and join us back on Wednesday for the carols and testimonies. I've asked one gentleman to give his testimony and each pastor has been assigned to find another one from their department to give a word on how they became the Christ. I've asked Michael Plantinja to give his story. He was converted this year. He's a Canadian originally, came to the state, studied at DU Law School and works locally, came out to services and heard the gospel both in song and in the word. And he's going to tell you how he came to Christ and how things are going in his life. It was very, very interesting this past week, we were praying together and he was sharing with me how one of his associates at work is very discouraged with him and does not want to work with him. She said, Michael, I like the old Michael better than the new Michael. And I feel very uncomfortable working with you now that you've had this religious experience. And I didn't like the fact that the other day I heard you speaking to one of the clients about Jesus. And so I don't think I can work with you anymore. So Michael has said, so let me get this right. So the old Michael, you would prefer to work within the new Michael. The old Michael was a party monster. The old Michael was bitter. The old Michael was a grump. The old Michael liked to cuss. The old Michael was, you know, had all misplaced priorities. The old Michael was undisciplined. The old Michael was all these things. So now the new Michael that I'm trying to honor God, be respectful to you, be diligent, and all these other qualities. Now, you don't want to work for the new Michael. And she said, in essence, yes, I like the old Michael better than the new Michael. And I don't think I can work with you. I'm going to be asking to be placed with someone else. And Michael's a little bit discouraged. And I said, you shouldn't be discouraged at all. What a blessing. She is seeing the power of God in your life being transformed. And you've got something cooking here. And I think she's under conviction. So let's pray it through here. and see Elise get saved. And it was neat that just recently, Elise said to him, I think I've been thinking on all this about you, and maybe I can work with you. So she's been very generous to work with the new Michael. But let's pray for her conversion. But Michael's going to tell you his story. His son just got saved three or four weeks ago in the youth group. He'll be getting baptized in the new year. That's always really exciting. And he just is so thankful for what the Lord is doing in his life. And you'll hear from him and several others on Wednesday. And then Christmas service next Sunday, just the morning service, 1030. I'll be preaching from the genealogy in Matthew chapter one. I'll share just briefly personally with how the Lord used that in preparing me to trust Christ as my savior. And I'll share the links in that genealogy to the, to the truth that now it was under this time that Jesus would be born in this, this family tree of David and Abraham. So we'll look at that on Sunday. Tonight we'll take a few moments out and look on a message, Scrooges and Grinches, or Grinches and Scrooges that Squeeze the Joy out of Christmas. And so I will just share a few thoughts this evening. There's a lot of bah humbug that goes on at Christmas time. And unfortunately we contribute to that theme where we just don't like things, we get grumpy, we get critical, and it's just bah humbug, I don't want to do it. And we get very weary sometimes just doing the whole Christmas thing and it wears us down and we can contribute to a problem. So I'm going to just give a handful of bah humbugs where Christians and others can really throw a wet blanket on this time of the year and how this time of the year could be a really joyful time as well as every part of the year. I'll start first with a bah humbug regarding the very day we celebrate Christmas. Not all Christians agree as to when we should observe the birth of Christ. The New Testament does not have an explicit date. I've said this several times. It doesn't say when Jesus was born. The only possible pursuit to find the answer is to try to figure out when John the Baptist was born and project three months out and say Jesus was born at that time period. That's about the best you can do. And that's very challenging to figure out when John the Baptist was born. But we do have folks who say bah humbug to December 25th. Now, when it comes to Christmas, when we celebrate it, we know Jesus was born sometime. He was conceived miraculously. He was born. Really, every Sunday we celebrate, in a sense, the birth and life and the resurrection of Christ. In fact, every day as a believer, Christ is real to us. He's living. And we enjoy that relationship with him. So that's why Paul can write in Romans 14 words to this point, to this extent. He says, one esteems one day above another and another esteems every day alike. What he's saying here is some Christians make a big deal about certain holy days on the church calendar and magnify and exalt those dates above other dates. And then he goes on to say, others don't view the calendar that way. Every day is the same. Every day is a day. to serve this resurrected Lord. And just like for the believer, we can eat any kind of food, whether it be kosher food or non-kosher food. We've been freed from the dietary laws of Jewish legislation. And so regardless of what your view is as to when to celebrate the birth of Christ, Paul then concludes, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. So whatever you're doing regarding holy days, do diligence to study the scriptures and make sure you're standing on scriptural and historical ground. Be fully persuaded. And be very gracious to others who may differ with you on dietary issues as well as holy day issues. That's what Paul's talking about. That's Christian love and Christian charity. When it comes to the celebration of December 25th, the origin of that is pretty straightforward. 336 A.D. is the year. So you have the first Christian emperor. His name is Constantine. Constantine talks about his conversion experience. There is some fuzzy parts to it. He saw a cloud formation with a formation of a cross in the clouds. And to him, that was a message that he would conquer and would lead the Roman Empire through the cross. and by extension through Christ. And there was some conversion from paganism to a monotheistic faith for Constantine. And you can argue as to the genuineness of his conversion and so forth. There is no question up to that point in the Roman Empire, until the days of Constantine, 311, it was illegal to be a Christian. We know that. Once Constantine has this vision and this experience with God, He then makes Christianity legal. And by 390 A.D., it's illegal to be a pagan. It's illegal to be anything but a Christian. And I'm not saying that's the greatest political reform you should have either, where you force and compel people to do something against their will and just to comply to your policy. But we know in 336 A.D., Constantine establishes for the Roman Empire as the Christian emperor. that that would be the day in which Christ's birth would be celebrated. Now, the argument comes in, some bah humbug, he was trying to accommodate paganism with this decision, because you had two celebrations of pagan ideas on December 25th, and so some folks think he is just trying to syncretize Christianity with paganism, kind of amalgamate them, yoke them together. And that would be very difficult to prove. Very difficult to prove. There is not a pope yet. So a lot of Christians say, oh, that was a Catholic thing. It was a papal thing. Catholics, their first pope was 490 A.D. Back to which guy? Who's their trail of blood go to? Peter, okay? Peter was not a pope, okay? Peter was married. Peter's not a pope. And so when you hear from a Catholic perspective, not in functionality, 490. And so what happens is some Christians is working with a pope to make this some ecumenical pagan worship for Christians now, really faulty church history. In fact, I'll just share one quote on this ba humbug that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas and we shouldn't celebrate on the 25th because it's pagan. At the same time, one of the theologians of Constantine's day said this about the December 25th date. He said, we hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who created it. Now, that doesn't sound very pagan to me. That sounds like this is a special day, they set apart a holy day, not because we are pagans, but we are not worshipping the sun, we are worshipping the creator. That's a pretty strong statement. So regardless, we have some folks who just bawl a humbug when it comes to, even when we celebrate the event, and can squeeze the joy out of Christmas. I'd like to turn to Acts chapter 17 for a moment, and I'd like to suggest a discipline for you, especially you men as you lead your families around this Christmas season, to consider this devotional technique or this devotional idea or this training. Here's the concept. It's to take something that you visibly can see and take that object, whatever it may be, or event or day, and leapfrog or spring from it to teach a spiritual truth about the Lord. For instance, this week in our pastor's meeting on Thursday, I brought a piece of wood to the staff meeting and it was a part of an ash branch about yea babe. And so I said to the guys, I want you to look at this ash branch. And then I turned it sideways and you could see a hole in the middle of it. And then I flipped it around, there was a hole on the other side. So here's this ash with two holes in it from both sides. And I said, guys, this hole was drilled by an ash borer. And this branch came from our property out here. My son came out with his team and they just cut down some of the trees, just pruning. And he said, dad, the ash borer is in all of your ash trees. And here's what they're doing. They look healthy on the outside. And we looked at the outside, we turned it sideways, and the very heart of it's being eaten out by an ash bore. So I asked the guys and we went around the table, okay, here's the object lesson, what can you teach spiritually about this ash tree? So let's just stop for a moment. So asterisk, I've probably shown it to you visibly. I said teach me something scripturally that you could take this object lesson and teach a spiritual truth. So you have one truth where, Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks at the heart, knows the heart. We talk about how the Pharisees look, you know, whitewashed on the outside but they're corrupt and dying on the inside. And you can just take one object lesson after another. So here's the discipline is to be able to take something around this Christmas season that may be neutral or even may have a negative connotation or something maybe that's even something you're not going to fully endorse but you're able to take it and direct a conversation to Christ with it rather than just saying bah humbug and to take it and be able to use it in an edifying way or an evangelistic way. So great discipline. I'm going to give you a couple of examples that I will kind of walk through an illustration and then I'm going to give you a couple of examples for you maybe to play with even on Christmas, this Christmas holiday with your kids to teach them to say let's take conversations to Christ. Let's take opportunities to point people to Jesus. So notice with me in Acts chapter 17, this is exactly what the apostle Paul does in Athens. So verse 22, then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill. So very boldly, courageously, Paul's moving from city to city to plant churches. He goes to the intellectual capital of the world, a very, very pagan place. I think some of the most pagan places in America are intellectual centers. That's tragically ironic. Places where the knowledge should lead to a knowledge of Christ, instead knowledge puffs up and the pride keeps them from Christ. But what we have here is Paul at Mars Hill, they said of Athens that there were more idols, more deities than there were human beings. So a very religious people, a very superstitious people. You think about superstitions for a moment. we may still carry over into our Christian life some superstitions. For our Chinese friends, superstition played a large part of their background, especially if they were non-Christian upbringing. You have, for instance, a bad luck number for the Chinese. It's the number four. The number four in Mandarin Chinese sounds like their Chinese word for death. And so if you go to China, for instance, and you mash the button, That's a southern thing. Mash the button. You mash the button and you'll see numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. And there's no 4. You say, what in the world? Why is there no 4? Because it's, they're superstitious. When you eat your Moogoo Guy pan and at the end of the meal you get your cookie and you crack it open and you pull the thing out and it says you'll meet a nice person today or whatever, notice the numbers on the bottom or on the back. That means nothing to you. Those are all good luck numbers. Superstition. You can go to a Chinese restaurant, for instance, and you can tell whether they're Buddhist or not in just a heartbeat by some of the superstitious things you can see, okay? So what Paul's doing, he's seeing a very religious, superstitious people who are observing a lot of pagan things. And he is there, one point in mind, and that's to evangelize them. And you can just see Paul, he is righteously angry towards the paganism and idolatry, hates it with a purple passion. And yet he's going to be able to somehow in his spirit take this context and take them to a higher ground point of the Jesus. And that's a tremendous skill set. A lot of people are just critics and judges and just slam dunk and just say bah humbug. And this paganism is bah humbug. But they realize they've got to get the good news to people. That's why they're superstitious, because they don't have the good news. So when it comes to our celebration at Christmas, we have a lot of paganism and materialism that has really entrenched a lot of our Christmas practices. We know that. A lot of things have been brought into Christian life from the outside world. We know that. We can illustrate it. And we can say bah humbug to all of it. or we can prudently use some of these techniques that Paul would use to get the gospel out. Even when it comes to the celebration of Christmas, I don't know when Jesus was born, what day it is. I don't have any, in my conscience, I have no moral obligation to pick a day out every year to worship on that day, the birth of Christ. I have no moral obligation in my conscience. I'm fully persuaded of that. You may feel that we must have a day somewhere in the calendar to celebrate the birth of Christ. You might have that view of calendar life for the church. I don't. I don't have a moral obligation. I don't feel like I'm compelled by God that I would be morally sinful if I didn't have a Christmas Eve service or a Good Friday service in the spring at Resurrection Sunday. But I will look at those calendar ideas and say, how can we use those calendar ideas and use it in a proper way to evangelize or to edify and sort of have a service, not from a moral obligation, but from an evangelistic opportunity. A Good Friday service, I don't have to do that to be obedient to God, but I could use that to minister to my community and present the good news of Christ's death and resurrection. Okay. Here's what Paul does. He looks here, and he says in his mind, I perceive that in all he says, you men of Athens, I perceive, I've looked around, I'm checking you all out that in all things, everything I'm looking at is pagan here, and you're too superstitious. You are so religiously steeped in superstition, you're a mess. And it's just all pervasive. And that's Athens. We can anticipate this kind of culture today where we look around and say, this is just pagan. This is so much superstition and folly and just legends and myths. What foolishness. And indeed, we would be probably very accurate in our assessments. Now, what do we do with it? Do we just say, bah, humbug to it all and throw it all out? Or do we say, okay, Lord, this is the life we live in, the context. Is there a way that we can take advantage of our, in this case, our Christmas season to get the gospel out? And I think the prudent Christian says, wow, this is an incredible opportunity to get the gospel out. Mr. Seidels this morning says, Pastor, I'm in the malls and stores. And people are now saying Merry Christmas. They feel safe to say it, where before you almost wondered if you couldn't say it because of the administration we were under. That's pretty sad. He said they're saying Merry Christmas to me, and in return I'm saying Merry Christmas, and I give them a track I wrote about Christmas, the Christmas story. He said I handed out, whatever, 170 or 180 of those this week with not one person refusing it. That's great. That's fantastic. So here he's using an opportunity where the world is saying Merry Christmas. If you hand him a track and then say, could I talk about Christmas to you? Many would say, no, no, no, no. Are you a Christian? Oh, no, I'm not Christian at all. But Merry Christmas to you. Okay? So here we have an opportunity. Now, here's what he says next. He says, for as I passed by, as I came into town here and looked around, passed by, I beheld your devotions. I saw what really makes you tick, where your heart is. And I found this quite interesting. I found an altar. with this inscription in it. So I found that this religious pagan site that had an altar where pagans are attending it and worshiping whatever gods. And in this case, this religious monument, this altar, had an inscription, and it said, to the unknown God. And I think the Greeks here are very wise in that. I'm speaking as a fool. They were thinking if we have missed a God, and there were many in their thinking, in their mythology. Then we'll have an altar here to kind of a catch-all, safety net altar here to the unknown God. And Paul's looking at their foolishness, their superstition, their paganism and says, wow, this is unbelievable, but what an opportunity, he says to himself, to take this pagan altar to the unknown God and then preach the known God to him, the God of creation, and then the God of the cross. So very powerfully, he doesn't just simply say bah humbug to it, He takes something that's very prevalent before them, and then he declares the gospel to them. Look what he says. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. Now, that's very bold and confrontational. So we're not talking about a wimpy, soft contextualization here. I'm not talking about that. But what we do have here is he takes an object that they had an inscription on, and he springs from that to declare the true worship of the true God. He says that God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, and dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worship with men's hands. So he's opposing their idolatry, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things, and of made of one blood, all nations. And he goes on to basically go from creation to redemption to an invitation. To me, I think that's brilliant. That's brilliant. So here's the discipline. Can we take things then maybe you don't even fully endorse, and rather than just simply saying, bah, humbug, say, hey, let me take you to a higher level. Let me talk about something maybe from a historical viewpoint that'll point you to Christ. Let me exhort you on something practically we should be doing today that points you to Christ, or maybe something even in the future regarding this object that could point us to Christ. So let me give you some examples, and then I'll leave some with the blanks unfilled so you can talk about maybe as a family. Let's talk about things around Christmas that you can say bah humbug to, and I'm not saying you shouldn't, but how can you take these subjects and turn them into gospel conversations? That's the point. Let's talk about Santa Claus, bah humbug number two. Santa Claus. Now, how you as a family deal with that subject matter, I will leave that to your discretion. I saw Santa Claus when I was like five years old. So I'm a, personally, I'm a believer, okay? I was upstairs on Christmas Eve. My parents said, it's time, my name was Robbie. That's what I was called. Robbie, it's time to go to bed. And I went up there, and I just couldn't sleep. I just couldn't sleep. And finally, at maybe one or two in the morning, I got out in the hallway. We had left cookies for Rudolph and Santa and milk. And I looked downstairs, and Santa was there putting gifts under the tree, okay? There's just one of these incredible, the timing was one of these impeccable timing moments. So I'm a believer, okay, I'm a believer. Now I learned later it was my DAD, okay? But it made me a believer at least that night. All right, so what we have here is a topic. Now I can do a lot of things with that topic, okay? I don't like any object other than God being ascribed of omniscience and omnipresence, where he knows where you're sleeping, he knows what you're thinking, okay? So I'm totally anti those kind of concepts. But how can I take something like this and move forward in a conversation rather than just a bah humbug, sourpuss, Christian approach to life? So I can do several things with this Santa Claus issue. I can give a history lesson. And I can put you to sleep right now if you're having problems with sleep issues. I can give you the history of this. And you can be snoring probably within three minutes, all right? But I've used this transition to gospel teaching about St. Nicholas. So, there truly was a St. Nick. He was a pastor in Schmyrna, 3 AD. He was tall and skinny. Okay, he wasn't short, fat. He was a very fine man. He ministered to a very poor country. A morphing of his benevolence, I don't know. But the story would have a dowry to make herself more attractive, remarkable, horrible, okay? But the context in their history, a woman, the parents would give, the dad would give the daughter maybe a box and over the years fill it up with different treasures. And then when she met the man and the man married her, he would benefit from the dowry. Not that the family was trying to sell her off. But often without a dowry, it would make it more difficult for a woman to get married. And this pastor knew that. And there was a very poor family with three girls. He was a widower, had no wife. And he was concerned about the future of these girls. And as their pastor, one occasion, came by their house, and he had some silver coins, and he wanted to leave them anonymously, discreetly there for the girls to start a dowry with, just to help them along. and he put the coins in a stocking, stockings that were above the fireplace that were drying out. They were wet. And so he put the coins in the stockings. Okay, that's how the story goes. All right? So here's the history. I can take the topic, Santa Claus, and I don't have to say Ba Humbug, take the word Santa, reverse the letters, you can spell Satan with it. Okay, I could do the Ba Humbug all day long, all right? Well, what about talk about Saint Nick? I'm talking about a man who was a true man who had this giving spirit, and then talk about how these women were going to be a bride to a man. And there was some material value in this dowry. And unlike that, we have become the bride of Christ where we have been redeemed not by corruptible things like silver and gold, but as Peter says, but by the precious blood of Christ. Now, that preaches, right? So we can get to St. Nick. We can talk about this story. Be honest with the stories, whether it is fully historical. In that case, I don't know. But this is a fun story. Let me tell you about it. And more importantly, we know that we are not redeemed by silver and gold. We are redeemed by the blood. So I can give a history lesson, all right? Another approach to this topic is Santa is really, in our context, a symbol of giving. And we can go from, there's some kids we should be giving, more importantly because God is the giver of good gifts. And you can go down that line of thought. You can often go to even a higher level, where we can go to Christ, and I already introduced this theme, where it speaks of Santa Claus as one who knows when you're sleeping, when you're good and bad. Well, that can only be true of God. God knows that, kids. Only God knows everything. And now you can get to Jesus at that level. He knows everything about you. And we can go down that line of thought in a gospel presentation. So anyway, take the objects and take them into gospel language. Bring them to a gospel discussion. For instance, the Advent wreath. So you've got your wreath. What could you do with that? The Advent wreath, you can speak of the endlessness of God, eternality. Beautiful topic. So you can leapfrog, spring forward to a topic about how we need eternal life. And God himself has no beginning, no end. He is eternal, and he's so willing to convey and commute to us eternality through the gift of salvation. Bells. You know, we have at our cabin, I've told you several times, and some of you have contributed to our bell track, Bella track. We have bells all through the woods. It is really cool. I just love walking through Bella's loop. We've got bells and bells and bells and bells and bells. When the wind blows, it's just, we have all these bells and chimes going, okay? Now, that's fun. I can talk about Bella all night long, and I'm learning how to shop for a granddaughter better, okay? And I appreciate all the ideas that come our way. Last year we bought her an American doll girl. I can't believe I spent $150 on a doll, okay? But I think every dad here should buy his daughter an American doll girl. So I think kids, if you want one of those, I think your parents should get at least one or two of those for you for Christmas. But I can take the bells and how bells are used to sound forth news, good news. How bells are used to bring people together. I can go from there to how Christ invites us and calls us to himself in salvation. So I'm just taking an object surrounding our Christmas season and going to the cross and Jesus with it. The Yule log, you can think of ways how the Yule log, and you say, well, that was a pagan practice, blah, blah, blah. Okay, jump from there and go to the light of the world, the Lord Jesus, and to the warmth that comes with Christ and conversion. So great opportunities to transition in those ways. The mistletoe. The mistletoe is a tremendous object lesson. The mistletoe is a parasite. You know, if you have a mistletoe on your plant, the mistletoe takes the life from the source, from a plant. That's pretty creepy, you know, to leech onto something and steal life from another. Mistletoe, its practice, its history, is that in the Roman world, second century, If you had a fight with someone, not maybe a physical fight, but you're at odds with someone, you're not getting along with someone, you're in an unreconciled status, and for whatever reason, you realize, I am this guy's enemy, and we've got to change this out. Look, I can't be at war with my mother-in-law. I can't be at war with my son. I can't be at war with my boss. I've got to be restored. I've got to be reconciled. And so in a Roman home, you'd have a mistletoe. And when two parties were reconciled, they would come under the mistletoe and agree that there's now peace between them. They're no longer enemies, but they've been made friends. And to symbolize that gesture, you would meet under a mistletoe. So it was the symbol of reconciliation. Now, we are all parasites in this sense. We do not have life in ourself. We can't save ourself. Only God has life to give to us, an eternal life in Him. And so we need to be reconciled to God. So the mistletoe is a wonderful thing. If I get into a house and there's a mistletoe, I'm going to grab my wife, not your wife, I'm going to grab my wife, and I'm going to smooch her under the mistletoe. Okay? And the kiss is a symbol of reconciliation. In Psalm, the second Psalm, the twelfth verse, it says, kiss the sun. Kiss the sun. lest he be angry with you and you perish. So the idea there in that language is be reconciled to God. Find life in him. Before you were converted, you were an enemy. Come to the cross, come to Christ and be reconciled. Kiss and be reconciled to the son. So the mistletoe, man, you can have a lot of fun with that. Come over here and let me smooch you, honey, and then you can broadcast the good news of reconciliation. And if you're fighting right now, husband, wife, find a mistletoe. It's really simple. Just find a mistletoe and smooch and let your kids see you smooching so they're not worried about you getting a divorce, okay? Because when you're fighting, they're worried. Mom and dad, they're not getting along. I hear them yelling and screaming and talking and it just makes things so unsettled. You need to get under a mistletoe and smooch and tell your kids, I love mommy and mommy loves daddy and we are reconciled. We're friends. Okay, so the mistletoe. Wonderful object lesson. Candles. You can do so much with candles. Charles Spurgeon wrote a whole book on candles and the spiritual significance of candles. The manger set. What an opportunity to take just the visible message of a manger set. If you come to our house, we have one tree this year. We usually have three trees this year. We are Bah humbugging everything, only one tree, okay? I was vetoed this year on putting up my pink flamingo Christmas tree. You say, what does the pink flamingo tree have to do with Christmas? Pretty much nothing, okay? And my wife said to me, you're not putting up your pink flamingo tree. You talk about having my feelings hurt, now I could say bah humbug to that. That you don't like my decorations, you don't like my aesthetic style, and I can go a long way with that topic, okay? But she's the keeper of the house. Now, I know where I am in that organizational chart. But she is the keeper of the house. And I'm going to dwell on her according to knowledge. And if she doesn't want the pink flamingo tree up, which is ridiculous, then I'm going to, in this case, yield and say, I'm going to please you. OK? But the manger set is so beautiful. The first known manger set was created in 1223 by St. Francis of a sissy, and he was no sissy, okay? That's the town. St. Francis was brilliant. He's looking at his congregation, and as he looks out, he probably could count on one hand the people who could read. So he's looking out there at his congregation. It's the Christmas in the West, which is December 25th, and he wants to talk about the birth of Jesus. So he got a couple guys in the church and said to them, hey, could you, could I solicit your help? Could we build the setting of the birth of Christ? Could we have, like, Joseph here and Mary? Could we get a wooden manger and put some wise man and maybe whatever into it? And then at church, wow, very bold, at church, to have a manger so the poor, illiterate people could see the birthday story visually. And he brought it right into the church. That was almost scandalous. Other churchmen are saying, why would you do that? That's incredibly, you know, awkward. And yet he really believed for the benefits of his people, you would have a manger set. Well, you talk about it's staring at you. Here's the story. Here's Joseph, the stepfather. Here's the virgin who's conceived. Here's Mary. Here's baby Jesus. Okay. There's this. You can tell the story from there. It's a fantastic story. Jesus, when he was laid in a manger, that was stone. It was not wood. So you can talk about how Jesus was born. You can talk about the gospel message, how it did lead to a cross made of wood. The Christmas tree. Some people do not like to have a tree in their house. Some, the Jehovah Witnesses, say it's sinful, and they take an obscure text in the Old Testament and twist it to fit their fallacy and make you feel guilty that you have a tree in your house. Okay? A Christmas tree. In my book, Colorado Snow, there's a whole chapter on the perfect Christmas tree. My family had a nursery, and every year at Christmas, my mom, they wouldn't set up the tree until dad went and got it from the family. So my dad would drive to the Senn residence there on, what's the name of the road? Mine's blank. Sweetsford Road. And he would go there, and my grandfather was the perfect Santa Claus. He was 5'10", 310 pounds, and had this incredible voice. Who's the guy, Lamborghini or Maserati? Who's the guy that sings so beautiful, the Italian guy? All right. Pepperazzi or Pepperoni, whatever the guy's name is. He sounded just like Pepperoni, okay? He sounded just like him. Or Maserati. Whatever the guy's name is, he sounded just like him. Maybe even better. And he would be outside, and he had a little John, not a John Deere tractor, he had a another type of tractor, I forget the brand, and he had planted around all the Christmas trees out in the fields wine bottles. That was kind of his orchard, okay, and he would go out there and he'd get tanked up and he would be Santa Claus and he would sell these trees, okay. And my dad would go down there and get the tree. And then my dad would join his father for Christmas celebrations. And we would all wait at home for dad to come home with the tree. And it would be three o'clock, Christmas Eve, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, usually about 9 o'clock, my dad would come home. And he was — if he could find the house, if he found the house. If he found the house, he'd have the tree. And we'd set the tree up from about 9 to 10 to 11, and then my mother would wrap gifts from 11 to about 2 o'clock in the morning by herself. And then we would wake up about 5 or 6 in the morning as the boys, rise and shine, ready to go. You can imagine how all that worked, okay? But the Christmas tree, I love Christmas trees. In our neighborhood, we have a Colorado blue spruce, our tree. It's the prettiest one maybe in the state, beautifully decorated. And I've thought, I don't know how many times, half dozen times I've driven by that beautiful tree that I need to stop. It all has bulbs in it. I need to stop and knock on that door and say, hey, I live right up the corner, about 12 houses from you, and I just want to thank you for putting those lights up. I love your tree. And then just talk about what the evergreen tree means. You think about the evergreen. Evergreen points to that which is eternal or everlasting. Look at how God in his creation takes a tree like that and how all the branches, all pointing to heaven, to the heavenly creator. Just a tremendous transition. For us as Christians, the history of the Christmas tree goes back to Martin Luther. Luther in Germany is out ministering, comes home late one evening through the forest, and just snowstorm like yesterday, beautiful snowstorm. The trees are just incredibly covered with snow. The weather's cleared out, and you could look up through the trees and see the snow and the evergreens and see all the stars. And it struck him, you know what, he had such an experience of God there in the woods. He said, I want my family to share a little bit of this experience with me. And so he cut a tree down and brought it into the house and said, kids, he had six kids at the time, he said, honey, I want you to sit here, kids, I want you to sit around, I want to talk about this tree. And I was just out in the woods and I couldn't help but think of how this tree pointed to my Savior. And the stars reminded me of the angels of God and I just I just burst out in worship of the Lord out in the woods. And we're going to worship God as a family here. And this tree is going to point us to the heavenly creator. And honey, I'd like you to get some candles. And let's put some candles around the tree. And that will kind of symbolize the stars I just saw outside. And they did it. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. And the next day, they ran to their friends and said, we had the greatest night last night. Dad, we thought it was crazy. He brought a tree into the house. And we put candles on this tree, and we had this incredible time, and we actually sang to God. And the kids said, really, you had a tree in the house? Yeah, a tree in the house with candles on it. You want to see it? Yes. All the kids are flocking over to the Luther house, and they're looking at the tree. After a few days, a tree with candles on it? Not a good idea. But the kids loved it. They went back to their parents and said, you should go to Luther house, Mom, Dad. You should see what Dr. Martin's done. The kids are so excited about it that the next year, that village and that community, almost every house had a tree in it. You know, it was just a tremendous object lesson. Maybe lost today, but you can jump with that. You can deal with the tree story. The holly berries, wow, what a message. The holly is the king of the winter plants right now for us as Christians, and its queen is the ivy. I mean, there's so much you can springboard to talk about from the sharp leaves and the red berries. pointing to the blood of Christ on the holly berries, the exchanging of gifts, and the list goes on. Whether Snopes is right or not, the story of the candy cane is still a great story. I love candy canes. I love candy canes. If you take the candy cane and you turn it upside down, what letter is the candy cane? It's the J for Jesus. The story goes that there was an Indiana candy maker who who made this J for Jesus, it was all white, representing the virgin birth and Jesus' perfect humanity, his purity. And then he added the red to represent the blood of Christ, how he, the perfect one, can cleanse us through his blood so we can be pure ourselves. And salvation is through Jesus. Snope says that's not true. Regardless, you can say, folks, I don't know if this is true or not, but this is a wonderful story. Even that candy cane there with the red pointing to the blood and white pointing to the purity, you can do something with that. So here's a few thoughts, and I'll close. We can say bah humbug to a lot of things. We really can. And as a parent, you've got to teach the things that aren't true. And you've got to create your own practices around whatever holy day. But if I can encourage you, we have an opportunity to go to an altar right now that is made to the unknown God. And to be able to take from the pagan people something even they hold as superstitious and take something from that and transition into gospel language and a gospel message. And that's what Paul did at Athens. And I think Christians should pick up on what he's doing there. He went right to the Creator, right to the Redeemer, and right to an invitation to repent and believe the gospel. So here's some thoughts. As a parent, to spend some time, whether Christmas, Christmas Eve, or sometime during these next few weeks, to say, let's look around the house. Let's look around our community. Let's look around. What are some objects that we can take and then take that object and make a gospel beeline to Christ and to take this conversation to this level of Jesus and salvation in Christ. You could talk about perhaps the poinsettias, which the Aztecs called the star plant or the star flower. What message could you derive from that regarding the gospel? How about the gingerbread man? What about reindeer? What about elves? Think of all the different things surrounding us, staring at us, inundating us. Where can you take those objects? How can you transfer that into a gospel message to someone? Now, I'm not saying that you'd have to do that with every single thing you see and share that with every person you meet. I know when I got saved, I did this very skillfully in that I took the object of whatever it was, whatever the topic. You name the topic, I turn it into gospel language for my parents and my brothers. The problem was I gave too much salt. Okay? What I mean by that, for instance, some of you might go to Wendy's, and I and you might love French fries. If you get French fries and there's no salt on them, how do they taste? I think raunchy. French fries without a little bit of salt on them, I don't think they're really that good. And you almost get upset that you go for the drive-thru, you order the thing, and you get down the road, and you start eating, and you're driving, and you got a coffee in one hand and a burger in the other, and fries here, and cell phone, and whatever else, and you're driving with your knees down the interstate, right? And you start pulling the French fries out, and you say, oh, there's no salt in this, and there's no salt in the bag. How could they forget the salt, right? Okay. What I would do, and this is the problem, I was skillful in going from whatever topic to the gospel, but I did it with every conversation and every topic the entire time I was with my parents, thinking I was doing the right thing. It was like, have you ever been to a restaurant where they just filled the salt thing up all the way to the top, and either they forgot to twist it tight or maybe someone intentionally untwisted it? And so you have on your plate your French fries. You taste it. You say it just needs a little bit more salt, just a little salt. You take the salt shaker and all of a sudden the whole thing comes out. How's that taste? OK. That's what I was doing. I was taking everything to the cross in Christ and I was just pouring the whole salt shaker out. That's distasteful, OK? And so it is when there's no salt, that's distasteful. So the wise Christian is saying, OK, how can I tastefully take the things that are staring at us and get on the topic of Christ in the gospel. So wise Christians, especially this time of year, say, okay, Lord, give me wisdom. How can I transition and get the word to people in a tasteful way? Not with a whole salt shaker, but just good taste. And I think that's our challenge tonight. Not to say, bah, humbugged everything, but to look for evangelistic opportunities. They're staring at us. We'll share some of those stories here this Wednesday night. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. for this time that we can be together and even some of these family talks here on Sunday nights on how we can take advantage of even the altar of a pagan and their inscription to the unknown God and use it as a springboard to preach the gospel to people. So, Lord, give us wisdom how to do that and to do it in a tasteful way so that people are given the seed, given the word, that will then be watered and in due season, there'll be a great harvest. So Lord, we even pray for some souls to be saved this Christmas season. We thank you for the lady this morning who is searching for you and is willing to meet and go over the gospel. We pray for her conversion. We pray for others that are hearing the word and needing you. And so Lord, give us grace we ask in Jesus name. Amen.