Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
715 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 11 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 13.4K ratingsSermons by Tim Keller, founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC and NY Times best-selling author of ”The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.” For more sermons and resources, visit www.gospelinlife.com.
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Episodes
Self-Control (Part 1)
June 21, 2024 10:00 - 34 minutes - 32 MBWe all have a problem with self-control, right? You can probably think of some emotion or some habit you have trouble controlling. And if you can’t think of anything that’s out of control, your pride is out of control. The fruit of the Spirit is a singular word, which means it’s like a diamond with many facets. That’s very important. Because you can manufacture a kind of self-control that is nothing more than willpower, that has nothing to do with love or joy or peace. And that’s not self-c...
Goodness, Faithfulness
June 19, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBGoodness and faithfulness are greatly interrelated. They both have to do with integrity, with living honestly. The word integrity is related to integer—a whole number as opposed to a fraction. A person of integrity lives in a unified, not a fractured, way. But today we live in a fragmented world, in which one area of life has one set of values and another area has another set. What does it mean to have a truth-centered life? Let’s look at 1) what the Bible teaches about truth, and then 2) ...
Kindness – Overcoming Self-Pity
June 17, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBThe Bible says one of the marks of a real Christian is that your love finds expression in deeds of kindness—especially toward those with material, physical, and economic problems. Kindness is loving deeds, doing something for someone out of love. And in a number of places, the Bible says a real Christian will care for the poor. It’s the Christian’s social concern, social responsibility. Let’s look at 1) the definition of kindness 2) the opposite of kindness 3) the counterfeit of kindness, ...
Patience – Overcoming Anger (Part 2)
June 14, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MBWhen the Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is patience, it’s saying a Christian is somebody who at last knows how to deal with anger. You know, anger is a scary thing. Almost all murders and wars start with anger. It’s a tremendously dangerous emotion. And this ability to deal with anger, to really release and remove it, to pray for enemies, to forgive people, to pray for oppressors, to repay evil with good is an essential sign of Christianity. Ephesians 4 shows us three things about ange...
Patience (Part 1)
June 12, 2024 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBWhen we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy seem like they’re in a higher league than patience. We think, “everybody gets impatient!” But in James 5, it says impatience and grumbling is worthy of judgment. You may say, “Why?” But what do you think murder is? It’s just grumbles that were planted and watered and fertilized. Impatience is at the root of things. Let’s look at 1) the danger of impatience 2) what patience is, 3) what patience is not, 4) the counterfeit of patience...
Peace – Overcoming Anxiety
June 10, 2024 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBA lot of Christians are cast down, losing their peace and joy because they don’t expect attacks on their peace and joy. We’re sad that we’re sad. We’re upset that we’re upset. We say, “it’s not supposed to be like this!” because we don’t have the proper expectations. Before you became a Christian, your main enemy in life was God: someone who loved you, who was doing everything he could to wake you up. But the minute you make peace with God, instantly, all of God’s enemies declare war on yo...
Joy – Overcoming Boredom
June 07, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBWhen the Bible says joy comes in the morning, it doesn’t mean you’ll wake up every morning with a smile on your face. It means there’s a joy of such intensity in the Christian life that nothing can put it out. A Christian will receive a joy of such intensity that no sorrow, in the end, can overwhelm it. Sorrow is always a temporary condition for a Christian, and joy is a permanent condition. To look at the fruit of joy, let’s ask 1) what’s the definition of joy? 2) what’s the opposite of...
Love – Overcoming Fear
June 05, 2024 10:00 - 49 minutes - 45.1 MBThey say if you’ve been married long enough you start to look like each other. Whether or not that’s true in marriage, I know that’s true about God and you. We’re being transformed into the image of his Son. Every fruit of the Spirit, every aspect of holiness comes from looking at God himself. We look now at 1) what it means to study the fruit of the Spirit, 2) why love is more important than anything else, 3) what the opposite of love is, 4) what the counterfeit of love is, and 5) how yo...
Walking in the Spirit
June 03, 2024 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBIn a single acorn is not only the entire tree, but all the acorns on that tree and all the acorns on that tree and so on and so forth. It’s all already in that one acorn. In the same way, a Christian already has the divine nature in them. When we talk about love, joy, peace, and patience, we’re not talking about how to import these into our hearts. No. The Bible says we must grow up into our salvation. So instead of saying, “Oh, I’ll never get there,” the question is: “When are you going t...
The War Between Your Selves (Part 2)
May 31, 2024 10:00 - 47 minutes - 43.4 MBThe point of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, surely is to make us look at ourselves and say, “Are we that bad? Is the evil in us that evil?” Therefore, another question immediately rises up. Since this story is inspired by the Bible, is this the biblical view of human nature? On the one hand, Stevenson is profoundly right about human nature, but in another way, he is profoundly wrong. The biblical view of human nature is more pessimistic and more optimistic than any...
The War Between Your Selves (Part 1)
May 29, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBAll of life is a battle between two selves, but there’s a war before you become a Christian that’s different from the war that happens after you become a Christian. When you become a Christian, you don’t move from warfare to peace. You move from a battle you cannot win to a battle you cannot lose. To understand the difference is extremely important. If you look at Romans 7, you’ll see 1) the battle you can’t win, 2) the battle you can’t lose, and 3) how you make the transition. This ser...
The Problem of Injustice (Part 2)
May 27, 2024 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.2 MBIn Psalm 73, Asaph is mad at God. He’s been living right, but everything is going wrong. Yet all kinds of abusive people are having great lives. Life seems unjust. Asaph’s just about to chuck his faith. Yet at the end, he’s able to say in his pain, “God is always good.” I’ll tell you, if you’re trying to live a decent life, this is going to happen to you. At some point, you’re going to say, “God, why are you letting this happen? You’re not running my life right. You’re not running history ...
The Problem of Injustice (Part 1)
May 24, 2024 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBA lot of people are mad at God. People who believe. People who don’t believe. And people who don’t know what they believe. And in Psalm 73, we see Asaph get mad at the way God seems to be mishandling the world. Asaph has been living a self-controlled, compassionate life, but everything is going wrong. On top of that, he sees all sorts of people who live abusive, immoral lives, and they’re having a great life. Yet we’re told that Asaph finally comes to the conclusion that God, in spite of it...
The Problem of Materialism
May 22, 2024 10:00 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBJesus’ teaching about money here is triggered by an event: a Pharisee gets upset that Jesus didn’t wash his hands before he ate his food. The ceremonial washings of the Old Testament were visual aids for the idea that you need to approach God with a clean heart. But the Pharisees had turned religion into a matter of externalities. Jesus slams that whole idea. He refuses to emphasize the external over the internal, but he also refuses to pit the external against the internal. Instead, Jesus...
The Problem of the City
May 20, 2024 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBEveryone points to a different reason for why the city has problems. The futurologists will say, “Technology has doomed the city. We don’t need to live in proximity anymore.” The liberals will say, “Racism has doomed the city.” The conservatives will say, “Big government and taxes have doomed the city.” Many Christians will say, “God has doomed the city for its wickedness.” But what the Bible says about the city is far more optimistic and far more pessimistic than anything you’ll find in th...
The Problem of Guilt
May 17, 2024 10:00 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBGuilt is a lot like an iceberg. You don’t see much above the surface, but if you really look, you’ll see it’s under everything. So how do you deal with a guilty conscience? In Psalm 51, David has been plunged—through the shock of recognizing the magnitude of evil he’s done—into the depths. Imagine the guilt, the shame, the horror, the self-hatred. He’s plunged into an emotional and spiritual dungeon. And yet this psalm is a record of his rescue. There’s no good human explanation for how he...
The Problem of Anxiety
May 15, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40 MBOf the articles and books I survey on worry or anxiety, they almost always say, “The things you’re worried about may never happen. So don’t think about them.” But in Psalm 27, David does the opposite: he visualizes the worst things that can happen. Why? Because he wants to have a strategy of life that can stand up to anything. Psalm 27 has a refreshing realism, even though it’s full of tremendous promises. It shows that you can have a way of dealing with anger, anxiety, and fear that assum...
The Search for Values
May 13, 2024 10:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBA Newsweek cover story said that after a 30-year spree, our entire society is waking up with a monstrous hangover, facing a values vacuum. It said that we realize unlimited personal freedom is not the way to build a society, but now we face the question of whose values we should use. If you think the Bible’s answer to the values vacuum is simply “Let’s get back to traditional values,” you don’t understand how penetrating and nuanced and sophisticated the biblical answer is. What is the bi...
The Search for Identity
May 10, 2024 10:00 - 48 minutes - 44.3 MBWhen it comes to building up identity and self-esteem, I’m afraid Americans are very pragmatic—and our pragmatism gets to us. Our books and articles say if you want self-esteem, you should lose weight, change your friends, switch your career, and so on. But nobody asks why. They don’t like to think about the underlying theory. It’s important to understand that there are certain reigning theories of identity formation. Unless you recognize them and analyze them, you’ll just pick them up like...
The Search for Certainty
May 08, 2024 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MBA fool can be brilliant and a fool can be stupid. Foolishness is not a function of your intelligence. Foolishness is a function of how you use your intelligence. The Bible says every human being is born with a heavy streak of foolishness. It’s like a deposit. It’s foolishness, according to the Bible, that destroys our sense of God’s reality. And it’s a common reason why people have trouble believing God is real. The Bible tells us 1) foolishness is a proud willfulness that keeps us from l...
The Search for Transcendence
May 06, 2024 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBThere is a thirst in the human heart that will not be denied. It cannot be denied. That thirst is for transcendence. Transcendence is intimacy with the infinite. Psalm 63 is about the search for transcendence. It says there is irreducible knowledge, there is terrible thirst, and there’s only one resolution for it. Psalm 63 tells us 1) the human heart needs transcendence and 2) how the human heart can find transcendence. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyter...
The Search for Substance
May 03, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutes - 38.8 MBA plant without roots is at best a tumbleweed. Is a tumbleweed freer than an oak tree? Yeah, it’s free to be blown about forever. There is what the Bible calls a rootlessness and a weightlessness about our society right now. Many of the problems you face today are that you’ve been affected deeply by this weightlessness we experience in our culture and society. The roots of this rootlessness were addressed long ago in Psalm 1, which tells us 1) the diagnosis of rootlessness and 2) the pre...
The Search for Happiness
May 01, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40 MBHave you in this modern world learned how to become happy and stay happy? I hope you don’t think that’s a trivial question. Because if you read the psychology books, the urban planning books, the biochemistry books, the political science books, they’re really about this problem: we’re not happy. How can we be happy? The Bible has always said the issues that make you happy or unhappy are profoundly cosmic and spiritual. In Psalm 1, we see 4 principles: 1) happiness is possible, 2) happines...
Converted by the Spirit
April 29, 2024 10:00 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MBJesus, in Matthew 18, uses a word for conversion that means to turn completely around and face in a whole new direction. That’s a perfect image of what Christian conversion really is. Christian conversion is a radical inner transformation. But it’s not so much a replacing of what you are as a re-facing of what you are. Your temperament doesn’t go away; your culture doesn’t go away. But everything you are is now lived on a whole new basis. The case study of Cornelius the centurion teaches ...
Converted by the Resurrection
April 26, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBChristianity was originally never understood as a set of teachings that one took on. Christianity was a power that took you up. It completely turned you inside out, transformed you from the inside. The classic example is the conversion of Paul. Paul was an abusive, violent zealot. He went from someone who was deeply unhappy and restless to someone who was utterly unflappable, absolutely content. How? A radical, deep conversion. We all need to know how to live deeply converted lives. And ...
Converted by the Cross
April 24, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MBConversion is a radical change of life. And in its early days, Christianity grew through conversions. It spread so rapidly that it changed a hostile society completely. What does it mean to become a Christian? By looking at the conversions in Acts, we can see what Christianity really is. In this passage, the conversion of an Ethiopian, we learn three things: 1) who converts, 2) the context of conversion, and 3) the key instrument conversion uses. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy K...
A Woman, a Slave and a Gentile
April 22, 2024 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBChristianity was born into a culture that was every bit as resistant and unsympathetic to its claims as ours is. So how did its message come into the lives of people and actually change them? In Acts, we have more case studies of conversion than anywhere else in the Bible. And in this passage, Luke chooses three to show us both how incredibly different and yet how incredibly similar Christian conversions can be. What does it mean to be a Christian, and how do you become a Christian? 1) L...
Stay With the Ship
April 19, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MBThe biggest problem people have in believing in God is probably the problem of evil and suffering. In the Greek imagination, the voyage was a metaphor for your life’s journey, and a storm was a metaphor for the evil and suffering and tragedies that come upon us. In this passage in Acts, Luke is in a boat, and he includes this account to teach us about the problems of evil and suffering. Let’s take a look at what he teaches under three headings: 1) the paradox of the storm, 2) the product ...
No Other Name
April 17, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MBChristianity was born into a society hostile to its claims. And the claim that was most revolting to that society is also what our society sees as the most repugnant: the shocking claim that salvation is found in no one else. It’s critical to realize this claim was as implausible in the Greco-Roman world as it is in ours. The Roman Empire was every bit as religiously pluralistic as our society, if not more. If they were as revolted as we were, why did so many believe it? Acts 4 shows us f...
To an Unknown God
April 15, 2024 10:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBThe culture in which Christianity was born was every bit as skeptical of the claims of Christianity as ours is. But the case for Christianity was made so strongly that skeptical people believed in numbers so great that it changed the entire Roman culture. There’s no better place to see the case that changed the whole Roman Empire than the book of Acts. Within it, there are a number of spots where Paul or Peter make the case, including this famous spot where Paul speaks to the intellectual ...
Many Convincing Proofs
April 12, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBIt’s a simple fact that in the Greco-Roman world, the claims of Christianity were found every bit as implausible, if not more, than people find them now. So why did so many people believe? Fortunately, we have a case study in Theophilus. How does a cultured, intellectually sophisticated person living in a culture that’s hostile to the basic claims of Christianity come to believe Christianity is true? The answer in a nutshell: the resurrection. Whether we already believe or aren’t sure we...
The Meaning of the City
April 10, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MBWhen the Jewish exiles got to Babylon, they found a huge city—hostile, big, brutal—and it was filled with other exiles, with different people groups and radically different views. Our culture is not so different. Liberals feel our country is so conservative that they’re pulling their hair out, and conservatives feel our country is so liberal that they’re pulling their hair out. Both groups feel like exiles. Millions of ethnic minorities feel like exiles. So how do you respond to a city that...
The Longing for Home
April 08, 2024 10:00 - 40 minutes - 36.6 MBWe’re not at home. We live in a world that doesn’t sustain or support the deepest needs of our hearts. Martin Heidegger (a fascist sympathizer) and Karl Marx (the father of Communism) were very different, prominent thinkers; yet, they both agreed that we can’t understand the human condition without the concept of alienation. Of course, that immediately raises the question, why wouldn’t we feel at home here? The prophet Jeremiah gives us a lot of insight: 1) why we long for a home, 2) how ...
The Freedom of True Love
April 05, 2024 10:00 - 47 minutes - 43.3 MBIn a culture where people really don’t know who they are and what life’s about—in a fragmented culture like ours—the fastest way to still feel good about ourselves is romance. It’s the ultimate philosophical narcotic. “I don’t know what life is about, but when I’m with her or him, I feel somehow life is significant.” Do you see? It’s an end run. That’s the reason why in all fragmented cultures, romance and sex and marriage can either be the ultimate fatal detour or a clue to how to find yo...
The Sickness Unto Death
April 03, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBIn a fragmented culture like ours, identity formation is a challenge. We decide our own goals and standards, and we get our sense of worth from whether we can achieve them. Jeremiah shows us that there’s something profoundly disordered and sick about the way in which we form our identities. In a traditional culture, where identities and roles are assigned, it might be hard to recognize this. But in our culture, where we’re actively aware of identity formation, we can better see what Jeremia...
The Necessity of Belief
April 01, 2024 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBWe live in a fragmented culture. There’s no consensus about the big questions of what’s right and wrong and true. Jeremiah is a prophet in this same situation—he lived and wrote in a fragmented culture. One of the challenges of a fragmented culture is living in the cafeteria of different worldviews, religions, and systems of thought. It’s typical to respond by saying, “I don’t think anybody has the answer.” But Jeremiah shows us that this very statement is ignorant of how the heart works. ...
Gifts of the Risen Lord (Easter)
March 29, 2024 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.2 MBJesus Christ says not just “I was resurrected,” but “I am the resurrection.” Present tense. He comes after his resurrection with his arms full of newness. I don’t know why we get into gift-giving at Christmas—I think we ought to be getting into it at Easter. Because as soon as Jesus Christ shows up risen from the dead, he is giving out all kinds of gifts of newness. Let’s look at these gifts and divide them into two parts: 1) there is the gift of faith, and 2) there are all the rest of t...
Doubt, Joy and Power (Easter)
March 27, 2024 10:00 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBWe’ve been looking at the life of Jesus and we come now to the risen Jesus. At the end of the gospel of Luke, the risen Jesus does four things that change the lives of his disciples forever. And because he’s the risen Jesus, he can do the very same things for us right now. Jesus 1) answers the doubts of their minds by arguing with them, 2) satisfies the needs of their hearts by eating with them, 3) reforges the direction of their lives by sending them, and 4) shows them his hands and his ...
The Hour of Darkness
March 25, 2024 10:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBThe night Jesus was betrayed has a theme: darkness, night. Right in the middle of the passage, Jesus makes an odd statement: “But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.” What that must mean is the physical darkness is a representation of something deeper. There’s a darkness that blinds the eyes, and then there’s a darkness that blinds the heart and the mind and the soul. It’s a spiritual darkness. This is the thing Jesus came to deal with. Because he came to deal with it, there’s a soluti...
The Upper Room
March 22, 2024 10:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBOne of the great questions of history is, “Why in the world did the early Christians adopt the cross as their main symbol?” All the other founders of the great religions died old and successful. In absolute contrast, you have Jesus, who dies at age 33, ignominiously, in agony, abandoned by everyone. But on the night before he died, Jesus gave his disciples the interpretation, the meaning of his death on the cross, and when it was all over, it changed them and the world. Jesus tells us fo...
The Robbers’ House
March 20, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBThe last week of Jesus’ life addresses not just our minds or our wills, but our hearts. We are to see Jesus, to meet Jesus. As Luke shows us the last days of Jesus’ life, all the doctrines and themes will be narratively depicted in the most vivid way. They’re driven home so we can really see Jesus and have an existential encounter with him. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shows us who he is, what he can do for us, why he can do it, and how he can do it. In other words, it shows us ...
Good News to the Poor
March 18, 2024 10:00 - 35 minutes - 32.1 MBIf you ask the question, “Why should a believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ be passionately involved with the poor?” this text gives you the answers. Isaiah 61 is the last of the Servant songs, a prophecy about the Servant of the Lord. And Jesus Christ preached from this in his first sermon. When Jesus reads this, he’s saying, “This is the essence of my mission. I have come to bring good news for the poor.” What does that mean? The three reasons why a believer in the gospel of Jesus Ch...
To Revive the Spirit of the Lowly
March 15, 2024 10:00 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBThis is a text of realism. There are many promises in the Bible about the great blessings Jesus’ salvation brings. In Isaiah 57, we have a reminder that we still live in a world filled with tragedy, difficulty, and suffering. The salvation we get from Jesus is by no means an exemption from the same brokenness that everyone else in the world is experiencing. Rather, the salvation is wonderful because it gives us the resources to face the brokenness in a way we never could without it. In t...
An Everlasting Name
March 13, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MBFor some, when they hear that salvation is absolutely free, their first response is to say, “If I really believed that, then I wouldn’t have any incentive to live a good life.” To that, I would say, “If, when you lose all fear of being smacked by God, you lose all incentive to live a good life, then the only incentive you ever had was fear. You need a better incentive.” See, if you realize the implications of the costly love of Jesus, it’s going to change your whole life. Isaiah 56 shows ...
The Maker Is Your Husband
March 11, 2024 10:00 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBThere are two pictures of two different women in Isaiah 54. And they teach us something miraculous. These last chapters of Isaiah are about a figure called the Servant of the Lord who is going to bring God’s salvation to the world. The New Testament writers identify Jesus Christ as the Servant of the Lord. And Isaiah 54 talks about the salvation he brings. From the two pictures in this passage, we learn about 1) miraculous births, 2) a miraculous marriage, and 3) the kind of miraculous lif...
Pierced For Our Transgressions
March 08, 2024 11:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBIsaiah 52 is the best chapter in the whole Bible to explain what happened on the cross. We know that because the New Testament writers were constantly referring back to it. It was the basis for their understanding of what happened on the cross. As I stand as a preacher before this text, I not only see too much in it to tell you, I feel too much about it to express to you. Therefore, I want to give you a due sense of the solemnity of this text. I want you to exercise the mental equivalent o...
The Mocking and the Spitting
March 06, 2024 11:00 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MBWhat did Jesus come into the world to do? In the final chapters of Isaiah, a mysterious figure called the Servant of the Lord is prophesied. This figure is going to come into the world and bring God’s salvation. And the New Testament writers identify this prophesied Servant of the Lord as Jesus. Isaiah 50 is the third of the Servant songs, and it 1) tells us about the life we ought to live, 2) shows us where to get the power to live that life, and then 3) explains why that power works. ...
Can a Mother Forget?
March 04, 2024 14:41 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBIsaiah 49 gives a sweeping, panoramic view of God’s salvation. But immediately following that promise, there’s a fascinating skeptical response. This is the second of the Servant songs, a prophecy about the Servant of the Lord, who the New Testament writers identify as Jesus. In it, it shows that there’s a salvation soon… and then eventually… and then ultimately. But to this view, Israel skeptically says, “There are all these promises of loving action, but I don’t feel loved.” And God respo...
A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break
March 01, 2024 11:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBIsaiah prophesies about a mysterious figure called the Servant of the Lord. In the New Testament, the writers identify the Servant of the Lord with Jesus Christ. These prophecies tell us some things about Jesus, about his work, about what he brings, and about ourselves that we learn nowhere else. Many of the prophecies are called songs, the servant songs. Let’s introduce ourselves to this servant, and therefore, to what this tells us about Jesus Christ. The first of the servant songs is i...
The Sword and All
February 28, 2024 11:00 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBIf you thought when you became a Christian you were leaving the fight to get into peace and tranquility, Paul says you were wrong. The Christian life is a fight. But now you have divine resources. We come now to the last piece of the armor of God: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” At the beginning and at the end of talking about how to live a victorious Christian life, Paul talks about the Bible. It shows that everything we do in putting on the armor is a matter of takin...