Tuesday, December 04,
2012, 8:09 a.m. – the Lord Jesus woke me with this song:
Blessed Are You /
An Original Work / August 29, 2012
Based off Luke 6:20-49 NIV 1984
“Blessed are you;
Blessed are you who
are poor
For God’s kingdom is
yours.
Blessed are you;
Blessed are you who
are hungry,
You’ll be satisfied.
Blessed are you;
Blessed are you who
weep now,
For you will laugh
with joy.
Blessed are you;
Blessed are you when
men hate
And reject you because
of Christ…”
The subject of the celebration of Christmas came up this
morning before I read my passage of scripture for the day. I am reading in the
Psalms, and today’s passage was Psalm 12. So, as I went into my time of reading
this morning, I asked the Lord what my response should be to people who ask
about the celebration of Christmas. I prayed, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is
listening.” Then I read Psalm 12.
When I got to verse 8, this is what
stood out to me:
The
wicked freely strut about
when what is vile is honored among men.
The word “vile” stood out to me, and then the Lord
immediately put this phrase in my mind, “pagan revelry.” I believe God sees,
and has always seen in the history of mankind, “pagan revelry” as “vile.”
Do
not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down
to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan
revelry.” ~ 1 Co. 10:7
I wanted to understand what this all meant, and how it
related to my inquiry about what my response should be to the subject of the
celebration of Christmas, so I looked up some of these terms in the dictionary
(www.thefreedictionary.com) . Vile means “loathsome, disgusting,
objectionable, offensive, wicked, shameful or evil.” A pagan is a supporter (sticking or holding to) polytheistic (more
than one god) religion, “especially when viewed in contrast to an adherent
(supporter) of a monotheistic (only one god) religion.” And, revelry is “boisterous, noisy or
unrestrained merrymaking; pleasure and good times, with connotations of
carousing and self-indulgence.”
The Christmas
Connection
So, what does this all have to do with the celebration of
Christmas? Well, let’s look at what all the celebration of Christmas entails.
For those of you who celebrate Christmas, what do you spend most of your time,
thoughts and energies on in this celebration? What is Christmas to you? What is
the main focus of Christmas in our society? And, what does the word of God have
to say about celebrating Christ’s birth?
Christmas, in our society, is primarily about Santa Claus,
Christmas trees, lights, decorations, Santa’s stockings, greed, commercialism, and
presents, etc. So, who is Santa? He is an aberration. He is made up. Yet, he
sees all, knows all and he can be all over the world at everyone’s homes all in
one night. Who does this sound like? Yes, you are right: God Almighty. He is
the only one who is all knowing, all powerful, and has the ability to be
everywhere at all times. So, who is the great imitator of God who wanted to be
God? Satan. He parades himself as an “angel of light” to deceive minds and
hearts. Ever notice the similarity between the names “Santa” and “Satan”? Santa
is of Satan and Satan’s goal is to be God in the hearts and minds of all
people, but especially in the hearts and minds of professing followers of Jesus
Christ. He wants nothing more than to steal the hearts and minds of naïve
people, especially young children, away from God and to another god.
Is He the Reason?
Christmas is often marketed as the celebration of Christ’s
birth, i.e. that “He is the reason for the season.” Is he really? Let’s look at
that. How do we celebrate Jesus’ birth? Some people will tell you it is with
the giving of presents to one another, just like the wise men gave gifts to
Jesus or just like God gave us the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ. Well, for
one, the wise men did not visit Jesus when he was born. He was probably a child
of two years old when they visited him, and they were not coming to celebrate
his birthday, per se, but to give honor to the King of kings and Lord of lords,
the promised Messiah of the people of God. They were giving honor to the Savior
of mankind, and they honored him with these costly gifts. Also, the giving of
God’s Son is the giving of salvation to mankind (Jn. 3:16).
So, when we give each other gifts, is this truly giving
honor to God/Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords and as the Savior of
mankind? If it is, in your thinking, then how do you believe this is
accomplished? Do you think God is truly pleased with this gift giving of ours
on this holiday? And, how is this similar in nature to what God did for us in
giving us Jesus? If we want to respond in like manner, then instead of giving
each other gifts, most of which we don’t really need, then we should be sharing
the gospel of Jesus with the unsaved. That is why Jesus came! And, that is why
he died on the cross. The greatest gift we can give, then, is the gift of God’s
Son to those who have not yet believed in Jesus as Savior.
Should we celebrate
Christ’s birth?
How did Jesus say we should remember him and honor him? He
said we should honor him and remember him through the remembrance of his death,
not his birth. And, the way in which we remember his death is through the
taking of communion, not just the taking of it in the sense of taking a
sacrament in a ritualistic sense, but as Paul described in 1 Co. 11:
Therefore,
whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will
be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to
examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone
who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks
judgment on himself.
There is a sense, thus, in which this participation in the
Lord’s Supper is not merely the sharing in the drinking of the vine and the
eating of the bread, but it is a participation in the meaning of these symbols
in reality in how we live our lives. For Jesus, the juice of the vine and the
bread represented his blood and body which were given for us on the cross of
Christ for our sins, so that we could be set free from the penalty of sin
(eternal damnation), and so we could be set free from slavery to sin
(day-to-day).
So, when we come to the Lord’s Table in remembrance of him,
we are not merely recalling his death, but we are choosing to partake (drink
and eat) with him in his death, which communion symbolizes, and in his resurrection,
in death to our sins and in resurrection to new lives in Christ. This is why it
is critical that we examine our hearts, not just in communion services, but all
the time, to make sure that we have forsaken our lives of sin, and we are
walking in obedience to Christ in all ways all the time. This is the kind of
worship and honor of Jesus that he desires:
Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his
cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain
the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of
me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his
glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” ~ Luke
9:23-26
Therefore,
I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living
sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do
not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s
will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. ~ Romans 12:1-2
Who gets Top Billing?
This (the above scriptures) is the kind of “gift giving”
that God approves. It is not that he is against us giving each other gifts, I
don’t believe, but I don’t believe the way we do gifts and the way we celebrate
Christmas in our culture is what he desires, and in fact, I believe he sees it
as “vile” and as “pagan revelry,” because it is a blend of the worship of
Santa, greed, and a pagan holiday with the celebration of Jesus, only Jesus
does not get top billing in this celebration. Think with me about that for a
moment.
Look at your decorations for Christmas. Do you have a tree
beautifully decorated with all kinds of trimmings? Are there lots of gifts
underneath the tree? Who are these gifts for? What do they represent? Do you
have Santa stockings hanging by your fireplace? Do you have images of Santa and
his reindeer displayed in your house? And, where is Jesus in all of this? Do
you buy a bunch of gifts you can’t afford for people who don’t really need them
because tradition dictates that we should do this in celebration of Jesus? How
does any of this give honor and praise to God/Jesus?
And, do you also have a manger scene displayed in your house
along with Santa? Then, this is a celebration of a false god and the true God
side-by-side, which is what God chided his children about all throughout
history. And, how is Jesus pictured? He is pictured as a helpless baby in a
lowly manger. Whose birthdays do we celebrate with images of what we looked
like as babies? - Only Jesus’. I believe this is purposeful. Why?
Children, in particular, will see Jesus as a helpless baby
who does what for them? And, they will see Santa as all powerful, all knowing,
and can be all places at all times, and who brings them presents. What is wrong
with this picture? Do you see the deception here? And, the two are celebrated
together side-by-side. Even if you don’t do the Santa thing, you, perhaps, are
still celebrating the birth of Jesus in a manner which has pagan roots, and
which has nothing to do with Jesus Christ at all, and that minimizes who he truly
is while on the same day an “all powerful, all knowing and omnipresent Santa”
steals the hearts and minds of young children, because he brings them presents.
How can you top that?
And, then we lie to our children and we tell them that Santa
is real, even though they can’t really see him, so is that of God? And, we use
terminology like “I believe in Santa.” And, then we tell our children to
believe in Jesus, whom they also cannot see. Oh, what trickery Satan has
concocted to get us to believe we are truly celebrating the life of Jesus when
all we are doing is falling prey to a lie of Satan.
The Challenge
You don’t have to believe this, obviously, because I said
it, but I pray that each person reading this today would prayerfully and
honestly before God examine what has been shared here today in light of God’s
word, and that you would inquire of God as to how he views our celebrations of
Christmas. God gave us the gift of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ
shed on a cross for our sins. The best way we can celebrate the life of Jesus
is to honor him with our lives, and to share the truth of his gospel with a
world in need of the Savior. Will you pray and ask God if he is pleased with
your celebration of him?
Sing Praises / An
Original Work / November 30, 2012
Based off Psalms 6-9
Sing praises to the
Lord!
Tell of His wond’rous
works.
Afflicted, they cry
out;
The Lord will not
forget;
The needy, not desert.
The Lord’s our refuge
now;
A stronghold when we
fear.
The Lord will ne’er
forsake
The ones, who Him
pursue!
Sing praises to the
Lord!
With all my heart I
sing.
I will rejoice in Him;
Sing praises to His
name;
Tell of His wond’rous
works.
My shield is God Most
High.
He saves those who
believe
In Jesus Christ, God’s
Son.
His grace has pardoned
you!
The Lord accepts my
prayer!
The Lord has heard my
cries.
He is so merciful.
He heals my anguished
soul.
The Lord has made me
whole.
Give thanks unto the
Lord.
Give praise unto His
name.
Our Lord is
righteousness.
Sing praises to the
Lord!
Sing praises to the
Lord!
Sing Praises: http://originalworks.info/sing-praises-2/
Blessed Are You: http://originalworks.info/blessed-are-you/
Note: All
scripture references are taken from the NIV 1984.
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