Beyond the Manger - The Christian Online Magazine

The Christian Online Magazine -

Shalom--Peace and good will toward men.

OK, get a good grip on your reindeer and polish your sleigh bells because Santa Claus ain’t coming to town, but Jesus is coming soon! In Hebrew, we call Him Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Messiah. Is this Messiah central to your holiday season? I hope so, because remember, Jesus is Lord, & He vuz such a nice Jewish boy. By the way, Jesus didn’t celebrate Christmas, He celebrated a different winter festival. According to the Gospel of John (John 10:22), Jesus, the light of the world, celebrated the festival of lights, better known as the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

Well, Hanukkah is NOT a Jewish Christmas and I hope you don’t mind a Jewish guy raising questions about Christmas, but seriously, is Santa Claus replacing Jesus? Was Jesus really born on December 25^th? Here is a perennial favorite: Is Christmas a pagan holiday? Well let me answer that by saying that I don’t think I would say so. I don’t want to insult any pagans in my audience. They may feel that Christmas is too materialistic. Besides, modern pagans, like Druids I have talked to, prefer hugging trees to cutting them down for lavish holiday decorations.

I guess we would agree that the commercializion of Christmas is way over-the-top. Still, there is no denying that Christmas affirms the God of the Bible and the prophetic birth of His Son in Bethlehem. Ancient pagans believed in many gods; Christians proclaim only one. Christmas retailers may depend on our pagan instincts to fuel holiday sales, but the Christmas message still declares the miraculous birth of our royal King. But if we are supposed to be celebrating the birthday of Jesus, why do we get all the goodies?

It seems each year, a babe in a manger gets the press, and everybody else gets the presents. In light of our ostentatious display of opulence in the face of so much suffering, is Christmas still relevant to a lost dying world? And, if so, does that relevance transcend holiday gifts or the 4^th quarter retail sales reports? The simple answer is YES!

People are desperate and in need of hope. And that is the promise of Christmas. I hope that we don’t allow Jesus to be lost in all of the holiday trimmings? Jesus came to us without any candy-coating. He still offers the sweetest hope of all time—peace with God and life eternal. Yet consider this rare, raw, real point of fact regarding the original manger scene. Jesus was born at night into a dark, dirty, working stable with dung-crusted straw among filthy, unsanitary animals. But you know what, in some ways it was cleaner than some of the sin-crusted hearts where He would choose to live right now if He was welcome. The inn was full, yet God’s glory brought light into the darkness. Is there room at the inn of our hearts this Christmas season?

Another issue to consider is that while Christmas may be a time of great joy for you, for others, it can be a time of sadness and conflicted emotions. Christmas dreams in reds & greens may be nightmares lived in black & white by families in crisis. Christianity should not a reduced to a religion of consumerism! Therefore, Christmas should mean more than deflated budgets, inflated waste lines, and exploding credit card statements.

Let me ask the hard question. Are we really satiated after our Christmas buying binges and festival feasts? Will we remember the momentary adrenaline rush of ripping through colored paper and pretty bows when the bills come home to roost and our bellies expand to fill our fancy new clothes? We are convinced that more is better and we always want more. Maybe some of just need to admit that we’re a bunch of addicts. We’re consumer junkies. That is why advertisers live to convince us that if we wear the right fragrance, drive the right car, and buy the right clothes, we’ll look skinny and attract more sexy partners. The media brainwashes spoiled kids into pestering weary parents to buy every toy advertised. Parents, please pay attention. We will never succeed in bribing rotten kids into becoming well-adjusted adults.

Look, I am not the Christmas grinch but I want to tell you 3 practical Christmas secrets. If you eat like a pig, you’re gonna resemble one. If you spend more than you make, you’ll be poor. Stuff won’t make you happy if your faith can’t give you joy. Things will never satisfy. No, at best, things only pacify. But pacifiers are for infants. I hope that this year we can mature and move from the flair of Christmas and get to the substance? OK, if it not about Jesus, it just ain’t Christmas? But before we forget Santa Claus, I want to tell you a story about Santa’s first job, Moses, and the burning Hanukkah bush.

Moses stood on Mount Volmart wearing old wornout Egyptian hurachi sandals. God appeared in a burning bush. There was only enough twigs and bark to burn for 1 night but the bush miraculously burned for 8. On the fifth night of Hanukkah his true love gave to Moses 5 golden calves and a brand new pair of designer sandals. OK, my silly story contains as much truth as the nuggets on the trail behind Santa’s reindeer. Yes, Moses really saw a burning bush. But NO, a Hanukkah bush is as big a hoax as a toy factory in the North Pole. Now in fairness to Santa, there is reason to remember St. Nicholas. He was a solid Christian man from a very wealthy family that lived in Turkey about 200 years after Jesus. Honestly, Nicholas was one of the good guys. He faithfully served the early church as a bishop. Nicholas was so generous that he literally gave all of his wealth away. His kindness spared many young girls from lives of slavery and prostitution. but listen, we still can’t allow a myth to replace truth. Nicholas died and is with Jesus. Jesus is alive and should be reinstated as the King of Christmas.

And let me ask this, was Jesus born on December 25? Well, there is one good reason to doubt it. What self-respecting shepherd would have been out in the field freezing his tuchas off with a shivering flock of sheep in the middle of winter? What we can be sure of is that Christmas was one of the last holidays added to the Christian calendar in the 4th century. And December 25th has never been universally recognized as the correct date. The Eastern Churches chose January 6. The Western Churches, at the suggestion of John Chrysostom settled on December 25. Later, in the 5th century, both sides negotiated a settlement and fixed Christmas on December 25, and they chose January 6 to be the anniversary of the visit of the Wise Men. And what’s up with these Christmas trees? The disciples never saw a Scotch Pine in Israel.

So fess up, are you a pagan? Well, you might be a pagan, but if so, there are other behavioral issues that you should resolve first before you seek deliverance from Christmasitis. There is only one way to find out. Let me ask you, “What do you worship?” Take a look at your checkbook to find the best proof of what is really important to you. Do you invest your time and your money with a passion for God, or do you worship at what I’ll call the 1st Church of the Holy N? You know, do you make your sacrifices to a god of an N? Any N? The Nasdaq, NASCAR, Neiman Marcus? Maybe your god receives alms and delivers commands through NBC, or the NBA, or maybe the NHL? Or even more sacred, the most holy grail of that Church of the N--the NFL ooooh. I hear you out there. You’re saying, “Careful now preacher, the next thing you’ll be talking about is baseball, apple pie and mom.” Nope, not to worry. Listen to me, I think God wants us to enjoy our leisure activities and pay our bills. But check your idols before you worship at a pagan temple. Is Jesus your real superstar? Now I’m not here to preach, and that was dangerously close to preaching. I just wanted to remind you that for the Christian, our greatest joy should be knowing God and our passion for life must centered on pursuing His will.

But some still ask, “Is Christmas a pagan festival?” I get many inquiries from worried Christians asking if faithful believers should even celebrate Christmas? I guess it depends on who you ask. What can be ascertained with reasonable assurance is the fact that the pagan holiday normally focused upon by the detractors of Christmas is Saturnalia. This was a Roman winter festival celebrated by worshippers of the sun. Unfortunately for the scrooge-mongers, Saturnalia, probably ran from December 17 to the 21^st. It didn’t even encompass December 25th. So that argument against Christmas is not terribly convincing. Some legalistic Christians, and a few cults just insist upon linking every Christian holiday to an older pagan tradition. My advice to the anti-Christmas crowd is simple, find another myth to build upon before you tear down the ones we have diligently constructed for ourselves. It seems to me that there are better issues to stand on and more relevant things to stand against.

Granted, modern denominations do not mirror the practices of the Early Church. It is a different world. Nevertheless, the Bible and our faith is consistent. Christmas may not be an original practice. But since the world has accepted this season as a time to recognize the birth of Jesus, why fight it? You’ll never win the world by condemning it. At least people are finally thinking about God. That’s good, isn’t it?

Now here is another special Christmas thought. I sleep with a grandma everynight, so I don’t care for the idea of grandma being run over by a reindeer but in spite of the foolishness and the secularization of Christmas, let’s admit that we also hear a steady stream of wonderful Christmas carols that declare the Lordship of Jesus. Christmas is a great time to evangelize. Maybe, we just need to find more creative ways to advance Christ’s kingdom during this Christmas season. Let’s remember that floods of unbelievers will pour into our churches to enjoy Christmas pageants and delightful children’s programs. Parents and grandparents will stream to our holiday events with cameras in hand for photo ops of their precious tender lambs wearing adorable costumes to huddle around cute manger scenes. These productions are guaranteed to lure unbelieving relatives to church. But will they hear the whole Gospel? Will they receive a meaningful invitation to obtain eternal life? I hope so, because Christmas is a great time to proclaim Jesus! But let’s remember, its also a time to be sensitive.

Holidays intensify joy, but as many of you must realize, holidays also intensify loneliness. Single parent homes often feel extra stress during the season when people might reflect on broken relationships, broken promises, and broken dreams. Many families have been tormented by a serious illness or a recent death and holidays can amplify feelings of emptiness and depression. Gift-giving can have tortuous effects on the unemployed or under-employed who may be unable to reciprocate. Parents who are financially strapped have great difficulty explaining their lack to little children who have greater expectations than the family can afford. Perhaps this is one excellent reason to exercise generosity during this special time of the year.

Like the bumper stickers declare, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” The world turns at the birth of Jesus. That first Christmas split history from BC to AD. But when was Jesus born? We know that He was not born in the year zero. I mean the calendar didn’t go from 1 BC counting down to zero at the birth of Christ and then start all over a year later at 1 AD. By the way, AD does not stand for “after death” as in after the death of Christ. It is a Latin term “anno domini” which means “in the year of the Lord.” OK, but if you think his birth certificate had His little handprint and footprint next to the date of birth: December 25th, year 1, you missed it. You know Times Square didn’t celebrate when the world went from BC to AD like Y2K. And by the way, the Bible measured time according to the reign of kings. So and so was born in the such and such year of the reign of king thus and stuff. That’s how we know when Jesus was born. It was near the end of the reign of King Herod the Great who died in the year 4 before the Common Era. Since Herod was an active participant in the Christmas account and, since he was dead by 4 BCE, Jesus was certainly not born after that date.

And what about the first family of Christmas? You know, Joseph and Mary Christ, the parents of Jesus Christ and his fun-loving, yet troublesome brother, James Christ. OK, so I’m kidding. Jesus Christ was not the baby boy of Joseph and Mary Christ. Jesus, is actually a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua, a shortened version of the Hebrew name of Yehoshua or Joshua which means “Yahweh is Salvation.” Yeshua was a common name among Jewish boys. There were 10 with that name in the Hebrew Bible and 3 in the New Testament. Christ was a title, not a last name. Christos is a Greek translation of the Hebrew title for the Anointed One, which is Mashiach meaning messiah. The concept of a messiah is a thoroughly Jewish idea unknown outside of the Jewish prophets. The goyisha Gentile Christ of Christmas is really Yeshua ha Mashiach Jesus the Messiah. Like I said, Jesus is Lord, and he vuz such a nice Jewish boy.

Being Jewish myself, I want to thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts about the season. Thanks for allowing a Jewish guy into your circle of holiday friends. Now that we are friends, may I tell you the greatest tragedy of Christmas? Millions of people will go to extravagant lengths to have exquisite Christmas décor. But God knows that many will fail to experience His love. This is the real scandal of the season!

Everybody loves the babe in a manger, but all too many ignore the Savior on the Cross. The infant Jesus doesn’t make demands. It is the living Lord who calls us to carry our cross. A cute kid is more appealing than a bloodied, tortured innocent victim of mob rage. But if your view of Christ is limited to the infant in a manger, may I ask you to recall that Jesus was a sinless middle-aged Jewish man who was brutally beaten and executed to pay for your indiscretions. And Christmas was only the first episode of this saga. The sequel is even better. On Resurrection Sunday, Jesus rose from the grave and that’s not even half of the story. He’s coming back as King of Kings not a helpless baby. The infant Jesus is a very cute marketing concept, but life is only found in His death. I won’t belabor the question, but like Jesus with Nicodemus, I want to inquire, have you been born again? (John 3:3) If not, you have nothing to celebrate. God gave His greatest gift, don’t leave it wrapped in the closet so to speak. Open your heart to receive the love of God. The gift of Christmas won’t be found under a pretty tree. Jesus hung on a tree—a horrible Roman cross. Jesus was born once so we could be twice born. Do you understand this? Do you believe this? If so, will you turn to God for His greatest Christmas gift—life eternal? If you don’t quite understand it perhaps we can help make it clear. Will you allow me to send you 2 free Christmas presents. I want to provide you with a printed copy of this message included in our free teaching newsletter. And I also want to give you a free copy of the Gospel of John. Just give me a call or drop me a line. In the US, call toll free 1-800-688-3422 or request these gifts when you visit my website at www.crosstalk.org. We would also enjoy praying for you so contact us while it is on your mind. 1-800-688-3422.

However you choose to celebrate His birth, I pray you experience the blessed hope of Christmas. On behalf of my lovely bride Adrienne, along with our children and grandchildren, from all of us here at CrossTalk, we pray God’s richest blessings on you and your loved ones during this holiday season. He lives! Come soon Lord Jesus. Shalom, peace! And oh yeah, I almost forgot, “Merry Christmas.”