Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Mary’s Son

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

The message of Christmas is the message of the gospel. It’s the essential message of Christianity. And in Luke 1, we have one person’s response to that message. At Christmastime you’ll be hearing this message. The question is, “How should you respond to it?”  The message is that the Most High has become the most low. God has become human. Let’s look at three things that this means: 1) God is far greater than we thought, 2) we are more sinful than we thought, and 3) God is more loving than we think. Then we’ll look at one person’s, Mary’s, three-stage response to this message. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 15, 1996. Series: The Real Jesus, Part 2: His Life. Scripture: Luke 1:26-38. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Do you know the real Jesus? If you're going to find out whether Jesus is the one to be king of your life, you have to make sure you understand him first in order to understand who you're meant to be, and you should know that if you reject him, you'll never be able to stop searching for him. Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller is looking at the Gospels to show us who the real Jesus is and what that means for our lives. After you listen, we'd appreciate it if you'd take a few moments to rate and review the

podcast. When you do, you'll be encouraging others to listen so they can discover the real Jesus because the gospel changes everything. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Usually, in a service week, we read the scripture a little and we explain it a lot. Today we read it a lot and explain it a little. And what we have in all these passages of the scripture we've been reading is what you might call the essential message of Christianity.

It of course is the message of Christmas, but the message of Christmas, and by the way, the message of Easter, and by the way, the message of any Christian special day, is the message of the gospel. In all the passages we've been reading, we have the message, but in one of the passages, we have one person's response to that message. And I'd like to reread that and point a few things out to us because what you're going to be having at the Christmas time is you're going to be hearing this word. You're going to be getting this message. The question is how should you respond to it? And the annunciation, the lesson two, Luke 1, 26 to 38, it goes this way. In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin

pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, greetings you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at these words, his words, and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. This kingdom will never end. How will this be, Mary asked the angel since? I am a virgin." And the angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age and she who has said to be barren is in her sixth month for nothing is impossible with God. I am the Lord's servant Mary answered, may it be to me as you have said and then the angel left her.

Now, I said, first of all, you have the message. Notice that the messenger speaks three times and Mary responds three times. Now, first of all, what's the message? Well, maybe we can be pretty much at summary here. The message is, the most high. Notice, God has called the most high twice. The most high has become the most low. The message is that the uncreated power that sustains the stars has become a baby. The message is

seek not in courts or palaces nor royal curtains draw, but search the stables so your God extended on the straw. What you have here is God becoming human, the most high becoming the most low. And what does that mean? It means first of all that God is far greater than we thought and that we are more sinful than we thought. See on the one hand it teaches this, it teaches, this is the message. And this was the message coming to Mary. First of all, the message of the incarnation

is God is greater than we thought. Today, many, many people, in fact, of course, every philosophy and religion and thought form except Christianity says that God is too great to become a single, single unique weak human being. God cannot become a human being, a single weak human being. People say it for different reasons. Humanists in a sense say it because they resist the doctrine of the incarnation because

it makes Christ too central. They feel that they resist the centrality of Christ and saying God became one human being. Judaism and Islam say it for a different reason. They say God is too great to have become limited like that. But no, this passage tells us that what makes him the most high is that he was able to become most low. In fact, the very, to disbelieve in the incarnation in the name of the greatness of God is actually to diminish his greatness. One writer put it this way, and I think it's fascinating. He says, the power of the higher just in so far as it is truly higher can come down to include the lesser. And everywhere the great enters the little, its power to do so is virtually the test of

its greatness. Now listen, think, think. Solid bodies exemplify truths of plain geometry, but plain geometry figures no truths in solid. Can I be a little bit more familiar? You can become kitnish with your kitten, but your kitten will never be able to talk philosophy with you. Can I become more emotional? When I am, when you are, filled with peace and joy, you can enter into the hurt of someone who is despondent, but when you are despondent, you cannot enter in to the joy of somebody else. Why? Because joy and peace are the higher and anger and brokenness are the lower.

You see, say it again, everywhere the great enters the little, it's power to do so, is the test of its greatness. And put it another way, the inability of the less to enter the greater is a proof of its lesserness. Hitler could never understand Lincoln, but Lincoln can understand Hitler. Because wisdom always understands foolishness, because wisdom sees the foolishness in yourself, but foolishness to foolishness, wisdom is utterly incomprehensible. Unsolfishness knows selfishness as number, but to the selfish, the deeds of unsolfishness are completely incomprehensible.

Therefore, if God is truly great, this makes perfect sense. In fact, now we know how great He is. The greatness of God is far greater than we ever thought. The most high has become the most low, and that's the first thing that this message tells Mary. It's the first thing it tells all of us. God, you thought God was great Mary. You have no idea how great. We know instinctively that the greater by definition is great because it can enter into

the lesser and the lesser by definition is lesser because it cannot enter into the greater. The greater has become a lesser. God has become human. But by the way, the incarnation is also a message, not just about the greatness of God, it's a message about the sinfulness of us. In other words, what Mary was being told, what we're being told at Christmas, is that we're more sinful than we thought. Well, you say, where is that?

Well, see, gifts. As wonderful as gifts are, gifts all carry a message with them. On Christmas morning, I will open all these gifts under the tree. And they'll be from people all around my life. And what if the first gift I open up is a book, and it says, How to Win Friends and Influence People. So I put it aside, and the next book is, How to Lose 50 P pounds in this excellent diet.

Hmm, and I put that aside and the next one is a year's supply of row game, let's say. So I look at these and if I turn to the people who have given these to me and say thank you, what I'm really saying is yes, I'm bald fat and obnoxious. There's no way to accept certain gifts without admitting something about yourself now. How sweet it is, you see, to think that God gave us His Son. How cozy. You know what that means? God became a baby. God emptied himself of power. God emptied himself eventually of life. God emptied himself. God came down. What it's saying is we are so bad off that nothing less than the sacrifice of the Son of God could save us. You see, when you look at certain gifts, if I open those gifts under the tree, I look at those gifts and I'll say, am I that way?

And when you look at the wonderful gift at Christmas, you have to look at that and say immediately, if you're thinking, if 2000 years of pious jargon haven't completely clotted over our sensibilities about what's really being said at Christmas. We're going to look at this wonderful gift and we're going to say, and are we that bad off? And the answer is yes.

So the incarnation is the gospel. The incarnation tells us how great God is. It's greater than you think. The incarnation tells us how sinful you are. You're worse off than you think. You're in more serious spiritual condition than you think. And thirdly, it tells us he's more loving than we think. He came, you see, in verse 30, 31, 32, 33, the messenger says, his name will be Jesus, which means savior. It literally means God rescues. And he came to rule us as king.

He's the king who's come to save us. But he's gone through that in order to save us. The incarnation shows us how much he loves us. Dorothy Sayers, one of my favorite authors, puts it this way. She says, the incarnation means that, for whatever reason, God chose to allow us to be limited, to suffer,

and to be subject to sorrows and death. For whatever reason guided that, he has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. He can ask nothing from us that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivially rotations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst

horrors of pain and humiliation defeat despair and death. He was born in poverty, he died in disgrace, he suffered infinite pain, all for us, and he thought it well worth his while. You know that little phrase at the end, he thought it well worth his while. Reminds us of the prophecy of Isaiah who says the results of his suffering he shall see and be satisfied. Now when you do something and you say what I got was worth it, it means that what you got was more valuable than what you lost. That's how you make it in life. You know, by low, so high, right? That's how you make it in life.

And it's even true here. It's worth as while. He sees the results of a sacrifice and we he he he will see it and say the infinite pain that cost me was worth it. Well, what does it get for all that infinite pain? Us. The incarnation. If you have a God who couldn't become human, if you have a God who is too great for that, what you mean is you have a God who doesn't love you like this God, loved his people. One of my sons has a little CD about it.

I guess it's a popular song and it's a cute song and it's a very typical song. And it's really not a very interesting song. But the climax of the chorus, a woman is saying it and the climax of the chorus, a woman is singing it, and the climax of the chorus is something that is so absolutely seminal to the way you feel whenever you fall in love. Again, it's not very illuminating, but the climax of the chorus says, say, you'll love me forever, never stop, never whatever. Say you'll love me forever, never stop, whatever. Okay, you said, that's not great poetry but I'll tell

you whenever you fall in love, whenever you fall in love, whenever you're the moments of intimacy you say that. You don't just say it metaphorically, you need that. You say I want you to love me forever and I want you to love me whatever, forever whatever. Now there is not a person in the universe except one that could ever respond to that. There's nobody can even respond to that. Now you say, well, you know, when you get excited and you get, you know, of course you talk like that. I wouldn't mean, of course. You talk like that because as a human being you have to have that. You want that.

And you're addressing somebody who could never give it to you. Nobody can love you forever, and nobody certainly can love you whatever. But in the incarnation where told there's only one person in the universe to whom you can address that kind of slop. And he has answered. He has responded. He has. See, the incarnation is the gospel.

He's greater than you think. He's not just a goddess great. He's that great. And you're more sinful than you think. You're not just a little bit broken. You're destroyed. You need salvation. You don't just need a help.

And he has done the most radically loving thing anybody could do. He has loved you forever. He has loved you whatever. See? Jesus, for He will reign forever. Now that is either fantasy or supernatural reality and it's supernatural reality. As we near the end of another year of ministry, we want to pause and thank everyone who is graciously and generously supported this ministry in 2022. We are so grateful for your support. We also thank God for all the

ways he is working through gospel and life and through you to bring gospel renewal to people all over the world and it is our privilege to serve you through this ministry. As we come to the end of this year, we ask you to briefly consider making a year-end gift to help gospel and life finish the year strong and start 2023 ready to share the beauty of the gospel with more people. To make a year-end gift today, go to gospelandlife.com slash give. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash give because the gospel truly changes everything. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's message.

Now how does Mary respond to it? And say, Mary, at this point, in a certain sense. In one sense, I have to be careful when I say it, is the first Christian. Now it does mean she was the first person who ever believed in God's mercy and was accepted and loved and forgiven. I don't mean that, but there's a sense in which this is the first time in the history of the world that somebody understands how God is going to save us and understands that in its fullness understands that Jesus Christ is the center. She is the first one. But I think she's great in the way she responds and I'm going to give you four words and very briefly show you what she does.

She goes through four stages. And I think that's very helpful to us. And anybody here needs to realize that if you're going to respond to the gospel message, you have to do what she did. The first stage is sobriety. And verse 29, which is always translated this way, it says,

verse 29, the angel says greetings, and says Mary was greatly troubled at his words, and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. It's almost, you know, it's kind of comical, you know, what kind of greeting? How many kinds of greetings do angels have? I don't know, but that's really not the best translation. Literally, she says, literally, what it says is,

Mary, and the use's an interesting word that basically means to account. Literally, it says, Mary reckoned and weighed up the different possible reasons for what had just happened. A word was used there, logistamai, which means to account, to reckon, to think. In other words, Mary began to think. She said, how do I count for what is going on?

Is this a hallucination? Is this real? Is this a dream? What is going on now? Very briefly, I think it's very important to see a lot of people say, well, even religious and irreligious people think that the only way you ever talk to an angel is turn off your brain. Irreligious people say, well, I love to believe, but in church you just have to believe I'm a thinker. I reason, I think. And there's even people inside the church, and there's people at least who are very religious

who say when it comes to really experiencing the divine, you have to turn off the rationality, you see, turn off the rational, turn on the mystical, turn off the analysis and turn on the intuition, turn off the intellect and turn on the emotion. That's not what you see with Mary. Mary doesn't sit there and say, wow, an angel, she's saying, what is going on? She reacts just the way you and I would. She doesn't turn off her mind in order to experience God.

Why would one half the brain be spiritually inferior to the other half? Why would analysis be inferior to intuition? I'll tell you one of the ways you know you've experienced God through Christ is that every part of your brain goes ballistic. Theoretical knowledge of God without experience of His love or emotional altered states of consciousness without an intellectual grasp is not knowing God. That's the reason why the Bible talks about experience of God is knowing God, not knowing about God, not just simply feeling God, knowing God.

She starts off with sobriety. She says, what's going on here? She doesn't turn her brain off. She thinks. Then secondly, I would say, let's say, after sobriety comes sincerity. She says, this isn't going to work. I'm a virgin. Now, what you say, what's the difference?

Here's the difference. When the angel first speaks, she's just thinking. She says, is this real? She's acting like a normal person. You know, there's a lot of folks out there who will say, well, back in those days, people believed in a virgin birth, but now we know it's impossible. And what you're saying is, Mary believed it

because she was different than me. She had a worldview different than me. Common sense will tell you, and the text is telling you, she reacted just like you. In fact, she does not have a worldview that makes it easy to believe in a virgin birth. Oh my. You might have a scientific worldview that makes it difficult to believe in a virgin birth, but she was a Jewish woman. And she was the last person, those were the last people in the face of the earth to believe that God through his Holy Spirit power could come in and impregnate her. She had a worldview far more antithetical to the Virgin birth than you do. Don't you dare get off the hook by saying,

well, I shouldn't have to believe in the incarnation and these things because now we know she also I shouldn't have to believe in the incarnation of these things because now we know she also didn't know it. Why does she believe in the Virgin birth? Because she was credulous? No, because it happened to her. You can't say because she was credulous. She was not. Common sense shows, as she wasn't, the text shows, as she wasn't. Our understanding of culture and history shows as she couldn't have been credulous, not about that. She was sober, then secondly she was sincere, and she starts to say, to God, I don't get this. And my suggestion to you, my proposal to you is, do what Mary did, she still got all sorts

of intellectual questions, but if there's a God, if he's there, if it's possible for God to exist, he's a personal God. If the God of the Bible is possibly there, then the only way to deal with your doubts and to think these things out is by praying. What she's doing is she's talking to him. She's going to him, she's thinking things out. She's willing to admit her stubbornness, she's willing to admit her

doubt, she's willing to admit her weakness, she talks to them, this is sincerity. You know, there's a kind, I think, of skepticism that it's afraid to hope and will not honestly seek and go before God and say, I don't believe, could you help me? You're afraid to hope. On the other hand, I think there's a kind of desperation. I see people very often who want to experience God and they don't want to ask these questions. They say, tell me what to do. Where do I sound in the dotted line? In that case, you're using religion as a narcotic and you're really just trying to feel good. And if you don't feel good, you'll be gone. Mary shows what real people who really respond to the gospel do.

They're not so scared of letting their heart hope that they won't even talk to God. But they're also not just simply using God as an narcotic, so they're afraid to ask questions. She's wrestling, she's struggling, and she's bringing her doubts to God, since they're really honestly, humbly, then finally, thirdly, she submits.

And she says, I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me, as you said. Now, realize what she's saying. When she says may it be, this is not a traditional, this and this is a traditional culture. When she says, I see that if you have your way with me, I'm going to be an unwed mother. I'm going to get pregnant before I'm

married. I'm engaged to Joseph, I'm going to get pregnant. And what is she saying? Let it be to me. May it be. Now what here's what she's saying? She says, may it be means first of all, may I be disgraced? If that's what you want, I expect it. She will be disgraced. There was no New York City to run off to where everybody says, oh well, whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. She knew that she would be ostracized from her family. She would be ostracized from her friends. She also knew that she would probably lose Joseph, Joseph would probably divorce her. She didn't know that God in his grace would send an angelic messenger to him. Otherwise, he would have left her,

and she would have been always an unmarried, young single mother, which meant she would have been on the lip of poverty all her life, and what is she saying? She says, may it be. And she's not filled with joy. She says, I see what I need to do and I give myself. You know, the joy comes later.

It's not so after she meets Elizabeth, who the angel says, go see Elizabeth. And when she walks into see Elizabeth, Elizabeth suddenly, the spirit could God fills her. And she says, how was it that the mother of my Lord should come to visit me for when I came to the door, the child in my womb leapt for joy? Oh blessed is she who believes that what the Lord has said to her will be done. That's Elizabeth and when Elizabeth confirms the word of the angel at that point, Mary, bursts into song. And she says, my spirit, that's rejoice, my soul magnifies the Lord. Mary, though here, says, I see that I need to submit.

I say that you're the Lord and I'm your servant and I'm going to give myself. I'm going to submit. I am not God, you are. But she's not filled with joy yet. The joy comes later when Elizabeth gives her a confirmation. You see the stages. This isn't maybe a nice simple little way of saying, here's how to receive Christ, bring him into your life and you'll immediately feel wonderful. Look, soberly she's filled with doubts. Then sincerely she brings them before God. Then finally she knuckles under. She says, I see the evidence, I see what's going on and I give myself to you and I realize that I give up the right to determine my life. I give up the

right to ask for conditions. I give myself to you unconditionally. And as that happens, the experience comes. That's really the way most people that I know have become Christians. There hasn't been a blinding light at once. There's been stages, there's been struggles. There's been surrender in stages. But eventually, eventually always, there's joy. Because when she starts to sing, and it's in the magnificat, it's later, it's not in the passage we just read. She says, my soul, my spirit. She says, my soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit does exalt and God my Savior. Conclusion.

For those of you who seek, let your heart hope, bring your humble problems and your difficulties to him, but do it before him, do it with him, tell him your problems, tell him your needs. For those of you who believe, this is an advanced lesson, verse 38, I am the Lord servant, may it be to me, as you have said. I was asking Kathy about this just to make sure I got this straight, but every so often I quote the end of a novel by Elizabeth Elliott called No Grave in Image.

It's a novel. It's a fiction, but it was based on her life. And it's the best illustration there is of this amazing, amazing passage where Mary finally surrenders, and though immediately doesn't have joy eventually gets it. The novel is about a woman who goes to Latin America to be a missionary and her life stream is to translate the Bible, and her life stream is to translate the Bible into the dialect of one particular needy group of people, Indian tribe there. And the one man who knows Spanish and knows English and knows this particular language,

the in the novel, he gets sick and she injects him with penicillin, he has a drug reaction and he dies. And her whole life falls apart. And when she wrote the novel, many people, Christians wrote her nasty letters saying, God would never do that in real life. If you ever gave yourself the God, God would not make you suffer like that, those things wouldn't happen. And of course, I almost exactly what actually did happen to her.

Not quite. Not quite. In real life, what happened was this man on whom everything in her whole career, and her whole mission was based, was killed in a bar room brawl. Somebody got it again, start shooting. And because she was the only white woman in town, and therefore she sort of represented authority, they brought the body to her.

And they said, and there he had a bullet in his brain. He said, please dig it out, bring the bullets so that when the authorities get there, you can show the bullets, and so there he is, she's digging the bullet out of his brain. This is the man on whom all of her hopes rested. At the end of the novel, she puts it this way. She says, and God, what of him? He had allowed Pedro to die, or, and I could not then, nor today, can I deny the possibility,

he had perhaps caused me to destroy him. And does he now I ask myself there on the grave side, ask me to worship him? Now here's the kicker. God, if he was merely my accomplice, had betrayed me. But if on the other hand, he was God, he had freed me. Now I find that I can no longer range my life in an orderly succession of projects with realizable goals and demonstrable effects. I can't designate this activity as useful and this activity is useless for the work

in the end as well as the labeling is all gods. She said, if God is my servant, He'd betrayed me. But if I'm His servant, He just freed me because I used to say, this is something that has to happen, this doesn't. Now I realize if God is God and I'm His servant, then I just go about my work because the work and the labeling's God. I don't label things anymore. I don't set my heart on this and that.

Who knows? She was liberated. Mary was liberated. This is the most advanced lesson possible. This passage has the most simple lesson that is go to God and tell him you're confused and he will show you the way, but has the most advanced lesson. And that is treat him as God and God will do incredible things through you. You say, well, I'm not Mary. Yes, but we see when Gabriel shows up and says, Hail Mary full of grace. The word does not mean God was attracted to you

by your greatness. Full of grace means having been graced. Mary, you're great because God has come to you. God is not coming to you because you're great. May it be to me, she said. Even as you said, that's the ultimate, that's the most advanced lesson possible, and that's the way to joy.

Let us pray. Our Father, Christmas time, we have something the most basic lesson. Go to God, see the one who loved us by sending us his son. If you've got doubts, just tell him about them, and he will lead you through. But we also have the most absolutely advanced lesson. Jesus Christ emptied Himself to become

full. Mary emptied Himself to become full. Mary served and went all the way to the bottom in order to raise the rise to the top. So did Jesus. So must we. Show us what that means. We thank you Lord that Mary and a relationship to her little baby shows us the meaning of life, of heaven and earth. We thank you that you speak to us in this way. Give us the things we've asked for for Jesus' sake. Amen. We hope you enjoyed today's teaching about knowing Jesus, and we hope you'll continue to join us throughout the month as we continue to discover the joy and freedom of putting him at the center of your life. Before you go, if you are encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more

people can discover the message of Christ's love. Thanks again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 1996. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel Unlife Podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.