Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

In our passage today, Paul, after having ministered in tremendous ways in Ephesus for three years, is now taking leave to go to Jerusalem. He assembles the elders, who are the leaders of the church, to say farewell to them. Usually when this passage is taught, it’s taught to give us job descriptions of ministers or elders, or leaders. But I think it’s helpful to look at this from a different angle because it’s actually addressed to Christians. There are many speeches and sermons in Acts,...

Our passage comes from Acts chapter 5 where things begin to look dim for the followers of Christ. Beginning around this time and spanning to around AD 300, the history of the early church is filled with persecution and suffering. Christians were systematically imprisoned, plundered, tortured, and killed. In this particular incident in Acts, we see Christians facing danger and the possibility of death with heroic courage. Where did they get that heroic courage? We’re going to focus on the...

Acts is about the origins of Christianity. Whenever you go to the origins, you learn something about what genuine Christianity is — authentic, original, real Christianity. That is important because many people base, to some degree, their non-belief on what it was like to be a “Christian” earlier in life or on what other “Christians” are like. If you ask yourself every day the question, “Am I a real Christian?,” it will drive you nuts. On the other hand, if you never ask that question,...

Our passage today is on the first miracle the apostles perform after the resurrection of Jesus, which is at the very beginning of the Christian church. If you want to learn about the topic of suffering, you go to the book of Job or a lot of other places in the Bible that seem to deal with it more directly. But this passage is actually a lot about suffering. This miracle, in many ways, is typical of so many of the other miracles of the New Testament done by Jesus or by apostles. If you...

Our passage from Acts 2 is about the birth of the Christian church. We’re going to look at how the birth of the church is intimately related to the birth of Christ: Christmas. In many ways, what happened at Christmas explains what happens in the early church; and what happens in the early church explains what Christmas is about. When the early Christians began to understand the reality of Christmas, they began to practice Christmas. They brought ideals into the world that no one had ever...

Our passage is the first Christian sermon given by Peter on the day of Pentecost. It’s important that we consider the entire sermon for the context, but we’re going to focus our time on the last four verses (36–39) and what it means to be a Christian. How do you become a Christian? In a sense, when you get to the end of the sermon, you have a little compendium on how to do this, but there are four things that come into play. In verse 36 we learn about mind and grace, in verse 37 about...

We’re going to look at a very famous episode in the book of Acts today, the day of Pentecost. What makes this unique is the descent of the Holy Spirit. There’s a sense in which the Old Testament people of God became the New Testament people of God because the Holy Spirit came down with a transforming power that had never been known heretofore. In a certain sense, the people of God are getting rebooted, relaunched — it’s the fullness of the Spirit. We need to ask the same question the crowd...

The book of Acts is about how the earliest church was essentially launched into a cosmopolitan and urban setting just like ours today. Our church has never been here just for convinced, believing Christians, but it’s also here for New Yorkers who aren’t sure what they believe (or who don’t believe in Christianity). Acts is one of a few books in the New Testament that is pretty specifically written for skeptical people. There are images the Bible gives us to get across a fundamental change...

Today’s passage comes from the Passion narrative found in the book of Matthew. Matthew is not just a reporter; he’s a teacher. He doesn’t just tell us that Jesus died, but he always builds the narratives around certain statements and sayings that interpret why Jesus died. It’s very typical today for people to say, “Well, the cross might mean something for you. You interpret it your way. I interpret it my way.” But the gospel writers don’t leave that as an option; they are very clear to let...

We’ve been going through the book of Matthew looking at the big blocks of teaching Jesus gives his disciples for how he wants his followers to live. While the Sermon on the Mount was mainly about how Christian disciples would relate to each other, starting with this passage, Jesus turns around and says, “But now here’s how I want my disciples to relate to the world.” This passage was Jesus teaching on how to move into a new town or a new neighborhood or a new city as Christian disciples and...

We’ve come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. It would be very profitable if we went through and took each of these metaphors Jesus ends the sermon with. You notice there are always two. There are two gates. There are two roads. There are two trees. There are two homes built on two different foundations. How many ways are there to live? Are there two ways to live, two paths, two trees, two gates? Yes and no. This is one of the most hard-hitting parts of the Bible. It is pretty...

When you get to Matthew 7, which is the last chapter in the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous sermon in history, there is a lot of intriguing stuff. There are ludicrous things in there. There are strange things in here. This isn’t so much inspiring as it is a convicting and brilliant piece of teaching. Verses 1–6 are talking about relationships, the kinds of relationships Jesus Christ wants us to have in the Christian community. Let’s look at the first six verses and see the kind of...

We continue to look at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ outline of what he wants his people to live like in the world. Put another way, Jesus says here that if we take the essential message of the Christian faith, the gospel, and actually live it out, it will not only make us different individuals, radically different people, but it’ll turn us into a counterculture. It’ll turn us into a completely new kind of human society. He’s now talking about money. Let’s notice three things about money...

We’re going through the Sermon on the Mount each week, and now we come to the most famous part of the most famous sermon in history, which is the Lord’s Prayer. The thing we have working against us with the Lord’s Prayer is the familiarity. We know it too well. Let’s see what Jesus tells us here about the foundation for prayer, the substance of prayer, and then the key to having a rightly founded, substantial, effective prayer life. The foundation for it, the substance of it, and the key to...

We’re going through the Sermon on the Mount and we have Jesus Christ telling us how he wants us to live. He has dealt with the commandment on murder and adultery, and now he’s dealing with the commandment on lying. He’s going to talk to us about integrity, truth, and honesty. We have as big a problem in our culture with this. Therefore, let’s take a look and see what Jesus says about integrity. He gives us the principle behind integrity and tells us something about the practice of...

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is telling us how he wants us to live in every area of life. Love and sex is one of those areas of life, and so he gets to that here. When you first read it, it would be natural to have a negative response, because on the surface it looks like Jesus is saying, “If you have sexual desire, you’re going to hell.” It would be very natural for somebody to say, “Aha! See? That’s that negative view of sex everybody says Christians have.” But that’s a great...

In the Sermon on the Mount, whenever Jesus talks about how we should live, he always also talks about how we get the power to live that way. Jesus is never just concerned about behavior. He’s also concerned about the heart. Here we have such a nice, small, compact text that gives us the whole picture. In these six verses, Jesus tells you three things. He says, “Here is what you must do.” Secondly, he says, “You’ll never do it.” Thirdly, he says, “But in and through me, you can.” I believe...

The Beatitudes make up the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, and it defines what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is someone who has a radically new relationship with God through belief in the gospel. The Beatitudes is essentially a list of the characteristics of someone with this new relationship with God. Today’s passage shifts to focus on the Christian’s relationship to the world. In other words, if you have a relationship with God (described in vv. 1–10), then that will mean...

We read in the New Testament about the life of Jesus and how he brings us new life. Now it’s natural to ask if we’ve been given this new life, then how should we live? Our passage today in Matthew, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount, is one of the best places to get Jesus’ main teaching on how to live. This is one of the most famous pieces of literature in the history of the human race. Because it is so rich, we need to pay close attention to every part, every verse and word. But...

Matthew gives us one of the four direct descriptions of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are two important questions for us as we read an account like this: Did it really happen? And what does it mean? Our culture is so dubious of miracles and the idea of resurrection already so the first question is very important to consider with that in mind. But it’s not just for those who are skeptical, it’s for all readers — we all have to come to grips with this question. Secondly, if the...