A Newsweek cover story said that after a 30-year spree, our entire society is waking up with a monstrous hangover, facing a values vacuum. It said that we realize unlimited personal freedom is not the way to build a society, but now we face the question of whose values we should use.

If you think the Bible’s answer to the values vacuum is simply “Let’s get back to traditional values,” you don’t understand how penetrating and nuanced and sophisticated the biblical answer is.

What is the biblical answer to the search for values? Psalm 19 tells us three things: 1) so-called “moral values” must be based on universal moral absolutes, 2) submission to God’s moral absolutes do not enslave—they liberate, and 3) God’s moral absolutes will destroy you unless they have assumed the right role in your life.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 17, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 19.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

When it comes to building up identity and self-esteem, I’m afraid Americans are very pragmatic—and our pragmatism gets to us. Our books and articles say if you want self-esteem, you should lose weight, change your friends, switch your career, and so on. But nobody asks why. They don’t like to think about the underlying theory.

It’s important to understand that there are certain reigning theories of identity formation. Unless you recognize them and analyze them, you’ll just pick them up like a virus.

Let’s divide our inquiry into two parts: 1) what the world says is the way to find out who you are and 2) what the Bible says is the way to find out who you are.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 10, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 8.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

A fool can be brilliant and a fool can be stupid. Foolishness is not a function of your intelligence. Foolishness is a function of how you use your intelligence.

The Bible says every human being is born with a heavy streak of foolishness. It’s like a deposit. It’s foolishness, according to the Bible, that destroys our sense of God’s reality. And it’s a common reason why people have trouble believing God is real.

The Bible tells us 1) foolishness is a proud willfulness that keeps us from learning, 2) foolishness is a superficiality that makes it impossible to see our own heart commitments as alternatives to believing in God, and 3) foolishness can’t understand grace.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 3, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 14.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

There is a thirst in the human heart that will not be denied. It cannot be denied. That thirst is for transcendence.

Transcendence is intimacy with the infinite. Psalm 63 is about the search for transcendence. It says there is irreducible knowledge, there is terrible thirst, and there’s only one resolution for it.

Psalm 63 tells us 1) the human heart needs transcendence and 2) how the human heart can find transcendence.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 26, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 63.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

A plant without roots is at best a tumbleweed. Is a tumbleweed freer than an oak tree? Yeah, it’s free to be blown about forever.

There is what the Bible calls a rootlessness and a weightlessness about our society right now. Many of the problems you face today are that you’ve been affected deeply by this weightlessness we experience in our culture and society.

The roots of this rootlessness were addressed long ago in Psalm 1, which tells us 1) the diagnosis of rootlessness and 2) the prescription for rootlessness.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 19, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 1.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Have you in this modern world learned how to become happy and stay happy?

I hope you don’t think that’s a trivial question. Because if you read the psychology books, the urban planning books, the biochemistry books, the political science books, they’re really about this problem: we’re not happy. How can we be happy?

The Bible has always said the issues that make you happy or unhappy are profoundly cosmic and spiritual. In Psalm 1, we see 4 principles: 1) happiness is possible, 2) happiness is fundamental, not superficial, 3) happiness can never be found directly, and 4) happiness is something you choose.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 12, 1993. Series: Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions. Scripture: Psalm 1.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Jesus, in Matthew 18, uses a word for conversion that means to turn completely around and face in a whole new direction. That’s a perfect image of what Christian conversion really is.

Christian conversion is a radical inner transformation. But it’s not so much a replacing of what you are as a re-facing of what you are. Your temperament doesn’t go away; your culture doesn’t go away. But everything you are is now lived on a whole new basis.

The case study of Cornelius the centurion teaches us four important facts. Christian conversion comes 1) through God’s initiative, 2) through the challenge to religion, 3) through the transformation of the Holy Spirit, and 4) through the words of the gospel.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 30, 2003. Series: The Necessity of Belief. Scripture: Acts 10:27-47.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Christianity was originally never understood as a set of teachings that one took on. Christianity was a power that took you up. It completely turned you inside out, transformed you from the inside.

The classic example is the conversion of Paul. Paul was an abusive, violent zealot. He went from someone who was deeply unhappy and restless to someone who was utterly unflappable, absolutely content. How? A radical, deep conversion.

We all need to know how to live deeply converted lives. And though Paul’s conversion is dramatic, it shows three things involved in every conversion: 1) an untame God, 2) a stubborn fact, and 3) a radical relationship.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 23, 2003. Series: The Necessity of Belief. Scripture: Acts 9:1-19.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.