We're in the midst of a very short series of lessons on Christmas traditions. And there are a lot of those. Good, bad, etc. All kinds of things that are happening this time of year. And something that sometimes distresses me amongst God's people, or those who claim to be God's people, is we may take such a strong stand for truth, and we should, amen? We should. We shouldn't mince words about what's true and what's not true. But in that zeal, we can almost become antagonistic, or very negative and critical. of others who maybe haven't matured or grown or learned or, you know, they're on their own journey and they got to learn some things and we can subtly undermine things that help the cause of Christ because of an excessive zeal in our mind for truth. And we have to be careful of that. We need the Lord to help us, okay? I think of James and John, you know, the village didn't wanna respond to Jesus, and they're like, oh, let's burn them down. And Jesus is like, back up, you guys are just, I'm paraphrasing, of course, are just a bit over the top. Back up a little bit. And if they're not against me, then they're with me. And that's important for us to recognize, especially as we come to Christmas, because there's so much. And you know, that's going to be irritating. Again, that's true. That is true. So I'm just going to have to project. I lost my train of thought. I want you to think about who was in the Garden of Eden. OK, the devil was there, Adam was there, Eve was there, and God was there, right? So that means the devil was there when the Lord said and gave the promise of the Messiah, right? So he's known about the coming Messiah for a long time, a long time. And is he not the father of lies? Yes, since he is the father of lies, and he knows the truth of God. I mean, he comes to, here we are in Luke 4, and it's right after the temptation of Christ. And what is the devil doing? The devil's quoting scripture to attack Jesus. He didn't know, maybe we don't think about this, but I think the devil knows the Bible better than any of us. He knows its truths. And don't you think he's so devious and so evil, and he knows the truth so well, wouldn't he have enough perception, if that's the right word, to take little nuggets of truth and plant them into man's traditions? So they become twisted and perverted. And I'm mentioning that on purpose because when we think about Christmas traditions, there's a whole bunch of stuff. But there's little kernels of truth in all of that. Down in the deep, there's something there. And that's kind of important, I think, for us to recognize. Notice verse 16, and we'll get into our few points here. He says, and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. So this is where he grew up. And as his custom was, I want you to notice that. There were some things Jesus did, and in the vein of our Sunday school lesson, they were traditional things that he did. He grew up like any other Jewish boy grew up. He wasn't exempt from the normal Jewish culture. And what would happen within that culture as a young boy would grow? And, you know, probably when he's 12 years old and they go to Jerusalem, that's, in essence, that's his bar mitzvah. That's just normal cultural stuff all Jewish boys would go through. And Jesus understood all those things. So he's at his hometown, and it's the Sabbath day, and he does what everybody does. He goes to church. Now, they didn't call it church. I know that. But to help us understand, that was normal. Everybody would go to the, on the Sabbath day, they would go to the synagogue. That's what they did. Again, I mentioned last Sunday, traditions are not bad. It is good to have traditions, provided they're helpful and they're not corrupting. Traditions are a guide. They're a fence, if you will. They keep us pointed the right way. They protect us from straying back into the old heresies and so on. That's a good thing. But the danger is, when we focus on the tradition to the neglect, of why it's there. We're back to Exodus when the son says, Dad, what are we doing these things for? And he has to explain, this is why we do these things. So we understand what those traditions mean. Over time, those little nuggets of truth, if you will, get overshadowed so much by the tradition, we have forgotten the truth. That doesn't make the tradition bad or wrong. But our focus in the wrong place. OK, so we don't want to forget the truth. All right. So I gave you a I gave you a homework assignment. And that was to share with me a Christmas tradition. You want to know what was that all about? But only one of you passed your homework. And that was Roy Roy says he wants to know what is up with mistletoe What in the world is that all about? Where did that come from? What does that have to do with Jesus even? Wow, so number one relational tradition Relational traditions And I'm specifically thinking about mistletoe. Because we all know what traditionally happens under the mistletoe. Yeah. Thank you, Katie. You're supposed to kiss under the mistletoe, right? So that's a relational thing, or at least it's supposed to be. Not just a... Yeah, you get it. Okay. So as we think about mistletoe, let's kind of back up a little bit. And in each of these points, I want to look at the tradition itself, the type or the picture that it gives, and then the truth that's underneath all of it. So we look at those three things. So relational tradition, specifically thinking about the mistletoe. And traditionally, of course, a sprig of mistletoe would be hung up in a doorway or an archway or someplace like that. It would be visible. Maybe if the family had a chandelier, they'd hang it from the chandelier in the middle of the room, whatever the case may be. And you would, obviously, any young lady who's under the mistletoe was fair game. You could go and steal a kiss. So now what that's supposed to mean is According to the things I was reading anyways Is that would be an unmarried lady and an unmarried man? And if he kissed her under the mistletoe, it was like proposing basically It was like a an act of pledge one to another Not obviously the promiscuous frivolity that goes on today, but that's what that was supposed to mean. Because mistletoe grows usually on hardwoods, ash, maple, mostly oak. And it's a separate plant. It doesn't have any roots. And I forget what they call it now. It actually roots itself Yes, it is. It's called a parasite, but I'm thinking about its roots. They had a funny name for the tentacle or whatever that goes into the bark. And I don't remember what that term is, but it draws its life from the tree, actually. Now, historically, if two knights like in medieval days who maybe were enemies would meet in the forest And above them was mistletoe growing in the oak tree. They would drop their arms, meaning their swords and so forth, and they would embrace as friends. It was a symbol of peace. peace and perhaps affection if it was the whole kissing thing. They say the Druids collected that. There's no actual historical writings from the Druids in England and so on of doing this. Only writings of people late centuries later writing about them. But they would gather the mistletoe and it was either a ritual thing or they would use the berries and maybe the plant itself for medicinal purposes. Perhaps, which is why sometimes mistletoe is called the healing sprig. I don't think I could prove that every place I looked. And I don't know that Wikipedia can be trusted in every point it talks about and all the other websites I looked at. But what is the picture? So that's kind of typically what would happen. But what is the picture? Well, two things, I would say love and peace. Love and peace. is it became a symbol of peace. Think about these knights meeting in the forest and they're they would have done battle except they meet underneath the mistletoe. And so they instead of battling, they become allies. The sense of peace and obviously then the sense of love. Now, think about the plant itself as we think about how that works is because the mistletoe is in a dependent relationship to the host tree. It gets its life from the tree. The sapon, it has green leaves, and so it goes through the normal photosynthesis, but it's not enough. It cannot survive on its own. It needs the life of the tree. Think about that. As a Christian, can you survive on your own? No, you need the life of Christ, don't you? What did Jesus say? I am the vine, ye are the branches. We draw our life from Christ. He sustains us. Keeps us in connection to the Lord. You know, to the Father and so forth, okay? That's a dependent relationship. Now if we want to think about on the human side, obviously what's intended in the marriage relationship is that's a dependent relationship, isn't it? Scripture says two shall be one. So they're dependent upon each other. So it's an appropriate picture. But aside of all that we may look into it, I mean think about this, in John chapter one, It says all things were made by Him. And without Him was not anything made that was made. So if everything in nature God has created, we can find pictures of truth in everything God made. That's logical, isn't it? will find some bit of truth will be illustrated in the things that God made. Either in how they function or how they're created, how they live, et cetera. We can find pictures of truth. So as we think about mistletoe and if we borrow from tradition and the sense that it stands for peace and it stands for love, what is the truth underneath of that? Does God love you? Yes, He does. Yes, He does. For God so loved the world. Okay. First John 4, 7, 8. Okay. Beloved, let us love one another. That's right. Because God is love. And so, peace. Does God offer you peace? Yes, Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5 verse 1 says, Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He's given us peace. By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. He gives us access. His peace. Now think about that. Think about in medieval days, if warriors are meeting underneath mistletoe and now there's peace instead of war. When we gather under the umbrella of the Lord, there's peace with him. The war has ended. Now we're at end, but without Christ, we're at enmity against God. Our old nature is God's enemy and fighting against him. But when we come under the banner of Christ, that war stops and now there's peace. I wanna illustrate one more thing with mistletoe that maybe will help us because whether you go to Encyclopedia Britannica, you go to Wikipedia, you go to all the websites about Christmas traditions, et cetera, always there's gonna be stuff cropping up out of mythology. Everyone talks about this Norse god or Odin and his kids or whatever, whatever, whatever. Okay. Well, remember the devil loves to lie. He loves to lie about the truth. He loves to lie with the truth. And there is a story in mythology about mistletoe. And I only know little pieces of it because I'm not a major on mythology because I have more important things to read. But I find it amazing, little kernels of truth cropping up in places that we might right off the cuff just dismiss. And we should because it's not true. It's mythology, it's pagan, et cetera. I get all that. But I find it amazing that the father of lies loves to take a little bit of truth and repaint it and twist it. So in mythology, one of these supposed sons of Odin wants to go into the netherworld or whatever, the world of the dead, and he wants to meet his relationship, whatever this person is. And the only way that he can get there is with a sprig of mistletoe. See, Pastor, that sounds like a weird story. I agree, that's a weird story, okay. But the kernel of truth is the only way you're gonna meet God and go to heaven is if you have God's peace. Because Jesus died for you. He showed His love. And He paid the price. And He's the one that gives us access. Now you say, well, that doesn't sound like that mythology story. Well, that's because the devil likes to twist it so badly that it sounds bizarre. But the kernel of truth is that there's no way I'm going to go to heaven without Jesus and His love and what He did for me. And that war between my old nature and his righteousness has to come to an end. And that only happens through Christ. Why isn't the sprig of mistletoe so important on the spring equinox? Why does it have to be associated with Christmas? Which is typically the time we celebrate the birth of Christ. And why does it have to be so twisted story-wise? Because now the devil can get people's eyes off of Christ, their need of a savior, and on some goofy soap opera drama of all the mythological gods. And we lose the kernel of truth. And all of that crud. Relational traditions. Number two. Since I was looking at mistletoe, it caused me to look at holly. Okay, and if you look at the back of your lesson sheet, the picture is mistletoe, the white berries, and holly, the red berries. Why holly berries during Christmas time? Now this is an instructional tradition, instructional. As we have relational, this one's instructional. We're talking about holly berries and so forth. And traditionally, holly's always been used as really just a decoration. in the middle of winter, because it's beautiful. It's green. It's an evergreen tree. It doesn't lose its leaves. So in the bleak midwinter, thank you, Bridget, for picking the song, even though we sort of stumbled and bumbled our way through it, then. Right. Right. It's a green, beautiful leave amidst all the barrenness of winter, the bleak midwinter. And who's teaching the lesson? That's right. That's right. I had to have a dry run. So we got these beautiful green leaves and these bright red berries. Yeah, we're going to get to that. That's part of the instruction. So in all this white and barrenness, you have this beautiful, eye-catching plant. So if you go back several hundred years, you couldn't just run down to Walmart and get a plastic poinsettia. You couldn't get a plastic anything, could you? The only way you decorated was with Real stuff. Leaves and so forth that you'd go and pick out. So in the middle of winter, if you want a little brightness in the middle of your table, you'd go get a piece of a holly tree. green leaves and the red berries and it'd be a beautiful thing on your mantle or on your table or whatever. It was just, it's kind of almost always been used as a decorative element. And I would suspect that's probably why green and red are traditional colors for Christmas because of what they would use as decorations. Okay. Now, uh... traditionally well i can read my uh... i can read my writing in uh... as i said it goes way back to medieval days and they would say traditionally those pokey leaves were a picture of the cross It would be a reminder of the cross. Not the cross, the crown of thorns that Jesus had to wear. Okay? Because they're sharp. Now the higher, actually if you go up higher in a holy tree, the leaves lose their thorns. And they're not pokey anymore. They're still green, but above head level, at least I was reading on one website of somebody who's a botanist, as the tree grows, when it gets taller, the leaves at the top of the tree don't have thorns, but the lower ones do. So the reason for that is because the animals grouse it, and it's a defensive weapon that the rat has. Right, because who wants to get stabbed in the lip? And they would say, they would talk about protection and so forth. The red berries, of course, they're red. And so the color red is a reminder of the blood. So it was a very simple way to teach kids about, or families, about truths. Jesus wore a crown of thorns. He was crucified. He bled and died. And the red berries were a picture of that. Now, just as there are the weird things with mistletoe, there are some weird things with holly. A holly wood, not in California, but holly wood, the wood from a holly tree, is white. It's a very light wood. It's like a hard wood, as you would classify it. So it's wood you actually use for furniture. and it's a very straight grain, light white wood. It has white blossoms, so the color of the wood as well as the color of the blossoms is an easy way to point to that will be white as snow. OK, so about the cleansing of the blood of Christ. Now, the weird thing about Holly, though, is, as we said, the devil likes to take pieces of truth and lie back to these brothers, these mythological peoples. The one was impervious to harm. He was, I guess, sort of the Superman of Odin's kids, except he had a weakness. And it was Holly. That sounds silly. He had a brother who was blind. And then another one, Loki, who he's been in the news lately and movie news, who was like the god of deception. And he tricked the blind brother to shoot the other brother. With an arrow made of Hollywood. And killed him. I'd say, okay, that's weird. Did Jesus die for you? Yes, He did. Did Jesus die because the devil deceived and caused Adam and Eve to sin? Yes. See all that mythology had now it's all very twisted and it's weird and I'm not saying we should study it. I'm just saying let's be careful just because something has a connection to something weird. We don't just dismiss it out of hand. It could be a kernel of truth in there. And that is the truth. The truth is Jesus did wear a crown of thorns. Jesus did die. Jesus did die for my sin. He died for me. So there's the truth, okay? And we could look at Matthew 2 and other places, Romans 5, 8, but God commendeth his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, okay? Number three, bountiful traditions. And this is probably why we don't have any coffee and donuts, actually. Say, well, that doesn't make sense, because that's not very bountiful. I was too busy trying to wrap the whiteboard to make it look like a giant present. And that is tough to do by yourself with that horrible wrapping paper that's like plastic. The tape doesn't stick and they're, oh, it's frustrating. But I got it up there, anyways. Oh, thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Sharon. But you still don't have coffee and donuts. Bountiful traditions. And this doesn't have anything to do with plants, of course. It has to do with presents. Presents. And the tradition we're thinking about here when it comes to Christmas is gifts and the gift giver. Gifts and the gift giver. Gifts obviously with the gifts that we give one another and our friends and families and others and so forth. But then the gift giver usually points to the jolly guy, Santa Claus, right? And there's a lot of stuff that has to do with Santa Claus. Okay. Now let's think about the type or the pictures maybe. Okay. Santa Claus. There was a real guy by the name of Saint Nicholas. His name was Nicholas, actually. He was the Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor. Later, later, later, later, later, the Catholic Church made him a saint, but his name was Nicholas. And back in those days, we're talking about the third century, a bishop was just the pastor. Bishop, pastor, overseer, all those are speaking about the same office in a local church, the pastor. OK, so he's the pastor of this church there. He happens to be wealthy. And he helps the poor people in his town and his village, and he does it anonymously because he doesn't want any credit. He doesn't care about the credit. He just wants to help people who are in need. OK, so that's the kernel, the historical kernel of truth behind St. Nicholas, which legend grew, and then eventually, especially over here in America, he became Santa Claus. Interesting, it was a theological professor, Moore, his last name was Moore, who wrote the famous poem... No, that's a song. "'Twas the night before Christmas, And he wrote that not that it was truth he wrote it for his kids just as a silly children's little poem and It got published against his permission. He didn't give permission for his own poem to be published But it became quite popular and it popularized Santa Claus and all that we have today was a reindeer and blah blah blah blah blah blah, okay but There was a real guy who was a gift giver. Now that doesn't mean that we should have a guy in a red suit doing that. That's not what I'm saying. But as always, there's usually something that's the kernel. There's something real in the midst of all of that stuff. And that's important for us. I believe it is. What is the truth I gain as I think about gifts and Santa Claus? Well, God gave me gifts. Did He give you gifts? For God so loved the world that He gave. He didn't just give a gift, He keeps giving gifts. Psalm 68 and verse 19, He daily loadeth us with benefits. He gives us every day. Not just one day a week, He's always giving. Always giving. When I was a teenager, the pastors of the church would say, you can't out-give God, so give till it hurts. And then keep giving till it feels real good again. I don't know if the offerings were down. I wasn't paying attention to that when I was a teenager. But God does give, doesn't he? And he gives, and he gives, and he gives, and he gives his grace that we enjoy on the day of salvation and his grace that we enjoy every day after that because There are no days that we are sinless. Amen. So his grace is a gift and he keeps giving. That's a wonderful thing. A wonderful thing. He is the gift giver. OK. And he gives the gift of his grace. He gave the gift of his son. He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit to dwell within. He he's given us the gift of his word. He's given us the gift of friends and family and all the blessings in our lives. He's the gift giver. That's the truth. He's the gift giver. And while I don't think there's a big jolly guy with a red suit flying around in a sleigh with reindeer, there is a God who gives. And he doesn't look to get anything back from us. It doesn't give. because we've paid for it. Because then it wouldn't be a gift, would it? No. He gives because he loves. Now, there's an obvious expectation. We'll be grateful and our gratitude will be expressed in our lives. OK, that's appropriate. Beyond God as the giver of gifts. Specifically with Christmas, what else do we find about gifts? The three wise men, right? Did they not come and give gifts? Sure they did. There in Matthew, in chapter 2. It says in verse 11, and when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Now we can speculate what those gifts were indicative of. And I think we could probably do that with a relative sense of safety that we're not going to go into heresy. But the text doesn't say they gave him gold for this and frankincense for this and myrrh for this. It doesn't say that, does it? It just says they gave gold, frankincense and myrrh. Could be gold because he's the king of kings and that's a very divine thing, gold. Frankincense because he's royalty and only royalty could afford it. Myrrh because he's gonna be the savior. And that was like an embalming ointment and so forth. But either way, all three of them are very expensive gifts. They were useful gifts. I think that's how Mary and Joseph financed their trip to Egypt, because they were a poor couple. They didn't have money to do that, but they did now. It was provided for them. Gifts. God gives gifts. And I think it's okay for us to give gifts. Now, the last point, Tradition and truth. There can be an element, can there not, in a holiday like Christmas where there's a lot of appropriation of cultural things that are maybe pagan. And the answer is, Yes, there sure can be. There can be. Whether intentional or not, sometimes we do things just because that's what's done traditionally and we don't think about maybe the roots of that tradition. That can happen. However, You know, so we need the Lord to help us so that number one, we don't appropriate traditional elements that actually undermine the truth. We don't want that to happen, OK? As long as I'm here, we're never going to have a big jolly guy in a red suit play Santa Claus at the Christmas banquet. OK? I'm not threatened by Santa Claus. I just don't think that's appropriate at a church banquet. Okay. If you have a Santa Claus in your house, that's your thing at that, you know, whatever. Okay. Um, but I want to be careful. We're not going to have a burning Yule log. Okay. That's a pretty pagan thing in some Norse cultures. Um, we're not going to do that. Okay. So we need the Lord to help us that while we may, we may recognize kernels of truth in traditional things. Just because there's a kernel of truth there doesn't mean that we should embrace it wholeheartedly. Everybody understand what I'm saying? That's something that you're going to have to make that distinction on your own. That's not something that's going to be legislated from the pulpit. I don't mind doing that from the pulpit for things that happen in church, but what happens in your house is your business. Whether you have a tree, you don't have a tree, you have a porcelain Santa Claus cookie jar, or you don't, but whatever. That's fine. If I come to your house and you have tasty cookies in your Santa Claus cookie jar, I'm not going to refuse them because they came from Santa Claus. I'll say thank you and dip them in my coffee. Okay. But we do need to be careful that we don't appropriate things that could undermine truth. We don't want, as I said in the beginning, we don't want our traditions to become so focused that they flush the truth away or they overshadow the truth to where the truth is forgotten. We don't want that to happen. We want to be careful. And on the other side, I need to be gracious with people who have traditions in their home and in their families that maybe might be different than mine. And I may think like, why in the world would you do that? But okay, if that's how I feel about that particular element, that's up to me. I have to be convinced in my own mind. And I have to give you grace. And I want you to give me grace. Give grace one to another, amen? We believe in soul liberty, do we not? You'll answer to the Lord for what you do or do not do. And we need to recognize that. Even in these precious times of the year, whether we come to Christmas time. One more verse and I'm going to be done. And that's Acts chapter 17. And a lot of things happen, as we've said several times already. And some people do things, and some don't, and some have trees, and some don't have trees, and some have eggnog, and some don't, amen? And fruitcake, and so forth. But the key is we recognize that it's about the Lord. It's about Jesus. He came. Now, I've said before, I believe He came on December 25th, and I wrote a whole book about it. But I can't prove it. But I can prove that He came, whatever day it was, because the Bible tells me that. So as we think about traditions, I want you to look at verse, we're in Acts 17, verse 28. We looked at this last Sunday. I just want to close this morning with this. For in him we live and move and have our being. Notice please what Paul says. As certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. Paul was aware of Athenian culture and traditions, and he used their traditions and cultures as a doorway to bring Christ. Now he didn't change Christ to fit them, but the fact that they had something in their culture that maybe in a twisted way pointed to the truth of God, he used that to bring them to the truth of God. And I think that's important. So whatever we think about the holiday, as I've said before, the whole world is celebrating Christmas. And we were at Shields the other day, and the person in front of us was checking out, and the clerk said, happy holidays. And I was getting ready to ask him which one. Groundhog Day, Fourth of July, what holiday are we talking about? But then he started checking us out, so we didn't have a conversation. And before he could even get his happy holidays out, I said, Merry Christmas. and gave him, here's a Christmas greeting for you. And I gave him the new Christmas drag. And he said, oh, thank you. Merry Christmas to you, too. OK, so our whole culture. This is the season. Whether we got the date right or not is not really the issue. Is everybody celebrating Christmas? So let's use it to point them to the truth of what Christmas is supposed to be about. And that's Jesus. That's Jesus. Okay, well I'll wait for somebody else to tell me what the next tradition is or two. Yeah, Dean has one. The 12 Days of Christmas. I'm gonna write the 12, okay. Christmas cards. Candy canes. Okay. 12 days. Christmas cards. Candy canes. OK. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your love and grace. And Father, we live in a time that can be distressing to us. We want to stand for truth. We don't want to compromise and just sort of mold and meld into our culture. We want to shine the light on Christ. And would you help us in the midst of this season? And we know our culture is almost sort of intoxicated with festivities and so forth and they're looking more at all the miscellaneous things and not the Messiah. I pray you'd help us in the midst of that to point them to Jesus. Bless our service to follow in Jesus' name. Amen.