Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

How do you know whether you’re just trying to be good, or whether the Holy Spirit has really brought transformation into your life?  The way to know is to look at what’s called the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. There’s a whole set of characteri...

Almost all of us have parts of our lives we really want to see changed, but change is really hard. And it’s very possible to mistake a morally restrained heart for a supernaturally changed heart.  If you squeeze a rubber ball and then take your hand...

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 14, 1999. Series: What’s Really Wrong with the World. Scripture: Isaiah 49:8-21. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, bo...

We’ve lost connection with part of what the Bible teaches about sin: that God gets angry at sin. And I’m here to tell you that losing that is a bad thing. In fact, I’ll go this far: you need an angry God. If you don’t believe in an angry God, a reall...

When people in the West were faced with the atrocities of World War II, the culture’s prevailing optimistic views of human nature were devastated. Two questions kept coming up: what’s wrong with us that we’re capable of this, and what are we going to...

In Isaiah 61, we have one of the great prophecies about the Messiah. It tells us the Messiah is going to deal with the problems of life—and that shows us something about sin.  Sin is not just breaking God’s scale and breaking God’s heart; it’s also b...

Even when we feel vaguely guilty for things in our past, or when we feel outraged by what we see other people doing, we have trouble talking about sin and evil. In our society, we’ve been taught that words like “sin” or “evil” are oppressive or meani...

The story in Judges 17 is not interesting. It’s a bunch of trivial people doing kind of dumb, weird things. Micah robs his mother, but then he gives the money back. Then his mother cheats God. Then Micah hires a Levite, and then Danites hire the Levi...

When people see the evidence of great evils and atrocities, they automatically turn into philosophers. They start to ask the metaphysical questions. How could this have happened? Why doesn’t God do something about evil, about the wickedness and viole...

The story of Jacob and Esau is a great example of how anger works out in a family situation.  Esau and Jacob were twins, and Esau was the oldest. When their father is fooled into giving Jacob the birthright, Esau can’t get ahold of his anger. We’re t...

The rich young ruler looked like he had it made. He’s characterized by moral excellence and he’s financially wealthy. He’s got it so together that he even admits he doesn’t have it all together—that there’s still something he lacks. He isn’t sure wha...

Joseph’s career was going along fairly well. He’d risen from servanthood to becoming, in a sense, the Chief Operating Officer of a huge estate. And then sex came. He wasn’t even looking for it, but it came at him. Things may be going very well for yo...

In the Middle Ages, theologians said there are different forms of gluttony—that you can eat and drink excessively, sumptuously, daintily, or impulsively. Technically, gluttony means to eat and drink immoderately. But gluttony also tells us something...

There’s a sickness in us. We are cruel to each other in ways we cannot seem to heal. We have an inveterate kind of unhappiness in our hearts we can’t seem to put out.  For the last hundred years, the reigning Western understanding of why we are so cr...

After he broke his promise to Jesus, Peter wept bitterly. Peter was an absolutely broken man in the profoundest possible way, and yet within weeks he was poised as the leader of a new movement, about to become one of the most influential leaders in t...