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- [00:05]
Tim Keller
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.
- [00:29]
Narrator
Tonight's scripture comes from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 35, 1:10 the desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom like the crocus it will burst into bloom. It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way. Say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, do not fear your God will come. He will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow, and a highway will be there. It will be called the Way of Holiness. It will be for those who walk on that way. The unclean will not journey on it wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast. They will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there. And those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. This is the word of the Lord.
- [02:28]
Tim Keller
The Book of Isaiah is filled with prophecies about a future Messianic age brought by a future messianic king who would put all things right. And because Christians believe that that Messianic king was Jesus, who was born at Christmas, what we've been doing during the month of December is we've been looking some of these prophecies about the future Messiah in the Book of Isaiah because it helps us begin to grasp the richness of what Christmas means and who it was that was born in the manger. Now, we've each week looked at a different one of these passages and therefore a different theme or different, you might say, take on Christmas today. Tonight, the theme which is actually a more Important theme in Christmas stories than you might think is home and exile. Or maybe I should say exile and home. Let's take a look at the text itself, this passage. Let's just walk through it, then see what that tells us about Christmas, then see what that means for how we live our lives. So what the text means, what Christmas means, and what it means for how we actually live our lives. All right. First. First, like I said, let's just walk right through the text. Verses 1 and 2 says, the desert and the parched lands will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it. The splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord. Now this is saying, someday the glory of the Lord will so come to pass that the actual natural order will be renewed. When it says the desert and parched land, the wilderness will blossom, it means there won't be deserts anymore. We're talking about a real change, a renewal in the world. The images of Lebanon, Carmel and Sharon. Lebanon was a place of great soul fertility. Sharon was a place of great physical beauty. Carmel represented orderliness. These different countries or lands had these traits. But we're saying here, he's saying that when the glory of the Lord shows up, everything will be. The soil will be perfectly fertile, the landscape will be absolutely beautiful. There won't be any deserts anymore. You'll have a renewed world, which we looked at somewhat last week in Isaiah 11, where it says, the lion will lie down with the Lamb, and so on. So here we're talking about a future renewed world. And then how's it going to happen? It says in verse 3 and 4, your God will come. Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come. He will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He will come to save you. Now this is saying that the reason why this is going to happen is God himself is going to come to earth. Now you might say, well, isn't God already here? Isn't God present everywhere? Yes, he's invisibly present, and he's also resistibly present. That is to say, he's present in the world. But it's possible to resist him. You can disobey him. You can be evil. Plenty of people are. But this is talking about a day in which God is visibly present and irresistibly present, that all evil, all corruption, everything that's bad or wrong will be ended, will be put down. And in that day it says, then will the eyes of the blind be opened. Verse 5 to 7, the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Does that sound familiar? Do you know the Isaac Watts hymn? Hear him, ye deaf, his praise ye dumb, Your loosened tongues employ ye blind, Behold your Savior Come and leap, ye lame, for joy. That's a versification of what this is talking about. A time in which there won't be blindness anymore, There won't be lameness anymore. There won't be disease, there won't be aging, there won't be death. Now, finally, the end of this wonderful passage says, only the redeemed will walk there. Those the Lord has rescued will return. And that word return means come home, to come home out of exile. Now, this is the theme and one of the great themes of the Bible. How so? Well, if you look at the history of Israel, which is a big part of what the Bible's about, you'll see exile and homecoming constantly. Israel is exiled to Egypt and then is brought home to their homeland. And later on, it's Israel is exiled to Babylon, and then they're brought home to their homeland. But even when they come back to their homeland, then when they're under Roman occupation, you know, in the time of Jesus, even though Jews lived in their geographic homeland, there was a lot of talk about still being in exile because they were under Roman oppression. They were enslaved, see, in their own land. And therefore home wasn't home. They still really weren't home. But if you stand back and look at the whole Bible from first to last, you begin to realize that the story of Israel is actually a kind of small version of the story of the whole human race. Because in the beginning of the Bible, Genesis, we see Adam and Eve, we see the human race losing their home. They were made for the Garden of Eden. The world was this paradise. But because we turned away from God, we lost it. And at the end of the book of the Bible, which is the end of the book of Revelation, at the end, we see God recreating that Garden of Eden, the garden city of God coming down out of heaven. And therefore, here is the teaching of the Bible, every human being is actually in exile. Spiritually, we are homeless. Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to be spiritually homeless, spiritually in exile? Well, if we're going to come to grips with what the Bible says about exile, we probably need to come to grips with what home is. What does it mean to be home? You know. You know, the term a house is not a home. And many of you know that, especially if you live in New York, because when you move to a new house or to a new apartment, it takes quite a while to make that place a home. Oh, you have a roof over your head, you got a bed to sleep in, you got a place to fix and eat your meals. But home is where everything fits, where everything is the way you want it, where everything suits you, where things are the. Where they want you want them to be. Years ago, when Kathy and I were in our first church in Hopewell, Virginia, there was a family in our church who were all very tall. The husband and the wife were both six feet tall. And they had four children, two girls, two boys. And they were all, even in their teenage years, all like 6ft tall or close to it. And they built their house. They built a house, their dream house. And I remember first going over to their house, they invited us out and you know, for me, I'm six four. If you were six foot something, it was an amazing place. They built the house to suit them. So the silverware drawers were right where they should be right here, which was basically eye level. For my wife, it was just barely five foot something, just barely. In fact, I don't think there's any something. And the cabinets, the cabinets were, they went, you know, the roof went to like, you know, there were like nine or ten foot ceilings and they brought the cabinets way up there. And it was incredible storage space. But only they could reach them and I could reach them. What they had done was they created a place that really fit them. Why do you think it wears you down to be on the road? When you're traveling, you're sleeping in a bed, aren't you? You've got a roof over your head, you got places to eat, but it's not your bed, it doesn't fit you. Home is a place where you arrange things. So home is a harbor. Home is a place of restoration. Home is a place that doesn't drain you, it nourishes you, it strengthens, because everything is the way that fits it suits you. A homeland or a home place is a place where you don't have to struggle to understand the language of people and where the landscape just delights you and where maybe even the food and the customs make sense to you. And literal homelessness is brutalizing. To literally be homeless, to be literally sleeping in the street and on the park benches, and that sort of thing is destructive to you physically. You're wearing down emotionally. Now, Martin Heidegger, famous 20th century German philosopher, says that modern people in particular Human beings are characterized by what he called Unheimlichkeit, which means we're living in a world that doesn't fit our deepest desires. We all feel homeless. We're characterized by a sense that this world doesn't fit us. We're basically out of place. We're alienated. Why? The biblical answer to that is Psalm 90, where it says God has been our dwelling place from all generations. Isn't that kind of interesting? Psalm 90 calls God our dwelling place. And there's another Isaac Watts hymn that talks about that. God is our eternal home. Oh, God, our help in ages past. You know, he says, in our eternal home, the Bible says God is your home. What does that mean? It means that we were built. We were originally designed, you can see it in the book of Genesis, to serve God, to love God, to be so delighted in his beauty that we serve him just for the joy of doing it. And that's what we're built for. And if we're doing anything else, it doesn't really fit what we're designed to do. If you live for anything more than God, if you're. You may believe in God, but if your career or your family or some political cause, anything else is more important than God. What you're doing is you're turning something that's not. Not a real home into home. And it can't bear up the weight of your soul. And it's spiritually like living in a box in a New York City park in the dead of winter. They're good things, but they're not home. And because we don't center on him, because he isn't the most important thing to us, and yet we were built for that. We experience Unheimlichkeit. And we're not talking here, by the way, just about psychological, inward. Oh, no, you know, this world is no longer our home. That's what the Book of Genesis is about. It says, in our primeval origins, human beings were made for paradise, were made for the Garden of Eden. But because we decided we were going to be our own masters, we were going to be our own lords, we were going to be our own saviors. We're going to call those thoughts ourselves. We lost home. And that's not so surprising. When you violate a relationship, you're expelled from that relationship. You violate a relationship, you betray somebody, you turn on them, you use them for your own ends, what happens? You're expelled. You lose that place. You lose it. And so we were told, we're told by the Bible that we have lost Home. And this world is not the place God designed anymore because we turned from him. What's happened to the world we were not built for? A world in which there was death. And you know that. We're not built for a world in which there's aging and there's withering and there's disease and there's blindness and lameness and deafness. No, we weren't. Now secular people would say, of course we were. We weren't built for. I mean, of course we were. You know, we're the product of natural selection. Nature is red in truth and claw. But you know, better. Dylan Thomas is right. We rage against the dying of the light. This world is not our home. This world doesn't fit our deepest desires. It doesn't suit us. It doesn't fit us. And therefore we're in exile. Every one of us, internally and externally. But all the pages of the Old Testament are wrestling with the promise that the Messiah will come and take us home. And the New Testament says, Jesus is that Messiah. And he comes back twice. And the first time he came, he began to heal our homelessness. But when he comes back at the end, and this is what this is describing, he will make this world home again. You say, how? How could he do. How will he do that? And the answer is Christmas. See, now we're looking at Christmas because here's what we see in Christmas. Do you realize now how much one of the themes of Christmas is homelessness and exile and brutality and rejection? We've sentimentalized. Now, look, I don't want to make you laugh, even though some of you will at certain points, you know, because we so often do the Nativity scene, you know, we kind of. We recreate the Nativity, the tableau of Nativity, you know, at Christmas. And we do it for children. We have really, really, really sentimentalized and sanitized the story. And now go. We have is. We have songs like the Little Lord Jesus Asleep on the Hay. Aw. You know, this hay is very sweet smelling and soft and there's furry animals all around Jesus and, you know, it's kind of nice. I'm so glad we were out here in this time instead of in the motel. You know, that is not the story.
- [16:46]
From everyone here at Gospel and Life. We want to thank you for the ways you've partnered with us in 2024. We're so grateful for your faithful prayers, for your generous gifts, and for how you've shared our resources to live out the gospel missionally. And we rejoice in the stories We've heard this year from people who have been renewed by the gospel teaching they've received through our podcast, YouTube video radio broadcast and other resources. God is using your gifts to bring the transformative story of the gospel to people around the world. Looking ahead to 2025, we believe God is opening up new opportunities for us to spread the message of Christ's love. As we approach the end of December, we invite you to prayerfully consider making a year end gift to gospel and life. Your support helps us to move into the new year with the resources we need to share the story of the gospel all over the world, making it possible for more people to discover the life changing reality of Christ's redeeming love. To make a year end gift today, go to gospelandlife.com give that's gospelinlife.com give because the gospel truly changes everything. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's message.
- [18:01]
You know the story, first of all, the story is that Jesus was born on the road. He wasn't. They weren't home, they weren't in Nazareth. They were on the road. They had to go to Bethlehem, the census and all that. So first of all, he was on. He was born on the road. He wasn't even at home, but he wasn't even born in a house because there were no places that are open to them. See, we always forget that in the Nativity. There's always a sense in which we almost think that Mary and Joseph and Jesus were traveling and then they had to sleep in a stable. No, no, Mary gave birth in the stable. See, here's the reality. The reality is door slam. And suddenly Mary says to Joseph, Joseph, I think it's coming. Joseph says, what here? Now let's go into the stable. All right. You know, it's dark, it's cold, it's terrible. And this 14 year old girl gives birth amongst the, you know, in the urine and the manure. I talked to a pediatrician, said, you know, there's some terrible things, terrible things that children can get from cows, infant children can get from cows and animals. There's some terrible things out there. But he was laid in a feed trough. See, we have sanitized the nativity, but it's the most unsanitary thing possible. You know, we just think, you know, it's the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. But don't forget before that, blood screaming, the mother screaming, labor sweat, no epidurals, nobody in rubber gloves. See, the whole idea of an unwed young teenage Unwed mother who, because she's having this child and is clearly pregnant. Her village knew she was pregnant before she was married. She's going to be rejected. She's going to have a social stigma on her entire life. And she gets here and she has to give birth out there in the urine, with the urine and the manure and put the child. It's supposed to break your heart. It's supposed to make you weep. It's not sweet. And it's a symbol of what? It's a symbol of the hardness of the world. It's a symbol of the radical inhospitableness of the world to our deepest desires. Jesus was not just born on the road away from home. He wasn't even born in a house. But the reason Christmas is so brutal and you see rejection and you see all that is because that's why Jesus came. That's how this Messiah is going to bring us his salvation. Christmas was just the beginning of it. It was just a foreshadowing of the rest of his life. What's the rest of his life? He's not only born away from home and born without a house. Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58. Jesus says this when he comes up in multiple places in the gospel. That means he probably said it more than once. Foxes have holes, he said, the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of man has no place to lay his head. He was born homeless, he lived homeless. And at the end of his life, he went to the cross. Now, what happened up there? Do you know what was going on there? He didn't just say, my God, my God, I'm hurting. He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In the book of Leviticus, we're told that at Yom Kippur, one of the things the Israelites used to do to, you know, the day in which they recognized their sin and asked God to forgive their sin, they used to lay hands. They used to lay hands on a goat and confess their sins. It was a symbolic way of transferring their sins to the goat. And then what happened to the goat? It was called a scapegoat. What happened to the goat? It was driven out of the community. Why? As we said, the penalty for sin is always expulsion. The penalty for wronging people, for harming people, for putting yourself first, for betraying people, for exploiting people. What happens? You're out of the community, you're out of the relationship. It's just a natural consequence. And because we turned away from God, we have been turned out. We are homeless. But Jesus Christ came to earth, experienced homelessness, and at the very end of his life, went to the cross. What was he doing? He was being expelled. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He was crucified outside the gate. One more time. He was born outside the door, and now he's crucified outside the city, outside the community. He's the scapegoat. He's being expelled. He's getting the cosmic homelessness that we deserve so we can be brought in. He's. He left the ultimate home in heaven. The ultimate home. He was in the Godhead glory heaven, but he came into the darkness and the coldness so that we could be brought into the light. He experienced absolute and utter aloneness so that we can be given the love of God that we'll never lose. Why? Because God came to earth in order to satisfy his own justice, in order to take the punishment we deserve. To take the curse that we deserve. How do you think he'll be able to come back on the last day? Look at that. Where it says in verse four, he will come with vengeance. He will come with retribution, divine retribution, to save you. Why aren't we all destroyed? Because those who believe in him that what he did at Christmas and especially what he did on the cross was become homeless so that we could be saved, so that we could be forgiven. That means at the end of time, he will be able to end evil without ending us. He'll be able to come and put down all evil, but at the same time save us. Why? Because he took the divine retribution himself for us. What does Christmas mean? I live in a city, and so do you, where many people put up with Christmas. Generally, not everybody, but most people put up with Christmas even though they don't really believe it happened. They say, well, Christmas story, we don't believe it all literally happened. But it's a very inspiring story. I like to hear it because it's an. I don't believe it really literally happened, but it's an inspiring story. I'd like to ask you a question. What in the world if this story isn't true? It's just inspiring. What does it inspire you to do? Would you please tell me what's inspiring about this story? What does it inspire you to do? Have your children outdoors? I mean, seriously, an inspiring story means. Well, we're inspired to live. Like who? Like what? What in this story is good? What in this story makes you aspire to be a better person? There's nothing in this story unless it happened. If it didn't happen, it means nothing. But if it happened, if God became homeless so that we could be brought home, all the difference in the world. And that leads us to the last point, the difference. What difference does this make if this is what Christmas is about? Home from exile. Well, there's four at least. Let me just give you four practical things that you need to keep in mind. Number one, if Jesus Christ only saved us through rough handling by being handled roughly, he came to earth and he became weak and, you know, and he gave up his rights and he gave up his glory and he gave up his rights to self determination. You know, it says in Philippians 2, which is another, which is a great passage to read on Christmas. It says, even though he was equal with God, he didn't hold on to it. But he came to earth and he humbled himself and took on human flesh and became a servant. See, he didn't, you know, he didn't stay in charge. He didn't stay, you know, in the driver's seat. He became a servant. He gave up his rights. He gave up his glory. Believe it or not, that's the only way. That's how he saved us. That's the only way for you and me to connect to that salvation. See, other religions basically say the way you're saved is you summons up your strength and you live a good life. Then God blesses you. Christmas actually tells you that Christianity says the opposite. We could never rise up. God had to come down. He had to come down and do what we could not do for ourselves. He comes down and he becomes weak. And through rough handling and rejection and being brutalized, he saves us. Now the only way for you and me to connect to that salvation is to do really the same thing. It's called repentance. It's not. Repentance and faith is not getting yourself together and pulling yourself together and living a better life and then God will bless you. No, no, no. It's admitting how weak you are. It's admitting you're spiritually bankrupt. It's saying, I'm a sinner and I can't. I have no hope unless you give me your mercy. I have no hope except through your mercy. I have no chips left. I have no leverage left. I give up my rights. I rely on you completely. Now, this world that we live in, especially a secular place like New York City, is all about self esteem. It's all about self promotion. It's all about glamour shots, putting, you know, you Know, it's all about, you know, it's all about Photoshop. You know, you're to make sure you get rid of that little part of your nose that doesn't look so good in reality. And you. I mean, in other words, all. It's. All. It's the opposite. It's not about admitting you're a sinner, looking at all your flaws, looking at all your warts. And therefore, actually, in the world's eyes, when they hear what Christians have to do in order to connect to Jesus, salvation. Repent, admit you're a sinner, give up your rights. It seems brutal. It seems pathological. It seems unhealthy. Well, it is brutal, actually. But it's the brutality of surgery. You can't come to a surgeon and say, I got a problem. I need to be healed, but I don't want you to cut me. I don't want it to be any blood and guts. It doesn't work that way. Surgeons do brutalize you, but they brutalize you so skillfully. They brutalize you only to the degree and only in the way that you need in order to be healed. And repentance is like that. Repentance is brutal. Jesus was brutalized. Repentance is. Is rough handling. You have to handle yourself roughly. And we're told to coddle ourselves and to, you know, always just feel good about ourselves and tell ourselves how great we are. That's not how salvation was accomplished. No, Christmas tells you that. And that's not how salvation is procured. That's not how you connect to it. So, number one, repent. That's the first practical application. Second practical application is be willing to be rejected by people around you because you identify with Jesus. It's intriguing to me. This fall we put a lot of time and effort in helping. You know, we've had this public faith initiative all year, and this fall, we've been talking about how important it is in New York City to be winsome, to be respectful, to be gracious, to be humble, but to identify yourself, to be willing to tell people that you're a Christian, that you identify publicly with Jesus Christ. A lot of people are struggling with this because we're finding out, or maybe we already knew. This is really, really hard because particularly in a place like New York, the risk of rejection is very high. But how can you come to grips with somebody who saved you through profound rejection, more profound than anybody here is going to ever experience. Do you know why he was rejected? Because he identified with you and me, because he identified with Us, he was rejected. Now, how do you respond to someone who saved you through this costly rejection without you being willing to go through some rejection in order to identify with him? I don't know how you do it. We've got to be willing to be public about our faith and risk that rejection. That's the second application. Third application. If Jesus Christ was so concerned about spiritually homeless people, that's us, that he was willing not to commute from heaven, you know, just to bring us fruit baskets at Easter and Christmas, but he was willing to move here and he was willing to come among us and he's willing to identify with us and he was willing to go through what we go through. All I know is literally homeless people, or not even technically homeless people, people who are under housed, people who are marginal, people who are oppressed, people who are poor, people who are people who are living in the parks. I mean, if Jesus Christ was born in a stable, then we should care about the poor and the marginalized. We should identify with them as much as possible. We should be involved with them in non paternalistic ways, but as much as possible involved with them. We should be known for that. And here's the last thing, let me say, just a little slower and a little more direct, what I said earlier. When I moved here 25 years ago, there was a whole lot more people, a lot more homeless people and a lot more homeless people living in parks. In fact, you couldn't go to a park in New York City early in the day because almost every bench there was somebody sleeping on them. Now here's what happens. Parks are wonderful places, but they're not meant for people to be there all around the day. They're there to be there for a while, but you're not supposed to live in them. They can't bear the freight of your entire life. They're not places where you eat and you sleep and you wash and you defecate. That's not a place to do that. Parks are wonderful places, but they can't be home. They're not meant to be home. So when the people were living there, when the homeless people were living there, two things happened. One is they ruined the park. It was a foul place. Secondly, the park ruined them because frankly, that's just not sufficient. You need, you know, people who lived in parks were getting sick, they were wearing down. So the park ruined them and they ruined the park. Now let me ask you this question. I know maybe you believe in God, maybe you are a good person, but what is the main Thing that gives you meaning in life. What is the main source of your significance and security? Is it your career? Is it making money? Is it your art? Is it some individual person, some relationship? Is it family? Whatever it is, if there's anything you love more than God, if there's anything more important to you than God, it's like living in a park. They're good things, but they're not home. And they will not be able to bear the full weight of your soul. They are going to desert you. They are going to disappoint you. They are going to empty you. If you insist on making anything more important than God in your life, existentially, intellectually, every way. It is like living in a park. It is like. You will be like Cain, always wandering and never home. Always winter and never Christmas. Christmas means that the great God Jesus Christ became homeless so that he could make this world a home. And at the very end of time, he will. The new heavens, the new earth, the lion laying down with the lamb. The desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. And when we see it, see when we. If you're the redeemed, only the redeemed will walk there. And those whom the Lord has rescued will return. And you know what we're going to say. I think it's something like what Joel, the unicorn, says at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia when he sees it. He says, at last, I've come home. I belong here. He says, this is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for the promise of homecoming that is there in Christmas. Thank you so much, Father, that you were willing to go to the infinite lengths that you did in order to bring us into your family, into home. And we pray that the humility that the care for the poor, that the fearless public identification of our faith, that our commitment to you and the resetting of our priorities so that you and our relationship with you and your honor and glory become the most important thing in our lives. All these things will come to pass if we take seriously how your son was born and what it means that he was given to us at Christmas. Now, Father, please work in our hearts in all these ways, for we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
- [35:26]
Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We hope you were encouraged by it and that it gives you deeper appreciation for God's grace and helps you apply, apply His Word to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal@gospeloflife.com when you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Today's sermon was preached in 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2016 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.