What Makes Christmas So Controversial?
00:00:00.000 | [intro music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, Christmas is nearly here and it's a great season to reflect on our
00:00:09.040 | anointed King who entered into human history.
00:00:12.720 | Fully God, fully man, God with us. He came for us. Jesus came not to be
00:00:18.640 | served, but to serve. To serve us. Which means
00:00:23.920 | Christmas fundamentally highlights our neediness.
00:00:27.360 | But what are we needy for? That's the million dollar question of Christmas.
00:00:32.080 | Pastor John answered the question in his 2003 Christmas sermon titled,
00:00:37.120 | "If the root is holy, the branches are holy."
00:00:40.400 | Here's what he said building from Romans chapter 11
00:00:43.760 | verses 13 and 14. One of the follies of trying to turn the
00:00:51.840 | gospel into a way of meeting felt needs in 21st century America
00:00:58.080 | is that the three main needs that the gospel meets are felt by almost
00:01:03.680 | nobody. Right here in our text there's an explosive word at the center of the
00:01:09.440 | gospel. It's the word "save" or "saved."
00:01:14.400 | "Now I am speaking to you Gentiles inasmuch as
00:01:19.680 | then I am an apostle to the Gentiles. I magnify
00:01:23.120 | my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews
00:01:27.760 | jealous and thus save some of them." The loud, joyful,
00:01:34.880 | glorious word at the center of the gospel is
00:01:38.480 | "saved." It's what Christmas is all about, right?
00:01:43.040 | "Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be to all the people.
00:01:48.480 | For unto you this day in the city of David
00:01:51.840 | is born a Savior." We need to be saved. You shall call His name Jesus
00:01:59.600 | because He will save His people from their sins.
00:02:04.880 | Right at the center of the meaning of Christmas
00:02:08.160 | and the meaning of the gospel is "saved." So, is that one of the felt needs in
00:02:14.960 | America in the 21st century? People wake up in
00:02:18.880 | the morning, "I need to be saved." Go to bed at night, "I need to be
00:02:23.600 | saved." Well, it depends, right? Depends on what you mean by "saved."
00:02:31.120 | Saved from what? You need to be saved from financial
00:02:34.000 | difficulty. Yeah, that would help. So, that's not an
00:02:39.200 | obvious answer. Is that a felt need in America?
00:02:45.040 | To be saved? So, let's clarify the three main
00:02:52.160 | things that the gospel does in saving. If you want to go with me and
00:02:58.400 | see them, chapter 5 of the book of Romans. I don't
00:03:02.640 | want to fill up this word "saved" with just my
00:03:05.440 | evangelical jargon or my history as a born-again Christian. I want to get it
00:03:11.840 | right from the Bible. I want to know what the Bible means by
00:03:15.280 | "saved." So, let's start at verse 9, Romans 5, "Since therefore we have now
00:03:23.360 | been justified by His blood, much more shall we be
00:03:28.800 | saved by Him from the wrath of God." There's need number one,
00:03:36.480 | met in Jesus. The wrath of God is our biggest problem. If it didn't exist,
00:03:44.320 | we wouldn't need the gospel. I need to be rescued from the just
00:03:49.520 | and holy anger of God against me. That's my main need.
00:03:57.360 | Salvation from the anger and wrath of omnipotent God
00:04:04.240 | against me. Let's keep reading. "For if while we were enemies," verse 10,
00:04:11.760 | "we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now, having been
00:04:15.440 | reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we
00:04:20.400 | also rejoice now in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
00:04:28.000 | saved from the wrath of God and saved for joy in God forevermore."
00:04:36.560 | One of the deepest needs every human soul has,
00:04:40.960 | they do not know it, is to be happy in something bigger than
00:04:47.600 | anything this world can offer. Everybody knows they want to be happy.
00:04:52.880 | Hardly anybody knows where it's to be found
00:04:55.920 | and what they're designed for and what that deep craving is all about
00:04:59.840 | in their hearts. And it's all about God. We try to fix it with money and sex and
00:05:05.680 | television and leisure and success, power, family, health,
00:05:11.280 | exercise, anything. And it's all about God. So this text says we're reconciled
00:05:19.200 | after the wrath is taken care of. Now we're reconciled in order that we
00:05:23.760 | might rejoice in God. There is one third
00:05:29.600 | need. And I'll just go back to Matthew 1.21 that I quoted a minute ago.
00:05:34.400 | "You will call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their
00:05:39.120 | sin." Not simply the consequences of sin and wrath,
00:05:44.400 | but the poison of sin and the distorting, contaminating, idolatrous,
00:05:50.880 | ugliness of sin that ruins everything in life
00:05:54.480 | and makes me love stuff more than I love God. I need to be cleansed
00:06:02.320 | of all of that. Not just freed from its consequences.
00:06:06.720 | I need the disease to be taken away, not just a rescue from the consequences of
00:06:12.960 | its death and wrath. So those are the three
00:06:15.840 | things the gospel is designed to do. The gospel saves me from the wrath of
00:06:20.320 | God. The gospel cleanses me from the idolatrous, poisonous, all-distorting
00:06:27.120 | sin that makes me love other things more than God.
00:06:30.480 | And the gospel opens access into, by reconciliation,
00:06:34.880 | a sweet, deep, ever-increasing, all-satisfying
00:06:39.360 | joy in my Maker forever. There is not a word here about "save from
00:06:45.440 | poverty." There is not a word about "save from
00:06:49.120 | sickness." Not a word about "save from terrorism."
00:06:54.000 | Not a word about "save from obscurity." Not a word about "save from rejection
00:07:00.480 | from men." Not a word about "save from having your
00:07:03.840 | daughter kidnapped and killed." Don't misunderstand me. I believe if
00:07:09.520 | you trust Jesus, many things in your lives
00:07:14.480 | go better. They just might not, because it's not guaranteed. That's not
00:07:22.000 | part of the gospel. Eventually, everything goes better.
00:07:27.920 | New bodies, fellowship with Jesus, all sin taken away,
00:07:33.040 | justice reigning in the earth, that's coming.
00:07:36.560 | But between now and the coming of Jesus or our death,
00:07:40.480 | the gospel guarantees three things. My sin being progressively cleansed away,
00:07:48.480 | my guilt and the wrath of God being totally taken away,
00:07:52.720 | and an ever-increasing intimacy with God, my Father,
00:07:58.080 | so that my soul is satisfied in Him when everything else around my soul
00:08:03.840 | gives way. So, are those three things felt as needs
00:08:11.600 | by American 21st century people? Not most of them. Most of them have God
00:08:18.400 | in their back pocket, not with flaming fire over their head in
00:08:22.160 | anger. Most of them love their sin, not hate it,
00:08:27.600 | fear it, run from it. Most of them have plenty of delights,
00:08:33.920 | but not in God. And they're not getting up and going to bed, seeking any solution
00:08:40.080 | to these three problems, which is why the preaching of the gospel is hard work.
00:08:45.680 | It is impossible work. If my job were to meet felt needs,
00:08:52.880 | I would not need the Holy Spirit. I know what your felt needs are, and I
00:08:57.520 | can make you feel really good by stroking them. You all
00:09:01.600 | are vain. So, if I tell you that you look really
00:09:04.960 | nice this morning, you'll like me, and you'll come back to
00:09:09.520 | this church and probably give. Everybody wants to be seen as smart and
00:09:14.560 | intelligent. So, if I tell you you're smart and intelligent,
00:09:18.080 | we'd grow a big church. It's easy to meet felt needs.
00:09:24.320 | It takes no God, no Holy Spirit, no gospel. What's the hardest thing in the world is
00:09:30.880 | to wake the dead, open the eyes of the blind, give ears to
00:09:36.400 | the spiritually deaf, give legs of faith to the
00:09:41.200 | lame of unbelief. I can't do that. You wonder why I pray before I preach?
00:09:48.880 | If God doesn't do something right now, I'm just
00:09:51.680 | batting my lips. Wow, that is a powerful excerpt from an old Pastor John sermon
00:09:57.840 | from 2003 titled, "If the root is holy, the branches
00:10:02.400 | are holy." I love that excerpt that the gospel saves
00:10:06.160 | me from the wrath of God. The gospel cleanses me from the
00:10:10.080 | idolatrous, poisonous, all-distorting sin that makes me love
00:10:14.720 | other things more than God. And the gospel opens access into, by
00:10:19.520 | reconciliation, a sweet, deep, ever-increasing, all-satisfying joy
00:10:24.800 | in my Maker forever. Amen. Christmas aims right at those three
00:10:32.000 | massive, unfelt needs, unfelt in the flesh,
00:10:35.120 | felt only by the grace of God. It's so good.
00:10:38.320 | Well, we are going to return on Christmas night, I think it is.
00:10:42.160 | And, you know, the hymn "Joy to the World" has this line about
00:10:45.680 | preparing hymn room, you know, preparing for Christ to enter
00:10:49.760 | into our lives. So what does it mean to receive Jesus Christ?
00:10:54.880 | That is a very fitting question for Christmas night,
00:10:58.960 | and that's when we return on the podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:02.880 | We'll see you then.
00:11:05.680 | [Music]
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