12 Wednesday Dec 2012
Posted in Grace, Incarnation, Jesus, Redemption, The Bible
≈ Comments Off
Tags
The heart of the unique message of the Bible is that the transcendent immortal God came to earth himself and became weak, vulnerable to suffering and death. He did this all for us – all to atone for our sin, to take the punishment we deserved. If it is true, it is the most astonishing and radical act of self-giving and loving sacrifice that can be imagined.
- Tim Keller
16 Friday Nov 2012
Tags
There is, in the end, only two ways to read the Bible: is it basically about me or basically about Jesus? In other words, is it basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done? If I read David and Goliath as basically giving me an example, then the story is really about me. I must summons up the faith and courage to fight the giants in my life. But if I read David and Goliath as basically showing me salvation through Jesus, then the story is really about him. Until I see that Jesus fought the real giants (sin, law, death) for me, I will never have the courage to be able to fight ordinary giants in life (suffering, disappointment, failure, criticism, hardship). For example how can I ever fight the ‘giant’ of failure, unless I have a deep security that God will not abandon me? If I see David as my example, the story will never help me fight the failure/giant. But if I see David/Jesus as my substitute, whose victory is imputed to me, then I can stand before the failure/giant. As another example, how can I ever fight the ‘giant’ of persecution or criticism? Unless I can see him forgiving me on the cross, I won’t be able to forgive others. Unless I see him as forgiving me for falling asleep on him (Matt.27:45) I won’t be able to stay awake for him.
In the Old Testament we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament. We see it in the clothes God makes Adam and Eve in Genesis, to the promises made to Abraham and the patriarchs, to the Tabernacle and the whole sacrificial system, to the innumerable references to a Messiah, a suffering servant, and so on.
Therefore, to say that the Bible is about Christ is to say that the main theme of the Bible is, ‘Salvation is of the Lord’ (Jonah 2:9).
- Tim Keller
17 Friday Aug 2012
Posted in Apologetics, The Bible, The Gospel
≈ Comments Off
Tags
Preaching is compelling to young secular adults not if preachers use video clips from their favorite movies and dress informally and sound sophisticated, but if the preachers understand their hearts and culture so well that listeners feel the force of the sermon’s reasoning, even if in the end they don’t agree with it.
- Tim Keller
02 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in The Bible, The Reason for God
≈ Comments Off
Tags
To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense? If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.
-Tim Keller
30 Monday Apr 2012
Posted in Jesus, The Bible, The Gospel, Worship
≈ Comments Off
Tags
A BASIC OUTLINE FOR CHRIST-CENTERED, GOSPEL-MOTIVATED SERMONS
The following may actually be four points in a presentation, or they may be treated very quickly as the last point of a sermon. But more generally, this is a foundational outline for the basic moral reasoning and argument that lies at the heart of the application.
The Plot winds up: WHAT YOU MUST DO.
“This is what you have to do! Here is what the text/narrative tells us that we must do or what we must be.”
The Plot thickens: WHY YOU CAN’T DO IT.
“But you can’t do it! Here are all the reasons that you will never become like this just by trying very hard.”
The Plot resolves: HOW HE DID IT.
“But there’s One who did. Perfectly. Wholly. Jesus the—. He has done this for us, in our place.”
The Plot winds down: HOW, THROUGH HIM, YOU CAN DO IT.
“Our failure to do it is due to our functional rejection of what he did. Remembering him frees our heart so we can change like this…”
a) In every text of the Scripture there is somehow a moral principle. It may grow out of because of what it shows us about the character of God or Christ, or out of either the good or bad example of characters in the text, or because of explicit commands, promises, and warnings. This moral principle must be distilled clearly.
b) But then a crisis is created in the hearers as the preacher shows that his moral principle creates insurmountable problems. The sermon shows how this practical and moral obligation is impossible to meet. The hearers are led to a seemingly dead end.
c) Then a hidden door opens and light comes in. The sermon moves both into worship and into Christ-application when it shows how only Jesus Christ has fulfilled this. If the text is a narrative, you can show how Christ is the ultimate example of a particular character. If the text is didactic, you can show how Christ is the ultimate embodiment of the principle.
d) Finally, we show how our inability to live as we ought stems from our rejection of Christ as the Way, Truth, and Life (or whatever the theme is). The sermon points out how to repent and rejoice in Christ in such a way that we can live as we ought.
- Tim Keller
*Quote taken from Monergism article, “Moralism Vs. Christ-Centered Exposition”
31 Saturday Mar 2012
Tags
21 Wednesday Mar 2012
Posted in Beauty, Creation, Stewardship, The Bible
≈ Comments Off
Tags
It is easy to read the first chapters of Genesis with the questions of our time: ‘How long ago did this happen?’ ‘Is this history or myth?’ ‘How does this square with modern views of science and evolution?’ etc. These are important questions, and we can probably learn some things from Genesis that are relevant to them. But we don’t learn much from a text if we ask questions that it was not written to answer.
Genesis is about deeper issues than biological origins. It is answering questions like: ‘What are human beings?’ ‘What are we here for?’ ‘What is our relationship to nature and to the world?’ Essentially, Genesis 1 is not about the ‘how’ of creation but rather about the ‘why.’
The word ‘God’ appears 30 times in the first chapter of Genesis. God overwhelms the text; he dominates and overshadows everything. Nothing happens unless he makes it happen. Nothing is created except by him. There is nothing in existence that does not owe its existence to him. We see immediately that the extreme repetition is a way of saying, ‘Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made’ (John 1:3).
And, we see that everything God makes is ‘good.’ Everything he touches is pleasing, joy producing, wholesome. There is a wonder and awe about the richness of the world. It ‘teems’ with life.
Notice that the overall effect of the highly patterned, repetitive text is to demonstrate that the world is made in an extremely orderly, purposeful way. There was ‘evening and morning’ not just once — but regularly, faithfully, continually. What we have here is a cosmos, not a chaos. And because God created everything, nothing is outside of his control, or outside of his rightful authority. The animals, plants, and even the mountains and seas are all part of a choir of praise to the glory of God. This is said explicitly in Psalm 19 and Psalm 150.
Notice too that only we are described as made ‘in the image’ of God. It is clear that we have a closer relationship to God than any other creature. We were made by God to be in relationship with him and to rule the world on his behalf. God gives us the task of subduing the earth and ruling over creation as his representative. Note too that it is only after the creation of human beings that the world is declared for the first time to be ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31).
- Tim Keller
16 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Christian Life, Community, Incarnation, The Bible, The Church
≈ Comments Off
Tags
As great as it is, God did not simply send us the Bible, a message through the communication medium of writing. If that was all he could do for us, salvation would ultimately be in our hands —it would have been up to us to follow his instructions. But instead, God also came himself, in the flesh, to be fully present to us in Jesus Christ. It is only through his being fully present with us that we could be saved by grace.
In the same way, we must learn to be fully present in community with our neighbors and with our Christian brothers and sisters. It is not enough to simply show up at a church service where you live physically, but then try to maintain all your closest relationships with friends and family members who live far away. God made us embodied beings—the body (though it is weakened by sin) is a great good. God was so positive about bodies that he himself assumed a body in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. If we are going to give and receive grace from each other, we have to get it the way God gave it to us. We have to be involved in accountable friendships and deep relationships with other people where we live.
- Tim Keller
09 Friday Mar 2012
Tags
Traditionally, the Old Testament is considered to have three parts — the Law (the five books of Moses), the Prophets, and the Wisdom Literature (here referred to by its chief book, the Psalms). Thus Jesus sees himself as the fulfillment of it all. Literally everything in the Bible is about him.
The Bible can only be understood if it is seen to be about him. So, Jesus fulfills the Prophets, who said the Messiah will be God (Isaiah 9), and will suffer and be killed (Isaiah 53). He fulfills all the ceremonial law since he is the sacrifice, the priest, and the temple to which all the ritual pointed. He fulfills the moral law for he alone lived it personally, exemplifying righteousness, and doing it all as our substitute, satisfying it for us. He even fulfills all the history of the Bible: he is the true prophet, the true priest, the true king to which all prophets, priests, and kings point. He is the seed of Abraham, David’s greater son, the true Jonah greater than Jonah, the true Solomon greater than Solomon.
In John 5 when Jesus is speaking to the Jewish leaders he tells them in verse 39: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.” In other words, the Bible in its entirety is all about Jesus, and the basic message of the Bible is that the Messiah has to suffer in order to redeem everything.
So, the Bible is not primarily a set of rules or a philosophy of life. Rather, Jesus is telling us in Luke 24 and John 5 that the Bible is primarily an account of what’s wrong with us, of what God planned to do about it, and about what he has done about it in history through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- Tim Keller
27 Monday Feb 2012
Posted in The Bible
≈ Comments Off
Tags
To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense? If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.
- Tim Keller