Merry Christmas: The Entry Of Jesus Christ Into Human History

Merry Christmas! May the Lord Jesus Christ be at the center of your celebrations this holiday season. Truly truly Christmas is all about Jesus Christ.

Does the date really matter? Not really. Are some of the Christmas traditions rooted in paganism? Yes they are. Yet despite those concerns, this Christmas can and is all about Jesus Christ in my heart. It should be the same for you. Set new traditions and new standards within your home, to make Jesus Christ the center of your Christmas celebration. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing pagan about that.

In the Bible God taught us to observe days of thanksgiving to remind ourselves how God has shown us love and mercy. Feast dates were instituted by the nation of Israel to remind them of the moments in history when God had helped them, like the exodus from Egypt. There isn't anything wrong with using the calendar year to keep our hearts and minds centered on Christ.

Christ is great. Christ is the real deal. We need to make sure we never forget, and always focus deeply on Jesus Christ. We humans are people of habit. When we get in the habit of recalling Jesus in this time, we can keep him front and center.

God came into human history. He suited up in the form of a person, Jesus Christ, to save his people. He went on a rescue mission to save humanity.

There was no hope before Jesus Christ, there was only sin and the rule of evil. Evil has destroyed our planet. It's given birth to every horror imaginable: child sex slavery, starvation, diseases, abortion, genocides perpetrated by secular dictators, divorce, broken families, wars of greed and wealth, racism, sexism, violence against those with differing views, and even the horror of the genocide of entire races of people. Think of the Jews during World War II, the people of Cambodia during the genocide, and millions of Africans during the Rwandan civil war.

Many get so upset when Christians say that the world is an evil place. They seem to think there is no evidence. Yet there is so much evidence all around us! Have they not lived in the terrible 20th century? They have, but they are blind. They have their secular humanist glasses on. Many today can't see past the borders of the United State's wealth and affluence. Despite their own propensity to bash and mock the American way of life, they live in a cocoon of safety provided by it. Despite the rhetoric, the problem of sin and evil is obvious.

God didn't make those things. We did those things. God gives us the choice. He lets us choose how to live. Do we do good or do evil? Most today choose passive selfishness. And apathy is the same thing as doing nothing. It's not helpful. Some choose good though. They're the ones constantly mocked on television, internet, and newspapers. They're labeled as crazies for standing for things like religious freedom, conscientious objection, faith lived in public life, or standing for Christian sexual ethics. They're even mocked for praying.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save people like us, lost, self-destructive, addictive, selfish, consumerist, and given to random sexual encounters at bars on Friday night. We've prostituted ourselves at bars, at parties with friends, to people we hardly know, just for the fun of it. How deep is our moral confusion, how inexhaustible is it? Yet Jesus came for people like us. He came to save us who go from divorce to divorce, for us who give ourselves to every stranger we catch feelings for. He even came to save the LGBTQ activists celebrating their sinful behavior in a parade, who spat on a Christian minister who accidentally walked too close to the procession. I saw a graphic describing the evolution of gay rights, it said: 1990 - we want tolerance. 2000 - we want equality. 2015 - bake the cake bigot! And the graphic showed a rainbow colored gun pointed to the head of the baker. Oh how the oppressed have become the oppressors. Yet Jesus came to save us who oppress the innocent. Jesus came to save us who abused and mocked the gay community. Jesus came to save those lost within the gay community. He came for us all, and we would only turn to him.

He came to save a culture that considers ministers less than scum, and Caitlyn Jenner as heroic. He came to save those who were actively in rebellion against everything he stood for. Jesus came to save us, the ones lost in sin.

The message of Jesus Christ is that it's never too late. You're never too far gone. You're still completely open to the chance of calling out to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all sin, to turn from your old ways and embrace the way of holiness.