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Hosea, chapter two, verse 16. And it will come about in that day, declares the Lord, that you shall call me Ishi, and will no longer call me Baali. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth so that they will be mentioned by their names no more. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, thank you so much for bringing us here today. Thank you so much for all the gifts that you have given us this week. Thank you for power when you have given it to us. It has been a very huge blessing, and it makes us appreciate it all the more when it is gone. Lord, I also pray that during this time that we would just remember to worship you in all things, and that you would bless this time together, that you would open our ears to hear, open our hearts to receive your truth, and open my mouth to speak it. In Jesus' name, amen. October marks the beginning of that most holy of seasons in the American church in which where we begin the time-honored tradition of complaining about pagan holidays. And since this is the last Sunday before Halloween, I will now go through my annual plea for the Christian church in general to stop being idiots. You are embarrassing yourself. And yes, I do mean being an idiot, allow me to explain. But first let's go into a little backstory on Hosea. Hosea is one of the funniest book in the entire Old Testament. Basically, a lot of times a God will call a prophet and he'll give him kind of a shtick, right? Like a thing that he has to do. It's kind of funny. Like one of them he called to lay on his side in the dust for two years, cooking all of his food over dung. And this was supposed to represent that they were all, you know, in the dust and eating Well, poop. Yeah. Thank you, sir. So the, and you know, like, so, and Jeremiah was supposed to go through the street screaming and he says, you're going to be hated. Everybody kind of had a shtick. So Hosea's shtick was, God said to Hosea, I want you to go and buy a whore. And I want you to marry her. And then I want you to have children with her. But she is going to continually keep going out and doing the whoring thing while you are married to her. And this is how I want you to demonstrate my message to Israel. Now, they have three kids. God told Hosea to name the first one Jezreel. Now, you may remember Jezreel as a city in the Bible. Some of the more famous things that happened there was there was a big battle in which Jeroboam was slain. Also, Elijah did his whole, your God is out at the bathroom. thing with the bales where he called down fire on the altar, that was done in Jezreel. And in the book, it does put Jezreel in the terms of the line of Yehu, who was foretold to have his entire line destroyed and his children to die in the streets and be eaten by dogs. So, nice Christian name. So he was told to name his firstborn Jezreel. Just so that we all knew. Oh, oh, oh, by the way, Hosea was in the northern kingdom of Israel, not in Judah. This was after they had rebelled and set up the golden calf as their main form of worship. So this was Hosea being sent to Israel to tell them that. The second child was a girl and her name was Luruhamah, which meant, we'll never know her father's mercy. that there is some question. Now, there's a subtle implication to this, it says we'll never know her father's mercy, even though we did know who the father was, and presumably he was rather merciful, so there is some question as to whether or not this was an ironic name. All right, and then there, he had a third child, a boy, called Lo Ami, which is either not my people or not my child. So all the children are named not mine. I just want to make that clear to everybody. So this, according to the Lord Most High, represents Israel, the northern kingdom. He said that you are all of the line of Jezreel, you will never know your father's mercy, and you are not my people. And this was to symbolize that Israel had, was in fact, whoring themselves out to other gods, specifically the Baals, and that they probably shouldn't do that. So that's the premise of the book of Hosea and all of the prophecies that he makes. Now, as a side note, there is this evergreen contingent within certain Christian circles, that we should all be modifying our tone, that we should not, in fact, be being mocking or making fun of the enemy, or having a, you know, like an incessant, kind of an insistent, like, ha-ha, pwn the libs sort of tone. And while there is some truth to that, I would like to remind everyone that God is hilarious. This is the funniest setup in the history of mankind, to me. If this wasn't a real thing and there weren't actual human suffering involved in this, this was just a story, you would have to, you'd be laughing yourself silly the whole time, right? So this is God. When I say that God tells a story, in some chapters he is quite funny about things. So I don't necessarily think that this idea that we can't make fun of sinners and how silly they are as being ungodly, in fact, I think a sense of poetic irony towards the idolaters is in fact reflecting the image of our creator. But all that to be said, today, All right, so back then they had a bunch of Baels, which just means Lord, by the way. So like when you hear Bael Zebub, the Zebub is flies, Bael is Lord, so it's Lord of the flies, right? Yeah, I read that. What? I read that. Yes, and so yes, Lord of the flies is Bael Zebub. Right? And there were many Baels. There wasn't just one. They were all considered, you know, they were all local gods that people worshipped. Now, we, in our modern times, look back on these silly people and say how, like, oh, look at their quaint little terms. They thought these Baels controlled the weather. They thought these, and they thought if they could sacrifice to these things that people would go up. Now, we know this is a primitive time. and all that back then, we in our modern age are far more sophisticated. Our bales go by the name of science, all rise, and modern scholarship. Now these things that we as a society worship, And by the way, I'm not talking about science proper, as in the study that uses the scientific method to determine truth in an unbiased way. That actually was a Christian invention. And I'm also not talking about scholars now in the modern day using modern techniques to look at the history of the past. I'm talking about science as in the science is settled, the way, science is never settled. And you've got the modern archaeologists have discovered these people are now the current lords of our thing. These groups are being run by atheists and apostates and by their own statements their goal is to dismantle the religion of the past, specifically Christianity, is their biggest enemy. Especially the modern archaeologists. Their entire job is to go back into the past and prove that Jesus wasn't real, or that he wasn't a god, or that Christians were idiots, or that they didn't believe what we believe now. That's their stated purpose. And, so in other words, we have these atheists and apostates whose goal is to make more apostates. Now, To be fair, the data that they have uncovered and that they present is fantastic. You cannot go to a better source than these modern scholars to find data for what happened in the past. The problem is their conclusions. The stuff that they leave out for instance, is significant. The stuff that they assume when they're reading in the past, like they just assume there is no God, and therefore there is no controlling force, and they assume that Christians were lying, and so they will assume that when they're reading the data. It's their, the assumptions and the conclusions that they, that are based on those assumptions are terrible. But, today, we must bow to these Baals, or we will be labeled not respectable, or anti-science, or backwards, or what? Racist bigots. Well, no, no, no, not even that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about we will not be accepted within the current community. You'll be anti-whatever, thank God. So, but we must, inherits what they say now despite the fact that Science itself was invented by Christians specifically Protestants Christians who said that because God is who he says he is and he is the same yesterday and tomorrow and today, that there must be some principle that runs through the course of his creation that is consistent and, and, this is the big one, because God became human, there must be something about God that we as humans can understand. And so as Isaac Newton once said, he did the study of science so that he could think God's thoughts after him. He wanted to study the creation that God had made, and he wants to see what God was thinking when he did it, and kind of how he put it all together. And this is a very, very Protestant thing. On the same time, modern scholars, who are conservative Christians, look at the same data and they go back and they come to completely different conclusions than the atheists do, where they go back and they look through history and they say, actually, no, it didn't happen that way, particularly about church history. And it's interesting, now there is a big movement among atheists who are looking back through the history of Europe and realizing that it isn't thoroughly Christian, and that the stuff that happened back then actually wasn't so bad, and it really kind of did happen the way that it happened. Now, they aren't going so far as to say that the miracles were real, but, you know, step at a time. So, back to Halloween. Every year we hear that it is in fact a pagan holiday. The primary belief of these pagans was that the veil of the underworld was the thinnest at this time of year, and so the pagans would then hide themselves in costumes. so that they could not be seen by the evil spirits. And they would carry around these carved pumpkins with lanterns in them to scare away the spooky ghosts. And this is what's repeated time and time and time again. And if you dare speak in public that this is BS, you will be labeled a unscholarly, not respectable person. The pumpkin was a fruit from Africa. Yeah, it's from Africa. But they would have used carved gourds. But yes. All right. So. All right. So let me address a few things. Of course there was a harvest festival. There's always a harvest festival. There's always some pagan thing that happens after you bring the harvest in where you pray, you sacrifice some of them to some god somewhere to do a thing. I mean, this is actually not even weird. In Leviticus, that's one of the holidays, the, is the holiday, Pentecost is the holiday of first fruits. You're supposed to bring in the harvest. to the Levites. This is a thing. It's always a thing. Of course, you're going to find that there was some pagan festival roundabout late October everywhere. All right. So that's whatever. The veil. Okay. Here's the thing. This belief is Druidic. And by the time the Romans showed up to England, the Gauls had pushed the Druids back into near extinction in the island of Ireland. Right? The Druids did not have a written language. So, whatever stories they might have told, we don't know how true they actually are, because it was the Gauls who heard them and told them to the historians. And the Gauls also didn't have a written language. So, A, we don't even know if that's true. B, the idea that this veil ended up as part of this late October ceremony that started somewhere in the Roman Empire is a little silly. The costumes. The first recorded instance of costumes being worn at the Feast of Halloween comes from sometime in the early 1900s in New York City. The jack-o'-lantern comes from an English story written in the 1700s. There is no mention of it before then. So what is Halloween? Right about the fourth century, when the Christians started being able to have public festivals, they decided that they were going to celebrate the deaths of all of the martyrs that had been suffered under persecution under Rome for the last 300 years. They thought, well, let's just have a day. We don't know all their names, so we'll just go ahead and celebrate all the saints who died in martyrdom. throughout the last 300 years. Eventually this day would be called All Saints Day, which happens on November 1st, by the way. Now, this tradition passed into Europe and in Christian lands for a good long while, and usually this was accompanied with the day beforehand, everyone making preparations for All Saints Day, which here in Ecuador actually does last a couple of days, and that is traditionally what it was. It was a couple of days off. Right? The harvest would get in and then all of a sudden everybody would take a couple of days off. We're all going to celebrate All Saints Day. There was feasting and laughing and carnival things. And on All Saints Eve, you would often have food, whatevers, and various other things. So that's All Saints Day. Now the word saints is actually Latin. It just means holy, right? So like, you even see that, so it's, if you know Latin, you know, in nombre de padre y fili, ispiritu santi. Ispiritu is the holy spirits, right? You still see that in Spanish, ispiritu santo, right? Santo is just holy, and that's what it means, right? So all of the holy ones. In Old English, that word is hollow. You can see it says, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It just means holy, right? So in old English and in Saxon, you would say it's all hollows. day. So the night before is All Hallows Eve. All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Eve. You can see how that quickly becomes Halloween. And that's what the name of the holiday is. It's All Saints, the night before All Saints Day. normally they would have uh kind of some cool stuff going on now in the in the 1500s the universities used to take these two days to have their debate teams go at it right like this was a big thing it was a high scholarship everybody in the university towns would show up to these debates and the priests from and the university students and the priests from our town would debate against the visiting team coming in. And in the year 1517, the town, the University of Wittenberg had this banger of a debate team, right? Like everyone was really excited. They had this new professor in town. He was a professor of moral philosophy, young guy, really brilliant. He even spoke Greek. It was amazing. His name was Martin Luther. Right? And everybody was really, really excited for this debate thing because the visiting university that was coming in was going down this year. So everybody was really, really excited. So this young Martin Luther did the traditional thing where he sent off the debate topics to the bishop of Brandenburg, because that was the bishop that controlled his area. And he also took those debate topics and posted them on the 16th century equivalent of Facebook. the church door. You may remember this caused a bit of a stir because those debate topics were on the subject of indulgences. So in Protestant areas, the celebration of All Saints Days also started becoming prominent because that is generally recognized as the beginning of the Protestant Revolution. October 31st, 1517. Happy Reformation Day. From this momentous event rose those doctrines that we cherish most here on this side of it, the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of salvation by faith and not by works. And that's what we've been covering in the book in the book of Ephesians, that it is God who saves us, God who predestined us to that salvation, and he did it based on, and the requirement is that we would have faith in that, not that we could bring anything to the table, right? So there was no external qualifications for being a child of God, to being one of the hollows. Salvation, sainthood, by faith. a gift from God. So, with that thought in mind, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong about the scholarship on this and it really was a pagan holiday? What if we brought that whole thing, even though it would be weird, but let's just say we brought the whole thing in from a northern European holiday that then we co-opted and then decided the next day after everybody slept it off that we just go ahead and have an All Saints Day thing because, well, I mean, carnival is a thing that happens. Who knows? Let's say that that actually happened. Let's say, for a moment, that Halloween is pagan. My response to that is, you know what? So were we. We've been reading in Ephesians, and I'm gonna go back to that real quick, just to remind everybody of this. Ephesians chapter two, verse one. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Spooky, ghosts, veil guys. You used to be part of that. Among them, we too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you were saved. Going down to verse 11, therefore remember that formerly you, The Gentiles, in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands, remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you, who formerly were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. substitute you for holiday. And you'll see where I'm going with this. Now, there is the temptation to say, yes, we have been brought in to Christ, and we should separate ourselves from all things pagan, and we'll all find all the things pagan that we want to find. But I would like to also remind you that the Bible says this, Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 12. One of my favorite verses this time of year because it just seems to be so appropriate, at least to me. Ecclesiastes, which is right before Song of Songs, which is right after Proverbs. Anyway, Verse 16, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other. For the one who fears God comes forth with both of them. Do not be overly righteous. Some of your versions will say overly pious. It's the same thing. Everybody wants to get themselves into a position where they're like, well, I, unlike other Christians, do not celebrate these days as pagan holidays. And some of you here have said that to me. And it's not just one person. Believe me, we've all gone through it. I did too at one point. But Ecclesiastes reminds us that wisdom is, do not be overly righteous. Don't get out over your skis. There's enough to try to be righteous about that you don't have to go out to the other things. Remember what one of the woes that Jesus had for the Pharisees. It was in, you don't have to turn there, but it happened to be in Matthew chapter 23, 23. He said, woe to you Pharisees, for you tithe of the mint and the cuban, but you have neglected the weightier things of the law. Peace, mercy. So what did he have to say to the Pharisees? He was constantly saying, you guys, you're going too far and you have forgotten what your first love was supposed to be. And also remember this, remember what Hosea said. When he spoke and I want to go actually back to this because there's a lot of subtle things that I wish this I wish English versions would stop translating these things the um Or would stop like just putting the names in and actually go ahead and translate them because that's kind of the point Anyway, the uh, the english standard version does translate these names. So if you're interested, but anyway, he says this And it will come about in the day declares the lord when you shall call me Husband Remember the context. He'd married a whore. And he had a bunch of kids that were maybe his. That you, the whore, Israel, would call me husband. And will no longer call me Bealdi, the Baal. It says, you will call me the husband and you won't be the ones who are under bail. Verse 17, where I will remove the names of the bails from her mouth so that they will be mentioned by their names no more. And one of the things that they said, if I can find it, anyway, oh yes, and I will say to those who were not my people, remember what the child's name was, not my children, not my people. And I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people. And they will say, thou art my God. And he even said at one other point that I will tell those who were called, will never receive mercy. I will instead call them, will receive mercy. And then they shall never speak of the bales, and they shall not even remember their names." So which is a better victory? Separating yourselves from these pagan holidays, repeating their names, saying, well, I won't take part in Samhain's festival. take Samhain's festival, turn it into a Christian holiday, and make everybody forget that Samhain's even a thing. Like, you don't even know what that name is, do you? Samhain? Samhain. That's the god who supposedly was the, uh, associated with holiday. I've heard the name before. Yeah, but you shall remember his name no more. So, Samhain's sitting around somewhere going, hey, that was my home. Yeah, no, no, this is a Jesus thing now. Let's even say for a minute, and I don't believe this is true, but let's say for a minute that Christmas is Saturnalia, the day where we celebrate Saturn, the creator of all the gods of the Roman pantheon. Is that what it's celebrating anymore? Does Saturn even come into the whole thing? Is there even like a Saturn anything in that anymore? Does people remember that? Do we speak the name of the bales anymore on Christmas Day? Do people even remember it? No, of course they remember it now because the atheists and the modern scholars keep bringing it up, but beforehand nobody remembered them. The names of the bales were not on their lips anymore. What is the true victory? The Christians separating yourself from that? And they shall speak the name of their gods no more. But we can spike the football on Saturn. Dude, you even lost your day. That's how much the victory of Jesus Christ over the pagans, over the Gentiles, over the gods, over the idols, was such that not even their holidays would be celebrated anymore. They would in fact be celebrated in the name of Christ. Yeah, but going back to the roots, you're supposed to be able, as a Christian, you're supposed to know what the roots are. But I'm not. I'm celebrating the birth of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Saturn is nothing to do with it. He is defeated, he is destroyed, and his name shall be spoken no more. Just as Hosea predicted, would be the ones who were called the children of wrath, those who would never receive their father's mercy. But instead, I have called you Those who would receive mercy. And you shall not speak the name of their gods anymore. In fact, you shall forget their name. And how many Baals names does anyone remember anymore? Not many. Nobody can even list those things. The victory over the pagan gods is complete. And Jesus was lifted high above every other name. And I cannot express to you enough that this idea that we're going to suddenly go back to pretending like these gods had any power. And besides that, it's not Saturnalia anyway. That's the atheist telling you that. But we'll go back to that. Today- Hold on, hold on. Okay. How can you say that? Because I've read history? Okay, but everyone's putting a Christmas tree with candles and items on the Christmas tree in their house. Yes, the Christmas... Do you know why they started doing that? Okay, I'll tell you. Where'd that come from, the Christians? Okay, so the evergreen tree represents everlasting life because the evergreen tree... You start with whenever it showed up, not... Whenever it showed up was actually... Somewhere around Wittenberg, around about the 1500s, this is actually kind of a thing they started doing right about the Protestant Revolution. They brought in the evergreen boughs because the evergreens were the symbol of Life. The winter would come and destroy everything, but the evergreens would live. So they brought those in and they said, well, this is the representation of our Christ who lives. He was, he died on a tree, but he came to life. The evergreen tree. That's the symbolism of it. The lights on the tree. Jesus is the light of the world. In Him, as those who know Him, shall never live in darkness. You're asking me where the Christmas celebration of these things come from. That's where it comes from. No. But not the evergreen tree. Not on Christmas. And besides, when they did that... The Bible on Christmas wasn't invented yet. Right. But that's why they brought it in. So that's the adornments. It's because He gives us great gifts on these days. These are all Christian symbols. These are all Christian symbols that happens on Christmas day. And when they did it, they did not remember the bales anymore. This was the absolute defeat of, so let's even say it comes from that. I mean, there's no way it did, but if it did, then it's still Christ defeating the nations. And I, for one, am going to celebrate the defeat of the bales. And I'm gonna rub it in their face. But either way, if I am right, which I believe that I am, or I'm wrong, Either way, we need to stop bowing to the idols of our age. Let's stop trying to get ourselves more pious about gods who are long since gone, and let's start concerning about the idols of today. Today, our idols are the gods of science. And I don't mean that as scientific pursuits, I mean those people who come out and say, well, this is science. Those people, let us not forget, do not know the difference between a boy and a girl. We also need to stop bowing to the idols of modern sensibilities, of these things where we listen to these guys tell us that we're wrong, and the first thing that Christians do will go, you're right, we're wrong, but that's a good thing. No, they're wrong. wrong. Or maybe they're right. But either way, we don't have to bow before them. We can do our own research. There are Christian scholars who look at the same data and come to the different conclusions. Christian scholars have looked into the history of where Christmas comes from, and they've traced it back to the first century in Syria. And we need to also stop walling ourselves off with needless separation. Remember, Jesus said you neglect the weightier matters of mercy and compassion and giving. There's a day of the year in the United States where all of the children in the neighborhood come to your house and you are given an opportunity to be charitable in front of them. That day is Halloween. So I would say that your true mark of separation from the world is your behavior, not what holidays you choose. There are people in the church back there that I would see all the time who were the most reprobate people in the entire world, but they didn't celebrate Christmas because God didn't want us to. Or they didn't celebrate Halloween because God didn't want us to. I mean, I'm not even talking about you. I'm talking about all these people back there, right? But they were horrible people. They were not charitable. They were mean. And I think Jesus would have to say to them, hey, I think you missed the point. So in my humble opinion, Well, at least in my opinion anyway. Do the spooky things on us. It's fun. Dress up. It doesn't matter. Give out candy. Enjoy candy. Enjoy the wonderful gifts that God has given you. And do it all in the name of Christ. And if some other bale pops up its head, you can just say to him, I'm sorry, what did you say your name was? I don't know who you are. My bad. Nobody cares. Also, bye! Jesus is Lord. God will bring all of the Gentile nations to himself in Christ. Even their holidays. Because that would be hilarious. And that's who God is. So Lord, Help us to focus on the weightier matters, to the things that are true, to the things that we actually need to repent of in our lives. Help us to focus on glorifying you in all things, and help us to know the wisdom of not being overly righteous. And help us, Lord, to get through this wonderful season where everyone gets to be happy all at the same time, and enjoy the same things together, and we as Christians can go out among them and say, hey, have you heard of this Jesus guy? He's a big deal. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.
Concerning Halloween
Time for my Annual Plea for Christians to just quit it with this Pagan Festival stuff.
Hosea prophesied that We would remember the names of the Baals no more, yet we just can't seem to help bringing them back up this time of year.
NOTE: There was some discussion that happened, the guy brought up some fairly common points, so I left those in and the subsequent follow up.
Sermon ID | 1027241854311397 |
Duration | 38:15 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Hosea 2:16-17 |
Language | English |
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