Sometimes when you read Jesus’ teachings, you feel like you’ve gotten on a horse that’s much too big and much too fast for you. When you read what Jesus says in Luke 12, you have nothing but lightning and blood, but in the center of this teaching is...
In Matthew 11, Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, and he uses the word “violence.” That’s what the Greek word means. There’s no way around it. The context is Jesus telling us about John the Baptist, who realized the kingdom of heaven is real. The...
Jesus said an awful lot of hard things. And in the story of the rich young ruler, Jesus says two hard things: he says our understanding of riches and our understanding of moral goodness are wrong. The rich young ruler is not only rich, but he’s also...
In this cultural moment, when our non-Christian friends look at the Christian faith, they often see a history of racism, an anti-intellectual mindset, homophobia, and the denigration of women. It's tempting to think that the best thing Christians ca...
For a person to go from no faith to faith it takes at least four things. There has to be 1) sustained attention, 2) some attraction, 3) a demonstration, and 4) an explanation. I’m going to give a couple ideas on three of these four things. This tal...
The first 30 years of my ministry life, I spent most of my time saying, “You’ve got to care about the poor. You’ve got to do justice. You can’t just do word—you’ve got to do deed.” The last 10 years of my ministry life in New York City, everybody wan...
If you’re reading through the book of Isaiah, you get to this passage and you’re shocked. Up until now, Isaiah indicates that God’s going to send a great king to put things right in the world. Then Isaiah starts talking about a servant. But then, her...
The great enemy of the human race is death. And we all have to face it. No matter how young you are, no matter how your life’s been going up to now, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that there is a lot of death in your future. And therefore...
We’re looking at the passage that Martin Luther thinks is the greatest single place in the Bible that explains the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he might be right, because it’s talking about three great gospel words. The three great gospel words are r...
The gospel brings great goods into our lives. This text tells us a lot about one of them: reconciliation. We’re reconciled to God. What does that mean? One of the ways to understand this passage is to start at the end and work back. It’s actually a p...
Home is where you fit. Home is where you can be yourself. But Genesis 3 tells us what’s wrong with the human race: we’re homeless. To see the great goods the gospel brings to us, we need to first see what’s fundamentally wrong with the human race. Wh...
We’re wrapping up a series tonight, where we’ve been tracing the single story of the Bible. The Bible is not a set of individual stories that tell you how you should live in order to find God. The Bible is a single story about how God came to earth t...
A special announcement from Kathy Keller and Steve Shackelford, CEO of Redeemer City to City. To learn more about Redeemer City to City, watch this video or visit redeemercitytocity.com.
When Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, he was called the first fruits for the dead. The first fruits are the beginning of a harvest. As great as the resurrection of Jesus Christ is—and it means everything—it’s only the first installment on somet...
We’re tracing the single story of the Bible. We look now to the very end of the book of Revelation because all well-told stories tie up all the plot lines. And in the book of Revelation, all the plot lines of the history of the human race and all the...
