When the Creator Came He Found Dead Men Walking

No, it wasn’t a zombie apocalypse. The Creator and Giver of life came to the world he had created and
found dead people walking around everywhere he looked. How sad it must have been for Jesus, who breathed life into humanity, to be face-to-face with dead humanity. And how sad it was for him to recognize that although they were dead, they didn’t know they were dead, and because they didn’t know, they didn’t hunger for the life that he had come to give them. How sad it is to have the one thing people desperately need, but they’re not interested in what you have to offer.

Life was born in that manger; it’s what the Christmas story is about. Life was born among the dead so that the dead would come to life. Now, I’m not talking here about physical death, but rather spiritual death. But consider the power of this word picture. This may sound crass, but it confronts us with what it means to be spiritually dead: the one person you expect nothing from at a funeral is the deceased. Because the person is dead, he is unable to relate to you, let alone rescue himself from his sad state. Consider that:

 1. A dead man has no awareness that he is dead.

2. A dead man has no ability to cry out for help.

3. A dead man can’t breathe life into himself.

4. For a dead man to live, a divine miracle must take place.

Listen to the description in Ephesians 2:1–9 of every sinner apart from the life-infusing grace of the Messiah, Jesus:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—​​​among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—​​​by grace you have been saved—​​​and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Because we were dead in our sins, we were completely without any ability to rescue ourselves. We were stuck in our sins and trapped in a cycle of rebellion against God, slaves to our passions and objects of God’s wrath. Not only were we dead, but we were also doomed, and not only were we doomed, but we were also helpless. Here you find the essence of the Christmas story. Here is where it preaches to us about God’s abounding love and his amazing grace. Because we were not able to act for ourselves to change our condition, God acted on our behalf. And because he is boundless in love and plenteous in mercy, he acted for us and not against. If God had acted against us, his judgment would have been right—​​​we deserved his wrath. But the birth of Jesus told the world of dead people that God was not going to act in anger but in mercy. He was not going to mete out punishment but rather grace. He wasn’t going to strike us with his holy sword of vengeance but rather gift us with his life-giving Son.

The birth of that baby tells you that the story of humanity would not end with the walking dead. It would not end with slavery to sin and separation from God. The birth of Jesus is God acting radically in human history to give life to dead people. How would that happen? Well, the One who was life would take on all our sin and die so that we would not only have life right here, right now, but fullness of life with him for all of eternity. The One who is life died for the dead so that the dead would have life forever.

The birth of Jesus tells you something else. Because of what Jesus would do in his life, death, and resurrection, because he was willing to die to give life, we will live, but death will die. The birth of the ultimate life-giver, Jesus, guarantees the death of death. In the life and work of that baby in the manger all the effects of sin will be defeated, the worst of them being death. As the children of God, we will not only live, alive in heart and alive to God, but we will be invited to the one funeral we’ll actually want to go to. We’ll be invited to the funeral of sin and death, because sin and death will die because of the redeeming work of the One born in Bethlehem.

So at Christmas remember that beneath the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph, and that rented barn is this amazing story of life and death. And because it’s a story of life and death, it’s a story of amazing grace. The birth of Jesus is a sure sign that God will act where we cannot act, and he will act with life-giving grace. Celebrate that Jesus came to give life, because it’s the one gift we could never, ever give ourselves.

 

By Paul Tripp, Come Let Us Adore Him Devotional (December 27) 

The Longest Night of the Year

The darkness has been gathering for a while now. It wasn’t particularly obvious at first—a lengthening
shadow here, a loss of an hour there. But as the weeks progressed and the hands of time were set forward, an undeniable gloom has settled in and with it, a chill. Things that once flourished in light now lie dormant. We go to sleep in darkness and wake in the same.

To be fair, the night has been coming due for a while now. Those high days of summer when we were carefree and daylight seemed to stretch on forever were always going to exact a price. But the loss of light was so gradual that we didn’t really notice it until we were sitting in darkness. And now, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere find ourselves facing the longest night of the year. 

Meteorologically speaking, the winter solstice is easily explained: It is the moment when the Earth’s poles are tilted to their most extreme positions in relationship to the sun, resulting in an exaggerated gap in sunlight between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. While the global South basks in the light of summer, the tilt of our planet’s axis places the North in darkness. The further north you go, the greater the disparity so that Oslo, Norway, will experience only six hours of daylight while Fairbanks, Alaska, will have less than four. Closer to the Arctic Circle, there will be no discernible sunlight at all—full days of darkness for places like Murmansk, Russia, and Utqiagvik, Alaska.

Those are the facts anyway. But the existential reality of the winter solstice is less reasonable and at least for me, deeply portentous. There’s a heaviness to it, and for some, a visceral despair as the loss of sunlight prompts physiological imbalances in the form of Seasonal Affective Disorder As a child, I remember my father speaking of the encroaching night with a sense of reverence and even humility. My father spent most of his day working outside, so for him the loss of daylight meant the loss of working hours and, to some degree, productivity, which in modern life also implies meaning.“The shortest day of the year is coming,” he’d warn as if he were a prophet and it was his solemn duty to prepare us for what was coming.

So like the Earth preparing for winter, I find myself shutting down as darkness descends. It is harder to wake in the morning, and I’m less eager to venture out in the evenings. My mind tells me that I should be active and engaged, fighting against the chill, pushing back the boundaries of the night. Conditioned for productivity and abundance, I flood the house with lights, crank up the heat, and push through. And yet, I also find my body telling me to wait. To accept that there are dark forces beyond myself and that all my energy and efforts cannot stop them from cycling through.

In such moments, I take comfort in the particularly propitious alignment of the winter solstice with the liturgical season of Advent. 

At least in the Northern Hemisphere, these weeks gradually bring us to the year’s darkest darkness even as they also deliver us to Christmas. Modern observances often treat Advent as an extension of Christmas, with celebrations and feasting beginning immediately after Thanksgiving, but Christians as far back as the fourth century have prepared for the coming Christ child by sitting in the darkness. Much like the season of Lent, these weeks are for fasting, prayer, and repentance. Strangely enough, we’re supposed to feel unsettled and lost.

In her book length treatment of Advent, Fleming Rutledge puts it more directly:

“Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in the world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness. As our Lord Jesus tells us, unless we see the light of God clearly, what we call light is actually darkness … Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness without and the darkness within.”

In this way, the Earth may be better attuned to the purposes of darkness than we are. While we insist on revelry and abundance, nature is content to receive such seasons and sit in night. What for us can be the busiest time of the year becomes for her a time of patience and quiet—a time dedicated to the hidden work of decay, the breaking down and dissolution of the past year’s excesses in preparation for future life.

But as much as Advent is a season of darkness, it is also a season of expectation and it is vital that we remember that the night delivers us to the morning. 

“Advent” derives from the Latin word, adventus which means “coming” or “arrival.” Something—Someone—is coming and we are waiting for that coming. Christians are waiting for the One whose justice and kindness far outpaces our own. So that even as the shadows lengthen and night descends, even as the things that operate in darkness feel like they grow stronger each moment, hope is not lost. For just as you cannot see the glory of the stars at noonday, it takes the chill of a winter’s night to clarify what is Light and what is Dark. And it is by these same pinpoints of light that we will be guided.

In the final book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien describes such a reality. As the heroes Sam and Frodo are engulfed by the ever-deepening shadows of Mordor:

“…there, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Today, we may sit in darkness, but we wait in hope. Whether you’re feeling the weight of strained relationships, economic pressures, or civil unrest, the invitation of Advent is to know that you are not alone in the darkness. There is a Light beyond us, and that Light is coming to us. So we entrust ourselves, our neighbors, and our world to the God who is Emmanuel–who has and is and will come. And soon we will celebrate.”

- by Hannah Anderson: A Dark Season at Advent

 

A Christmas Message for the Post-Christian

C.S. Lewis once pointed out that Christianity does not begin by telling us how to behave, but by telling us
what is wrong.

There is a particular kind of person who feels most irritated by Christmas. Not the outright unbeliever, not the pagan who senses a mystery he cannot name, but the one who has already “been there.” The post-Christian knows the story. They know the carols, the manger, the angels. They have opinions about it all. They have moved on.

Or so they think.

This is the person C.S. Lewis had in mind in “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans” when he spoke of those who are sick and do not know it. Not because they are immoral, or foolish, or uniquely corrupt, but because they have lost the ability to feel their need. They once heard the diagnosis and now believe themselves immune.

The post-Christian does not usually say, “I reject Christ.” They say something softer and far more dangerous. They say, “I know all that already.” They believe the faith has been outgrown, like a childhood coat. They remember the rules more clearly than the mercy, the prohibitions more clearly than the promise. And so they assume the cure was nothing more than a moral program they have since replaced with something more flexible, more adult, and more reasonable.

Christmas arrives and irritates them because it refuses to stay in the past. It insists on returning every year like an unanswered question. Lights go up. Songs drift through grocery stores. Old words reappear. “Prepare the way.” “Watch.” “Wake.” The post-Christian tells themselves it is nostalgia, or marketing, or cultural debris. But something underneath them stirs anyway.

Lewis once pointed out that Christianity does not begin by telling us how to behave, but by telling us what is wrong. That is precisely what the post-Christian resists. They do not want to be told they are unwell. They prefer to believe the trouble lies elsewhere. In systems, structures, history, bad actors, anything but the human heart.

So they trade sin for psychology, repentance for self-expression, forgiveness for explanation. They learn to narrate themselves endlessly. They understand their wounds. They trace them carefully. They name every fracture in the family tree. And still the ache remains.

This is the quiet irony of the post-Christian life. They have thrown off guilt, yet cannot find rest. They have rejected judgment, yet live under constant accusation. They have abandoned absolution, yet they continue to rehearse their failures in their heads. They have learned all the language of healing except the one thing that actually heals.

Christmas does not argue with them. It does not try to win them back by force. It simply stands there and tells the old story again, slowly, stubbornly, like a bell that refuses to stop ringing.

It says the problem is not that you lacked information. The problem is not that you failed to try hard enough. The problem is not that you grew up in a bad church or heard the faith poorly explained. The problem is older, deeper, and far less flattering.

The world is sick. And so are you.

Lewis was blunt about this. He insisted that Christianity only makes sense if something has gone seriously wrong. Not slightly wrong. Not inconveniently wrong. Fatally wrong. Christmas dares to say the same thing without raising its voice.

The post-Christian bristles. They do not want a savior. They want a solution. 

It tells us that no amount of education, therapy, reform, or self-curation can mend what is broken at the root. It tells us the reason we cannot save ourselves is not that we have not yet discovered the right method, but because we are the problem we keep trying to solve.

This is where the post-Christian bristles. They do not want a savior. They want a solution. They want improvement, not resurrection. They want Christmas without the confession that makes Christmas necessary.

But Christmas refuses that bargain.

It insists that the cure comes from outside us. That help does not rise from within. That the center of the story is not human potential but divine interruption. A God who does not wait for us to climb toward him, but comes down into our confusion, our fatigue, our self-justifications, our well-polished unbelief.

This is why the incarnation offends modern ears. A teacher we can admire. A moral example we can adapt. A spiritual insight we can integrate. But a God who enters the world as a child because we cannot rescue ourselves? That is harder to dismiss and harder still to accept.

Christianity insists, stubbornly and repeatedly, that something had to die before anything could live.

Christmas does not shout this. It whispers it. Candles instead of spotlights. Silence instead of spectacle. A pregnant pause in the year that asks one uncomfortable question: What if you were wrong about what you needed?

Not wrong in the sense of ignorant, but wrong in the sense of misdiagnosed. What if your restlessness is not boredom, but hunger? What if your cynicism is not wisdom, but exhaustion? What if your distance from the faith is not maturity, but grief you never finished grieving?

Lewis once noted that Christianity does not promise comfort first, but honesty first. Christmas follows the same order. It tells the truth before it offers joy. It names the darkness before lighting the candle. It waits.

And then, quietly, it says this.

The cure is not an idea. The cure is not a principle. The cure is a person. A person who does not recoil from your doubt, your resentment, your past church wounds, or your practiced indifference. A person who enters history precisely because history cannot fix itself.

Christmas does not exist to make you feel nostalgic. It exists because without intervention, the story ends badly. Christmas is the season that remembers this without apology.

If you are post-Christian, Christmas is not here to drag you back. It is here to ask whether you ever truly left the question behind. Whether the ache you keep managing might actually be an invitation. Whether the cure you dismissed is still standing at the door.

The lights will come on soon enough. The songs will swell. The Child will arrive, unarmed, unguarded, unimpressive by every modern metric.

And Christmas will have done its work if, even for a moment, you wonder whether the faith you thought you outgrew might still know something about you that you have not yet dared to face.

The night is long.

The world is unwell.

And the cure does not wait for our approval.

by Donavon Riley, pastor, author, and writer at 1517

Masculinity Is Self-Rule Before World Rule

Masculinity is self-rule before world-rule. That idea used to be obvious.

Across civilizations, religions, and generations, men were not first measured by what they could conquer, command, or correct. They were measured by what they could restrain. Anger. Appetite. Ambition. Ego. Before a man was trusted with authority over others, he was expected to demonstrate authority over himself.

That assumption ran so deep it rarely needed to be explained.

But something changed.

When Anger Started to Feel Like Strength

Periods of cultural instability always produce the same temptation. When order collapses, anger begins to feel like clarity. Volume feels like courage. Aggression feels like masculinity.

It’s understandable. Weak leadership provokes reaction. Feminized institutions invite revolt. Men who have been ignored, mocked, or sidelined start looking for something solid to grab.

Anger offers that solidity. It sharpens the edges. It simplifies the world into friends and enemies. It feels decisive.

But Scripture never treats anger as a qualification for leadership. It treats it as a liability.

“Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” (Proverbs 16:32)

That verse doesn’t deny the value of strength. It reorders it. Taking a city is impressive. Ruling your spirit is rarer.

The Reversal We Barely Noticed

Somewhere along the way, masculinity quietly flipped its order of operations. Instead of self-rule leading to authority, authority became something to seize first, with character expected to catch up later. If it ever did.

Reaction replaced formation. Outrage replaced discipline. Confidence became a posture rather than a pattern of life. That reversal feels powerful in the moment. But it produces men who are brittle rather than strong.

A man who cannot govern his temper cannot govern a household.
A man who cannot receive correction cannot be trusted with command.
A man who must stay angry to feel strong is already confessing weakness.

How Authority Has Always Been Tested

Long before platforms and comment sections, institutions that actually lasted operated on a simple assumption: authority is entrusted, not claimed.

Across households, churches, armies, and trades, men were evaluated by a few basic duties. They weren’t edgy. They weren’t complicated. But they worked.

Care.
Does this man steward what has been placed in his hands, or does he burn through it to prove a point?

Obedience.
Is he visibly submitted to lawful authority, or does he only respect power when he holds it?

Accounting.
Can he give an honest account of his actions and their fruit, or only defend his intentions?

Loyalty.
Is he anchored to real people and real obligations, or to a tribe that exists mostly online?

These aren’t soft virtues. They are stabilizing ones.

A man who fails here may still sound confident. He may still be right about many things. But he is not yet trustworthy.

The Trap of Performative Masculinity

One of the great dangers of the moment is mistaking posture for power.

Rhetorical aggression can look like leadership. Contempt can masquerade as discernment. Constant opposition can feel like courage.

But Scripture does not define masculinity by how sharply a man critiques the world. It defines it by how faithfully he orders his life. Elders are required to be sober-minded, self-controlled, gentle, disciplined. Not because those traits are weak, but because authority without them destroys rather than builds.

Anger might rally a crowd. It cannot shepherd souls.

Christ as the Measure

This is where everything clarifies.

Christ did not inherit authority because He seized it. He did not rule by outrage. He did not posture for dominance.

He obeyed the Father. He ruled Himself. Then He was given all authority in heaven and on earth. That order matters.

Any vision of masculinity that cannot survive that comparison is not biblical. It is brittle.

A Harder Path Than Outrage

It is easy to be angry online. It is hard to be faithful in obscurity.

It is easy to identify enemies. It is hard to rule your spirit.

It is easy to demand order from the world. It is far harder to submit yourself to real authority, real accountability, and real responsibility.

But that harder path is the only one that produces men fit to lead.

Masculinity is not proven by how loudly a man resists cultural decay. It is proven by the order he maintains over himself, especially when no one is watching.

Self-rule comes first. World-rule comes later, if at all.

And when that order is honored, authority no longer needs to be announced. It is recognized.

 

By Virgil Walker who serves as a Teaching Pastor at Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona. He is also the co-host of the Just Thinking Podcast and is a featured writer at Sola Veritas, Standing for Freedom Center, and TPUSA’s BLEXIT movement.

“Nothin’ From Nothin’ Leaves Nothin’.”

Without a savior, sin always rules

In his book “What Americans Believe,” George Barna points out that 87% of non-Christians and 77% of
self-described born-again believers agreed with the statement “People are basically good.” In other words, our culture, by and large, has discarded the idea of original sin.

The sophisticated among us roll our eyes at the concept of innate human corruption. We snicker at the notion that certain actions, thoughts and behaviors are still deemed to be sinful. The very idea of sin seems a bit too Victorian to us. “It is judgmental and prudish,” we say, and we are quick to condemn anyone who dares suggest that we are anything less than good people.

The whole idea of sin has gone the way of the horse and buggy. It is an outdated and useless concept that has been replaced by more modern ways of understanding the human being and human experience. Men and women are born good, and suggesting that anyone comes into this world with a corrupted nature and is guilty of sin is, well, a sin.

The irony, however, of denying this biblical understanding of human nature is that if you boil it all down to its basic premise, it is really nothing more than the celebration of what Scripture calls the “fall.” That is, the fall of everyone wanting to “be as God” and thereby deciding for themselves what is right and wrong, just and unjust, and true or false. It’s the fall of us declaring who is male and who is female and even presuming to define life and death.

Such autonomous power is to become our own God, for we no longer need him to know the difference between good and evil.

In our denial of a sovereign, we have, ironically, found one. We are the ultimate ruler. There is only one king, and it is us. We will bow to no one else.

St. Paul warned of this 2,000 years ago in his letter to the Romans. He told us the danger of worshipping the created rather than the Creator is that it inevitably leads to bondage rather than freedom. Elevating ourselves over God always leads to slavery to sin, either ours or someone else’s.

The lessons of history have proved repeatedly that when men make this mistake, the consequences are dire. Millions have suffered in the prisons and died in the furnaces from such idolatry.

The paradox in all of this is that admitting the existence of our depravity is the only bulwark against it. As G.K. Chesterton famously argued, “Original sin … is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,” and the best minds in human history (such as Jefferson, Adams, Washington and Monroe) “all took positive evil as the starting point of their argument.”

In other words, our Founders understood that “when there is no king in the land, everyone starts doing what is right in their own eyes,”(Joshusa 17:6) and culture collapses under the weight of human depravity. They did believe we needed a king, and his name was Jesus. Or, in the words of Thomas Paine: “Where, say some, is the King of America? I tell you, friend, he reigns above.”

At its core, the “No Kings” movement is really nothing more than a repeat of the millennia-old cycle of the original sin. Eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, these people become their own monarch as they haughtily rise and shout, with the maniacal confidence of Diderot, “We will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest!”

We dare not, however, forget that if the French Revolution teaches us anything, it is this: When you take God out of the public square, it creates a vacuum that will quickly be filled with despots and demagogues. Shouts of “No Kings” always lead to someone who is only too willing to use the guillotine to secure his reign.

Back in the 1970s, Billy Preston sang, “Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’.” He was right. Sooner or later, “you’ve gotta have somethin’” to fill the void. Chaos always demands a correction. We all will have a king. It will either be the one we see in the Bible or the one we see in the mirror.

Without a savior, sin always rules.

Dr. Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com

Cellphones: Blessing or Curse

Recently, writer Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, posed this question to ChatGPT: 

“If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation, without them even knowing it?” 

Here’s a bit of the answer he shared in a Free Press article:

“I’d keep them busy. Always distracted” and “I’d watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is, they’d never know it was me. They’d call it freedom.”

Mr. Haidt wrote, “It seemed to be saying, if the devil wanted to destroy a generation, he could just give them all smartphones.” He came to this after studying why Gen Z, the kids born between 1996 and 2012, experienced an increase in mental health problems beginning in the early 2010s.

Sometimes, truth also comes packaged in unorthodox places.

The Babylon Bee online satire site had a recent headline, “Jesus Heals Demon-Possessed Man by Taking Away His Cellphone.” “Multiple reports indicated that the man’s rages, convulsions, and foaming at the mouth were instantly healed as soon as Jesus removed the man’s smartphone from his hand,” the story reads. “At publishing time, witnesses had reported that Jesus had told the man to go and scroll no more, or something worse might happen to him.”

Christians familiar with biblical accounts of Jesus’ miracles, plus his admonition to the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more,” will get this immediately.

Yet you don’t have to be a Christian to question whether smartphones have been a blessing or a curse. Clearly, they are both. Remember what it was like trying to connect with someone arriving at an airport? Or losing written directions on the way to a destination? Or not having change for a pay phone? Scratch that last one if you’re younger than 40.

The convenience has been astonishing. The world’s accumulated knowledge is at our fingertips. You can talk face-to-face with friends, loved ones and business acquaintances around the world, but the price has been steep.

A story broke last year in The New York Times about a remote Amazon tribe getting internet access and cellphones and developing social pathologies within two years. The tribe says the paper exaggerated, and it has filed a defamation lawsuit.

Nonetheless, the social effects of ubiquitous cellphones are obvious. Every weekday, on a nearby corner, middle and high school kids wait for a school bus. Every one of them has his or her head down, engrossed in a cellphone. No one is talking. No girl is flirting with a boy. No boys are comparing sports scores. At least not in person.

When we encounter these teens on neighborhood walks, we’re often surprised and saddened that they won’t even return a friendly “Hello.”

Apple founder Steve Jobs introduced iPhones in January 2007, and by the 2010s, they were everywhere. With instantaneous communication, Big Tech has created an environment in which kids are fed constant opinions and, often, dark themes. They can become victims of scathing psychological attacks or become part of a peer group assaulting another student. They can watch videos ad nauseam on TikTok, access pornography, create deepfakes and read posts that make their parents out to be ogres if they exert any discipline whatsoever glued to their phones angels” or make them subject to “spiritual degradation.” All too often, he writes, it’s the latter.

Personally, I have no doubt that God exists, came miraculously in human form 2,000 years ago to save our souls, and is still doing so. In any case, Haidt is on to something important. He offers “four norms” that could help: No smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, and more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world.

Children, he says, need “to do hard things, over and over, and suffer setbacks and losses, in order to become strong, independent adults.” In other words, they need to develop character, something about which the Bible has much to say. For example, “Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.” (Proverbs 10:9)rampant. Throw cellphones into this mix, and you have a perfect storm.

A committed mother and father can make an enormous difference. For those lacking such a foundation, faith in a loving God goes a long way. “He will heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3) The Apostle Paul offered a timeless antidote to angst and cynicism that could apply even to overuse of cellphones: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Phil. 4:8)

Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.

The Cross is Not Neutral

“The great line that divides humanity is not political, economic, social, or ethnic. No, the great fault line
is Jesus.”

When Mary and Joseph took young Jesus to the temple, they didn’t know that Simeon, a righteous man, would be waiting there for him. The Holy Spirit had told Simeon that he would not die before he saw the “Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). Simeon took Jesus in his arms. What an amazing scene. Imagine being chosen by God to hold the young Messiah in your arms! As he held Jesus, Simeon spoke these words:

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
     according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
     that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
     and for glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:29–32)

After Simeon spoke his words of blessing, worship, and prophecy, he turned to Mary and said, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35). These would have been hard and confusing words for the young mother of the Messiah to hear.

Simeon captured the inescapable truth about the identity, person, and work of Jesus.

When you are presented with the truth of Christ’s birth, God’s declaration of who he is, the testimony of his miracles and ministry, and his own self-testimony, you cannot be neutral about Jesus. Spiritually, you either rise or fall with your response to him. It is not enough to say he was a good prophet and teacher. You either say he is the Messiah Savior and bow before him and cry out for his grace, or you reject him and your need for his grace. You either worship him, or you mock him. You either confess your need for him, or you turn in independence away from him.

There is no neutrality in the shadow of the cross.

The great line that divides humanity is not political, economic, social, or ethnic. No, the great fault line is Jesus. When Simeon told Mary that a sword would pierce her soul, he was, of course, speaking of Calvary, when Mary would watch as a spear pierced the side of her Messiah son. What agony awaited this young mother.

The cross of Jesus either is your hope in this life and the one to come, or it represents the death of a man you do not love and do not need. There is no neutrality in the shadow of the cross.

So, today, what will you do with Jesus? Will you bow in worship and gratitude, or will you take life in your own hands and walk away?

This article is adapted from the Everyday Gospel Christmas Devotional by Paul David Tripp.

The Hope of Christmas

No matter what this Christmas season holds, the Bible proclaims good news—God offers hope to all
through the gift of his Son.

For many, the word Christmas brings thoughts of fun with friends and family and the enjoyment of giving and receiving gifts. For them, as the song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” But for others, Christmas is a painful reminder of broken relationships, lost loved ones, or financial hardships, any of which makes the season the most difficult time of the year.

Whatever feelings we have this Christmas, the Bible explains that there is good news that can give us hope and joy no matter what our Christmas season is like. But before we can benefit from this good news, we must first understand the “bad news.”

The Bad News: We are all separated from God

God did not create us like robots to automatically love and mechanically obey him. The first man and woman chose to disobey God and to go their own willful way. Each of us since then has been born sinful and disobedient toward God. All this results in spiritual separation from him.

The Bible says . . .

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23

The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23

People have tried many ways to bridge this separation between themselves and God.

The Bible says . . .

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Proverbs 14:12

Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. Isaiah 59:2

No bridge reaches across that separation . . .
except one.

The Good News: God has provided a bridge—the cross

Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave. Though he was God’s sinless Son, he became a human and took our place in order to pay the penalty for our sin. By doing that he bridged the otherwise uncrossable gap between God and us!

The Bible says . . .

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5

Christ . . . suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. 1 Peter 3:18

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. . . . The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 5:8; 6:23

Christ died for our sins, . . . he was buried, . . . he was raised on the third day. 1 Corinthians 15:3–4

God has provided the only way to forgiveness of sin and eternal life. But each person must make a choice.

The Choice: Accept or reject Jesus Christ

In order to receive the forgiveness of sin and the eternal life offered to us by God, we must repent of our sin and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and Life.

Jesus says . . .

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  John 14:6

The Bible says . . .

To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

What is your decision?

Will you receive Jesus Christ right now and trust in him alone for forgiveness and eternal life? The Bible says that is the only way to find freedom and peace with God.

 

60 Years of Hearing the Gospel in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

2000 or so years ago there were probably heated conversations in Israel about how many terms Quirinius would serve as Governor, the political ramifications of Caesar’s Census, the new tax rates, the terrorist threat level, and when a great political leader would come to usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. Seems like not much has changed today.

Many in those days missed that first Christmas because of the human gravitational pull for political saviors. Even today many think the gospel is a political message or good advice for better living rather than God’s sovereign grace and power to save sinners. No one back then was looking for the hope of the world and the glory of God in a feeding trough in Bethlehem. Yet God the Son humbly put on flesh, stepped into time and space, and chose to live with us and for us. John 1:14 says literally, “He pitched his tent among us, and we saw His glory.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is the animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. It made its debut on the CBS television network on December 9, 1965. It tried to turn counter the culture’s counterfeit Christmases and to remind and the audience then and ever since that Jesus is the reason for the season. It concluded its 26-minutes with Linus responding to Charlie Brown’s frustration about the commercialization of Christmas when Charlie shouts, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Linus, hearing his friend’s question, carried his blanket on stage and recited the following from Luke 2:8-14:

”And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

You may recall Linus’ blanket was his ever-present security and companion. In all Charles Schultz’ cartoons Linus was never without it except one time. At the exact moment in the story when Linus recites the words, ‘Fear not…a Savior is born, which is Christ the Lord” Linus drops his precious blanket. This wasn’t an accident. Charles Schultz, a Christian, was quite intentional in presenting the gospel.

 In this seemingly innocent moment, Linus delivers a powerful reminder of the true meaning of Christmas. We are to “fear not”, for Jesus is born. We are to “love one another” (John 13:34). We needn’t rely on material things for security, we have God with us, “Immanuel”, (Matthew 1:23) Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior - the true meaning of Christmas. 

 Also, amid the big, bright, colorful, shiny artificial trees, Charlie Brown chose the least of them, a little, wooden tree with just a few branches. Shortly thereafter, Linus uses his blanket to wrap about the base of the tree and says, “Maybe it just needs a little love”. In that moment, the tree “awakens”, stands tall and firm. A reminder that no matter who we are, no matter how many sins we’ve committed, a God's love makes all the difference in where we will spend eternity.

Jesus’ birth, His perfect, obedient life, and His atoning death all in our behalf free us from our sin, fears and anxieties, idols, earthly security blankets…and from death. In Christ alone, we find our security, significance, and satisfaction, and receive the greatest joy by loving, treasuring, and delighting in Him. 

BTW, here’s a bit more about why the secular network broadcast the gospel.

Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, was also a devout Christian. CBS asked Schulz to create a Christmas special featuring the Peanuts characters. He agreed with one requirement, that they allow him to include the story of the birth of Jesus. Although network and affiliate executives were hesitant and tried to convince him otherwise, Schulz was insistent. As a result, for the past 60 plus years, millions of people have watched and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and heard the story of Jesus and “what Christmas is all about.”

May you and your family see and savor Jesus in the glory of Christmas Advent Season! May we all boldly and joyfully share the reason for the season – Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior and Life

(BTW, the video clip of this gospel scene in the program is HERE

Men Who War Against Sin and Temptation Are The Heroes

JESUS:
"And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,'This people
honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’" - Mark 7:6-7

SUMMARY:
"The hypocrite is not the Christian who struggles against sin, fights against temptation, and keeps doing what is right even on his worst-feeling days. That’s a hero...The sin of hypocrisy is not that we are more messed up than we seem. That’s true for all of us. The sin is in using the appearance of goodness to cloak the deeds of evil. The sin is in thinking that who others think you are matters a great deal more than who God knows you to be."

BACKGROUND:
Many Christians misunderstand the nature of hypocrisy. It’s common to think of hypocrisy as the gap between your actions and your feelings. So if I do something without having my “heart” in it then I’m a hypocrite. Evangelicals are especially sensitive to this charge because we believe (quite rightly) that Christianity is more than “just going through the motions.” We know that having a personal relationship with Christ is crucial. We believe faith must be sincere.

And yet, we can easily misappropriate our good instincts. Some Christians wonder if they should still go to church if they don’t feel like it. They wonder if it’s right to sing the praise songs if they aren’t feeling worshipful that morning. They hesitate to give generously because “God loves a cheerful giver” and, well, giving doesn’t make them very happy. They aren’t sure they should repent of their sins or work to forgive their offender unless they feel really sorry and feel like forgiving. Many Christians fear that doing the right thing without the right feelings makes them hypocrites.

But is this really hypocrisy? Another word to describe this behavior might be “maturity.” Children only do what they feel like doing. Adults learn to do things they are supposed to do though they may not always be excited about it. Of course, as Christians we want to grow so that we feel good about what is good. But the Christian life is full of instances where the doing and the feeling do not exactly match—sometimes with feelings ahead of obedience and sometimes with obedience ahead of our feelings.

Hypocrisy is not the gap between doing and feeling; it’s the gap between public persona and private character. Hypocrisy is the failure to practice what you preach (Matt. 23:3). Appearing outwardly righteous to others, while actually being full of uncleanness and self-indulgence—that’s the definition of hypocrisy (Matt. 23:25-28).

The hypocrite is not the Christian who struggles against sin, fights against temptation, and keeps doing what is right even on his worst-feeling days. That’s a hero. The hypocrite is the Christian who uses the veneer of public virtue to cover the rot of private vice. He’s the man living a double life, the woman fooling her friends because she has church clothes, the student who proudly answers the questions in Sunday school and just as proudly romps through immorality the rest of the week.

The sin of hypocrisy is not that we are more messed up than we seem. That’s true for all of us. The sin is in using the appearance of goodness to cloak the deeds of evil. The sin is in thinking that who others think you are matters a great deal more than who God knows you to be.

 

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. He has written books for children, adults, and academics, including The Biggest Story Bible Storybook, The Hole in Our Holiness, Daily Doctrine, and Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children.