It would be possible to go to church for many decades and never hear a sermon on Habakkuk. It’s a short book in the Old Testament, and we know almost nothing about Habakkuk himself. But this book is very contemporary in its application. This little...
We’re looking at people who have had close encounters with God. Of course, Mary’s experience is often read at Christmastime. In Luke 1, Mary sings the very first Christmas carol. It’s the first Christmas song, and I’d say it’s the best. Let’s look a...
When people in the Bible have close encounters with God, in almost every situation they say, “I can’t believe I’m still alive,” and Hagar is one of them. In Genesis 16, we see the story of Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah. Sarah’s and Hagar’s experien...
It is with sadness that we share with you that our founder and friend, Timothy J. Keller passed away this morning, May 19, 2023 at the age of 72, trusting in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. Please join us in prayer for his family as th...
We’re looking at historic accounts of people who had direct encounters with the living God. Isaiah 6 is a seminal passage: all of biblical religion is in here. It tells us so much about what it means to be a Christian and what it means to really meet...
Two times God appears to Abraham, but this time is utterly different than the last time. This time, God has come to get Sarah’s attention. In Genesis 15, God speaks to Abraham in dread darkness as an unapproachable thing. Here, in Genesis 18, in the...
We’re looking in the Bible at people who have had direct encounters with the raw presence of God. But this situation in which Abraham has a meeting with God is one of the weirdest stories in the Bible. It’s also the most significant passage for me in...
We’re looking at times when people have had close encounters with God. The one Paul gives us is one of the most curious of all. And it’s actually about discouragement. Paul is writing a letter to the church at Corinth. There were false teachers who h...
We’re looking at individuals who have met God in a particularly poignant way, who have actually come into the presence of God. To understand Elijah’s experience, we have to first jump back. Right before this moment in Elijah’s life, we see one of the...
We’re looking at places in the Bible in which someone, or in this case something, got near to the presence of God. Whenever a person gets into the presence of God, there’s usually some kind of physical manifestation. In other words, God connects his...
Many of you have probably heard of the battle of Jericho. But you probably didn’t know about what happens in these first three verses. These verses make all the difference. Jericho was a huge city, a fortified city, and humanly speaking, an impossibl...
Many people say, “I want to meet God. I want to have an encounter.” But the way Job gets to an encounter with God is through absolutely horrible suffering. Job is a book for adults. It’s not easy. It’s certainly not sugarcoated. When God shows up, it...
Drawing near to God is perilous. If there’s any place in the Bible where that comes out, it’s here, because when Jacob draws near to God, he finds that God is a wrestler. This is the climactic moment in Jacob’s life. This is the place where Jacob fin...
This talk and Q&A by Tim Keller was held at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City on October 2, 2013.
There’s nothing more inevitable in life than suffering, and there’s no book in the Bible, and maybe no work of world literature, that faces the issue of suffering with more realism, integrity, and wisdom than the book of Job. In the middle part of th...
