Sermons

Summary: Jesus was a Jew, not a blue-eyed blonde or any other people group, but the Jews. Portraying Him any other way is to be denying who He was and create another Jesus. He came for all men, but He came as a Jew.

Mat 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

We have made Jesus a Gentile Messiah by separating Him from the Jewish context which He chose to come in the flesh. True, we are no longer under the Law, but we have deleted the Passover and He is the Passover Lamb. We substituted it with Easter which is full of pagan rituals. Should not celebration of the resurrection of the Passover Lamb be on Passover? We are commanded to remember His death as often as we would, but should not one of those times be tied to the actual event rather than a different ritual? It makes no sense. The early Church would not fast on the same day as the pagans so there would be no confusion, yet we have created two holidays incorporating things the early Church would have shunned altogether.

We created a holiday to celebrate His birth, which we were not commanded to do, on a date that is not biblical and again filled it with pagan rituals. We can ascertain His birth by studying the Word, but instead we go with the imaginations of men. If we really wanted to celebrate it wouldn’t have been better to use a date not tied to a pagan festival and actually celebrate it by giving Him gifts instead of to everyone else that we have to top each year? Thus we have even made His birthday a Gentile orgy format instead of a Jewish format by declaring a date not based on Scripture and partying more like the folks in the temples of Greece and Rome. Then we add another god that we lie to our kids about who is not quite omnipresent, but is omniscient and he brings his reward with him or his coal of judgment. If God does not share His glory with anyone, is it not an insult to drag in this myth to His birthday celebration?

If we are not careful, we could be creating a Jesus in our image rather than Jesus creating His image in us. Instead of seeking to win His people we have ostracized them. Paul was willing to go to Hell for them. After all, the Gospel is still to the Jew first and then to the Greek or Gentile. We are to provoke them to jealousy, not provoke them to anger. I think both holidays or holy days were created to cut the Jews out of the Church. It may have been a misunderstanding of some Scripture or it may well have been a deliberate act of Antisemitism. I opt for the latter, but either way, changing Jesus into a Gentile is just not right.

Even in our art, we portray Him as a Goy in Red and Yellow, Black and White versions, when He was a Jew. Scientists have now shown that there is only one color. We are all a shade of brown. Still, Jesus was a Jew so any pictures drawn should show Him as a Jew, but then again we really are not supposed to make any images of God. No matter what we paint, we have no idea of His exact features, so whatever we do is not Him. No, I am not a believer in the Shroud of Turin.

I stopped to help an elderly Black man who ran out of gas. He could not believe I was helping him since I was White. He stood at attention and said, “Now I know why they painted Jesus White!” I said they did not paint them correctly as Jesus was a Jew and he was amazed.

We may be Gentiles, but He was a Jew and we should keep Him and any holidays we celebrate based on His context and free of junk. I know that some will want to use Romans 14 and 15 to rebut me, but that was a whole different deal in many ways. At least the Jews had a good argument based upon the Old Testament. They could not grasp God abolishing so many things they practiced as a people for centuries. The Gentile could not see why they wanted to hold on to those things because the Gentiles did not have it in their culture. Hence the injunction let a person respect a day or not respect a day as everyday is the Lord’s day.

We are dealing with things that have no biblical basis at all. It is all stuff made up and turned into almost an idol for to challenge these things is to invoke wrath and shunning. It is obvious that the Reformation did not go far enough. We are to be people of truth and yet we tolerate in these two days things we would not tolerate any other day of the year. We tell our children to never lie and seek truth, yet we lie in the name of fun and sentimentality. If they lie to us can we really fault them since we lie the most on holy days?

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