There’s more emphasis in our culture on getting and spending money, on consuming goods, than in any culture in history. In his book, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, Andrew Delbanco says we’ve lost the sense that there’s something beyon...
Christian hope is unique. The certainty of a material future, the new heavens and new earth, and the certainty that in Christ, that’s coming to you, makes Christianity a distinct, life-shaping force. It distinctly shapes the way in which we live in e...
We underestimate the degree to which our present behavior and our present living are determined by what we believe our ultimate future to be. Christian hope affects everything, every area of our lives. That means Christian hope, our understanding of...
Historical and sociological scholarship shows the early Christians were remarkably different than their neighbors. Why were the Christians so much more compassionate to the sick? Why were they so much more forgiving to their persecutors? Why were the...
In this short special episode, Tim and Kathy Keller have a conversation about the resurrection of Jesus as the historically verifiable event on which the Christian faith stands.
I think I can say without fear of contradiction that no matter who you are, there’s a lot of death in your future. If you look around, you look at your loved ones, you look at your family, you look at your friends. Either you will face death yourself...
You might say that even though you believe in most of what the Bible says about the ultimate future, it hasn’t changed your life. You really don’t handle suffering or death or other things any differently than other people. Why would that be? The ans...
Nobody has ever asked me to preach on hope, except my wife, who asked me to do this whole series. The reason people don’t ask me to preach on hope is we underestimate tremendously what really is the engine of our lives. How you live now is completely...
All four of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell us that the women followers of Jesus on Easter Sunday morning found the tomb empty and heard a message from the angel. Of those four accounts, Mark’s is the shortest. In two wonderful verse...
In the burial of Jesus, we see three classes of people who are brought together by the death of Jesus. There is the Roman centurion, who is a pagan. There are the women who stay with Jesus all through this time. And there’s Joseph of Arimathea, who i...
At the actual moment of Jesus’ death, an inexplicable, mysterious darkness comes down. From noon to 3:00 PM, it was absolutely dark. This is an inexplicable darkness. A solar eclipse does not create absolute darkness for more than a few minutes. Besi...
In the first half of the crucifixion account, there’s a theme. That theme is the fact that Jesus is mocked, insulted, jeered at, laughed at, humiliated, and shamed. The soldiers are jeering at him, spitting on him. He is stripped naked and crucified...
For the first time, in Mark 15, we have Jesus in front of the political establishment, the Roman state. So we have to ask the question, “What is the relationship of Jesus to politics, of Christianity to the government?” Pilate asks three questions. H...
The story of Peter’s denial and the story of Jesus’ arrest and trial are intertwined in Mark 14. We’re meant to compare these two stories. Peter is on trial, just like Jesus. Peter is being questioned, just like Jesus. The question is being put in fr...
We’re looking at the final days of Jesus’ life on earth. And in Mark 14, Jesus is on trial. There’s nothing more dramatic than to be on trial for your life. And there’s no more dramatic moment in a trial than when the defendant is called to testify o...
