December 23, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode, Lisa explores the true meaning of Christmas, contrasting its commercialization with its spiritual significance. Lisa introduces Dr. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas. Dr. Jeffress delves into the biblical significance of Christmas, emphasizing themes such as God's sovereignty, the humanity and divinity of Jesus, and the reasons for Christ's coming, including redemption and adoption as children of God. He underscores that Christmas is about celebrating Jesus Christ's birth, God's gift to humanity, sent to save us from our sins. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've all seen the commercialization of Christmas. It's gifts under
the tree for family and loved ones, It's Sanna, Rudolph
the Red Nose Reindeer, debates over if Diehard is a
Christmas movie or not. You car commercials with bows on them.
You know, the list goes on and on and on.
But we all know that's not what Christmas is really about.
The true meaning of Christmas is celebrating the birth of
(00:21):
Jesus Christ, that God sent his only son to save
us from our sins. And I think that message is
more important than ever this year, at this time when
it feels like we've been battling or we've been in
a battle of good versus evil as a country.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So with that, we are.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Blessed for this episode to hear the true meaning of Christmas,
what it's truly about, from doctor Robert Jeffries. He's a
senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.
He is also an author a radio podcast host of
Pathway to Victory. You've also probably seen him on TV
as well on Fox News as a contributor. But before
we hear this really important message, the most important message,
(01:01):
I want to wish you at home and merry Christmas
with your loved ones. I want to thank you for
listening to the show throughout the year. I want to
thank you for your continued support. So Merry Christmas to you.
And here is Pastor Jeffries on the true meaning of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's that time of the year again when people
started bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas and lamenting that people
had forgotten the real purpose of the holiday. But if
you ask most people to summarize what Christmas is about,
they would have a hard time explaining it. And if
you told them they had to summarize the meaning of
(01:44):
Christmas in one sentence, most people, even Christians, would find
that impossible. But not the apostle Paul. In Galatians four
four through five, Paul uses one sentence to describe everything
you need to know about Christmas. But when the fullness
of the time came, God sent forth his son, born
(02:06):
of a woman, born under the law, in order that
he might redeem those who were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption as sons. Every journalism student
knows that if you're writing a news story, the lead
paragraph ought to answer six questions who, what, when, how, where,
(02:28):
and why. Paul does that in this one sentence from
Galatians four. First of all, he answers the question of
who and the fullness of time God. The subject of
the sentence is very clear. It's God. God is the
initiator of all of the events that led to the
First Christmas. In fact, He's the initiator of everything in
(02:50):
the world, including your world. We often refer to God's
control over all creation as God's sovereignty. He is king
over all. The late Ray Stedman, former pastor of Peninsula
Bible Church in California, wrote, there is the sovereignty of
the potter over the clay. Men make plans, but God
(03:12):
makes other plans. Napoleon had to learn that lesson. He
once said, God is on the side of the army
with the heaviest artillery. But there came a time in
his life when exiled on the island of Saint Helena,
he said, man proposes, but God disposes. Or in the
words of Mother Teresa, we are all pencils in the
(03:34):
hand of God. God is sovereign. He's in control of life, death, governments, angels,
your plans, your coincidences, and your so called control over
your life. Now, some people get nervous about the idea
of the sovereignty of God. Now, if God were some
giant ogre in heaven trying to inflict as much pain
(03:56):
on us as possible, then his sovereignty may be so
thing we should fear. But everything God does in the world,
including your world, is motivated by love. For God so
loved the world. John three point sixteen tells us that
he sent his only son, But God demonstrates his own love.
Romans five eight says, and that while we were yet sinners,
(04:19):
Christ died for us Ephesians two four. But God being
rich in mercy because of the great love with which
he loved us and one John four ten. And this
is love, not that we loved God, but that He
loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation,
the satisfaction for our sins. God is the first cause
(04:42):
of everything behind the coming of Christ in the world.
In the fullness of time, God, and what did God do?
He sent forth his son. Notice Paul doesn't say he
sent forth his infant or child. Too many times we
focus on the infancy of Christ at Christmas rather than
his deity. People tend to get all sentimental at Christmas
(05:06):
for all the wrong reasons. We see the Nativity scene,
the baby wrapped in the swaddling cloths. We get all
teary eyed and sentimental thinking about how sweet babies are,
and then about the birth of our own children, and
pretty soon Christmas is nothing more than a massive syraphy sentimentality.
(05:26):
The fact that a baby was born that night in
Bethlehem was nothing special. Hundreds of babies were born that
night in Israel. But this baby was different. He was
God himself. He would grow up to die on a
cross for our sins and be rescued from death for
our victory over sin. This is what made his birth
(05:48):
different than any other in history. And when did this occur?
Paul writes, it was in the fullness of time that
God sent forth his son. One paraphrase says, at just
the right time, God sent his son. Have you ever
noticed in your life that God is always on schedule.
(06:08):
He's never a minute late, he's never a minute early,
He's never in a hurry. God is always operating according
to his timetable. And it was true when Christ came
on that Christmas night so many years ago. It was
at the right time, and how exactly was Christ coming
(06:28):
at just the right time? Well, it was the right
time politically. The Roman Empire was at its zenith, the
Pax Romana, the Roman peace reigned over the world. The
world was at relative peace. The sophisticated Roman system made
it possible to travel more easily, facilitating the spread of
the good news about Jesus. It was the right time. Culturally.
(06:52):
The world was becoming more educated. More and more people
were speaking coin a Greek, the language of the common
pers that also facilitated the spread of the Word of God.
It was the right time spiritually in the world for
Christ to come. The polytheism, the worship of many gods
of both the Romans and the Greeks, was being replaced
(07:14):
by a belief in monotheism that there was one God.
And most of all, it was the right time prophetically
for Christ to come. The Old Testament had made dozens
of prophecies about the birth of Messiah, and all those
prophecies converged one night in the tiny town of Bethlehem.
Let me just mention one of those prophecies, Micah five
(07:37):
to two, was written seven hundred years before christ birth,
and it predicted that Jesus would be born in the
tiny village of Bethlehem. The prophet wrote, But as for you, Bethlehem, Ephitha,
too little to be among the clans of Judah. From
you one will go forth from me to be ruler
in Israel. His goings forth or from war long ago,
(08:00):
from the days of eternity. Seven hundred years later, the
Roman emperor Octavius we know in miss Caesar Augustus, was
meeting with his cabinet in Rome trying to figure out
how to handle a fiscal crisis of a shortage of funds.
Sound familiar, Well, they came up with a plan to
(08:20):
tax everyone in the Roman Empire, and the way they
would do it would be through a census. Without irs
computers to track people down, they had to rely on
this method. Every head of household would travel to his
hometown to be registered for the census in order to
be taxed. Little did Octavius know that when he signed
(08:43):
that decree it would cause a couple he had never
met to travel to a village so small it wasn't
included in the registry of Towns and villages in order
to give birth to the Savior of the world.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
It was got to take a quick break. More on
the true meaning of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
When the time was just right, God sent forth his son,
and how did he do it? The phrase born of
a woman explains how this is a reference to certainly
Jesus virgin birth. Isaiah seven fourteen, written seven hundred and
forty years before the birth of Christ, predicted behold, a
(09:23):
virgin shall conceive. But this phrase points to something else
as well. It points to the humanity of Jesus. Yes,
Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully man,
meaning he could understand our difficulties and empathize with our
difficulties in life. A six year old boy was practicing
(09:46):
shooting baskets in his backyard. He was always falling short
of the goal. His dad came along, took the ball
and said, son, just do it like this. It's easy,
and with no effort, he put it through the hoop,
tried again, had missed. His dad showed him again, taking
the ball and making a perfect shot. The boy, obviously frustrated,
(10:09):
said it's easy for you up there. You don't know
how hard it is down here. You and I can
never say that about God. God knows how difficult it
is for us to live life because he's experienced humanity
as well. That means he knows what it's like to
endure heavy duty sorrows like losing a loved one, or
(10:31):
like undergoing tremendous temptations or being betrayed by those closest
to you. But it also means he understands the minor
irritations of life, like having to climb out of bed
with a sore throat and go to work, or stay
up late or get up early. Jesus knows how you feel,
and he sympathizes with you. That's why Hebrews four fifteen
(10:53):
through sixteen says, for we do not have a high
priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but one who
has been tempted in all things as we are yet
without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to
God's throne of grace, that we might receive mercy and
may find grace to help in time of need. When
(11:17):
you pray to God, you can know he understands your problems,
not just intellectually but experientially. And how do we answer
the question where the next phrase tells us Jesus was
born under the law. What does that mean to be
born under the law. Many people think that there's a
(11:39):
difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God.
We think of the God of the Old Testament as
being strict and unreasonable and intolerant. But somehow we think
God loosened up a bit when Jesus came and is
much more lenient. No God is the same, He never changes.
Jesus said he did not come to abolish God's law,
(12:02):
but to fulfill it. God demands perfection, a standard none
of us can meet except for Jesus. And because he
was born under the law and obeyed God's law perfectly,
he's qualified to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Tewod Corinthians five twenty one says it this way, He Jesus,
(12:24):
who knew no sin, became sin for us that we
might become the righteousness of God in him. And why
why did God do all of these things? Why did
God sin? Forth? His son Paul answers the why question
with two reasons for the coming of Christ. First of all,
(12:46):
to redeem us. Verse five says in order that he
might redeem those who were under the law. That word
redeem is the Greek word x meaning out of agorazzo
mean marketplace. In Paul's day, if you wanted to purchase
a slave, you would travel to the agora, the marketplace
(13:08):
where slaves were sold like animals. A slave would be
placed on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder.
The purchaser of the slave was free to do with
the slave whatever he wanted once he had paid the price.
He could abuse him, he could slit his throat, he
could torture him. The slave was simply transferred from one
(13:29):
master to another master in the Agora. You and I
were born into this world as prisoners of Satan, and
Satan is a cruel, sadistic master who has nothing but
misery planned for our life and our eternity. But God,
for no other reason than the great love with which
he loved us, chose to sin Christ to pay the
(13:52):
ultimate price for our sins, that he might purchase us,
redeem us from the marketplace of sin, and deliver us
to God. Becoming a Christian doesn't mean we have no master.
It means we have a new master and an obligation
to serve him with our whole hearts. Paul explained it
(14:12):
this way in one Corinthians six nineteen through twenty. You
are not your own. You have been bought with a prist. Therefore,
glorify God in your body. But Paul gives another reason
for the coming of Christ, not only to redeem us,
but to adopt us as sons. Paul's whole point in
(14:32):
this passage is that when God redeems us, we are
no longer slaves with no rights. We're not even children
with a few rights. We are full adults with complete rights.
In Paul's day, a son would receive the full rights
of being a family member. Between the ages of fourteen
(14:53):
through seventeen. God is saying that when we trust in
Christ as our savior, we have his status as fellow
heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. Three benefits of being
an adult child of God are first of all, a
new position. When we become a Christian, we are welcomed
into God's family and nothing will ever change our status
(15:17):
with God. We have a new privilege as a son
or daughter of God. We have the ability to ask
God for anything, knowing that He hears us. Now, that
doesn't mean God grants our every request. He didn't grant
Jesus his every request remember, in the Garden of Death semony,
Jesus prayed that God would spare him from the cross,
(15:40):
and yet God said, no. Everything God does for us
is for our best and his glory. One John five
fourteen says, and this is the confidence which we have
before him, that if we ask anything according to his will,
he hears us. By the way that phrase according to
(16:01):
God's will. Isn't some loophole meant to keep good things
out of our life. The boundary of God's will is
meant to keep bad things from entering our life. We
have a new position, we have new privileges, and being
a part of God's family gives us a new power.
The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead
(16:23):
is available to you to give you victory over worry, stress, sin,
and ultimately over the grave. These are the reasons Christ
came to Bethlehem that he might redeem us out of
the marketplace of Satan and adopt us as sons and
daughters with full rights and privileges. The idea of God's
(16:45):
son giving up his rights as God and coming to
earth so that he might pay for our sins is
really a truth that is beyond human comprehension. The late
radio broadcaster Paul Harvey used to tell story every Christmas
on his broadcast about a farmer who had become jaded
(17:05):
in his faith. Skeptical, he chose to isolate himself from
others and lit out his days without being confronted with people.
It took a never to be forgotten experience in the
dead of winter to change the farmer's perspective. One raw
winter night, the man heard an irregular thumping sound against
(17:25):
the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and
watched his tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside,
beat in vane against the glass touched. The farmer bundled
up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn
for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights, tossed
(17:46):
some hay in a corner, and sprinkled a trail of
salting crackers to direct them to the barn. But the sparrows,
which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from
the house, still hid in the darkness afraid of him.
He tried various tactics, circling behind the birds to drive
them toward the barn. Tossing cracker crumbs in the air
(18:06):
toward them, retreating to his house to see if they
would flutter into the barn on their own. Nothing worked.
He a huge alien creature, had terrified them. The birds
could not understand that he actually desired to help them.
He withdrew to his house and watched the doom sparrows
through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him,
(18:30):
like lightning from a clear blue sky. If only I
could become a bird one of them, just for a moment,
then I wouldn't frighten them, so I could show them
the way to warmth and safety. At that same moment,
another thought had dawned on him. He had grasped the
true meaning of Christmas. As Philip Yancey writes, a man
(18:53):
becoming a bird is nothing compared to God becoming a man.
The concept of us offer and being as big as
the universe he created. Confining himself to a human body
wasn't is too much for some people to believe, But
Paul believed it, and he wrote, when the fullness of
(19:14):
time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman,
born under the law, in order that he might redeem
those of us who were under the law that we
might receive the adoption as sons. That's everything you need
to know about Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That was Pastor Jeffries. I want to thank him again
for spreading that important message on the podcast, for taking
time for us to tell us about the true meaning
of Christmas. Also, Merry Christmas to you all at home again.
Thank you so much for listening every Monday and Thursday,
but of course you can listen throughout the week. Also
one of the things John Casio, my producer, for putting
the show together. Until next time,
We've all seen the commercialization of Christmas. It's gifts under
the tree for family and loved ones, It's Sanna, Rudolph
the Red Nose Reindeer, debates over if Diehard is a
Christmas movie or not. You car commercials with bows on them.
You know, the list goes on and on and on.
But we all know that's not what Christmas is really about.
The true meaning of Christmas is celebrating the birth of
(00:21):
Jesus Christ, that God sent his only son to save
us from our sins. And I think that message is
more important than ever this year, at this time when
it feels like we've been battling or we've been in
a battle of good versus evil as a country.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So with that, we are.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Blessed for this episode to hear the true meaning of Christmas,
what it's truly about, from doctor Robert Jeffries. He's a
senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.
He is also an author a radio podcast host of
Pathway to Victory. You've also probably seen him on TV
as well on Fox News as a contributor. But before
we hear this really important message, the most important message,
(01:01):
I want to wish you at home and merry Christmas
with your loved ones. I want to thank you for
listening to the show throughout the year. I want to
thank you for your continued support. So Merry Christmas to you.
And here is Pastor Jeffries on the true meaning of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's that time of the year again when people
started bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas and lamenting that people
had forgotten the real purpose of the holiday. But if
you ask most people to summarize what Christmas is about,
they would have a hard time explaining it. And if
you told them they had to summarize the meaning of
(01:44):
Christmas in one sentence, most people, even Christians, would find
that impossible. But not the apostle Paul. In Galatians four
four through five, Paul uses one sentence to describe everything
you need to know about Christmas. But when the fullness
of the time came, God sent forth his son, born
(02:06):
of a woman, born under the law, in order that
he might redeem those who were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption as sons. Every journalism student
knows that if you're writing a news story, the lead
paragraph ought to answer six questions who, what, when, how, where,
(02:28):
and why. Paul does that in this one sentence from
Galatians four. First of all, he answers the question of
who and the fullness of time God. The subject of
the sentence is very clear. It's God. God is the
initiator of all of the events that led to the
First Christmas. In fact, He's the initiator of everything in
(02:50):
the world, including your world. We often refer to God's
control over all creation as God's sovereignty. He is king
over all. The late Ray Stedman, former pastor of Peninsula
Bible Church in California, wrote, there is the sovereignty of
the potter over the clay. Men make plans, but God
(03:12):
makes other plans. Napoleon had to learn that lesson. He
once said, God is on the side of the army
with the heaviest artillery. But there came a time in
his life when exiled on the island of Saint Helena,
he said, man proposes, but God disposes. Or in the
words of Mother Teresa, we are all pencils in the
(03:34):
hand of God. God is sovereign. He's in control of life, death, governments, angels,
your plans, your coincidences, and your so called control over
your life. Now, some people get nervous about the idea
of the sovereignty of God. Now, if God were some
giant ogre in heaven trying to inflict as much pain
(03:56):
on us as possible, then his sovereignty may be so
thing we should fear. But everything God does in the world,
including your world, is motivated by love. For God so
loved the world. John three point sixteen tells us that
he sent his only son, But God demonstrates his own love.
Romans five eight says, and that while we were yet sinners,
(04:19):
Christ died for us Ephesians two four. But God being
rich in mercy because of the great love with which
he loved us and one John four ten. And this
is love, not that we loved God, but that He
loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation,
the satisfaction for our sins. God is the first cause
(04:42):
of everything behind the coming of Christ in the world.
In the fullness of time, God, and what did God do?
He sent forth his son. Notice Paul doesn't say he
sent forth his infant or child. Too many times we
focus on the infancy of Christ at Christmas rather than
his deity. People tend to get all sentimental at Christmas
(05:06):
for all the wrong reasons. We see the Nativity scene,
the baby wrapped in the swaddling cloths. We get all
teary eyed and sentimental thinking about how sweet babies are,
and then about the birth of our own children, and
pretty soon Christmas is nothing more than a massive syraphy sentimentality.
(05:26):
The fact that a baby was born that night in
Bethlehem was nothing special. Hundreds of babies were born that
night in Israel. But this baby was different. He was
God himself. He would grow up to die on a
cross for our sins and be rescued from death for
our victory over sin. This is what made his birth
(05:48):
different than any other in history. And when did this occur?
Paul writes, it was in the fullness of time that
God sent forth his son. One paraphrase says, at just
the right time, God sent his son. Have you ever
noticed in your life that God is always on schedule.
(06:08):
He's never a minute late, he's never a minute early,
He's never in a hurry. God is always operating according
to his timetable. And it was true when Christ came
on that Christmas night so many years ago. It was
at the right time, and how exactly was Christ coming
(06:28):
at just the right time? Well, it was the right
time politically. The Roman Empire was at its zenith, the
Pax Romana, the Roman peace reigned over the world. The
world was at relative peace. The sophisticated Roman system made
it possible to travel more easily, facilitating the spread of
the good news about Jesus. It was the right time. Culturally.
(06:52):
The world was becoming more educated. More and more people
were speaking coin a Greek, the language of the common
pers that also facilitated the spread of the Word of God.
It was the right time spiritually in the world for
Christ to come. The polytheism, the worship of many gods
of both the Romans and the Greeks, was being replaced
(07:14):
by a belief in monotheism that there was one God.
And most of all, it was the right time prophetically
for Christ to come. The Old Testament had made dozens
of prophecies about the birth of Messiah, and all those
prophecies converged one night in the tiny town of Bethlehem.
Let me just mention one of those prophecies, Micah five
(07:37):
to two, was written seven hundred years before christ birth,
and it predicted that Jesus would be born in the
tiny village of Bethlehem. The prophet wrote, But as for you, Bethlehem, Ephitha,
too little to be among the clans of Judah. From
you one will go forth from me to be ruler
in Israel. His goings forth or from war long ago,
(08:00):
from the days of eternity. Seven hundred years later, the
Roman emperor Octavius we know in miss Caesar Augustus, was
meeting with his cabinet in Rome trying to figure out
how to handle a fiscal crisis of a shortage of funds.
Sound familiar, Well, they came up with a plan to
(08:20):
tax everyone in the Roman Empire, and the way they
would do it would be through a census. Without irs
computers to track people down, they had to rely on
this method. Every head of household would travel to his
hometown to be registered for the census in order to
be taxed. Little did Octavius know that when he signed
(08:43):
that decree it would cause a couple he had never
met to travel to a village so small it wasn't
included in the registry of Towns and villages in order
to give birth to the Savior of the world.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
It was got to take a quick break. More on
the true meaning of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
When the time was just right, God sent forth his son,
and how did he do it? The phrase born of
a woman explains how this is a reference to certainly
Jesus virgin birth. Isaiah seven fourteen, written seven hundred and
forty years before the birth of Christ, predicted behold, a
(09:23):
virgin shall conceive. But this phrase points to something else
as well. It points to the humanity of Jesus. Yes,
Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully man,
meaning he could understand our difficulties and empathize with our
difficulties in life. A six year old boy was practicing
(09:46):
shooting baskets in his backyard. He was always falling short
of the goal. His dad came along, took the ball
and said, son, just do it like this. It's easy,
and with no effort, he put it through the hoop,
tried again, had missed. His dad showed him again, taking
the ball and making a perfect shot. The boy, obviously frustrated,
(10:09):
said it's easy for you up there. You don't know
how hard it is down here. You and I can
never say that about God. God knows how difficult it
is for us to live life because he's experienced humanity
as well. That means he knows what it's like to
endure heavy duty sorrows like losing a loved one, or
(10:31):
like undergoing tremendous temptations or being betrayed by those closest
to you. But it also means he understands the minor
irritations of life, like having to climb out of bed
with a sore throat and go to work, or stay
up late or get up early. Jesus knows how you feel,
and he sympathizes with you. That's why Hebrews four fifteen
(10:53):
through sixteen says, for we do not have a high
priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but one who
has been tempted in all things as we are yet
without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to
God's throne of grace, that we might receive mercy and
may find grace to help in time of need. When
(11:17):
you pray to God, you can know he understands your problems,
not just intellectually but experientially. And how do we answer
the question where the next phrase tells us Jesus was
born under the law. What does that mean to be
born under the law. Many people think that there's a
(11:39):
difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God.
We think of the God of the Old Testament as
being strict and unreasonable and intolerant. But somehow we think
God loosened up a bit when Jesus came and is
much more lenient. No God is the same, He never changes.
Jesus said he did not come to abolish God's law,
(12:02):
but to fulfill it. God demands perfection, a standard none
of us can meet except for Jesus. And because he
was born under the law and obeyed God's law perfectly,
he's qualified to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Tewod Corinthians five twenty one says it this way, He Jesus,
(12:24):
who knew no sin, became sin for us that we
might become the righteousness of God in him. And why
why did God do all of these things? Why did
God sin? Forth? His son Paul answers the why question
with two reasons for the coming of Christ. First of all,
(12:46):
to redeem us. Verse five says in order that he
might redeem those who were under the law. That word
redeem is the Greek word x meaning out of agorazzo
mean marketplace. In Paul's day, if you wanted to purchase
a slave, you would travel to the agora, the marketplace
(13:08):
where slaves were sold like animals. A slave would be
placed on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder.
The purchaser of the slave was free to do with
the slave whatever he wanted once he had paid the price.
He could abuse him, he could slit his throat, he
could torture him. The slave was simply transferred from one
(13:29):
master to another master in the Agora. You and I
were born into this world as prisoners of Satan, and
Satan is a cruel, sadistic master who has nothing but
misery planned for our life and our eternity. But God,
for no other reason than the great love with which
he loved us, chose to sin Christ to pay the
(13:52):
ultimate price for our sins, that he might purchase us,
redeem us from the marketplace of sin, and deliver us
to God. Becoming a Christian doesn't mean we have no master.
It means we have a new master and an obligation
to serve him with our whole hearts. Paul explained it
(14:12):
this way in one Corinthians six nineteen through twenty. You
are not your own. You have been bought with a prist. Therefore,
glorify God in your body. But Paul gives another reason
for the coming of Christ, not only to redeem us,
but to adopt us as sons. Paul's whole point in
(14:32):
this passage is that when God redeems us, we are
no longer slaves with no rights. We're not even children
with a few rights. We are full adults with complete rights.
In Paul's day, a son would receive the full rights
of being a family member. Between the ages of fourteen
(14:53):
through seventeen. God is saying that when we trust in
Christ as our savior, we have his status as fellow
heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. Three benefits of being
an adult child of God are first of all, a
new position. When we become a Christian, we are welcomed
into God's family and nothing will ever change our status
(15:17):
with God. We have a new privilege as a son
or daughter of God. We have the ability to ask
God for anything, knowing that He hears us. Now, that
doesn't mean God grants our every request. He didn't grant
Jesus his every request remember, in the Garden of Death semony,
Jesus prayed that God would spare him from the cross,
(15:40):
and yet God said, no. Everything God does for us
is for our best and his glory. One John five
fourteen says, and this is the confidence which we have
before him, that if we ask anything according to his will,
he hears us. By the way that phrase according to
(16:01):
God's will. Isn't some loophole meant to keep good things
out of our life. The boundary of God's will is
meant to keep bad things from entering our life. We
have a new position, we have new privileges, and being
a part of God's family gives us a new power.
The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead
(16:23):
is available to you to give you victory over worry, stress, sin,
and ultimately over the grave. These are the reasons Christ
came to Bethlehem that he might redeem us out of
the marketplace of Satan and adopt us as sons and
daughters with full rights and privileges. The idea of God's
(16:45):
son giving up his rights as God and coming to
earth so that he might pay for our sins is
really a truth that is beyond human comprehension. The late
radio broadcaster Paul Harvey used to tell story every Christmas
on his broadcast about a farmer who had become jaded
(17:05):
in his faith. Skeptical, he chose to isolate himself from
others and lit out his days without being confronted with people.
It took a never to be forgotten experience in the
dead of winter to change the farmer's perspective. One raw
winter night, the man heard an irregular thumping sound against
(17:25):
the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and
watched his tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside,
beat in vane against the glass touched. The farmer bundled
up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn
for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights, tossed
(17:46):
some hay in a corner, and sprinkled a trail of
salting crackers to direct them to the barn. But the sparrows,
which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from
the house, still hid in the darkness afraid of him.
He tried various tactics, circling behind the birds to drive
them toward the barn. Tossing cracker crumbs in the air
(18:06):
toward them, retreating to his house to see if they
would flutter into the barn on their own. Nothing worked.
He a huge alien creature, had terrified them. The birds
could not understand that he actually desired to help them.
He withdrew to his house and watched the doom sparrows
through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him,
(18:30):
like lightning from a clear blue sky. If only I
could become a bird one of them, just for a moment,
then I wouldn't frighten them, so I could show them
the way to warmth and safety. At that same moment,
another thought had dawned on him. He had grasped the
true meaning of Christmas. As Philip Yancey writes, a man
(18:53):
becoming a bird is nothing compared to God becoming a man.
The concept of us offer and being as big as
the universe he created. Confining himself to a human body
wasn't is too much for some people to believe, But
Paul believed it, and he wrote, when the fullness of
(19:14):
time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman,
born under the law, in order that he might redeem
those of us who were under the law that we
might receive the adoption as sons. That's everything you need
to know about Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That was Pastor Jeffries. I want to thank him again
for spreading that important message on the podcast, for taking
time for us to tell us about the true meaning
of Christmas. Also, Merry Christmas to you all at home again.
Thank you so much for listening every Monday and Thursday,
but of course you can listen throughout the week. Also
one of the things John Casio, my producer, for putting
the show together. Until next time,
Host
Lisa Boothe
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