Transcript
Tim Keller (0:04)
Thanks for listening to Gospel and Life. Today, Tim Keller is teaching on the surprising expectation, defying and surpassingly hopeful meaning of the Christmas story. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for email updates. Now, here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller.
Reader (possibly a church member or assistant) (0:29)
A reading from the book of Isaiah, chapter 1111, verses 1 through 10 a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness, the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat. The calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear. Their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. As the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. The Word of the Lord.
Tim Keller (2:21)
Thanks. Now each week what we're doing is we're looking at a passage in December, we are looking at a passage out of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is an Old Testament prophecy prophetic book that often prophesied the Messiah, a great messianic king being born into the world out of the line of Jesse or out of the line of David. There's a whole lot of prophecies and because Christians believe that the messianic king that Isaiah prophesied was Jesus. At Christmas, we often look at these passages because and we're off. They're often read. Some of them have already been read today because we believe they help us understand the depths and the richness of the meaning of Christmas, because it helps us understand who Jesus is. The themes of Christmas, if grasped, are Life transforming. So let's look at three of those right now that we find in this passage. This is telling us about a great king that's going to be born. Three things about the king. The justice of the king, the wisdom of the king, and the identity of the king. The justice, the wisdom, the identity. Look at the passage with me. First of all, the justice. Take a look at the middle part here. It says in verse four, with righteousness he will judge the needy. With justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. At first sight, when it says he's going to judge the needy, the way that comes out in English, usually to judge someone means to condemn them. That's not what it means. It literally means he will make things just for the needy, he will put things right, he will make the crooked straight. And when it says he will give decisions for the poor of the earth, again, it doesn't come out as well. In English, the word poor, there is a word that means downtrodden people without power. And to say he will give decisions for them, what it actually means is he's going to stand in their place and exercise his power. He's the great equalizer. He's going to identify with the poor and give decisions on their behalf and use his power to make things right again for them. Now, at this point, you're getting the impression that this is going to be an enlightened civil servant, you know, some king who will come in and create more social justice. And that's great. But then the passage sort of bursts the banks, you know, the water comes up and floods everything. Because then it says, look in verse six, very famous verses, the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The infant will play near the cobra's den. The young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain. And this poetry is saying that this king is not just going to make the world a little bit better. He's going to get rid of death, he's going to get rid of disease, he's going to get rid of violence, he's going to get rid of suffering. He's going to make everything right. Now, what's this mean? Christmas actually sheds some light on this, and that is that here we're told that this king is going to care about the poor and identify with the poor. But it's not till Christmas Day that we know the lengths to which this king will identify with the poor. Because Christmas means that the Son of God was born into a poor family. Remember his parents, when they went to get him circumcised at the temple, gave two birds as the sacrifice. That was, you know, back in those days, that the sacrifice you gave depended on your income. That was from the. The poorest people gave two birds. He was born into the poorest of families. He did not come as a general or as a philosopher, but as a carpenter's son. And look at his priorities. When he ministered, he didn't just preach the gospel. He also fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead. So what's that mean for us? We want to be in the spirit of Christmas. What does that mean? It means, among many other things, that that has to be our priority too. That not only must we be concerned about the poor, but we can't do it from afar. Jesus didn't come from afar. He didn't commute in to help the poor. He participated. And in some non paternalistic, non patronizing way, we as a church, as an institution need to figure out how to come alongside and be involved with the life of the poor. Many individual Christians need to individually and personally become deeply involved with the lives of the poor coming alongside, non paternalistically, non patronizing. Because that's what Jesus did. We can't go into this anymore. We don't. It's a big subject. We can't talk anymore about it. But the Christmas points us in that direction. So first we see the justice of the King. Now the second Christmas theme that we see in here is the wisdom of the King. That's also a very important theme. Look up a little closer to the top. It says, the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, this messianic king, and he will have a spirit of wisdom and of understanding. He'll have a spirit of counsel and of might. Notice, along with the might goes counsel. And that word counsel does mean wisdom, just like the first two. It means not only does he have the power to do what should be done, but he knows exactly what to do. He knows the best way to get it done, as well as having the power to get it done. Then it also says, notice he will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears. That's another metaphor for wisdom. Why? Because if you just think back on all the. Think of your most stupid choices in life, the most foolish things you've ever done, and almost always was because you Went on appearances. It looked good, they looked good, he looked good, she looked good, everything seemed fine. And you didn't have the wisdom to penetrate down to the reality and see. But see, this one has perfect wisdom. Now, the wisdom, the wisdom of Jesus, the wisdom of God is one of the major themes at Christmas too. Because when you take a look at the Christmas passages, one of the things that's always part of the Christmas story is those wise men. What is that up? What's up with that? The wise men, they come and they, they bow down, they offer gifts. It's a metaphor. It happened, of course, but it was also a metaphor for this theme, that the wisdom of the world pales before the wisdom of God and that especially in Jesus Christ's plan of salvation, the way in which God saved the world through Jesus, which began at Christmas, the wisdom of the world is seen to be foolishness because Christmas in particular, but actually all of Christ's career. But at Christmas we see a violation of the paradigms of the world's wisdom, an affront. Everything that Jesus does turns the wisdom of the world on its head. Let me just give you two examples, two of the world's wisdom paradigms that Christmas is an affront to. It's a violation of, first of all, Christmas. And the way in which God brings Jesus in the world, the way in which salvation works is an affront to the world's understanding of success, its paradigm of success. Kathy and those of you who heard this the first time, actually I got the story wrong. So Kathy has helped me with this. My wife Kathy, years ago heard a talk or a Christian sermon or a talk by a guy who was trying to get across, the speaker was trying to get across how the wisdom of God is different than the wisdom of the world he had actually seen at a football, he was at a football game, packed stadium, and at halftime, the Blue Angels, which is a Navy aeronautical acrobatic squadron, these are Navy pilots, crack Navy pilots who do all sorts of, you know, death defying feats in, in, in jets. At one point they sort of dove, you know, toward each other. One of the things that the Blue Angels do is they look like they're about to crash and then they pull up at the last minute and this was all over the, the football stadium. And then when they were all done, they helicoptered them, the pilots, into the 50 yard line and they jumped out and they were in these incredible suits with, they were silver and blue and they had a zipper from here to here. And everybody roared and cheered 50,000 people. And the speaker says, okay, if you're the son of God, you want to come to earth? That's how you do it, right? That's how we would do it. That's not how God did it at all. You know, urine smell, feed trough, stable, poor parents. Or let me put a fine point on it. How does strategic planning work? Well, in strategic planning, you get everybody together and you put up on the board your end state, your vision. What are you trying to achieve? What is the end state you're trying to achieve? And once you've identified where you want to go, then you start to strategize, how will we get there? Now imagine that you bring your best friends together and you say, we want to have a strategic planning meeting. And your friends come together and you say, okay, I really want to be successful, very successful in life, and I want you to help me to strategically plan for it. I say, okay, well, what's the end state? So let's just say you put up on the board. I want to be so successful that 2,000 years from now, everybody in the world virtually knows my name. Okay, put that up there. Secondly, I would like a quarter of all the people in the world 2000 years from now to center their entire lives on me. Okay? And thirdly, I would like my teaching to be seen 2000 years from now as the single most important body of thought in the history of the world. And I would like to have two or three major civilizations based on my person and my work and my teaching. Okay, 2,000 years from now. Well, that's pretty successful, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. Okay, so how do we get there? So you start strategically planning. Would you put up things like this? Would you say, well, make sure you're born and you spend your entire life basically in small, out of the way villages. Never go, you know, don't have a career in a major city or major urban area or cultural center. Make sure you stay totally, totally outside of any networks of economic, political, social or academic power. In fact, make sure you don't know anybody in those networks. And then lastly, just as you're beginning your career, get executed in disgrace. Would you put those things up? Nobody, nobody would put those things up. But that was on God's strategic plan planning board. Because why? Because the wisdom of God makes the wisdom of the world looks foolish. And in the wisdom of the world, the wisdom of God is foolish. But God's wisdom wins.