Well, Christmas is nearly here and it's a great season to reflect on our anointed King who entered into human history. Fully God, fully man, God with us. He came for us. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. To serve us. Which means Christmas fundamentally highlights our neediness.

But what are we needy for? That's the million dollar question of Christmas. Pastor John answered the question in his 2003 Christmas sermon titled, "If the root is holy, the branches are holy." Here's what he said building from Romans chapter 11 verses 13 and 14. One of the follies of trying to turn the gospel into a way of meeting felt needs in 21st century America is that the three main needs that the gospel meets are felt by almost nobody.

Right here in our text there's an explosive word at the center of the gospel. It's the word "save" or "saved." "Now I am speaking to you Gentiles inasmuch as then I am an apostle to the Gentiles. I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them." The loud, joyful, glorious word at the center of the gospel is "saved." It's what Christmas is all about, right?

"Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be to all the people. For unto you this day in the city of David is born a Savior." We need to be saved. You shall call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. Right at the center of the meaning of Christmas and the meaning of the gospel is "saved." So, is that one of the felt needs in America in the 21st century?

People wake up in the morning, "I need to be saved." Go to bed at night, "I need to be saved." Well, it depends, right? Depends on what you mean by "saved." Saved from what? You need to be saved from financial difficulty. Yeah, that would help. So, that's not an obvious answer.

Is that a felt need in America? To be saved? So, let's clarify the three main things that the gospel does in saving. If you want to go with me and see them, chapter 5 of the book of Romans. I don't want to fill up this word "saved" with just my evangelical jargon or my history as a born-again Christian.

I want to get it right from the Bible. I want to know what the Bible means by "saved." So, let's start at verse 9, Romans 5, "Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." There's need number one, met in Jesus.

The wrath of God is our biggest problem. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't need the gospel. I need to be rescued from the just and holy anger of God against me. That's my main need. Salvation from the anger and wrath of omnipotent God against me. Let's keep reading. "For if while we were enemies," verse 10, "we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.

More than that, we also rejoice now in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, saved from the wrath of God and saved for joy in God forevermore." One of the deepest needs every human soul has, they do not know it, is to be happy in something bigger than anything this world can offer.

Everybody knows they want to be happy. Hardly anybody knows where it's to be found and what they're designed for and what that deep craving is all about in their hearts. And it's all about God. We try to fix it with money and sex and television and leisure and success, power, family, health, exercise, anything.

And it's all about God. So this text says we're reconciled after the wrath is taken care of. Now we're reconciled in order that we might rejoice in God. There is one third need. And I'll just go back to Matthew 1.21 that I quoted a minute ago. "You will call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sin." Not simply the consequences of sin and wrath, but the poison of sin and the distorting, contaminating, idolatrous, ugliness of sin that ruins everything in life and makes me love stuff more than I love God.

I need to be cleansed of all of that. Not just freed from its consequences. I need the disease to be taken away, not just a rescue from the consequences of its death and wrath. So those are the three things the gospel is designed to do. The gospel saves me from the wrath of God.

The gospel cleanses me from the idolatrous, poisonous, all-distorting sin that makes me love other things more than God. And the gospel opens access into, by reconciliation, a sweet, deep, ever-increasing, all-satisfying joy in my Maker forever. There is not a word here about "save from poverty." There is not a word about "save from sickness." Not a word about "save from terrorism." Not a word about "save from obscurity." Not a word about "save from rejection from men." Not a word about "save from having your daughter kidnapped and killed." Don't misunderstand me.

I believe if you trust Jesus, many things in your lives go better. They just might not, because it's not guaranteed. That's not part of the gospel. Eventually, everything goes better. New bodies, fellowship with Jesus, all sin taken away, justice reigning in the earth, that's coming. But between now and the coming of Jesus or our death, the gospel guarantees three things.

My sin being progressively cleansed away, my guilt and the wrath of God being totally taken away, and an ever-increasing intimacy with God, my Father, so that my soul is satisfied in Him when everything else around my soul gives way. So, are those three things felt as needs by American 21st century people?

Not most of them. Most of them have God in their back pocket, not with flaming fire over their head in anger. Most of them love their sin, not hate it, fear it, run from it. Most of them have plenty of delights, but not in God. And they're not getting up and going to bed, seeking any solution to these three problems, which is why the preaching of the gospel is hard work.

It is impossible work. If my job were to meet felt needs, I would not need the Holy Spirit. I know what your felt needs are, and I can make you feel really good by stroking them. You all are vain. So, if I tell you that you look really nice this morning, you'll like me, and you'll come back to this church and probably give.

Everybody wants to be seen as smart and intelligent. So, if I tell you you're smart and intelligent, we'd grow a big church. It's easy to meet felt needs. It takes no God, no Holy Spirit, no gospel. What's the hardest thing in the world is to wake the dead, open the eyes of the blind, give ears to the spiritually deaf, give legs of faith to the lame of unbelief.

I can't do that. You wonder why I pray before I preach? If God doesn't do something right now, I'm just batting my lips. Wow, that is a powerful excerpt from an old Pastor John sermon from 2003 titled, "If the root is holy, the branches are holy." I love that excerpt that the gospel saves me from the wrath of God.

The gospel cleanses me from the idolatrous, poisonous, all-distorting sin that makes me love other things more than God. And the gospel opens access into, by reconciliation, a sweet, deep, ever-increasing, all-satisfying joy in my Maker forever. Amen. Christmas aims right at those three massive, unfelt needs, unfelt in the flesh, felt only by the grace of God.

It's so good. Well, we are going to return on Christmas night, I think it is. And, you know, the hymn "Joy to the World" has this line about preparing hymn room, you know, preparing for Christ to enter into our lives. So what does it mean to receive Jesus Christ?

That is a very fitting question for Christmas night, and that's when we return on the podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.