Gospel in Life

Guest (Male): You're listening to the Gospel in Life podcast. What kind of relationship does God actually want to have with us? The Bible uses many images to describe how God relates to us, as a father, a friend, a spouse, and a king. Today, Tim Keller takes a closer look at one of these dimensions of God and how it helps us see the depth of his grace and love more clearly.

Tim Keller: We're going to read the scripture reading. It's a long scripture reading and it's about friendship. Because of the friendship between Moses and God, there's a dialogue in the middle of it. We're going to read this long piece in a dialogical way. Michelle and I will read it with you together. Exodus chapter 33:7 all the way to 34:8.

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the tent of meeting. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent.

As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped each at the entrance to his tent. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide, Joshua son of Nun, did not leave the tent.

Guest (Female): Moses said to the Lord, "You have been telling me, 'Lead these people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, 'I know you by name and you have found favor with me.' If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people."

Tim Keller: The Lord replied, "My presence will go with you and I will give you rest."

Guest (Female): Then Moses said to him, "If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?"

Tim Keller: And the Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you and I know you by name."

Guest (Female): Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."

Tim Keller: And the Lord said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

Then the Lord said, "There's a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen."

The Lord said to Moses, "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain. Not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain."

Guest (Female): So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning as the Lord had commanded him. He carried the two stone tablets in his hands. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord.

He passed in front of Moses proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped.

Tim Keller: This is God's word. Thank you, Michelle.

We're doing a brief series on who God is. The thesis of the series is that God is a complex character like any real person. The Bible says he's father and friend and lover and king. If we elevate any one of these images, any one of these metaphors that God himself uses to describe himself, if we elevate one to the exclusion of the other or even to greatly favor one over the other, we end up with a one-dimensional God, a cartoon God, a God we can't really have personal engagement with.

Today, we're looking at this fascinating spot in verse 11 where it says, "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend." What's friendship with God? Why would God dare call himself our friend? Let's ask the question of the text like this: Why is friendship with God so important? What it is, what it brings, and lastly, how we get it.

First, why is it important? You have to understand this incident here where Moses goes out to the tent of meeting and gets things from God. For example, it says, "Whenever Moses would go out, all the people rose and stood at the entrance to the tent. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would ask Moses." Then Moses would go into the tent.

What is this all about? It's very simple. When God first brought the children of Israel to Mount Sinai, he gave Moses the plan for the tabernacle. The tabernacle was to be a tent, the dwelling of God in the midst of the people. All of the tents were around it. It was right in the midst of the people.

What is this cloud, this cloudy pillar? It's the glory of God. At daytime, it looked like a cloud in the sunlight. At night, it looked like a pillar of fire. It was the signification of the presence of God. It was supposed to be right in the midst of the people. But when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, he finds the great feast of the golden calf.

God says in the beginning of chapter 33, right before this passage, "I've got an alternate plan. You're too stiff-necked for friendship. You're too stiff-necked for me to dwell in your midst. You don't have the loyalty and you don't have the heart that's necessary for access to my presence."

Here's what I'm going to do. First of all, in chapter 33 right before this, he says, "I'm going to send an angel with you to Canaan and I'll drive out your enemies. I'll make you successful. I'll give you military power. I'll give you economic prosperity. And if you want to know something from me, if you want guidance on some personal problem, if you need ethical guidance or personal guidance, very simple: go to Moses.

Moses will pitch a tent outside the camp, not in the middle of the camp. That tent will be a place where he can meet with me. He can have the access to the glory cloud. He can have access to my presence. If you have a need, you talk to him and he'll tell you."

This is incredible. This is exactly the religion we've all been waiting for. On the one hand, everybody says this is what I want. First of all, God says, "I'll give you power, I'll give you prosperity, I'll give you success." And he says, "I'll give you a religious professional to deal with me so that you don't have to deal with me personally."

In other words, he's saying, "I won't be right in the middle of your life where you have to arrange everything around me. When you need me, you can get me. When there's a crisis, when there's a bind, Moses, a religious professional, it's his job to be meeting with me all the time. If you have a need, you go to him."

This is the religion that all kinds of people want. God's power, God's success, and not actually having to deal with God right smack in the middle of your life where you're always having to deal with him all the time. Instead, God when you need him. There's a professional, Moses. He can get in touch with Superman when we really need him.

What's the response? Moses comes in verses 14 and 15. You have to read it carefully. The Lord replied, "My presence will go with you and I will give you rest." But who's the "you"? Moses. The presence, the glory, the cloud, the meeting: you'll have it. Moses comes back in verse 15 and says, "Great, presence goes with me. But if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here."

If you read the "you" in verse 14 as a plural, then verse 15 makes no sense. If he says, "My presence will go with you all," and then Moses turns around and says, "But if your presence won't go with us..." If the "you" in verse 14 is singular, then it makes perfect sense what Moses is saying.

He's saying, "You can keep your success, you can keep your power, you can keep your guidance, you can keep the whole thing. If we don't have access to your presence, if the whole people of God don't have friendship with you, if they don't all have access to your presence smack in the middle of their lives, if they're not all actually able to meet you: we don't want anything else."

If you think that's just Moses' idea, you have to again look at verses four, five, and six. You'll see all the people, when they heard God say, "I'll drive out your enemies, I'll make you successful, I'll give you Moses to answer your questions, but my presence will not go with you," they all mourned and threw off their ornaments.

The children of Israel are kind of like the apostles. They never get it right. The apostles are always confused all the time and the children of Israel are always being foolish. They learn a lesson and then one day later they've forgotten it. They're just going back and forth. They're not spiritual giants.

Yet they know that to have God's power, to have God's teaching, and not have his friendship, to not actually know him personally, is to not have anything. Let me ask you a quick question. Do you see even the children of Israel at this stage in their life, and certainly Moses, know there's nothing more important than this: knowing God personally, meeting him?

Jeremiah 9:24, the famous place where it says, "Let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, but let him who glories glory in this: that he knows me, that he knows me personally." Not just knows about me, but knows me.

What does that mean? God is saying there in Jeremiah 9:24, "If you win five Olympic gold medals, the mighty man or woman; if you're a Wall Street partner making 30 million a year year after year after year, the rich man or woman; if you're the great public intellectual of the country and you're professor at large at all the Ivy League universities and the president is asking you to come in and reads your books and asks your advice: think of the approval, think of the honor, think of the satisfaction." And God says, "Oh rich, oh mighty, oh wise, that's nothing compared to what it's like to know me."

Now, let me ask you a quick question. Have you settled for the kind of religion that the children of Israel rejected? Have you settled for a God that you only need when you're in trouble, and that's when you go get him? He's not in the middle of your life.

More than that, have you settled for a God whose teaching you follow, you study, you try to do the best thing, and you pay professionals like me to go meet with him and come back and tell you what to do, but you yourself never have a sense that you're really meeting him, really conversing with him, really touching him?

Is there an exchange? Do you feel like you're personally dealing with him? Do you have a personal interaction with him? Have you settled for that? Don't you see why it's so important? It's astounding. What is Moses saying? He says, "If we don't have access to you, if we don't have friendship with you, if we don't all have friendship with you, you can take all your money and all your power and all your success and everything else. You just have it. We don't want it."

Secondly, what is it? If that's so important, what is it? Well, there's three things you see here. Verse 12 and following, this dialogue, is an example of verse 11. Verse 11 says God spoke to Moses face to face; they were friends. And verse 12 and following is a case study of friendship.

Here's what we learn. There's a deep analogy between human friendship and divine friendship. Human friendship and divine friendship work very similarly. Not completely, of course, but very similarly. Friends: here's three principles for building a friendship with God or anybody, actually. Friends often come around, always let you in, never let you down.

First of all, often comes around. Moses' whole issue is "I want your presence." But every place the word "presence" is used, every place God says, "My presence will go with you," and then Moses says, "But if your presence does not go with us," and Moses says, "I've got your presence, I can go to the tent of meeting and get your presence, I want them to have the presence."

What is this word in Hebrew? In Hebrew, it's always the same. It's the word *panim*, which means face. Every place in the Hebrew scriptures where you see the word "presence," it's just the Hebrew word "face." God is saying, "I've got a face."

One of the things that's very important to realize is that if you want to have a friendship, you've got to actually be face to face sometimes. You've got to come around. You often have to come around. You often have to hang out. Email is nice, but I've heard many people say, "I met somebody online; oh, I want to meet them in person."

What's the difference? Why is phoning, why is emailing, why are letters, as nice as that is, why is it nothing like face to face? Here's the reason why: face-to-face relationship engages all the senses. The other person is someone who fills your sight literally because you're face to face. You fill your sight. You hear, you see, you touch, you can hug, you can kiss, you can shake hands.

Whereas every other way of relating to somebody, they're okay, they're good, in fact they're very important for maintaining friendships, but they only ever engage one sense: email or phoning or even television. You can't hug. You can hug the monitor, but it won't work.

First of all, you're not going to really have friendship if you never see each other. There has to be physical proximity. You've got to often come around. But what we learn here is that God, though he is everywhere, God has a face. God has a face.

This boggles the mind a bit because since God is a spirit, it's not a physical face. What other kind is there? Just think about what we just said. Why is face-to-face relationship so much better than any other kind? Because when you're face to face, all the senses are engaged and the relationship moves ahead so much faster than any other way.

What is the presence of God? God is a force, he is everywhere, and yet he's also a person, which means he has a face. It means that God has a presence where you can relate to him. What is that? Let me put it like this. The presence of God is when and where he fills up your senses. The presence of God is when and where things that were just intellectual, things that you just knew about, come down on your heart, touch your heart, press down on you.

For example, I have 40 or 50 good examples of this, but my favorite is this one. Here's something from the journals of Jonathan Edwards. He says once in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, I walked around for divine contemplation and prayer as I usually did.

Now listen: "But on that one time, I had a view that for me was extraordinary. The glory of the Son of God appeared so calm and so sweet. He appeared so great above the heavens. It overwhelmed me and I continued in this state, near as I can judge, for an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud."

What happened? He "saw," he says. It "appeared." Did he have a vision? If you know Jonathan Edwards, no, he did not have a vision. I don't think he believed in visions. What is he talking about? He got into the presence of God. The presence of God is the place where things that you knew about, like the glory of God or the grace of God or the holiness of God, you sense.

What do you mean "sense"? We don't know exactly. You have to use sensory language to describe it. It's one thing to know that sugar is sweet; it's another thing to taste it, to sense it. It's one thing to know that somebody is strong; it's another thing to feel him lift you up with one arm.

It's one thing to know God's holy; it's another thing to meet him, to sense his holiness on your heart and on your life. There's no other way to put it. The Bible talks in that language all the time, and that is the presence of God. There is a place, there is a means, there is a situation in which things you knew about become real to you and he becomes real to you. You're talking with him face to face.

First thing is, if you are a friend of God, you know that there's such a thing as the presence of God. What's the difference between a friend of God and just a general person who believes in God, comes to church, gets us religious professionals to tell them the truth and all that?

Friends of God know that he has a face. Friends of God know that there's the presence. Friends of God do everything they can to get into that presence. You can't always have it, just like friends can't always be with you. Friends often though come around. In the same way, if you're a friend of God and he's your friend, sometimes you sense his presence, sometimes you meet him.

Number two: friends often come around, and number two: always let you in. Transparency. You're not a friend unless both of you are vulnerable to each other. In fact, you're not friends unless both of you are telling secrets to each other. Friends tell secrets.

On the one hand, there are two men in the Hebrew scriptures, in the Old Testament, that are called friends of God: Abraham and Moses. In both cases, you have these spots where you see Moses and Abraham going at God a little bit in some amazing ways, being extremely frank. Being respectful, but being very frank.

This place right here where Moses comes and says, "I am not satisfied with this situation." Where does he get that kind of frankness? Go back to Abraham, who is the other one who's called "friend of God," and we have an astounding example of this where he knows that God is on his way to judge Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham says, "Well, you wouldn't judge Sodom and Gomorrah if there were 50 godly people there, would you?" And God says, "No, I wouldn't." "How about 45?" "No, I wouldn't do it for 45." "What about 40? What about 30? What about 20?" That's in Genesis 18. You go, "What is this? What kind of prayer is this?" It's a prayer of friends.

When you go to a friend, you don't have to be too varnished, you don't have to be too polished. You trust your friend to accept you. You trust your friend to put the very best construction on what you're doing, don't you? When you see Abraham and you see Moses, they don't know how a holy God could love them this much and accept them this much, but they are utterly secure before the face of God. Enormous security, complete frankness. They're vulnerable. They let it out.

But on the other hand, you're not a friend if you're the one who's always talking and your friend listens and that's all that ever happens. You've got to listen. You've got to listen. The Bible tells us, and you can see it right here, where does Moses get his understanding of who God is?

He doesn't just think it up. He listens to the word of God. He goes out to the prophetic word of God. In Psalm 25:14, if you look at it in most modern translations, it won't go literally. In the NIV translation, it says that God confides in those who fear him. But literally in the Hebrew, Psalm 25:14 says, "The secret of the Lord is with those who fear him."

What that means is, if you fear, which means—don't forget this—if you come before him in awesome wonder and you submit and say, "I'm going to listen to you, I'm going to accept what you say," God will tell you secrets. What does that mean? Something like this.

When do you really feel you've met somebody? If you've ever had a talk with a friend, when have you ever felt when there was an amazing connection, a deep connection? It's not usually only when you sit down and you tell a secret, and you say, "blah, blah, blah," and the other friend sits there and goes, "ah," accepts you, but doesn't say anything back.

That's not a real connection. You might feel a little bit better that this person didn't come down my throat and is very warm and all that. But where the real deep connection is, is when your friend, after you've revealed something about who you are, your friend reveals something about who he or she is.

When your friend says, "Well, let me show you something about me," and what a connection, and it's exactly what you needed to hear and it speaks right to your point of need. That is what happens in real friendship with God.

In friendship with God, you are completely honest. You repent, you're open, you just lay it out. And when you listen through the Holy Spirit, the word of God turns on, lights up, and God shows you secrets. What secrets? They're open secrets, of course, but they weren't things you saw before.

The language of someone who is really engaged with God at the moment goes like this: you're reading the scripture and it lights up and you say, "How did I ever see? If he's like that, why am I worried? If he's like that, why am I angry? If this is true, why am I scared? If this is true, why am I tempted? If this is true, why am I despondent? And why haven't I ever seen this before?" He's telling you secrets. He's showing you things that are secret to you. You've never seen them before.

The second part of friendship is you tell each other things. You're completely open with each other and he speaks back through his word. Thirdly, we said there's three things: friends often come around, always let you in, and never let you down. Never let you down. Here's God and God is doing what?

He says, "Okay, I'll stick with you. All right, I will go with you." I know a lot of people who complain and say, "Well, God didn't stick with me. God did not stick with me. I prayed for this and I prayed for that and he abandoned me." Let me tell you a secret about friendship with God. If you're God's friend, you stick with him even when it looks like he's abandoned you.

What if you have a really close friend and you hear something very negative about your close friend? What do you usually do? You say, "That doesn't sound like my friend at all." You doubt it. Of course, friends are imperfect human beings, but you doubt it. Why? You're friends. You want to find out for yourself.

It doesn't square with what else you know about them. If you're a friend of God, you stick with him even when he seems like he's abandoning you and you will find eventually that he's not abandoned you a bit. The only way to find out that he's really stuck with you perfectly is for you to stick with him even imperfectly. That's a friend.

Now we go to the end here. Lastly, why it's so important and what it is. Friends of God know there's a presence. They completely open up because they know he accepts and they listen submissively to his word. Through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit shows you who he is and relates it to who you are and then you sense you're meeting him and you sense you're there.

Friends stick together and he sticks with you. In fact, one of the biggest parts of being a friend is over the years to see that if I really, really assume that he's not abandoned me, I'll find that he has not at all. If I assume he's abandoned me, if I don't stick with him, I won't see the things he's doing in my life and my friendship with him won't grow.

How do we receive it? Let me tell you. Moses says, "I want to see you. I want your glory." Somebody's going to ask me or you're already thinking: how come in verse 11 it says they spoke face to face and in verse 20 God says, "Nobody can see my face and live"?

The answer is he had partly, he had some access, but he didn't have the real thing. He didn't have the whole thing. God says, "Because I'm holy, you can't be my friend. But I'll put you in the rock and let my glory pass by and then you'll be safe."

What gets the heat and what gets the light? What bears the brunt of that consuming fire of God's glory? The rock. And the Bible says, St. Paul says, that in the wilderness, the rock of Moses was Christ. Christ actually is, therefore, not just a rock but the ultimate friend.

Here's why. The Bible tells us Jesus Christ did not come as a teacher and save us with his teaching. If Jesus Christ had just come and said, "Do this, this, this, this, and this," that wouldn't have saved us, would it? Because we could never live up to that. Jesus did not save us with his teaching. What did he save us with?

He saved us with his friendship because Jesus did the three things in the ultimate way. First of all, Jesus came around. He was incarnate. He was born in a manger. He had to come to us. Number two: Jesus let us in. He was utterly vulnerable. In fact, he's the only one—we have the only religion, Christians have the only religion that even claims that God became vulnerable, that even claims that God became weak.

All around the world, when you come like this toward an enemy, what does this mean? Friendship. It's a token of friendship. Why? Because you've made yourself vulnerable. If you walk toward an enemy like this, you are saying, "I want friendship," but the only way you're going to show them that you want friendship is you make yourself vulnerable.

They could nail you. They could nail you. Jesus' arms were open to us; they were nailed open. How much more vulnerable do you want to get? Jesus saves us with our friendship because he came to us personally in the flesh, he was vulnerable for us, and he stuck with us.

On the cross, Charles Spurgeon says, Jesus Christ looked at the people he was dying for. He looked at them jeering him and he looked at them laughing at him and he looked at them fleeing and denying him and betraying him. In the greatest act of friendship in history of the world, he stayed. Could have left, but he stayed.

Jesus saved us through the ultimate friendship. Because Jesus Christ was our ultimate friend, we can be friends with God. As a result, let me tell you why you need to be in a small group. Because Jesus saved us with friendship, not with his teaching, the main way in which you grow into God, the main way in which you meet God is through friends.

There's a deep symbiotic relationship between human friendship and divine friendship. What do I mean by that? Well, on the one hand, 99 times out of 100, you find God through other friends. Philip brings Nathaniel to Jesus. Andrew brings Peter to Jesus. Anybody practically in this room who ever found Christ or is in the process of finding Christ probably is doing it through friends.

I'm a teacher. I'm help. But basically, it won't happen without friends. In fact, if you don't have friends to help you process the stuff I'm saying week in and week out, you're not going to get to God. But not only that. Not only does friendship bring us to God, but God brings us to friends.

How are you going to be a great friend? How are you going to be transparent when you're scared what they think of you? But what if you have the ultimate friend who loves you no matter what, no matter what? Then you have the freedom to be transparent. You don't need their approval.

When people let you down, are you a fair-weather friend or do you stick with them? How can you do that unless you see you have the ultimate friend who never will let you down? So then you have the freedom; you're not as needy as you were before. You won't be a great friend until you have the ultimate friend.

And you generally won't find the ultimate friend except through friends. As good as worship is, you've come to hear the paid professional. Moses has gone to the tent of meeting and comes out and tells you what you need to hear. But I tell you where you're really going to learn friendship with God.

It's with other people in a group in which you can talk about how the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, has spoken to who you are with who he is. How has that happened for you? Friendship is very personal. Friendship is very deep. Friendship is something that you work on and you learn from other friends, not just through great teaching from the professional who has come out of the tent of meeting and said, "You know..."

Interesting, let me just tell you one interesting thing. The second of the old Boris Karloff Frankenstein movies, there is an amazing scene in the second one, *The Bride of Frankenstein*. There's an amazing scene that I saw, amazing scene that I've never seen before and it's really odd.

Frankenstein monster, of course, he's walking on through and he's on his way, and he's growling and that's all he'd ever does is "grrr" all the time. He's running away from all the people who are after him and he comes into this very remote part of the woods and he sees a cottage.

In it, a blind man is living. The blind man is on his knees praying to God saying, "Oh Lord, please send me a friend in my terrible loneliness." In comes the monster. He can't see the monster and all he hears is "grrr." He says, "Oh, you have an affliction. So do I. We can be friends."

And he starts to love the monster and he sits them down and makes things for him and gives him some soup. The monster's never experienced the love of a friend. There's a brief period, like a three-minute thing, three-minute scene where for the only time you see in all of the movies, he smiles.

He starts using English language. A couple places he says, "Food," he says, "Good." He starts to humanize. Then of course what happens is some hunters come along and they walk in, they see the monster, and they begin to try to kill it.

The monster knocks down, of course, some oil lamp and next thing you know the whole cottage is gone up in flames and the blind man is dead and everybody's dead and the monster is groping out back into the cold, monstrous again, saying, "Friend... friend..."

Now, if you could see your self-image, if you actually saw your self-image, if it was made visible, it would look kind of like a Frankenstein monster because you get your self-image from what everybody says about you: your family, your friends, your parents, your coaches, your teachers, society, various forms of society.

It's not coherent. It's kind of contradictory, just like a Frankenstein monster. All these dissonant pieces have been sewn together. What you need is a friend who will come along and with the power of his love tell you who you are. As Moses said, "You know me by name."

A friend whose love will completely overcome all of those other verdicts and give you a coherent human face that you'll see in the mirror. We're all like this guy groping through the wood saying, "Friend, friend." If I could just find the friend, then I'd be okay. Well, here he is. Let us pray.

Our Father, when we go to the Lord's supper, we ask that you would help us meet you. This is a table of meeting, a table of meeting, just like the tent of meeting. This is a place where the bread and the cup make your death real to us, Lord Jesus, make your face real to us. We ask, Lord, that you will help us during the Lord's supper to find you and sense you and to go on from there. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Guest (Male): Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but it's also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In *The Meaning of Marriage*, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage.

Whether you're single, considering marriage, or have been married for a long time, *The Meaning of Marriage* will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. *The Meaning of Marriage* is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. To request your copy today, go to gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give.

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Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.