Tim Keller’s sermons have impacted millions, including many of us.

 I’m going to do a series of his most popular sermons, but because this is such rich meat, I’ll often divide them into two weeks.

The most popular one he preached is “Peace – Overcoming Anxiety” from Philippians.

He was in his late thirties and in his 2nd year at Redeemer, with a relatively small and young congregation, but so wise already, for God had gifted him.

This life is hard and full of trouble, and every single one of us needs this—such practical wisdom from a man God richly anointed. I am inserting the transcript in parts (it’s a big rough – I bought it from Logos) but it’s so essential that you listen to him, as his preaching is so anointed. Go here to download the sermon, and then you can review with the inserted daily sections of the transcript.

https://gospelinlife.com/sermon/peace/

On a personal note, I’d appreciate prayer for the “Bridges” man (liason for the 400 international students who work here in the season) in meeting with the pastor who was deeply offended by my gospel presentation to them tomorrow at 2:30 Central. Wisdom for the Bridges man, and God’s will.

Also, today I know is Charlie Kirk’s memorial. Certainly a reminder that spiritual warfare is real, yet as Keller says, “God only give Satan enough rope to hang himself.” So let us pray that great things will come from this, maybe even a turning point.

Sunday: With Thanksgiving

1. In our passage from Philippians, it says make your requests known with thanksgiving. Even though you don’t see how God will answer, you are to be thankful. Keller will explain this — but it is so important that we can see His hand in our lives and record our thanks. How did you see His hand this week?

Monday: The Passage

1. While we will look at auxiliary passages, meditate on the key passage: Philippians 4:4-9. 

A.  Read it aloud, and then share what stands out to you and why.

B. According to verse 4, what are we to do and how often?

C. Consider a challenging circumstance you are facing — what do you know about the Lord that can cause you to rejoice?

D. What is the next command in verse 5, and how is that related to “the Lord is near?”

E. What is the third command in verse 6, and how does the Lord tell us specifically to deal with anxiety in this verse?

F. When you are facing a challenging circumstance, where do you typically go first for wisdom and help?

G. What is the promise in verse 7 if we obey all that has gone before?

H. What are we to think about in these times, according to verse 8?

I. Who will be a model to us according to verse 9?

Tuesday: Expectations

Listen to Keller and use this to either read along or to know when to stop listening:

EXPECTATIONS

TRANSCRIPT

Let’s end the reading of God’s Word right there Well, we’ve been doing the fruit of the Spirit. We’re going to something a little different tonight. We’ve been doing a fruit each week. We did love one week. We did joy last week, and this is week to talk about peace. What we’ll do is take about 10 minutes to summarize peace and joy and what the Bible teaches about them, but I want to focus a little bit more on the roadblocks to peace and joy. Someone was telling me a typical example of how different life is in New York from other places. He was in a taxi yesterday and another taxi came up and rammed the end of the taxi he was in. What did the taxi drivers do? What did they do? Nothing. They just kept on going. One guy rams into the other guy. Wham! Boom! What does he do? Put on the pedal and off we go. You say, “Well …” Just imagine any other town in which that sort of thing would happen. Can you imagine? Two people running into each other, you know, a crash. So what happens in your typical American town? Everybody goes, “Oh, no! Oh, my word! Oh!” It depends on your upbringing, of course. You’re either very distressed. “It’s the end the world. How am I going to face people? What a hassle. Oh, my word. Oh, my goodness.” You get on out, and you exchange cards. The other thing to do is to get out and say, “What did you do that for?” You get real angry. Here’s two taxi drivers, say, “Oh, I had an accident. Oh, well. It’s not so bad. It’s been three hours since the last one.” Right? Neither of them got out, isn’t that right? They just rear-ended. Okay, now look. The reason for the difference between the way the taxi drivers in New York operate and the way two people in Richmond, Indiana, would operate is because of expectations. Expectations. The taxi drivers expect turmoil. They expect conflict. Most places, when somebody runs into your car, you consider that a conflict. In New York, it’s not … yet. In New York, your expectations are of having people in your face all the time, elbows in your face when you’re on the subway, your nose in someone’s armpit, right? For a hundred blocks. Well, that doesn’t happen to me too often because of my size, but some of you, I know right where you live, and I really wonder how you do it. It’s a matter of expectations. You get used to a certain amount of conflict, and you kind of get out there, and you expect to be jostled around. You expect to have people try to grab your wallet. You don’t even get upset. You say, “Nice try. You don’t get it today.” It’s a matter of expectations. The fact is, as you know, since so many New Yorkers are from somewhere else, when you first get there, your expectations have to do with other places. You expect a certain amount of sunlight. You expect a certain amount of space. You expect a certain amount of peace and so on. As a result, it really is oppressive, tremendously oppressive, much more oppressive. Our buddy, C.S. Lewis says, “Expectations are everything.” If before I lead you into a room I say, “Now before we get into this room, let me just tell you what this room is. This is a honeymoon suite,” you say, “Okay. Let me see it.” You walk on in. You look around. “What a dump,” you say. But if, before you go into the very same room, the very same room, if instead of telling me it’s a honeymoon suite, instead you say to me, “I want you to realize this is a jail cell,” you walk in with very different expectations. You look around at the same room and you say, “Pretty nice place,” because expectations are the filter through which you’re reading and seeing what happens here. A lot of Christians are cast down all the time and are losing their peace and joy all the time because they don’t expect the attacks on peace and joy that are inevitable. I’d say one-half, two-thirds, maybe three-quarters of the depression we experience as Christians is depression over our depression. We’re sad that we’re sad. We’re surprised that we’re surprised. We’re upset that we’re upset, and if you weren’t so upset about being upset, you wouldn’t be as upset. At least one-half of being upset is the anger and the guilt and the frustration, and you say, “It’s not supposed to be like this!” because you don’t have the proper expectations. Christians do not come into the Christian life with the proper expectations.

2. What example did he give of the taxis and how their expectations affected their behavior?

3. What did Jesus say that should shape our expectations about life in John 16:33?

4. What should our expectations be about our propensity to sin in 1 John 1:8? And what should our expectations be about God’s forgiveness in 1 John 1:9?

5. What else stood out to you from this section and why?

Wednesday: Enemies

Listen and stop when the transcript stops.

ENEMIES

The Christian has more enemies. You have more enemies than when you were non-Christian, and I’ll tell you why. You had one enemy when you were non-Christian. Who was that? Really, one real enemy. It was God. It wasn’t because he’s a mean person. It’s because you were at war with him, all right? You declared war, and so there was a state of warfare. But God is a mighty, wonderful adversary. He tries to save all the people who are trying to kill him. He’s amazing. God reminds me (and God’s relationship to me) very much of a scene I remember some years ago when there was a little kitten. Nobody knows how he got there. Obviously, he was thrown into this large creek by somebody. He was on a stone in the middle of the creek and he was scared to death. A bunch of young guys were trying to get him, and they were going out to him. As they tried to get him, of course, what did he do? He was at war with anybody who tried to get him. “Somebody else is trying to drown me. I can just see it now.” He bit and scratched. Fortunately, he was small enough that finally one kid decided he would pick him up and he would just take all the cuts, he would take all the scrapes, and he would take all the scratches and the little tooth marks; they weren’t going to be that bad. He took it. Of course, then, comes this cat just absolutely screaming, kicking, and trying to kill the person who is trying save him. I mean, that is the picture the Bible gives us of all of our relationships to God in our natural state. That’s the way we are born. We’re born at enmity with God. Romans 8:7: “The natural mind is enmity with God. It cannot love the law of God. It can’t submit to the law of God.” It cannot. It’s incapable of it.

The minute you make peace with God (which we’re going to see is the heart of all other peace), instantly, all of God’s enemies declare war on you, and they’re not nice enemies. Before you became a Christian, your main enemy in life was a good guy, someone who loved you, someone who cared about you, someone who was doing everything he could to wake you up. Now when you become a Christian, all your enemies are bad guys, and the three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the Devil. If you don’t have proper expectations, you are going to get mauled. Think of warfare. If you don’t come in with proper expectations into warfare, you will be mauled. If you overestimate or underestimate, if your expectations are off at all, you’re going to be killed in a battle. If you overestimate the enemy, you will surrender or retreat too soon, and you’ll lose. If you underestimate the enemy, you will go in with inappropriate or insufficient resources. If you come into Christianity (and unfortunately, many of you have) without somebody immediately telling you have much nastier, meaner enemies, not greater enemies than you had before, but nastier, meaner, more spiteful enemies than you’ve ever had in your life … It’s sort of like, here is Switzerland, neutral in the middle of World War II. Switzerland is neutral during World War II, and the Allies are battling the Axis and so on. Because they’re neutral, they might have some skirmishes around the edges, but basically they’re not at war. If they come into the war on the side of either one, if they come in on the war on the side of allies, immediately, things heat up because suddenly they have half the world as their enemy. Before, it wasn’t that way. Somebody has to say to Christians, and I’m saying to you now, if you haven’t heard it before, you have enemies. They’re called the world, the flesh, and the Devil. If you’re a Christian, they cannot destroy your salvation. They cannot pull you out of God’s hands. Jesus Christ says, “My own know me. I have them, and no one can pluck them out of my hand.” That means the enemies can’t pluck you out of Christ’s hand. They can’t destroy your salvation, so the only thing they can do is make you totally ineffective and miserable by destroying your peace and joy. That’s what they’re out to do. I want to just talk a little bit more about the joy and the peace, and then I’d like to talk about those three enemies, and talk about attacks on assurance. I mean some of you are saying, “Boy, this is going to be a somber sermon,” one of those big “SSs,” the somber sermon. Not necessarily, but I would rather, instead of you thinking of it as a somber sermon, I would like you to think of it being a sobering sermon. Smelling salts are good things, right? You know a good drink of coffee when you’re trying to get sobered up is good. It’s not pleasant. It’s not sweet. Smelling salts, when you’re knocked out on the ground, aren’t pleasant and sweet, but you need it. Basically, I would just like to give you a good “smelling salts” kind of sermon about joy and peace.

6. According to Romans 8:7 — who was your enemy before you came to Christ?

7. What was his point with the kitten? Were you at all like that before you came to Christ? If so, explain.

8. What are your three enemies after you become a Christian?

9. What are those three enemies unable to do according to John 10:28-29? Are you confident of this? If not, what is wrong with your thinking?

Thursday: Smelling Salts of True Joy

SMELLING SALTS OF TRUE JOY

 First of all, let’s not forget what joy and peace are. Joy is what? Joy is a buoyancy, a spiritual buoyancy, that comes when you’re rejoicing in God. Second Corinthians 4:16–18 is a terrific place (I don’t remember it all) where Paul is saying, “We’re down, but we’re not out. We’re crushed, but we’re not destroyed.” He’s talking about buoyancy. He says Christians have a joy. That doesn’t mean we’re impervious to suffering. It means we’re unsinkable. We’re constantly getting wet. We’re constantly being pushed down, but we don’t stay down, or at least we don’t sink. There’s a buoyancy about it. We’re constantly being pushed down. The buoyancy comes from a focus on the unchanging privileges we have in God, and we said, last week, the opposite of joy is not sadness. The reason the opposite of joy cannot be sadness is because the Bible is constantly talking about the fact that you can be joyful when you’re sad. If you don’t know what that means, you don’t have the hang of it yet. It doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian, but it really means you haven’t even begun to tap into the resources that are yours. If what I just said makes no sense at all, you may not be a believer at all. You may not understand at all. If, on the other hand, it’s just something very difficult to grasp, it could be you’re a believer but you just haven’t really gotten hold of something that’s critical. There’s a big difference between joy and happiness. Happiness comes from the comfort of having things you want. Joy is a deep kind of rejoicing, an assurance, a security, a mirth. I’m going to the word mirth. We don’t use that word much, but it’s better than the word happiness, I think, for our purposes. There’s a deep mirth, down deep, that says, “I have the only thing that really matters.” You constantly say that to yourself, and the more you say that to yourself, the more you say, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” You do that, frankly, in some small ways all the time. If one of your coworkers sits down and says to you, “That was a lousy script you wrote last week,” that may make you feel bad. But then suppose you had some award. Suppose you won some great award for a script just this year. You say, “Well, but I know what I’m capable of. Yeah, that probably wasn’t a very good script.” Okay. You admit it, but because you fall back on something deeper, you’re able to deal with that particular unhappiness. Christians do the same thing. In fact, the opposite, therefore, of joy is not sadness; it’s hopelessness. It’s having nothing to really rest in. First Thessalonians 4:13 says, “I want you to grieve,” Paul says, “but don’t grieve as those who have no hope.” We said the counterfeit of joy is happiness, which rests in the feeling of comfort or pleasure, and it’s resting in the blessings, not the Blesser.” In Psalms 4:7, there’s place where David says, “I have more joy in my heart than they have when their corn is full and their wine abounds.” What he is saying is, “They only have joy when the stock market is up, and I have joy all the time. Because their joy is in the stock market; my joy is in the One who owns all the wealth in the world and is going to give me everything I need.” To rejoice in the Blesser means you can enjoy pleasure. That’s the most interesting thing. If you really have a joy, that means you can enjoy pleasure. You can enjoy good food. You can enjoy a comfort. You can enjoy physical pleasures, but you know what they’re there for. They’re simply little samples, those sort of cruddy little things they stick out there and they say, “Here, come and taste something.” They put little samples up in the delicatessens. “Here, come and sample them.” You look at them, or usually somebody else has already looked at them with their fingers, and all that sort of thing. You taste them. They’re okay, but they’re stale. They’re not the very best thing you’re going to get, not the best dessert that comes out from the great restaurant. Even the best physical pleasures are just those kinds of dim hints. That’s the reason why our friend Lewis says (this was from last week’s talk, which I never got a chance read) a real Christian allows his mind to run up the sunbeam to the sun. He doesn’t sit and look at the sunbeam. He knows where it’s from. In other words, you let your mind run up the blessing to the Blesser, and that’s the way in which you can really enjoy the world. You can really enjoy a good meal. In a way, that actually makes you praise the One who you know, someday, is going to have you sit down at the wedding supper of the Lamb, and that will a meal that ends all meals, and it’s never over. You’re able to do that. You’re able to let your mind run up the sunbeam to the sun. So Lewis writes this: “We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star,” as it says in Revelation, “and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy.” Then he says, “At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience …” Did you hear that? “When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation …” You know the clams and the sun; they’re all doing exactly what God created them to do. That’s why they’re so glorious. A clam is being perfectly a clam. That’s why it’s so neat. It’s just that you and I are not being, perfectly, men and women who God created us to be, so the clams have it all over us. That’s what he’s saying. He says, “When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or that greater glory of which Nature is only a first sketch.” Which is hard to believe. “The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter [in nature] when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures …” Let me repeat that: “The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when he made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, these physical pleasures are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountain-head of that stream of which even these lower reaches proves so intoxicating?” We can’t handle sex. We can’t handle drink. We can’t handle food. We can’t handle any of the physical pleasures, which he said are just far-off, dim echoes of the joy that comes from actually knowing not the blessing but the Blesser. So he says, “What would it be to taste at the fountain-head of that stream of which even these lower reaches proves so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine says, ‘The rapture of the saved soul will “flow-over” into the glorified body.’ ” What he’s saying is a Christian should know more about joy than anybody else. A Christian ought to be able to sit down and enjoy a good meal like nobody else can because we’re thinking of the wedding supper of the Lamb. We’re thinking of the God who created this incredible, faint, far-off, wonderful pleasure which is so intoxicating, which is just a dim reflection of what it’s going to be like to sit down at his feet. We should be experts in joy, and we’re not. We’re scared. We’re scared of joy. It’s partly because we focus on the pleasures and the blessings instead of the Blesser.

10. Meditate on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and describe the main point.

11. Meditate on this from 2 Corinthians 6:8-10 in J. B. Phillips

Our sole defence, our only weapon, is a life of integrity, whether we meet honour or dishonour, praise or blame. Called “impostors” we must be true, called “nobodies” we must be in the public eye. Never far from death, yet here we are alive, always “going through it” yet never “going under”. We know sorrow, yet our joy is inextinguishable. We have “nothing to bless ourselves with” yet we bless many others with true riches. We are penniless, and yet in reality we have everything worth having.

A. What smelling salt of joy stands out to you in the above and why?

B. How does this impact your expectations?

Friday: Smelling Salts of True Peace

THE SMELLING SALTS OF PEACE

Now look at the summary of peace, because we have to move here. What does the Bible say about peace? We just read the classic text, and, frankly, it’s pretty simple. The Bible says peace is confidence and trust in God’s wise control of your life. The opposite of peace is anxiety. There’s a difference. Some people say, “What is the difference between peace and joy?” The answer is joy is the opposite of hopelessness. Joy has to do with the mirth. Joy has to do with actually being “up.” Peace has to do with the steadiness, and the opposite of peace is not hopelessness or despair. The opposite of peace is worry or anxiety. Peace, therefore, has to do with confidence in God’s control of your life, and the way we can see that is right here. It says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God …” will result. Anxiety as opposed to peace. Where do you get peace from? This is a great verse. It says, “… in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Now many counselors have pointed out something I’m going to point out right now, which is really important about the verse. All your requests have to be presented with thanksgiving. What does that mean? How can you be thankful for something when you’re just making the request for it? That’s the key. That’s the secret. The answer is you thank God before you make the request because you’re saying, “Lord, whatever you do in response to this request is good. I thank you for it. If I’m asking for something which is at the wrong time and you don’t give it to me, I thank you for that. If you give something the opposite of what I ask, even though it’s going to be very, very difficult, I’m not going to be happy about it, I’m not going to try to force joy … that would be very wrong … but I know you’re a God who knows what he’s doing, and I thank you for your ordering of my life.” To thank God ahead of time for the things you request of him is the secret, and here you have peace, which, obviously, then is confidence and trust in God’s wise and good control of your life. A little note here: There’s a difference in the Bible between the peace of God and peace with God. Romans 5:1 says, “Now, because we’re justified by faith, we have peace with God.” In Philippians 4, it talks about the peace of God. What’s the difference? They are distinct, but they’re never separated. The peace of God is a frame of heart that is completely constant and solid and confident, no matter what the condition, and, boy, do we all want that or what? We want that so badly. Everybody wants it. That’s what they’re after in those seminars. That’s what they’re after in almost all of these things. A person who has confidence and stability and sort of a calm, no matter what, that’s what we want. There’s no doubt that the world doesn’t really understand that. What they really want is the Marlboro Man. You know, the Marlboro Man, he’s always cool. He’s always lighting up a cigarette. He never changes … It doesn’t really matter. People dying all around him. People giving him the Congressional Medal of Honor. “Yup.” It’s the same. We’re absolutely steady. “I don’t let anything bother me.” That’s a worldly version of it because (I may as well say it now, not wait a second later) don’t forget the fruit of the Spirit is one.

12. What is the opposite of peace?

13. Meditate again on Philippians 4:6 and write down everything you see.

14. How is it possible to give thanks before we know how God will respond to our request?

15. What is the difference between peace with God and peace of God?

16. Make a request of God here for a hard situation you are facing, and do it with thanksgiving. (Let us support one another.)

Saturday:

17. What have you learned or have been reminded of that will help you know more of His joy and peace?