Around the web you can find lots of great Tim Keller sermons.  Steve McCoy has the definitive list here.  The Redeemer site has released 150 free sermons, but there is no easy way of downloading them quickly.  They are organised into 3 main categories: Discovery, Growth and Mission, with lots of sub-categories.  Within these sermons you will find

• Six sermons that lie behind The Reason for God
• Six sermons on The Prodigal God

I have downloaded them all, and kept them in their categories by arranging them in a hierarchical folder structure.

Discovery Sermons are here (1.24GB zip file)

Growth Sermons are here (930MB zip file)

Mission Sermons are here (705MB zip file)

In addition, I have compiled all of the free resources I have, from various sources, which are here (1.1GB zip file)

This contains:

If anyone feels like producing a document that indexes the free sermons, i.e. goes through Redeemer’s free sermons pages and copies the passage and mini-description for each sermon, that would be an amazing resource!

All in all, this is 4GB containing 250 sermons which will take you 150 hours to listen to.

(If you like this, and are feeling generous, my Amazon wish list is here…)

Hmm, that doesn’t exactly prove my case!

Tim Keller Reviews The Shack

Tim finally gets around to reading The Shack and posts a review here.  [HT: Buzzard Blog]  To whet your appetite:

At the heart of the book is a noble effort — to help modern people understand why God allows suffering, using a narrative form. The argument Young makes at various parts of the book is this. First, this world’s evil and suffering is the result of our abuse of free will. Second, God has not prevented evil in order to accomplish some glorious, greater good that humans cannot now understand. Third, when we stay bitter at God for a particular tragedy we put ourselves in the seat of the ‘Judge of the world and God’, and we are unqualified for such a job. Fourth, we must get an ‘eternal perspective’ and see all God’s people in joy in his presence forever.

…However, sprinkled throughout the book, Young’s story undermines a number of traditional Christian doctrines. Many have gotten involved in debates about Young’s theological beliefs, and I have my own strong concerns. But here is my main problem with the book. Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible.

In his review, Tim references a “good (and devastating)” review from the most recent print edition of Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Jan/Feb 2010.)  I’m pretty sure he means this one here: I am not who you think I am.

For what it’s worth, I read The Shack last summer and enjoyed a lot of it.  There are lots of good and helpful things he says about the problem of suffering and the way we foolishly respond to suffering.  But William Young has a serious problem with authority – he cannot conceive of authority and love coming together, which is why he ends up emphasising God’s love but not his rule or anger against sin.  For someone who tries hard genuinely to allow Jesus to be the revelation of God, it seems strange he misses the obvious fact that Jesus does reveal both authority and love.

Mini-review over.  Back to Keller.

Tim Keller and The Prodigal God

I mentioned The Prodigal God before.   You’ll find a very favourable review of the DVD over at Tim Chester’s blog.

I can’t praise this resource too much – it’s magnificent. The presentation of the DVD is beautiful and the content is dynamite. Even though I was familiar with the material from sermon mp3s and the book, I cried as I watched – twice!

Well, that pushed me over the edge and I’ve just gone and ordered my own copy.  I’m inclined to say “I’ll post a review when I’ve seen it” but, let’s be honest, this blog is so irregular it would be an empty promise.

Finally… the next post will give you easy access to lots of free Keller sermons, in 4 easy downloads.  Watch this space!

Go and visit the website of Dutch chain store HEMA. Now watch what happens!  Guaranteed to raise a smile.

Are you a preacher?  Have you discovered Tim Keller yet?  His teaching on preaching is some of the best I have ever discovered.  On iTunes you can find 18 hours (or so) of preaching lectures by Tim and Ed Clowney: “Preaching Christ in a Post-Modern World“.  I’ve listened to a few and thoroughly enjoyed them.  Did I say they were free?  I’ve now discovered that you can get the handout (189 pages of goodness) from here (direct link).

1. Preaching to the Heart without being Legalistic
2. Preaching to the Heart without being Piestic
3. Unintentional Preaching Models
4. Reading, Preparation, Conversation, and Preaching
5. Preaching to “Emerging” Culture
6. Preaching to the Heart without being Individualistic

I ordered these from the Ockenga Institute. It also includes a CD with the PDF files as well – being Tim Keller, we’re talking some 40 pages of full script handouts! I haven’t listened to them yet (which is why they’re going onto my phone) but a glance at the handouts have whetted my appetite. These could be the best resources about preaching I have come across – and I’m speaking as someone who has had some of the best conservative evangelical training going in the UK. I’ll post my favourite quotes and ideas as we go on.