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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on December 22, 1985 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. Leviticus 23:1-2 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Colossians 2:16-17 JESUS WASN’T BORN ON DECEMBER 25. You might ask, “What difference does that make?” Well, none really, except you ought to be intelligent about your faith. If you let your children grow up believing that Jesus was born on December 25, one day they will find out He wasn’t, and then they might wonder if everything else you told them about Christ is false. There is really nothing wrong with celebrating Christmas, so don’t allow any tradition-bound church people to criticize you for having a little eggnog or for “taking Christ out of Christmas,” when He was never in it to begin with! If I may be ludicrous, I find no record of the disciples sitting around drinking eggnog on December 25. There is no evidence that Mary and Joseph held a birthday party for Jesus every year on that date. The apostle Paul never gathered the saints around him in the Mamertine dungeon on Christmas Day, nor did anyone drop little chocolate Christmas trees down the dungeon’s trapdoor. The Christmas tree was never a symbol of the cross of Jesus Christ. In fact, in ancient times, an evergreen tree was a fertility symbol! Some people get shocked when you challenge the traditions of the church. I say that you don’t have to leave your brain in the foyer when you come into the church. Jesus told the people in His day, “You make void the word of God by your traditions,” and people are doing the same thing today. There is no sin in having a party in the wintertime, and it doesn’t matter what day you want to celebrate on; but stop trying to Christianize it. Some fundamentalists say that you have to stop having parties as the price of being a Christian. I would remind them that the first miracle Jesus performed was turning water into wine at a wedding feast in order to keep the party going! Jesus brought joy everywhere He went. We all know that the Christmas holiday has taken on meanings that have nothing to do with Christ, which is why I quarrel with those who want us to put Christ in it. Either Christ is in your life or He is not. Too many people get “religious” only on special occasions; they salute Christ once or twice a year and then forget about Him the rest of the year. There are plenty of people who have joyous memories of loved ones decorating a Christmas tree, of the family coming together, of eating good food, and of other holiday activities. Why ruin the holiday by falsely Christianizing it? Some fundamentalists might object and say, “You shouldn’t celebrate it at all! It’s a heathen festival!” Well, who cares? They might say, “But you yourself just said that a Christmas tree was a fertility symbol!” Again, who cares? Its meaning was forgotten long ago; and in the modern world, most people are smart enough to know that fertility symbols don’t really work anyway. The apostle Paul had to deal with similar problems in the church in his day where matters of conscience were raised. People were concerned about whether certain pagan practices were permissible, such as eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. If you were “weak in the faith,” to use Paul’s expression, then you had a problem. There were Christians who were afraid that if they ate the meat of an animal sacrificed to an idol, they were somehow partaking of a heathen god. Therefore, it was a sin for them to eat it because they thought it was wrong. But Paul makes it clear that if you aren’t weak in the faith, God doesn’t care about those things. God gives you salvation for your faith. His gift of salvation is not dependent upon whether or not you eat a strangled chicken. Eat whatever you want to eat. By analogy, there is no sin in setting up an ancient heathen symbol, decking it with ornaments and putting presents under it. Not only is it not a sin, it is a joy. Some Christians say you shouldn’t set up a Christmas tree. They like to prove their point by quoting from Jeremiah 10, where the prophet condemned the practice of setting up a tree. He said, in essence, “You cut down a tree in the woods and you put a platform under it. You deck it with silver and with gold, and then you kneel down and worship it! It isn’t much of a god; it cannot see, it cannot hear, and it cannot speak!” Jeremiah was talking about idol worship; and under the law, setting up such a tree was a sin. There are plenty of churches where people set up Christmas trees and think they are being spiritual. I say you don’t have to spiritualize the holiday; just go ahead and have fun with your family. If you want to keep a religious festival in December, I recommend you celebrate Chanukah. At least Chanukah has a sound, historical basis. Antiochus IV, a descendant of the Seleucids, ruled over a portion of Alexander the Great’s empire after he died. Antiochus gave himself the name “Epiphanes,” which means “god manifest.” He instituted a policy of “neutrality” toward all religions, doing what many governments do today: they claim they are “neutral,” as long as you recognize they are supreme over you! Antiochus’ officers came into the little village where Mattathias Maccabaeus was the Jewish religious leader, and they told him, “Since you are the religious leader, you ought to be the first to set an example by showing your allegiance to Antiochus Epiphanes.” But Maccabaeus said, “Not only will I not bow down to you, I will kill anyone in this village who does!” And the Maccabean Rebellion began. Mattathias’ son Judas raised up an army that totally demolished Antiochus’ forces. And having defeated Antiochus’ troops, he restored the temple at Jerusalem and lit the candlestick for the first time in many years. I am sad to say that some religious leaders in this generation only remember the lighting of the candles. They call Chanukah “The Festival of Lights” and downplay the revolutionary aspect and the battle for religious freedom. But Chanukah was instituted as a religious celebration because of the faith of one man who, when challenged by the government, let it be known that he served a higher law and he would not bow down. We also owe a debt to Esther and Mordecai for the liberty they obtained and the victory they won over Haman in the time of King Ahasuerus, which is commemorated by the Feast of Purim. So as Christians, if we want to celebrate a religious holiday in December, I recommend we celebrate Chanukah instead of Christmas, but we can still have a party around the tree. Go ahead and tell your children that Christmas is a heathen holiday. Saint Nick cannot be spiritualized. Kissing under the mistletoe is not an outgrowth of the New Testament doctrine, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” And the wise men brought gifts to Jesus; Jesus didn’t exchange gifts with them! You might ask, “Didn’t the church always keep Christmas on December 25?” The answer is no. The early Christian church didn’t celebrate the birth of Christ. December 25 was the date of a pagan feast called the Saturnalia, which came from a worship of Saturn, which in turn originated with the worship of Tammuz out of ancient Babylon. It wasn’t until the fourth century that the church decided to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25 as an attempt to Christianize the Saturnalia. The Saturnalia was deeply embedded into Roman culture. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, the holiday has become more Christianized. However, with the rise of modern cities such as Los Angeles, the pagan aspects of the holiday are taking over again! I pastor a church that is salt in the world. I don’t create women’s missionary councils and men’s fellowship societies; the word of God is the focus. I maintain that you can be normal and be a Christian. A man or woman can have faith in God and receive the gift of His salvation without becoming a freak. If you are a Christian, you can walk in a pagan world and be yourself, and not be a pagan. The Saturnalia feast can be traced back to ancient Babylon, where Nimrod, along with his wife Semiramis, set up a rebel kingdom against God. Nimrod’s name means “rebel,” and he was God’s enemy. Nimrod was Satan’s caricature of what God had promised in Genesis 3, that one born of the seed of a woman would provide the path back to God. Nimrod was identified with sun god, Baal. Semiramis gave birth to a son named Tammuz, well past nine months after Nimrod died. Semiramis had to provide an explanation for his birth, so she said he had been miraculously conceived by a sunbeam and that his father was actually Nimrod, who had essentially been reincarnated as the sun god! Therefore, the birth of Tammuz was supposedly the rebirth of Nimrod, which was the rebirth of the sun god on earth. Semiramis thereby initiated a false system of worship that spread to every land. In other cultures, Semiramis is known as Astarte, Ishtar, or even Venus in various legends. The cult of Tammuz permeated the entire Middle Eastern world. There is a strange passage in Ezekiel 8, where the Lord brought the prophet to the door of the temple to witness the abominations that were taking place. There he saw women weeping for Tammuz, instead of worshipping God! This ancient mystery religion from Babylon made its way into Rome via Pergamos and Alexandria, and it was practiced in Rome long before the church arrived there. The head of the mystery religion bore the title “Peter,” from a word that means “interpreter.” The church took advantage of the similarity between that name and the name of the apostle Peter. They melded the office of the teacher of their pagan religion with the office of Peter the apostle, who was claimed to be the rock on which Christ would build His church. In this ancient religion, when an animal was sacrificed to a pagan god, the people partook of the flesh of the sacrifice believing that they were partaking of the god. The oracles of this religion claimed to be able to speak and turn the flesh of the sacrifice into the flesh of the god. It was not until centuries after the New Testament times that the church grafted the doctrine of transubstantiation onto the Lord’s Supper or communion, in order to compete with the popular heathen religion. Jesus had established the communion service as a simple memorial event. On the night He was betrayed, Jesus was keeping the Passover with His disciples. When He said, “This is My body, and this is My blood,” His flesh was still on His bones and His blood was still in His veins; but He took the Passover elements of bread and wine and gave them a new meaning. Jesus simply said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” The bread remained bread and the wine remained wine. They could not have been transformed into His literal flesh and blood because, again, His flesh was still on His bones and His blood was still in His veins. But four centuries later, the church yielded to the pattern of the mystery religions and taught that people literally ate the flesh of Christ and drank His blood, and the simple communion was turned into a ritual of a new sacrifice. In the doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and the wine were said to have mysteriously changed into the literal body and blood of Christ. There were theological debates in the Middle Ages over what would happen if someone accidently broke the bread, which was now supposedly the body of Christ. If a crumb fell on the floor, and if a rat or a dog ate it, would it become a Spirit-filled rat or a Spirit-filled dog? That is why it became a great sin to break the bread, and why the priest would very carefully put it on your tongue. When Jesus took the bread at Passover, He broke it. But instead of taking their cues from Jesus, the priests started giving people an unbroken round wafer, called the Host. This round wafer originated as a pagan symbol of the sun disk and was associated with the worship of Tammuz. So by substituting a round wafer for the broken break, idolatry moved into the church. Not only Catholics but also Protestants have fallen into this error, as there are Protestant churches that also use the little round Host for their communion services. Eating the Host was originally a symbol of swallowing the idol. You might ask, “Well, if you were attending a communion service and someone gave you a round wafer, would you eat it?” My answer is I don’t care. I can even eat an animal sacrificed to idols, but I know what I am doing. Paul addressed these very matters and said it is only a sin to eat if you think it is a sin for you to eat. There are a number of church traditions that have their origins in pagan worship practices. Where do we get the name “Easter?” It comes from the name of the pagan goddess Ishtar. Why do we commemorate “Good Friday?” Why do people eat fish on Friday? It was originally a fertility symbol, which makes sense when you consider the number of eggs in a fish. Why are rabbits a symbol associated with Easter? Again, it was a fertility symbol. Jesus didn’t die on “Good Friday,” He died on a Wednesday. He was taken down from the cross and placed in a tomb that same night. John 19:31 says the Jews didn’t want the body to remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, for that Sabbath day “was an high day.” Most people wrongly interpret this to mean that the following day was Saturday. But the following day was called a “high day” because it was a feast day; it was not a regular Saturday Sabbath. In this case, it was the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which fell on a Thursday! Jesus lay in the tomb from Wednesday night to Thursday night. That is one day. Thursday night to Friday night is two days. Friday night to Saturday night is three days. He was in the tomb for three days and three nights, and He rose right after sundown on a Saturday night, which was the start of the first day of the week on the Hebrew calendar. Why were the days of Christ’s birth and death changed? There were so many people celebrating the ancient pagan holidays, the church reasoned that if you can’t beat them, then join them; and the church in the Middle Ages essentially grafted on heathenism. Again, I don’t care if you want to celebrate Christmas; just don’t call it Christian. Christmas is only one of many heathen holidays that have been grafted on to Christianity. December 25, through the centuries, was the birth date of Tammuz, not the birth date of Jesus. Tell your children; don’t let them find out from someone else. Christianity requires intelligent faith. There is no greater challenge to the mind than the Christian faith, which can be synthesized with historical facts. That is what makes these kinds of studies worthwhile. When was Jesus really born? There is much evidence in the Scriptures that He was born in the fall. We read in Luke 1:5, “There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest name Zacharias, of the course of Abia.” Zacharias was the husband of Elisabeth and became the father of John the Baptist. He was serving in the temple as a priest in “the course of Abia,” which is the Greek form of the name Abijah. The priests served in “courses” according to their families, following a sequence that was established in the Old Testament. These courses are enumerated in 1 Chronicles 24. There were 24 courses, and each priest served for one week every six months. They also had to serve for one week at each of the three national festivals. Once we know that Zacharias served in the course of Abijah, it is possible to pin down by historical records the season in which he was serving when he received an angelic message that his wife would bear a son. We read in Luke 1:8 that Zacharias “executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course.” From studying historical records, we can determine that Zacharias was serving in July when the Lord visited him and said, “Your wife will have a son. His name will be John, and he will be the predecessor of the Messiah.” I am sure that Zacharias ran home to tell his wife! I suppose I could say that in a more spiritual way, but I try to put flesh and blood in the Bible, because it is there. Now, if he did his divine duty, she conceived in that week or shortly thereafter, and John the Baptist was born nine months later, which would be around April. The Scripture clearly says that John was born six months before Jesus. Therefore, Jesus was born in the fall of the year. There is more biblical evidence that points to Jesus’ birth being in autumn. The Bible says that the Romans had issued a decree that everyone was to be taxed. The Romans didn’t collect their taxes in the wintertime; they collected in the fall because it was a harvest time and the taxes were paid in both money and goods. They were smart enough to collect their taxes when the people were paid. Further, we know that every Jew was required to go to Jerusalem for three annual feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. The Romans took advantage of the fact that so many people would be gathered in one place for a feast. In Luke’s Gospel, we read that everyone went to be taxed in his own city, and that Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem because he was of the lineage of King David. Critics will say that the Roman decree was the only reason for them to be in the vicinity of Jerusalem at that time. But why did Mary accompany Joseph? There would have been no reason for Mary to go with Joseph to pay taxes. The very fact that Mary accompanied Joseph suggests that their primary reason for being there was a feast day. Now there are three feasts that occur in the month of Tishri, which corresponds to September or October on our calendars. The Feast of Trumpets occurs on the first day, Atonement occurs on the tenth day, and Tabernacles begins on the fifteenth day and lasts for the whole week. So Joseph and Mary most likely arrived in the area shortly before the Feast of Tabernacles, which also explains why there was no room at the inn. Also, the Bible says there were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the fields on the night of Christ’s birth. The shepherds would still be in the fields during the fall, but not during the wintertime because it would have been too cold. There is abundant evidence proving that Jesus was born in the fall, and there are abundant historical records showing that the December 25 date was chosen by the medieval church as an attempt to Christianize the heathen festival of Saturnalia. So what is the importance of the day of Christ’s birth? Paul said in Colossians 2:17 that the Old Testament feasts were “a shadow of things to come.” When you see a shadow, if you are interested in finding its source, you can follow the shadow and it will lead you to the substance that cast it. You can look around a corner and see who or what is casting the shadow. The substance, when it appears, fulfills the meaning of the shadow. The Old Testament shows us over and over again that God is a God of set times. I believe in a reconstructionist God. I believe that God risked the possibility of sin in order to give us freedom, which He values. We are always messing things up, but God enters in to all things to work His good for them which are the called. There are margins of freedom in everyone’s individual lives, but there are certain benchmarks in time that God has set for certain events to occur. And as an expression of His omnipotence, He will cause those events to happen. When we see the way in which God makes things come to pass, that becomes a basis for our faith in His ability to perform the many promises He has made to us in His word. In Leviticus 23, God through Moses said, “These are the feasts of the LORD.” The literal meaning is “These are the set times of the Lord.” Then He named them, starting with the Sabbath. When we study the characteristics of these feast days, we can then follow the trail of the shadows and expect to see the substance that fully brings their meaning to life. The Sabbath was a day that showed man’s dependence upon God. In the book of Hebrews, the substance of the Sabbath is given. Saturday has always been the Sabbath, so why do we gather for church on Sunday? No one day has any special significance; we could just as easily have church on Saturday; but I would not want to do that, for it would suggest that we are emphasizing the Sabbath. The church meets on Sunday because it is the first day of the week. Hebrews 4:9 says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Literally, it says that there remains a “sabbath-keeping” or a sabbathing. In the New Testament, you are sabbathing when you lean on God’s promise to save you by the work of His Son. The meaning of keeping the Sabbath is fulfilled when you act in faith. Anytime you grab a promise of God and act on it, you are keeping the Sabbath. It doesn’t matter if it’s midnight on Tuesday, or 6 A.M. on Thursday, or noon on Friday. The act of faithing becomes the New Testament substance of sabbathing, because the Sabbath, in all its aspects, was only a shadow of things to come and it typified reliance on God. Under the law, you could testify to your reliance on God by not working on Saturday. But now, the life of faith is the substance that fulfills the Sabbath. When you act in faith and rest in Christ’s finished work, you are testifying to your reliance on God. The other feast days are enumerated in Leviticus 23: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles. Each of these feast days or set times was a shadow of things to come. One of God’s purposes in establishing the feast days was to point to Christ, but Satan attempted to thwart God’s purposes by shifting the date of Christ’s birth to Christmas. Christ fulfilled the Feast of Passover. He had to be in the tomb for three days and three nights. Therefore, He had to be laid in the tomb by Wednesday night when the Feast of Unleavened bread began, because He fulfilled that feast as well. He rose on the Feast of Firstfruits, which was on the first day of the week and fell within the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus came out of the tomb right on time. The chief priests and the scribes in His day said, “We can’t let Him be crucified on the feast day, lest there be a riot.” But in order to fulfill the substance of the prophecy of the feast, Jesus had to be crucified on Passover. He was crucified at 9 A.M., died at about 3 P.M., and was taken off of the cross by Joseph of Arimathea before sundown. Jesus fulfilled the Passover, right to the minute. Paul looking back calls Him “Christ our Passover.” Jesus was laid in the tomb at sundown, which was the beginning of the “high day” Sabbath at the start of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He came out of the tomb 72 hours later, shortly after sundown on Saturday, as the Feast of Firstfruits began. Paul also calls Christ the “firstfruits” of the Resurrection. Seven weeks after Christ rose from the dead, the church was born on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost was the harvest feast. We read in Acts 2:1, “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come . . .” G. Campbell Morgan translated this verse, “When the day of Pentecost began to be fulfilled. . .” The day of Pentecost began the harvest of souls whom God would claim out of the world through the workings of the Holy Spirit. Now God would save us and freely give us His Spirit as a gift in response to our faith. Right on time, the Holy Spirit came upon all the disciples on the day of Pentecost. So when was Jesus actually born? He was born in the fall on the Feast of Trumpets. Two silver trumpets were blown on this feast, because silver was always the symbol of redemption. The trumpets would blow all day long to announce the coming Day of Atonement. On the Day of Atonement, a sacrifice for sins would be offered where all the people’s sins would be blotted out for a year. The high priest would lay his hands on the head of a scapegoat, symbolically transferring the sins of the people to the goat. The goat would then be turned over to a responsible man who would lead it out into a wilderness place where no one lived, so no one could ever bring up those sins again. God was communicating through this type that all of our sins were placed on Christ, never to be brought up again. Yet it seems like some modern-day fundamentalist preachers want to hunt for the goat so they can take back the sins and condemn us for them. Jesus was born on the Feast of Trumpets, and He will return to take us home on the Feast of Trumpets. God is a God of His word. Once He says something, He is forever bound to keep His word. God chose a people to lay down these shadows in the Old Testament so that He might later reveal the substance. God laid down the law of the kinsman redeemer, which was given in Leviticus 25 and unfolded in the little book of Ruth. A kinsman redeemer could redeem someone who had lost his inheritance or who was under a penalty of judgment or death for wrongdoing. There were specific criteria that the kinsman redeemer must meet. First, he must be someone near of kin; a stranger couldn’t perform the role of redeemer. Second, he must have the price of redemption in order to pay whatever was necessary to redeem the one who had lost his inheritance. Third, the kinsman redeemer must be willing to pay the price of redemption; he cannot be forced to do it. And fourth, he must actually pay the redemption price. These requirements remained a part of the Jewish law, God’s word forever settled in heaven, as a shadow looking for a substance. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all were in need of redemption, for our sins had separated us from God. Adam is ultimately to blame for our problems. We are all born in the condition of being out of fellowship with God; we don’t even know how to do what is right. Ephesians 2 describes a “wall of partition” between us and God, because God had said for sin comes death. And by His own law, only one near of kin could redeem us. Hebrews 2:14 says we are “partakers of flesh and blood,” meaning we all share in flesh and blood. The word “partakers” is a translation of a form of the Greek word koinoneo, which means “joint participation.” We recognize our common brotherhood; we jointly participate in flesh and blood and we don’t have any choice about it. Verse 14 goes on to say, concerning Jesus, that “he also himself likewise took part of the same.” We had no choice about the matter, but Jesus had a choice, and He voluntarily took upon Himself flesh and blood. The fundamental claim of the New Testament church is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. John’s Gospel says that the One who was facing the Father, who could tell us all we need to know about God, who was one in nature with God, “struck a tent” in human flesh and dwelt among us. That is why Jesus came as a babe who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and was laid in a manger. If I may use religious symbolism, the Redeemer had to step from His throne in glory to move into a tent of human flesh. Jesus was the very Substance of God, voluntarily sharing in flesh and blood. Luke’s Gospel says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” Hebrews says He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He accomplished one thing that none of us has ever accomplished. Because of the imperfection of one man, Adam, all mankind suffered alienation from God. The price of our redemption was a perfect life. God decreed He would restore His fellowship with us because of one Man’s perfection, even Christ. He became our Kinsman Redeemer, taking on flesh and blood and perfectly fulfilling the law. Jesus said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” He became the living law incarnate, not as a set of statements written on stone. And as our Kinsman Redeemer, He had to voluntarily lay down His life for our sins. Jesus also fulfilled the Old Testament law of the perfect servant given in Exodus 21. The law of the perfect servant declared that if a servant had completed a period of servitude, he could go out free. But if his master had given him a wife during his servitude and she had borne him children, his wife and children would remain with their master. But if the servant plainly said that he loved his wife, his children, and his master, and that he wanted to remain with them, then the judges would take him to a door or doorpost and bore his ear with an awl, and he could remain with them forever. Again, these are all Jewish types and shadows written into their law. The perfect servant had his ear nailed to the door as a symbol of obedience, in order that he might remain with his wife and children. Jesus came to be our Kinsman Redeemer and to share His inheritance with us. He came to open the door to restored fellowship with the seed of the word. He could have returned to His Father without having saved us, but He wanted to keep His wife and children that He had obtained during His servitude. Therefore, He would not return to heaven without first undergoing the door-nailing ceremony, again figuratively speaking. The penalty for sin was death, and the price of redemption was a perfect life. In John 17, Jesus prayed at the close of his earthly ministry, “Father, I have done what You sent me to do.” And in Matthew 26, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He prayed in the garden, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,” and He voluntarily offered Himself as the price of our redemption. Isaiah 53 says, “The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That is why I don’t let anyone lay any guilt trips on us. God took away our sins and laid them onto Christ, as in the type of the scapegoat. Jesus had the price, He voluntarily offered to pay it, and He actually paid it as our Kinsman Redeemer. God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. If you were to ask me, “Do you think you’re a sinner?” I would say “Yes. In fact, I’m a damn good sinner! One thing I am good at is sinning.” You might say, “Well, then, why are you preaching?” I preach because that is what I am called to do. I stand redeemed, because One worth enough to God, worth more than all of us put together, died in my place. The One who had never known separation from God’s presence endured separation because of my sins. And the One who had never known anything but the light of God’s presence took the darkness of God’s wrath that I deserved. God treated His Son in the way you and I deserve to be treated, in order that God might now treat us as His Son deserves to be treated. God gives us the gift of eternal life for the simple act of trusting Him, not because some preacher comes along with a new list of rules deduced from Mount Sinai. Sinners though we are, while we cannot make ourselves perfect, we can look every circumstance in the eye and say, “Circumstance be damned! ‘For ever, O LORD, thy word in settled in heaven!’ God said it! I’m going to grab hold of it. And if I die trusting God, I will wake up where His word rules without friction!” Faith is what saves, not works! Paul said, “I frustrate not the grace of God, for if righteousness came by works of the law, then Christ died in vain.” We are all sinners being saved by grace. Even the smallest grip of faith will save you, even when it seems like you are only hanging on by a fingernail. When the tears come rushing down and everything looks bad, find the courage to declare God’s promise, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you!” When you are sure that the events of today or tomorrow will crush you, you can reach up and grab hold of the promise, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you!” When you are sure that the events of today or tomorrow will crush you, you can reach up and grab hold of the promise, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be!” When racked with pain, you can claim the promise, “I am the LORD that healeth thee!” You might ask, “What if I die of this sickness?” Then you will wake up well in His presence! God has promised to heal you, and “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” That is the beautiful kind of faith, which is 90 percent courage and 9 percent tenacity. You can look every circumstance in the face and say, “I will trust in God.” God is looking for people like that. He will give you the righteousness of Christ and look at you through what I call the “spectacles” of Jesus: He sees you as a finished work in Christ. The God who knows everything about me, far more than you or I will ever know, looks at me as though I were Jesus because I trust in Him. That is the message I want you to take home with you this Christmas season. The real date of Christ’s birth is only important because it proves that when God says something, He does it. God brought forth His Son in the fullness of time on the Feast of Trumpets. Jesus was ordained at His baptism in His thirtieth year and was crucified exactly three and a half years later in order to precisely fulfill a sequence of God’s set times. And a God who can make history bend to His will can sure take care of you and me. Merry Christmas! 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