As you can see, these psalms are about weeping, suffering and grief. Religious people, by and large, want to deny the power and the depth of their feelings. On the other hand, secular people tend to see discovery and expression of your feelings almost as a good end in itself. To bow to your feelings or to stuff your feelings, to be over-awed by your feelings or under-aware of your feelings are both dangerous. 

The Psalms give us a gospel third way of dealing with your feelings. The Psalms do not say to deny or vent, but to pray your feelings. Pray your deepest feelings. Bring them before God and process them. There are three things these texts tell us. Expect tears, invest tears, and pray your tears.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 27, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 39:12-13, 126:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Psalm 16, Psalm 17.

The Psalms are not so much about lofty, high doctrine as they are about how the human heart works, the deep recesses of the motives and emotions of the human heart. And what we’re now going to look at in Psalm 73 is doubt. 

Doubt always masquerades as more intellectual than it is, but doubt is a condition of the soul and the heart. Here’s a person filled with doubts, struggling with doubts about God and about faith. Let’s see what the condition is, what the cause of the condition is, and what the cure of the condition is.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 20, 2000. Series "Psalms - The Songs of Jesus". Scripture: Psalm 73:1-3; 12-26.

We’re looking at the life of David, and this episode in 2 Samuel 6 is a strange one for modern readers. One of the very first things David does after he becomes king is he wants to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. To do so meant putting, in a sense, God’s worship in the very center of the national life and in the very center of David’s life. 

Two fascinating incidents happen first; one is the death of Uzzah, a man who simply tries to keep the ark from falling off the cart. David is frightened and angry, thinking, “This God is more holy than I thought.” Secondly, the ark is given to Obed-Edom, the Gittite, and there the ark actually doesn’t do anything but make them prosper, showing God is more gracious than he thought. 

Let’s notice three things when David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem: David is a changed man. Secondly and thirdly, the first thing that changes him and the second thing that changes him.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 31, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 2 Samuel 6:1-23.

We’re going through the books of 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, which tell the story of King David’s life. Each week we look at a new episode, and each week the episode ties us into another major biblical theme. This week, this particular story talks to us and tells us quite a bit about what it means to love people who have wronged you.

What I’m going to do is kind of recount the story, and as we recount the story, we’re going to see what it tells us about loving a neighbor, loving an enemy or someone who has wronged you, loving a fool, and where you get the power to do so.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 24, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 26:7-14, 21-25.

We’re looking at the life of David, and the life of David is a little bit of a challenge for a preacher because we have more information in the Bible about the life of David than about any other figure. Therefore, the narrative arcs are longer in this part of the Bible than normal.

If you’re going to follow David’s relationship with Saul or David’s relationship with Jonathan, you have multiple texts, so we did something a little unusual today, and we gave you four texts. We’re going to show you how they tell us about the rightly famous friendship between Jonathan and David; and what these texts and what the Bible tell us about the importance of friendship.

Let’s take a look at what we learn from the relationship of David to Jonathan about the 1) absolute importance of friendship, the constituent elements of friendship — what it’s made of — and 3) the requisite power in order to be a friend and to have friends.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 17, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 18:1-4; 19:4-7; 20:40-42; 23:15-18.

We’re looking at the life of David, and it’s interesting how this ancient text every week yields so much insight about very current problems (you could even say perennial problems), and this week we get a portrait, a simple portrait of something that is a lot bigger problem than most of us think of it as being. Saul’s life is being destroyed by envy.

Envy. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of people come to me to talk about issues like anger and despondency, but almost never does somebody come to me and say, “I have a problem with envy.” I’ve had lots of people say, “You need to preach on this issue,” or “You need to preach on that issue. These are important issues.” Never, I want you to know, has anyone ever asked me to preach on envy.

Yet, Aristotle … Not just the Bible but all of the ancients understood envy is one of the deadly sins, one of the things that destroys people’s lives, one of the things that’s making the world such a miserable place, so let’s look at what this passage tells us about envy: what it is, what it does, and how we can escape it.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 10, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 18:1-14.

Of all the episodes in the life of David, his encounter with Goliath is the most famous, it’s the most dramatic, it’s the most often told, and it’s probably the one that deals with the most fundamental question of all … How do you deal with fear? How do you have the courage to face life?

The ordinary way this text is read to answer that question is kind of like this. Goliath represents your fears. Look at them. They’re intimidating, but David is your inspiring example to show you how to handle those fears, which is to go right at them. Banish the fears. Face your fears, and the bigger they are the harder they will fall.

I’m here to say that’s a shallow understanding, even a deceptive understanding of how to read the text, and it has a lot more in here to answer that question if we read it a little differently, so let’s, first of all, ask the question, “What is this telling us?” I think it’s going to give us two answers. It’s going to show us the problems of counterfeit courage, but it will also show us the way to true courage.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 3, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:32-50.

We’re looking at the life of David, and it impresses me how each week each time we look at a new episode we not only are getting ancient history, but we’re always getting some question addressed that has quite modern, contemporary … I should actually say perennial … relevance. For example, I think the question we’re going to be helped to answer today is … What do you really look like? Am I ugly? Am I attractive? What do I really look like? This passage helps us answer these questions.

There are a number of ways to read a passage, so let’s read this one while keeping that question in mind. Let’s notice what it teaches us about 1) the importance of true beauty, 2) the source of true beauty and 3) the secret of both detecting and developing true beauty.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 26, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1-13.

We’re looking at the life of David, and today we get to a text that actually gets us to address one of the most urgent and important questions you could ask: what’s wrong with the human race? The problem is we know how we should live, and we aren’t able to do it. Why do we do the terrible things we do when we basically know how we should live? One answer is in this passage from 1 Samuel. It’s not the only answer, but it’s an extremely important one. It’s a small but important subject I want to bring to your attention. To get at it, let’s ask these questions: How did Saul fail? Why did Saul fail? How can we escape the thing that destroyed him?

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 19, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 15:10-23.

We’re going to be looking at the life of David, who is not only the author of most of the Psalms but was a great man of prayer. First and second Samuel are often called the book of David. This story begins with a woman who radically changes her life through prayer. She’s a desperate woman. She’s culturally oppressed, but she takes control through prayer, so it’s very appropriate.

She’s obviously the forerunner of David and the mother of the forerunner of David. Let’s take a look at this very attractive person. Her name is Hannah.

We are first going to look at Hannah’s sorrow, which we’re given more insight to in the first few verses. Secondly, Hannah’s response to her sorrow. Lastly, in her great song, only of which a few verses we were able to read, we see a Savior who Hannah is looking forward to who actually enables her to respond to the sorrow in the way she does.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 12, 2015. Series "David: The Man of Prayer". Scripture: 1 Samuel 1:3-11, 18-20; 2:8-10.