Here is the full transcript of John MacArthur’s sermon titled “The Truth About Christmas”.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Christmas is kind of an interesting experience for Christians. It’s a very bizarre combination. We have been celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ singularly tonight. You have not heard jingle bells by design.
We have come together, as Christians do, to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, not a calorically challenged man in a red suit who is a fantasy of people’s imagination. Now, I’m not trying to be a downer here. I understand that Santa Claus is a kind of harmless myth, kind of a delightful fantasy. There’s some value in the traditions that have come around the figure of Santa Claus, but he basically is a fantasy, not true, a lie.
There are no flying reindeer. There is no sleigh. He doesn’t come down your chimney. He doesn’t leave you anything. This bizarre kind of fantasy has somehow laid itself on top of the celebration of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most profound, the most profound event that ever happened in human history when God came in, and He has to share it with this crazy non-existent guy named Santa Claus.
But that lie has stuck, and I will admit, in a sense it’s harmless. Children enjoy fantasies, and you can get a little leverage out of it by trying to get them to be good, but it’s just not true. I don’t think that the lie about Santa Claus does a whole lot of damage, but I will say our society is engulfed in a group of lies that do a tremendous amount of damage.
We are literally engulfed in terms of how we think in a series of lies that have eternal consequences. And I want to just kind of share those with you because I would want to tell you the truth. The church, the Bible says, is the pillar and ground of the truth. And when you come here, you should hear the truth.
But there are some pervasive lies that have literally dominated people’s thinking. I think you might recognize them. First of all, life is random. It just happens. Really, nobody’s in charge. It’s not following any pattern. It’s not following any design. There’s no real order. We don’t really have to answer to anyone. Oh, maybe there might be God somewhere, but He’s probably struggling with what’s going on the way everybody else is.
And life is random, and the best you can do is kind of grab the randomness as it comes along and see if you can latch on to what works for you and hang on for the ride. But for sure, life is random. Nobody in charge. Nobody’s design being worked out. Not coming from somewhere specific, going through a specific plan and ending up in a specific goal. It just happens, and you have to make the best of it.
The second lie that dominates our society is that truth is relative. Since there is nobody in charge, there is no lawgiver, there is no judge, there is nobody to answer to, there is nobody whose will dominates. Truth is relative. Truth is whatever you want it to be, whatever you think it is. You have your truth, I have my truth, somebody else has his or her truth. There’s no such thing, by the way, as absolute truth. There’s just whatever we vote in as truth, whatever the latest poll tells us is our version of truth.
But truth is relative. It shifts and ebbs and flows and changes depending upon what we want and what we think.
There’s a third lie, and this works into that system pretty well, and it’s this. Man is basically good. Man is basically good. We’re basically good, and if all of a sudden we act badly, it’s because of our circumstances. It’s because of influences outside of us. Somebody did something to us. Maybe parents messed with us.
Maybe somebody molested someone. Maybe there’s some kind of generational curse going on in a family, but we’re basically good, and if left to ourselves, we’ll do good things.
Since there’s nobody in charge, and since truth is whatever we decide it is, and that can ebb and flow according to our own will and desire, and since we’re basically good, the fourth lie is this: The highest virtue is tolerance.
Because if no one’s in charge and there are no real absolute rules, and we’re basically good, then you’ve got to leave us alone to do whatever we want. And if we start sitting in judgment on people, we’re going to have collisions all the time. The only way we’re going to have unity in the world and peace in the world is if we just become completely tolerant of everything and everyone’s view of everything.
Does this sound like the world you’re living in? There’s some further lies. Another one is this, that life really consists in what you possess, what you acquire, what you own. And I don’t just mean houses and cars and fashion and whatever. I’m talking about whatever you’ve achieved. Maybe it’s an education, maybe it’s advancement, maybe it’s success, maybe it’s fame, maybe it’s notoriety, maybe it’s popularity.
But that’s what you have to choose, and that’s what you have to chase. And we want people to chase that. In fact, when they’re five years old, we put them on a soccer field, we make sure they all get a trophy so they know that’s what they should spend their whole life doing, trying to get recognition.
It’s all about what I can accrue, what I can bring to myself. That’s what life is all about. It’s what I have that defines life.
There’s another lie that’s pretty dominant, and it is this, the goal of life is personal satisfaction.
The goal of life is personal satisfaction. You say, well, people are very charitable, very generous, and that would be true. A lot of charities, a lot of hospitals, a lot of good things. But it always interests me when you listen to people talk about why they give to charity, and you hear them say, it makes me feel better about myself.
It makes me feel better about myself. That’s because the driving, compelling reality in the life of most people is satisfaction. And if charity makes you feel good about yourself, there’s a very personal motive in that.
So this is the world we live in, a world literally surrounded with these lies. Life is random, truth is relative, people are good, tolerance is the highest virtue, life consists in what you possess, the goal of life is personal satisfaction.
And let me throw another one in. Here’s another lie. You can become anything you want. You can change. If you don’t like your life, change it. You have the power within you, reach within you. In fact, there are some who believe the only God that exists is the God that is in you, kind of that collective God of Hinduism that is in us all.
You can become whatever you want to be. You hear that from the time little children go to school and are told, you can become anything you want to be. That’s a lie. Everybody has limits. You can’t change yourself. You can’t change yourself. You are what you are.
Certainly morally you can’t change yourself. You can clean your act up a little bit, but you can’t change your heart. And there’s one more lie that is very disturbing and very popular, and it is this. Death is a pleasant transition. Don’t worry about death. It’s a pleasant transition. It’s just going into the light at the end of the tunnel. And we have all kinds of books being written supposedly by people who went there and came back to tell us about this pleasant transition.
These are dominant lies in our culture, and I’m here to tell you that they are far from the truth. Let me give you the truth. Life is not random. There is God. He is the Creator. He is the Sustainer, and He is the Judge. He is in absolute control over everything that happens in this world, and it all happens within the framework of His will and by His power and for His purpose.
And the God who is in charge and the only God who exists is the God revealed on the pages of Holy Scripture. He is God and no other.
Secondly, truth is absolute. Truth is absolute. You should know that. If you climb up on the top of a ten-story building, you may say, I don’t believe in gravity. You may have standing next to you a guy who says, I do. You both jump, you both go down. Whether you believe in gravity or not is irrelevant. There are absolute laws in the physical world.
Do we imagine that there are absolute laws in a physical world and relative laws in the spiritual world? The laws of the spiritual world and the moral world are as absolutely absolute as the laws of nature. Truth is not relative. You will not find it in you. It doesn’t reside in you. You can’t learn it from inside of you. It is external to you. It is outside of you, and again it is in the pages of the Bible.
The God of the Bible is the one true God who has established and revealed what is true about everything, and it is absolute. Morality is absolute as described in the Bible. Creation is absolute as described in the Bible. Relationships are what they are based upon the terms revealed in Holy Scripture. Time and eternity is defined for us on the pages of Scripture.
Thirdly, man is basically bad. We are basically evil, alienated from God, sinful, motivated by evil desires, selfishness, pride. We are sinners. The noblest virtue is not tolerance. The noblest virtue is righteousness. Righteousness. Doing what is right before God and man.
The most important thing in life is not what you possess. The most important thing in life is what you believe. It’s what you believe. What you possess will not bring you to God. What you possess will not take you to heaven. What you possess will not bring you forgiveness of sin and salvation. Only what you believe will. And the Bible says, only if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will you have eternal life.
The goal of life, the goal of life is not personal satisfaction. The goal of life is the glory of God and the honor of God. And that is also the chief blessing of life. When you live to honor God, you enjoy life to its max.
Death is not for most people a welcome, delightful transition. It is a horrible, horrible sending into eternal judgment. And you can’t change yourself. The good news is God can change you, will change you, will make you a new creation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Really, we live in a world where these lies are so pervasive. And I’ve just kind of introduced them to you. And I’m here to tell you from the pages of Scripture the truth. It’s all summed up, really, in John 3:16, “for God so loved the world,” and that’s very important to know, that the God who is absolutely holy, who is in charge of everything, sovereign over everything, the God who gave us His law, the God who demands righteousness, the God who knows we’re sinful, the God who compels us to believe so that death is a glorious transition into heaven, the God who has designed for us to give Him glory forever, that God loves us.
He loves the world. He loves sinners like us. And He has sent His Son, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” That’s the good news.
And that’s why Christmas is such an incredible event. How in the world — how in the world could we deflect our thoughts from the profound reality of the coming of the Savior to some fantasy character? Sounds to me like a strategy of the kingdom of darkness.
The message of Christmas is the message of hope, forgiveness of sin, salvation, eternal life in Jesus Christ. And you’ve heard that a hundred ways tonight in the music. And I trust that the Lord will open your heart to embrace the only Savior, our Lord Jesus.
Pray with me.
Father, we thank You for the legacy of music that we have around this season that looks at the glory of the arrival of Your Son. We thank You that we can celebrate His coming as our Savior, the only hope, the only Redeemer, the only sacrifice for sin, the only one who can give us life, salvation, and the hope of heaven. It’s been a joy to celebrate tonight in music, but that really falls short of what you want. It’s more than admiring the music, enjoying the music. It’s receiving the subject of the music, the one about whom the music is written, the Lord Jesus Christ. Your desire is that we would embrace Your Son as our Savior. May that happen in hearts tonight. For Your glory. Amen.