Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Meaning of Christmas

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Christmas shows why Christianity is unique. In all other religions, a prophet arrives and teaches how we can find eternal life. In Christianity, God himself comes to us and gives himself as the way to eternal life. Christmas shows that salvation is by grace, that we can have true intimacy with God, that love really matters, and that there exists an unceasing river of joy beneath all the sorrows of this world. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 18, 2011. Series: Christmas 2011. Scripture: 1 John 1:1-4. 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.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. In our broader culture, you may have heard that working hard to help others and making the world a better place is the true meaning of Christmas. But if you look at the story of Christ's birth in the Gospels, you'll find a completely different message that Jesus came to Earth because we absolutely cannot save ourselves by our good works. Listen now as Tim Keller shares the amazing news of the Christmas message and the gift we have in Christ.

The scripture reading is from 1 John 1 verses 1 through 4. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the word of life. The life appeared. We have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you may also have fellowship with

us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the word of the Lord. Now to Christmas service, you can go to a text for reflection that describes the Christmas events. So, you can go to a text that has shepherds, angels, wise men, the manger. This is actually a text.

It's obviously not describing the events of Christmas. It's telling us what they mean. It doesn't tell us what happened. It tells us what what happened means. And this is the beginning of first John, John wrote the gospel of John, plus these three letters. The prologue, or the very first four verses of John that we just read, are very like the very first few verses of the gospel of John, which you've actually got also printed a couple of pages back that was read in Flemish.

And what I'd like to show you is there's four things that this text tells us, the Christmas means. It's very easy at Christmas time not to actually think about what it means. All you have to do is sort of let the nostalgia hit. You feel warm, you've got memories, you've got some time off, many, many good things happen and just feel good at Christmas. I like to help you think about what Christmas actually means and what the Bible talks about, the birth of Christ, the Son of God, Lord of Heaven, becoming into this world, born as a human being in the manger.

What does that mean? Four things. First, it actually means the salvation is by grace. Do you notice how John talks about Jesus here? In chapter one of John, he's called the word. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, the word was God. As a matter of fact, over there, that's the Greek N.R.K. Hologus. In the beginning was the word. That's the Greek N.R.K. Hologus. In the beginning was the word. And Jesus was called the word.

And here, he's called the word of life, but look more carefully. It says, this word of life was with the father from the beginning. Verse two, the life appeared. We have seen and testified to it. And we proclaimed you the eternal life with who was with the father.

Now, we're not being told here that Jesus Christ has life or gives life and this is not just physical life, it's eternal life, salvation. It doesn't just say he has it or he gives it, it says he is it. Here's one of the first things we always can say makes Christianity different than other religions. In every other religion, the founder is a prophet or a sage and the founder says, here's the way for you to find eternal life. Do this, do this, do this, do this, and you will connect to the infinite or you will become

one with God or you'll be saved, whatever. Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. This is the way to eternal life. But Jesus says, I am the way the truth in the life. John chapter 14, He says, I am the way the truth in the life. Because Christianity does not say Jesus is a great prophet, pointing the way to God and how we can save ourselves. Jesus Christ, according to Christmas, is God come to save us, to do for us what we can't do for ourselves, to know Him is eternal life. It's not like He comes and you follow Him and you do the things that you should do and

you live a good life and then God blesses you and God saves you. No, no, he is the life. Over the years, I've had people say to me something like this. They say, well, you know, I don't know what I believe about Jesus or I don't know if I believe the incarnation or all these things, because doctrine doesn't matter. Doctrine and dogma doesn't matter. What matters is you live a good life.

That's what matters. And I always say, when you say doctrine doesn't matter, what matters is that you live a good life, that's a doctrine. And you know what the doctrine says? It says, I actually am not so bad that I need to save you. I'm actually not so messed up that I need to save you. I'm actually not so messed up that I can't pull it together and live a good enough life. So when you say doctrine doesn't matter, what matters is that you live a good life. That is the doctrine

and historically it's called the doctrine of salvation by your works rather than by grace. And I'll tell you this, everybody, if you do say, doctrine doesn't matter, what matters is you live a good life, and I'm trying to live a good life. Yeah, you're trying to live a good life. It will be a life characterized by fear and insecurity because you'll never feel like you're being quite good enough. Or it'll be marked by pride and disdain for other people. If you feel like you actually have been good enough,

or it'll be marked by devastation and self-loathing, if you feel you haven't been good enough. So you're gonna be insecure and anxious, or you're gonna be proud, or you're gonna be devastated, or you're gonna go through phases over and over again. And if Jesus Christ didn't actually come, if the story of Christmas is just a wonderful legend, God, gift, baby.

But you see what we're being told here is, when John says, we saw him with our hands, with our eyes, we heard him with our ears, we touched him with our hands. Why is he being so emphatic? Bob Yarborough, who's a New Testament scholar, Greek scholar, scholar of ancient history, etc. Says, look at these terms when it and he says this. He says about these verses, the variety of verbs correspond to the variety of witness attestation in ancient jurisprudence. And

so when John writes, we have seen it and testified to it, and then he speaks of hearing, seeing and touching, he is not making conversation, but he's virtually swearing at deposition. What John is trying to say is, it's not just a nice story about Jesus. It really happened. We really saw him. He really lived. He really died. He really rose from the dead. It's really God come. He's not just a wonderful teacher. He's God himself. If Christmas is just a nice legend, you're on your own. But if Christmas is true, and John says it is absolutely true, I witness account swearing at that position, then you can be saved by grace. You can know that just by believing in him you're received, you're accepted.

Okay? So first of all, Christmas means salvation by grace. Secondly, Christmas means you can have fellowship with God. Why is he talking about the doctrine of the incarnation? We proclaim this to you what we have seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And that means to have fellowship with God, the Father and the Son,

because he has fellowship with the Father and the Son. In other words, the doctrine of Christmas, the incarnation is about fellowship. Ah, we're being told here, In other words, the doctrine of Christmas, the incarnation, is about fellowship. We're being told here it is not enough just to believe in God, or even just to obey Him. Christmas means God has gone to infinite lengths to come near you, to have a personal relationship with Him, so that you can know Him personally. God is not content to simply be a concept, to be believed, or even something to warm your heart.

He's not even content, to be a powerful force that you bow to in some way, because he became human. And one of the reasons is so we can have fellowship with him, intimacy. Look at the sun. No, don't. Because if you try to look at the sun to see what it looks like, you won't be able to see it. Will you? Why? At best, it will just be a blur. It's glorified. It will be too great for your eyes. It will overwhelm you and you really won't see it.

You'll see a blur at best. At worst, it will burn out your retina. And therefore, if you really want to see the glory of the sun, you need a filter. You need something between you and the sun that enables you to actually see the flames bursting on the surface, the sun spots, the eruptions. If you want to see the glory of the sun, you can't just look at it. You need to look at it through something. You need to look at it through a filter. Are you really can't see the glory of God? Whoops. It's not just the sun we're talking about. When we pray, when we sing, hear the Herald Angels sing, there's a line, I think it's in the

second verse that goes like this, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. Isn't that interesting? Charles Wesley, who wrote the hymn, very good theology. He didn't say because God is veiled in flesh, we can't see the Godhead. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead, hidden? No. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see seen because God has become a human being. We can see His glory in a way that otherwise would just overwhelm us, literally, because remember Moses tried to look at the glory of God and God says it'll kill you. It'll burn out the retina of your soul. It'll destroy you. And yet John chapter 1 says, the word became flesh

and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. Glory is the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What does that mean? When you see the story of Jesus, read the gospels, and you're seeing God in human form. It's like a filter.

You can see him, see his love, see his humility, see his brilliance, see his wisdom, see his compassion, all the brilliance, see his wisdom, see his compassion. All the attributes of God that you know about from the Old Testament, which are kind of overwhelming, daunting, and maybe even intimidating, overwhelming, well, God says, I can't show you directly, but in Jesus Christ, we can come nearer. We can come nearer intellectually because we can understand we can grasp him. He becomes graspable, palpable. You read about a human being, God in human form. He becomes someone we can relate to. You know that. So many people who really have never read the New Testament believe in God, but when they get the New Testament, they really believe Jesus is the Son of God and they start to read about him. Suddenly God becomes really human. He is human. He becomes a person. Now he's a real person.

But the application, the practical point is this. God went to infinite lengths to get near you, to get close to you, so that you could know him personally. God went to infinite lengths. He lost his glory. He lost his life. Now, you must be willing to go to infinite lengths. He lost his glory, he lost his life. Now, you must be willing to go to great lengths to get close to Him. It's not enough just to

believe in Him. Many of you know there's things going on in your life that He's just pleased with. That's why you're really not that close to Him. Many of you just aren't taking the time to learn how to pray. God's Christmas means God wants to be near you, wants to be close to you. This is a Daniel Steele who was a Christian minister, British Christian minister in the 18th century. A letter he wrote to a friend about his per life, listen to this.

Almost every week, and sometimes almost every day, I feel a pressure of His great love that comes down on my heart in such a measure as to make me groan under an almost unsupportable plethora of joy. At such times, He has unlocked every apartment of my being and flooded them all with the light of His presence. The inner spot has been touched, and its stoniness has been melted in the presence of Jesus,

the one all together lovely. That's a man talking about his prayer life. Is that how you can talk about your prayer life? Probably not, but you know, it's because, if you want to get close to him, you have to put in the time, you have to change your Him, you have to put in the time, you have to change your life, you have to put Him in the center of your life.

The incarnation, Christmas means that God is not content to be a concept, or just someone you know far off. He went to infinite lengths, get close to you. Now you do what it takes to get close to Him. What will it take in your life? The biblical meaning of Christmas is historical and life-changing because it's the moment God entered the world as a man, born to save us, and provide life everlasting to those that

believe in Him. The true meaning of Christmas is transformational. Cathy Keller recorded a special Christmas message to encourage you to see the hope, joy, peace, and love that Christ brings to us through his birth. In this special video message, Kathy and her son Michael share how the hope and joy of Christmas can help us through hard times and difficult circumstances. You can watch this Christmas message at gospelonlife.com slash Christmas. That's gospelonlife.com slash Christmas. That's gospelonlife.com slash Christmas. From everyone on our team here at gospelonlife, we pray that you and your family have a warm and joyful Christmas. Christmas is a challenge there. So first of all, Christmas means,

so I wish my grace. Secondly, Christmas means you can have fellowship with him. Thirdly, Christmas means love really matters. Thirdly, Christmas means love really matters. The secular world says, this world is all there is. You are nothing but physical matters. There's no soul, there's no spirit, it's just you, just a physical. And therefore everything about you is here only simply because of the process of natural selection. Francis Crick, Nobel-winning scientist, some years ago wrote a book called The Estonishing Universe, and in it he said something that was controversial, but from the standpoint

of a secular view of things, irrefutable, he said, you, your joys, and your sorrows, your memories, and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are all, in fact, no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Now what he's saying, again, what he's saying is this, If you have no soul, you only have a body, then your thoughts and your feelings, like you say, love matters, people matter, human beings matter. Those are thoughts, those are feelings,

but actually he says they're chemical responses. They're chemical things happening in your brain. And so those chemical things make you say, oh, love matters, but the fact is, they're just a chemical response. Well, why are you having those chemical responses? He says, well, science will tell you, because your ancestors had those particular chemical responses in their brain, which led to behavior that enabled them to survive. And all the people who didn't have those particular chemical responses in their brain, who didn't think those thoughts, because they didn't think those

thoughts, they did not survive. And that's the reason why today everybody says love matters, people matter, human beings have dignity, but they're just chemical responses in the brain. Science will tell you that human beings individuals don't matter, the species sort of matters, but only if the strong, only if the weak ones die off, then the species survives. You say love makes a difference, love matters, taking care of people matters. And if there is no other thing but your body, if there is only this world, if this life is all there is, Francis Crick is right. And love is nothing

but a chemical response in the brain that enables you to survive. But there's a different way of looking at it. And by the way, I know plenty of people in New York City who believe that. That's what they say. Everything has a scientific explanation. Everything has a natural cause. Maybe there's a God, but we don't know. We must never take that into account.

It's the second point of view. And yet nobody lives as if love doesn't matter. Nobody lives as if these thoughts and these feelings are really just chemical responses, though they would be on that part of you. And yet nobody lives that way. Christmas tells you that what your heart intuitively knows is true.

Christmas can make you whole on New Yorker. If your brain tells you one thing and your heart tells you another thing, so your brain says this is it, but you're not living that way, Christmas can make you whole. Because Christmas proves that love is not something that just happened inside a human brain as a chemical response, but love pre-existed the world, created the world, and is redeeming the world. Where does it get that? Well, the beginning of chapter 1 of John, and the beginning of chapter 1 of the gospel of John,

and chapter 5 and chapter 17, John gives us more about the trinity than any other writer in the Bible. And you notice what it says here is from the beginning. That doesn't say, what that's saying, when the beginning of time happened, there was already the word and the father. The son was with the father. See that?

He says, we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father from the beginning. And of course, over in chapter one of John, it says, in the beginning, the word of Christ, Christ, already was. And the word was with God and the word was God. Every other religion says, God is a force or God is a universal being who created. And of course, you can't have love until you create other persons. In other words, you have to have more than one person have love.

So other religions say either God's an impersonal force, or God is a unipersonal being that created, and then love came in. But only Christianity says that God is a communal, glorious love in himself. There's one God, but in that one God, there have always been three persons. And those three persons have been knowing and loving each other and adoring each other from all eternity, which means love was before the world.

And the world came from a God who was already love, love created the world. The world came out of love and the world is redeeming love. Part of me, the love is redeeming the world too. Love is not just a response up in your brain. It was before the world, it created the world, and now it's redeeming the world. Because why did God come to earth? Why did He go to all this incredible trouble, to become something that could be seen and heard and tasted and touched. I'll tell you. When I was 11 years old, Yuri Gagar in the first Russian cosmonaut orbited the earth.

That was 1961. You can do the math. It was one of the first things I remember of reading in the paper and everybody being really excited about it. And Nikita Khrushchev was the premier of Russia at the time. Actually said after that, he said at one point, we in the Russia are official, religion is atheism, or we're officially atheists.

And we have even more evidence for atheism now because we sent a man into heavens and there was no God there. So we have more evidence than ever. Now, C.S. Lewis was still alive at that time and he heard what Nikita Khrushchev said. And so he wrote a little essay called The Seeing Eye. And he said, think about it, everybody. If there was a God, you wouldn't relate to God the way a person who lives on the first floor

relates to a person who lives on the first floor relates to a person who lives on the second floor. You see, Nikita Khrushchev was actually saying, he was thinking of God as someone who lives on the second floor, and we were down here on earth and we sent a man to the second floor, and there was nobody home. So clearly there's nobody up there. And Lewis says, well, think about it. If there was a God, you wouldn't relate to him the way a person on the second floor relates to the third floor.

You would relate to him the way Shakespeare relates to Hamlet. See Shakespeare created Hamlet. And the only way Hamlet can know anything about Shakespeare is that Shakespeare writes something about himself into the play. Hamlet is not going to find anything out about Shakespeare by going up into the rafters of the stage and looking upstairs Only if Shakespeare, how do you say it? Only if the creator by revelation reveals something to the creature You only know something about your creator if he reveals if he writes something into the world into the play and

then Lewis said But God did something better than just write some information in. Dorothy L. Sayers was a woman who lived some years ago and she was the first, one of the first woman who ever graduated from Oxford and she was a writer of mystery detective stories. And her most famous character was Lord Peter Wimsey, who was an aristocrat, who solved mysteries. And in the middle of all these novels and short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, who was a single man for most,

for a big period of time, suddenly a woman appears in the novels. Her name is Harriet Vane. She's not very particularly good looking. She's one of the first women who ever graduated from Oxford. She's a writer of detective fiction. And she and Peter meet and they solve a couple of mysteries and then they fall in love and live happily ever after.

And many people have said that Dorothy Sayers looked They saw a couple of mysteries and then they fall in love and live happily ever after. And many people have said that Dorothy Sayers looked into the world she created and looked to the man that she created and fell in love with him and wrote herself into the story because she saw he was lonely and he needed someone to save him. And so she wrote herself into the story and they lived happily ever after. Isn't that sweet? Isn't that moving? Isn't that moving? Of course it's moving.

And yet God has actually done that. The doctrine of Christmas, the teaching of Christmas, is the love who created the world and who created us and who knows that we've gone astray and we've gone away from him and we're in a mess. He looks, God has looked into the world that He created and He has looked at us, the main character in the world, human race, and He has loved us. And He wrote Himself into the play. He wrote Himself into our lives.

That's why He was born in a manger. And He came to save us, to live the life we should have lived, to die the death we should have died in our place. There is a barrier between us and God, and as everybody knows, when you wrong someone, there's a barrier in that relationship. God has to deal with, God had to deal with it, and that's how we came. Love is not just a chemical reaction or a chemical response. We know it's not. We talk about love, when we talk about love, we talk about forever. How love you forever, which is silly. Why don't we just say, I love you till I die or you die.

But we don't feel that way. We feel like our love is going to let, why do we feel that way? Because love is not a thing originally from time and space. It's come into the world. It's come from somewhere else. Christmas proves that. Lastly, Christmas means salvation by grace, fellowship with God as possible.

Love matters, really does, and lastly, it means joy. Notice the last word, the last pass it phrase. I'm writing you all this about the incarnation. I want you to believe this to make our joy complete. When I, Cathy, I only have ever owned one home in our whole lives. You know, we rent here but we own to home when we lived in Philadelphia in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the Rosalyn, Abington area, and we lived on the side of a hill, or kind of a small mountain, so it was a pretty steep incline.

And it was a good house, and we had upstairs downstairs in a basement. But the one thing that really puzzled us was how wet and damp the basement always was. Whenever it rained, it would actually fill up with water. It was a real problem. But even when it was dry, in fact, even when it was a drought on, and everybody was parched, and it was hot,

and the grass had turned brown because there had been no rain. Even when it was incredibly dry and hot in the weather, it was always damp down there. Always wet and damp and mildewy. Couldn't figure it out. And then finally, one of our neighbors who lived their all his life said, oh, the real estate people don't tell you about this. No offense real estate people, but there are people like that

through it in your field. The real estate people don't tell you about that. There's a subterranean river that comes, it's underground, and it runs down the side of the mountain, and it goes right under the house. Our water table is like this, it's just underneath your, the basement and of course when there's any kind of rain the water just rises up and comes into your building but even when there's no rain, even when it's dry upstairs you might say up in on the earth,

underneath it's always, always, always moist and cold and wet because there's a river down there. If you believed everything I've told you about Christmas, if you believed it with all your heart, if you really knew it, it would be a subterranean river of joy that was always there keeping you cool when the circumstance of your life were hot and parched. keeping you cool when the circumstances of your life were hot and parched. If you think of it like this, until Christmas, here was the ideal and here was the real. Here's the ideal. Heaven, bliss, happiness, eternity, immortality, and down here's the real suffering, death, limitation, brokenness. And between the ideal and the real was this concrete slab, reality at Christmas in the incarnation.

God punched a hole. Punched a hole in that concrete slab between the ideal and the real and the ideal became real. And the ideal came down into our lives and into this world and is going to change everything eventually. That can be a subterranean river of joy in your life that keeps you cool, keeps you going. Even when everything else is pretty bad in your life.

Christmas means all these things. Christmas means so much. Think about it, Let's pray. Our Father, we're grateful to you that we don't just have to feel good at Christmas in a general way, and it wears off. We can think about what Christmas really means, and that can be an anchor to our souls, and it can be a subterranean river of joy, and it can be great, a great thing for us. We ask that Christmas, you might help us to think out all that it means so that we can have the joy and have the fellowship and have the grace

and have the love that Christmas points to. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you have a deeper understanding of God's Word. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at GospelOnLife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel On Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other resources. Again, it's all at GospelOnLife.com. This month's sermons were recorded from 1994 to 1997.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was seen your pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. you