Light in the Darkness
30:04 Share

Thanks for listening to Gospel in 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 gospelinlife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now, here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. The scripture this morning is taken from the book of Isaiah, chapter 9, verses 1 through 7.

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtala. But in the future, he will honor Galilee of the nations by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.

Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. This is the word of the Lord. So we're looking this Christmas season at a number of

classic texts in the Old Testament book of Isaiah to help us come to grips with the depths of the riches of the meaning of Christmas. And this is perhaps the most famous of the famous passages in the book of Isaiah that helps us understand what Christmas means. And if I could put it in one sentence, though I'll break it into phrases,

several points, is this is telling us that Christmas means an unexpected, the unexpected ultimate light through the God-man, which can only be received by grace. Unexpected, ultimate light that comes through the God-man and can only be received by grace. Let me break that down just the way I hinted I was going to break it down. First of all, this is talking about

Something God does that is unexpected. Notice it says, in the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future, he will honor Galilee of the nations. Now, this would have been a big surprise to any of the readers because the readers would have expected, Isaiah's readers would have thought if God's going to do something big, he would have started at divine headquarters, which is Jerusalem. Instead, Isaiah says he's going to start in Podunkville.

Even back when all 12 tribes were there in Israel, Zebulun and Naphtali was the northern part, sort of the outskirts of Israel.

And they had been long deported and taken away. And now Galilee was a place that did still have Jews in it, but it also had lots of other countries. It was a very multi-ethnic region. That's the reason this word, Galilee of the Nations, literally means Galilee of the Gentiles, Galilee of the Nations. And...

It says he's going to honor it. That is, the salvation is going to come out of Galilee, which, of course, is something that nobody would have expected. Do you remember in John chapter 1, perhaps, when Nathaniel, one of the 12 disciples, eventually is introduced to Jesus and they are trying to get him to meet Jesus. And they say, you know, he's this rabbi. He's this great guy. And he's from Nazareth in Galilee. And Nathaniel says, Nazareth? Nazareth?

See, there's always been a pecking order. So if you're from Rome, you thought Jerusalem was Podunkville. And so if you lived in Jerusalem, you had to find somebody else to look down on to deal with that. So you said, well, Galilee is the backwater, see? And so everybody looks down at something. And so what in the world? Are you kidding? Some big religious figure coming from there? But that's what God does. And that's

One of the main themes of almost every Christmas passage we can find. Jesus was not born into a comfortable home. He was born into a feed trough, a manger. He was not born into middle class, wealthy family. He was born into a poor family. He was not born surrounded by heads of state. He was surrounded by shepherds who were at the bottom of the social totem pole. He was born to a pregnant, unwed child.

teenage peasant girl who would, because she got pregnant before she was married, been stigmatized the rest of her life. And she was in that culture in that time. And so would her son have been. In other words, and of course he was, Jesus had none of the markers that the world looks for that tells the world this will be a successful person. He had none of the marks of greatness. He was a person of no consequence as far as the world was concerned. And so what happened? Well,

Jesus was obviously, inarguably, in that obscurity, you had the most influential person in the history of the world. In that servility, in that manger, you had the greatest kingliness possible. In that weakness, you had the greatest strength possible. What does this prove? The point is that glory was going on in that manger and nobody saw it.

And so the world in general does not recognize greatness when it's there, especially not in this situation. And God loves, therefore, to generally bring greatness, bring power, bring salvation into your life through ways that you would never expect. And actually, that's one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, was that great place in 1 Corinthians where Paul says, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the weak. He chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

He chose the lowly and despised things of the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. So what is the spirit of Christmas? You know, we always talk about, oh, don't you want to be shaped by the spirit of Christmas, quote unquote. What is the spirit of Christmas? Well, here's one way to define the spirit of the Christmas. It's that other text, that other sacred text that many of us look at. There's a little phrase that's gotten pretty famous. All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost.

And of course, as far as the Bible's concerned, almost nothing that is gold glitters. But you and I live in the middle of New York City, unless you're visiting from here. And even if you're visiting, you recognize something. New York is all about glitter. It's about the glittering resume above everything. It's about killer credentials, the right credentials, the right connections, the right schools, the right people. You wear the right clothes at the right time.

And in the right part of town. You don't wear that there. You wear that there. And Jesus had none of those markers. And what it means to be shaped by the spirit of the Christmas is at the very least not to be blinded by that. Not to care that much about that. And especially, how do you regard people that don't have the markers? How do you regard people like Jesus? People from nowhere. People without the credentials. People that don't have the right accent. Right?

People that aren't of the right race. They're not of the right political party. They're not of the right whatever. How do you regard them? Or do you just paternalistically tolerate them and think of yourself as a great person because you don't despise them openly? Or do you know how to learn from and respect them and love them? Then you're beginning to be shaped by the spirit of Christmas because God works through the unexpected. Secondly, the salvation that we're being talked about here has to do with light.

The ultimate light. Verse 2. The people walking in darkness have seen it. Pardon me. No, verse, what is it? Yeah, it is 2. The people walk, it's a long verse 1. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, but on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. Now that word deep darkness is a kind of unusual compound word that's been created by Isaiah, and it literally means the death shadow. Those living in the death shadow. And it takes the idea of darkness and the idea of death together.

puts them together. Because in general, in this world, light and life go together. Not absolutely, but by and large, they are connected. When God creates the world, he's going to create life. In Genesis 1, he starts with light. Let there be light, first thing, and then he goes on to life. Because you need light for life. That's how this world basically works. I read an interesting article in Popular Science not too long ago that talked about what would happen if the sun suddenly went out

just like that. The sun suddenly went out. Here's some interesting, I mean, people have to write about something, you know. So here's, there's three things. Number one, if the sun suddenly went out, the whole world would be zero degrees by the end of the day, 100 degrees below zero by the end of the year all around the world, and it would have stabilized at 400 degrees below zero. That would be the Earth's temperature. Secondly, photosynthesis would stop immediately.

which means all the oxygen that all the plants in the world are putting out there in the world wouldn't be there.

So, it's possible to survive, but probably most of us would freeze to death before we could create shelters for everybody. And it's possible to not suffocate. There are ways of creating oxygen that don't come from the plants, but most of us would suffocate before we had the chance to create oxygen supplies for the whole human race. And then, of course, we get so much vitamin A and D from the sun that it's very, very difficult, very difficult to replace that, that most of us would have our bones start crumbling.

because they become very, very fragile. In other words, if there was no sun, life wouldn't have developed on the earth anyway. And if the sun goes out, life will just quickly, slowly but surely die. So what does it mean when it says, literally, on those living in the land of deep darkness, on those in the death shadow, a light has flashed? That's what it says literally there in Hebrew.

On those living in the death shadow, a light has flashed. What does that mean? It must be talking spiritually because we have the sun. I mean, obviously, we've got the sun and we have photosynthesis and we have life. So it must be talking about spiritual darkness, right? No. And I'll tell you why. Would you stand back and think? I said if the sun went out, all life would end. Don't you realize that the sun is going out and we are dying? Thought experiment. Imagine you cook this wonderful dish.

turkey for Christmas day and you get the turkey out and it smells great and you put it on the table. Now, just a thought experiment. Instead of eating it, just let it sit for four hours. Now what? It's cold. Okay, let's sit for four days. Don't touch it. Just let it there. Now it's starting to smell bad.

Okay, let's leave it for four weeks. Well, you're probably not going to be in your apartment anymore because the health people, health inspectors, will have been called by your neighbors in your apartment hall, and they will have come because you're now a health hazard and that sort of thing. Basically, why? What's wrong with this turkey? Well, the point is, if you don't do something to the turkey, it just loses energy and it goes bad. But that's your future. You're looking at your own future there. You're going, it's slower.

But you're running down. I'm running down. We're losing energy. That's where we're going. But so is the whole world, including the sun. And you can sit there and say noble things like, well, yes, of course I'm going to die, but I can make the world better for people who come after me. For how long will people come after you? Because at a certain point, you know, the sun is going to die. It's dying. It's going down. And eventually there won't be anybody around to remember anything that anyone has ever done. Unless, see, there's an ultimate light.

When God created the world perfectly in Genesis chapter 1, does anybody notice that when God created the world, he said, let there be light, and there was light, and the sun wasn't actually created until later? So there was light, but there was no sun. How did that happen? I'll tell you why. Because in the book of Revelation, it tells us that when God has created a perfect world, when the city of God has come down out of heaven, and the new heavens and new earth are here, and the world is perfect, and all death is gone, and all suffering is gone, and all injustice and disease and aging and decay, it's all gone. Why? Why?

It says there will not be any sun. Why? You won't need a sun. The sun is just a symbol of what? It says God and the Lamb will be the light of the world. See, there's an ultimate light. And in that ultimate light, nothing dies. Nothing decays. And we need that light. We need that light. And we're being told here that God is going to give it to us.

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 videos, radio broadcasts, 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 slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's message. Well, then through what? How do we get that light? How does that ultimate light flash on us? Verses 6 and 7, the most famous part. And in verse 6 and 7, it says, For unto us a child, for... In other words, this child...

is the reason why we have all this hope, the reason why we know all this is going to happen. It's all going to happen because for unto us a child is born and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We obviously do not have anything like the time to delve down into every one of these titles, but let's just notice something. These four titles are titles you could only give to God. Two of them are definitely divine and two of them imply

He's the mighty God. And he's not just a divine personage of sort of divining, divine-ish. You know, he's not some just kind of avatar of some kind of divine principle. He's the everlasting father, which means he's the source of all creation. And yet he's born. A child who is born is God. There's nothing like this. Nothing like this claim in any other of the faith's major religions in history. This person...

is obviously human because he's born and he's a child, but this person is obviously divine because he's the mighty God and he's the everlasting father. Jesus Christ is the God-man. And if he's the God-man, let me just suggest two things. Because obviously what Christmas means among many other things, Christmas obviously means that God works in unexpected ways, but Christmas is about the birth of God.

It's about God becoming human, God becoming incarnate, the incarnation. That's what we're celebrating, what we're observing at Christmas. And it means two things, even though it could mean at least 200 things, but I'll just give you two. First of all, if Jesus Christ is really God, not just human, but really God, you can't just like him.

Listen, my life was utterly changed when I read a couple paragraphs in John Stott's little book, Basic Christianity, years ago when I was like 21 years old or 20 years old. It changed my life and I'm trying to pass on the favor. Because what he said there was, he says, if you look and see people who actually talk to Jesus in his life and heard his claims and realized what he was claiming...

There are only three possible ways to respond to him. You either hated him and tried to kill him for claiming to be God, or you were scared to death of this lunatic and you ran as far away as you possibly could, or you fell down and worshipped him and gave him every single part of your life. You embraced him. You gave him your highest allegiance. You said, you're the reason I'm going to get up every day just to live for you. You either hated him, you feared him, or you worshipped him. But nobody liked him. Nobody just thought...

He's inspiring. I like him. I get things out of him. I try to learn from him. Nobody ever said that. Anybody who does say that, and most people in New York are either kind of like that. Well, I can learn from him or whatever. Haven't heard what Christmas is all about. It's this claim. And he's absolutely, John Stott was absolutely right. Changed my world. I realized there's no such thing as just liking him. So if Jesus Christ is God become human,

You have to worship him. You have to give him everything. The word wonderful, by the way, means beautiful. He's ultimately, he's the ultimate beauty. You would not just obey him because you have to, because he's God. Because he would be the source of everything beautiful. Anything that you have right now that attracts you, well, he'd be the source of it. Because of who he is, because of what he's done. But on the other hand, if he's God become human, we just looked at if he's a human being who is God, but if he's God become human,

Now you've also got a God who understands. Again, that's unique. Of all the religions in the world, there's no other religion that says God has suffered. God has come down here and he's suffered. He knows what you're going through. So when you talk to him, he understands. It's actually a way of helping me deal. It helped me deal with the problem of evil and suffering. I don't know why God hasn't stopped evil and suffering, but I do know it can't be because he doesn't love us.

Because he was willing to get that involved. Dorothy Sayers, a British essayist and detective novelist, said this years ago, helped me very, very much. She says, the incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall into a condition of being libertarians.

limited to suffer, to be subject to sorrows and to, oh, pardon me. The incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall into suffering and to be subject to sorrows and death, he nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine.

He himself has gone through the whole of human experience from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. He was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain all for us and thought it well worth his while. He's the God man. Now, lastly, all this stuff we've been talking about, the hope that you could get if you believe in Jesus,

That he was the one who was born in the manger, that God himself has come into the world. The hope you can get, the joy you can get we've been talking about, the humility you get. All of this can only be received if you receive it as a gift of grace. Because notice, it doesn't just say, for us a child is born. It also says, to us a son is given grace.

It's a gift. Verse 5 actually says this great battle against evil. It says, every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning. It will be fuel for the fire. What it's really saying is a great battle is going to be fought and evil will be overturned, but you are not going to have to fight it because you won't need a warrior's boot. You won't need armor. You won't need a sword. Melt it down. Burn it up. It doesn't matter because it's going to be a gift. Someone else will do the fighting.

Now who? It's Jesus, of course. And even though it doesn't tell us here, you have to wait until you get into the servant songs of Isaiah 42 and 53, where it says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to our own way. And God laid the iniquity of us all on him. He bore our transgressions. See, he suffered for our iniquities. If Jesus Christ had come in strength to put down all evil, think about it.

I hate to do this in 30 seconds, but I must. What is the source of the evil in the world? It's basically the self-centeredness of the human heart. The self-centeredness. Everything's about me. Me first. That's where the misery of the world comes from. So if he comes and he decides to destroy evil, how many of us would be left?

You see, because that self-centeredness is in every single person's heart, even though it comes to different levels of expression. And if he'd come in strength the first time to fight this battle against evil, we would all have been destroyed. And if you don't believe that, it's because you still don't know what your heart is capable of, but someday you probably will. Instead, he came in weakness. He came as a lamb. He was crucified. He took the punishment we deserve.

And therefore, this great salvation, this light that comes into your life partly now, and ultimately it's going to flash out and it's going to destroy all death and suffering at the end of time. This comes as a gift, a gift of grace. And the only way that you can receive it is to admit it's a gift. Now, just last idea here. I want you to think of something for a second. Some gifts make you swallow your pride. See, some gifts are hard to receive.

So for example, if you open a book on Christmas morning from a friend and it's a dieting book, well, thank you. Then you open another book from another friend and it's how to win friends and influence people. And so you say, thank you. I really appreciate, I am fat and I am obnoxious. I do know that. I do, really. So there's no way to be, there's no way to receive the gift, thankfully, without admitting something that you would rather not admit. Seriously, however, there are situations, some of you have been in them,

Or you were in great financial straits and somebody came, really, really bad financial difficulty, and somebody came and offered you an incredibly generous financial gift that would get you out. Do you remember how you felt? It was tough. Some of you probably turned it down. Most of you were probably male. But if you accepted it, you remember it meant a lot of pride swallowing. Like, I guess I'm not self-sufficient. I can't make it all by myself. Well, there's never, ever been a gift offered that makes you swallow your pride to the depths of

that the gift of Jesus Christ to the world at Christmas makes you, if you understand it, do. Because, see, if God had to become human and go to the cross and suffer infinitely, that must mean we are really in bad shape.

That must mean nothing less than the death of the son of God would save us. That means that you must not be somebody who really should be able to pull yourself together and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No, to really accept the gift that's given, you have to admit you're a sinner and

You need to be saved by grace. You need to give up control of your life. You need to give over everything to Jesus. That is descending way lower than any of us really want to do. That's swallowing our pride at a level nobody ever wants to do. And yet Jesus Christ's greatness is seen in how far down he came to love us. And your greatness will be achieved by going on the same path. He descended into greatness today.

And the Bible says it's only through repentance that you come into the light. It's only through repentance by descending that you come into greatness. Let me just read this quote from C.S. Lewis and then we're done. But listen carefully. Listen very carefully to this one. The power of the higher, just insofar as it is truly higher, can come down to include the lesser. Everywhere the great enters the little, its power to do so is almost the test of its greatness.

Thus, solid bodies exemplify truths of plain geometry, but plain geometry figures no truths of solid. Thus, we can become kittenish with our kittens, but your kitten will never discuss philosophy with you. Thus, when I'm at peace and joy in joy, I can enter into the hurt of someone who is angry and despondent, but when I'm angry and despondent, I cannot enter into joy and peace. Why? Because joy and peace are higher, greater. Why?

That's why, I can add, Lincoln can understand Hitler, but Hitler will never be able to understand Lincoln. Why? Because Lincoln is greater. How do you know, therefore, he's saying, how do you know something is really high and really great? Because it can come down. It can enter into the lesser. It can sympathize. It can humble itself. You're strong enough to be weak. You're secure enough to be vulnerable.

And therefore, if you want the greatness that you can have and the greatness of that light treatment that begins the minute you believe, you need to follow your Savior's path and descend into greatness. The meaning of Christmas. Let us pray.

Our Father, thank you so much for what Christmas forces us to do. It forces us to think and think and think about some of the greatest things, the greatest things that have ever happened in the history of the world. But it's amazing that we are capable of turning those things into routines so that we just don't even realize we're not amazed at them anymore. Don't let that happen to us.

We ask that you would let all the things we've talked about today become more and more true in our lives. We ask in the name of the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's message from Tim Keller. If you have a story of how the gospel has changed your life or how Gospel in Life's resources have encouraged or challenged you, we'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting gospelinlife.com slash stories. That's gospelinlife.com slash stories.

Today's sermon was preached in 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.