s so special about walking with God? In the garden of Eden, in the beginning of time, God took long walks with us every evening. And yet the minute human beings disobeyed God, they couldn’t stand intimacy with infinity anymore. Humans no longer walk with God. But suddenly, in Genesis 5, Enoch shows up and he still walks with God. What? It’s still possible? Yes,...
Apr 09, 2025•37 min•Ep. 1208
Many of us are wondering how we’re even going to face Monday, but the men and women in Hebrews 11 didn’t just know how to face life—they were enabled to even go against the whole world. And the thing that enabled them was they were commended by God. Abel got the commendation from God—he was shown God accepted him as absolutely righteous, and as a result, he became one of these great hearts who can face the world, can face anything. By looking at Abel, and the contrast with Cain, we can have some...
Apr 07, 2025•39 min•Ep. 1207
Christian faith is more than thinking, because the Christian message, the gospel, is much more than an idea. It is not just an idea; it’s a power. The gospel bears fruit in you. It’s a living thing. But how does faith move from being an idea to being a power? You stop just believing in God and you start believing God. Noah shows us the way. Hebrews 11 shows us that Noah does three things that bring the power of faith into life: 1) he believes God, 2) he condemns the world, and 3) he hides in the...
Apr 04, 2025•38 min•Ep. 1206
The Bible tells us faith begins with thinking. The Bible says faith requires and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost. Nowadays, we’re told by our culture from the time we’re very little that the big questions—what is real, what is right and wrong, and what we should be living for—are questions for the philosophers. We’re taught that the important things are standard of living, career, appearance, and psychological...
Apr 02, 2025•38 min•Ep. 1205
What is faith? What is it made of? How do you know if you have it? How do you lose it? How do you get it back? Hebrews 11 deals with all of these things through specific personal case studies of men and women who wrestled with issues of faith. I would suggest that it’s the easiest to understand the parts of faith as three layers, one of which comes first, then the others resting upon it. But the reality is it’s more complex than that. If you look hard enough at any one of these aspects, the othe...
Mar 31, 2025•40 min•Ep. 1204
One mark of a supernaturally changed heart is a changed attitude and view of races and cultures. In social relations, grace-changed Christians use their power to serve, not exploit. We’re going to look at this by looking at a dispute that happened in the church of Rome, and by comparing it to another dispute. These passages show us 1) the problems that culture poses, 2) the solutions, true and false, and 3) how we get the power to implement the true solution. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timo...
Mar 28, 2025•45 min•Ep. 1203
Some people say there’s a cultural crisis of integrity. For example, Volkswagen was revealed to have deliberately used software designed to lie about emissions. It was a failure of integrity from one of the biggest corporations in the world. And some of you may be yawning, thinking that’s just the way things are. But the Bible says a supernaturally changed heart rejoices with the truth. Let’s talk about 1) how important integrity is, 2) how you practice integrity, and 3) how you can become peopl...
Mar 26, 2025•40 min•Ep. 1202
When the Greeks and Romans met the early Christians, one of the first things that surprised them was how Christians handled suffering. Christianity brought into the world a view and a way of handling suffering that the world had never seen. It was one of the evidences of a supernaturally changed heart. And in Romans 8, a passage that looks at all the benefits of salvation, we learn a lot about suffering. Romans 8 shows us 1) the unique Christian view of suffering, 2) the unique resources we get ...
Mar 24, 2025•44 min•Ep. 1201
What are the characteristics of a supernaturally changed heart? You can be very moral and active in church and still be an incredibly impatient, bitter person. So we’re looking at what Paul says are the marks of a supernaturally changed heart. And for this, Romans 12 is an explosive passage. Let’s look at what this passage says about 1) patience and graciousness in life in general, and 2) love and forgiveness in the face of mistreatment. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer...
Mar 21, 2025•43 min•Ep. 1200
Most of us know how to restrain a life. We start to get in trouble, so we change. But when the consequences go away, we snap back the way we were. Human nature without supernatural intervention is like a rubber ball that’s squished, but when the pressure is off, it snaps right back. The rubber ball was constrained. It wasn’t actually changed or reshaped. 1 Corinthians 13 is about how you actually change, about how you get a supernaturally changed heart. What is the supernaturally changed heart? ...
Mar 19, 2025•38 min•Ep. 1199
There is nothing that beggars your own sense of wisdom than to study what the Bible says about divine wisdom. Ephesians 5 tells us a lot about wisdom. And it shows us that biblical wisdom puts God in the center in a way that develops three aspects of wisdom. We see in these verses 1) why we need to walk in wisdom, and 2) what it means to walk in wisdom. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on June 9, 1991. Series: Christian Lifestyle. Scripture: Ephesian...
Mar 17, 2025•44 min•Ep. 1198
Ephesians 5 talks about light and wisdom. Paul says that because you once were darkness and now are light, you should now expose works of darkness and experience the fruit of light. Then in verse 15, Paul says that we are to walk as wise and not as fools, for the days are evil. What Paul is saying is that walking in wisdom is the way in which you expose the deeds of the darkness. In these verses, Paul shows us 1) there are two different realms—darkness and light, 2) we are to have nothing to do ...
Mar 14, 2025•28 min•Ep. 1197
The essence of Christianity is arguing with yourself. What makes you an effective Christian is that you’re continually arguing with yourself, and you’re winning the argument. Because of what Christ did, God can restore the world and restore everything if we come to him through Christ. And in Ephesians 5, Paul uses the imagery of darkness and light to argue with us about how we need to be living: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” If you don’t get the verse right, yo...
Mar 12, 2025•40 min•Ep. 1196
Christianity is never a mechanical thing. And the church is not a morality agency—it’s a regenerating agency. The real goal of the do’s and the don’ts in the Christian life is always character—growing into God’s holy people. The church does bring about moral behavior but, in a sense, as a byproduct. Because what the church is after is to turn people into saints, to create a kind of person. In Ephesians 5, we learn three things: 1) your Christian faith has to include a saying no as well as a sayi...
Mar 10, 2025•38 min•Ep. 1195
Whenever God turns to you, if you believe in him, all he sees when he looks at you is complete beauty and sweetness. Jesus Christ offered himself up and fulfilled all of the obligations we owe God, so he has completely satisfied God. God sees nothing and senses nothing but sweetness when he regards you. But you still live in a world twisted and broken by sin. And you have to deal with the realities of that. Therefore, there’s always a negative. And Ephesians 5:3-7 tells the negatives: there are ...
Mar 07, 2025•44 min•Ep. 1194
If you look at the particulars Christian teachings, the particulars don’t look that different from many other ethical systems. The difference is that Christianity is never interested in moral behavior simply as moral behavior. In every instance, putting on the new self means to remember your identity. Being a Christian is ultimately about being melted with spiritual understandings of who you are now that Jesus Christ has said, “You are my beloved child,” of who you are now that the Holy Spirit h...
Mar 05, 2025•45 min•Ep. 1193
Christianity has an amazing approach to lying and to anger that almost nobody else has. For truth-telling, it says truth must always be told with love. And for anger, it says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Paul doesn’t say, “Well if you get angry, it might be okay.” He says, “Be angry. Do it.” Very often it is wrong not to be angry. But then he turns around and says, “and sin not.” It must mean two things: that anger can easily lead to sin and trouble, and that it’s possible to be angry but not be...
Mar 03, 2025•46 min•Ep. 1192
A good test shows you what you really are, what’s really in you. If you’re in denial, the tests are devastating. If you’re dropping the ball, the tests are traps. Jesus says the only way you’re going to come through the tests of life is if you seek God. How are you doing right now? Are you going through and failing the little tests, and are you setting yourself up for failure of some big test in the future? How can you be delivered from evil in the tests of life? Jesus tells you how. Let’s look ...
Feb 28, 2025•35 min•Ep. 1191
In this passage, we finally get to a particular kind of prayer in which people are very interested: to the place where Jesus says prayer is a way to change our circumstances. Prayer makes a difference. You can come to God and say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But notice this happens in the very middle of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s surrounded by all sorts of other concepts. And you can’t understand how it works unless you see all of its relationships to the rest of the prayer. Petitionary pra...
Feb 26, 2025•33 min•Ep. 1190
I’ll say it consciously: this is our worst nightmare. More than anyone else in history, modern people believe we ought to have a good life and we ought to have some control over our lives. But Jesus says when you connect with God, you must pray, “Thy will be done.” This means the purpose of prayer is not that we would bend God’s will to meet ours, but that we melt and soften our will into God’s. The Bible says the way to find yourself and your happiness is never to seek yourself or your happines...
Feb 24, 2025•32 min•Ep. 1189
What does it mean to hallow? It’s a word virtually never used anymore in everyday English, but we don’t quite have an equivalent. To hallow something means to treat it as sacred and ultimate. It means to make something your ultimate concern, to make it the most important thing, to make it the most crucial thing, to make it the supreme beauty, the supreme aim of your life. Jesus says this comes first, and I want to show you that praise and adoration is really what life is about. Matthew 6 teaches...
Feb 21, 2025•32 min•Ep. 1188
Jesus doesn’t just point the way to God—rather, he is the way to God because he’s risen. And that means that for Christians, prayer is a unique, radically different process than it is for other religions and philosophies. Prayer is a rather universal thing, and there are many ways to pray. But Jesus says there are really two different bases on which you can approach God. He’s not talking about whether to ask; he’s talking about how to ask, about why you think you’re being heard. And he says ther...
Feb 19, 2025•38 min•Ep. 1187
The Psalms is the divinely inspired prayer book, but when you open this prayer book, the first page is not a prayer. It’s a meditation on meditation. Meditation is not the same as studying the Bible. In studying the Bible you’re just learning information. Meditation takes what you’ve learned and does something with it. And according to the Psalms, meditation is actually the key to prayer. Psalm 1 tells us 1) the priority, 2) the promise, 3) the products, 4) the practice, and 5) the problem and s...
Feb 17, 2025•40 min•Ep. 1186
The Lord’s Prayer is quite a workout. You’re asking for a lot of things: daily bread, deliver us from evil. But at the end, you rest in God. The last phrase in the Lord’s Prayer is, “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, amen.” Is that just a rhetorical flourish? After all, it doesn’t seem to be a prayer. But ancient commentators have said this is a prayer of repose. You realize all the things you’ve been looking for are already there in God. In Psalm 27 we have ...
Feb 14, 2025•41 min•Ep. 1185
We don’t see that envy is as terrible as it really is. Envy is wanting somebody else’s life. Do you know what that does? It sucks the joy out of the life you actually have. In Psalm 73, the psalmist is living as good a life as he can, and everything is going wrong. And on top of that, he sees a lot of other people who are corrupt and they’re having a great life. What is the solution? A particular kind of prayer. There are four things the psalmist does in prayer that can only be done in prayer: 1...
Feb 12, 2025•42 min•Ep. 1184
What if I told you 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 whole? Well, here it is. It’s what the Bible calls repentance. You say, “You mean just saying I’m sorry?” But that reveals you don’t understand the power of this kind of prayer. This kind of prayer, if you do it in an ongoing way, will finally enable you to change deeply from the inside out. Looking at Psalm 51, we’ll see 1) what one thing...
Feb 10, 2025•44 min•Ep. 1183
We need every bit of help we can get to learn to pray, “Thy will be done,” because we’re going right into the teeth of our culture. The essence of American culture is the belief that the more free we are to decide for ourselves, the happier we’ll be. But Jesus Christ says every time you pray to God, you need to say to him, “Thy will be done.” That goes right against probably everything you’ve been taught in our culture. To understand this phrase, we need to see that when Jesus himself prayed it,...
Feb 07, 2025•39 min•Ep. 1182
What does it mean to pray, “Thy kingdom come”? Jesus gave us his instruction on how to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s filled with concepts you need to know from the rest of the Bible. There are two places—Matthew 5 and Luke 6—where Jesus tells us a lot about the kingdom of God and the blessedness of the kingdom. I want to show you 1) what the kingdom of God is, 2) what it’s not, 3) what it’s like, 4) how you enter it, and 5) how that relates to prayer. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timoth...
Feb 05, 2025•36 min•Ep. 1181
