The following two videos each include the bold words “Here I stand.” But do they mean the same thing?

1. Elsa (from Frozen‘s “Let It Go”)

2. Luther (at the Diet of Worms)

Tim Keller explains how they differ:

“Let It Go,” by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, was sung in the Disney movie Frozen and won the 2013 Oscar for Best Original Song. It is both interesting and ironic to compare the sung speech of the character Elsa in Frozen with that of Martin Luther before the Holy Roman Emperor. Both say, “Here I stand.” But Luther meant he was free from fear and from other authorities because he was bound by the Word of God and its norms. Elsa speaks for the contemporary culture by saying she can be free only if there are no boundaries at all.

That’s note 26 on pages 283–84 of Keller’s latest book:

Timothy Keller. Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Viking, 2015.

And that illustrates a good rule of thumb for Keller’s books: Don’t skip the endnotes. They are gold. And sometimes they make you smile.

Often the most skilled practitioners are not very skilled at explaining how they do what they do. Not Keller. Keller clearly unpacks how to preach to the heart. He explains how and why you should preach Christ from all the Scripture, and he spends most of the book explaining how to preach Christ to today’s culture. So insightful, so wise.

I did some researching and writing this summer on applying the Bible, and Keller’s book served me well. I discovered that although there are tons of resources on how to interpret the Bible, in comparison there aren’t that many on how to apply it. That makes Keller’s book even more valuable.

Check out Matt Smethurst’s interview with Keller about the book.

And here are three thoughtful reviews:

1. Dane Ortlund (I love this one.)
2. Chris Brauns (from the perspective of a thoughtful rural pastor)
3. Christopher Ash (constructively critical)