[Richard Kennebeck] Several years ago, Drew Carey, the TV actor, the comedian, the game show host was one of the main presenters at the Correspondents' Association White House event held annually in Washington DC. I don't normally get history or spiritual lessons from comedians, but he did have a couple of interesting things to say. Let me read part of what he said in that speech that evening, and I quote, "I can't watch the news lately. It gets so depressing. I mean, I just get depressed watching the news. You know what I do when I watch the news now? I turn the news off, I get out my Bible, I turn to the book of Revelation and I start checking stuff off. You know, got it, got it, need it, need it. Red dragon, 7 horns, 10 crowns. Yeah, I read the Bible a lot. You know, this is crazy. We celebrate holidays in the United States. I found out just recently, there are so many religious holidays we celebrate here in this country that have nothing to do with the Bible at all. Real famous holidays like Christmas, Christmas is nothing. It's not in the Bible, the birth of Jesus is in the Bible, but not Christmas. Trees are in the Bible, but not the Christmas tree. Nowhere does it say, “’Celebrate My birthday,’ says Jesus.” It's just a pagan holiday that the Romans invented that we just do."

Now his whole routine that night garnered a certain amount of chuckles and laughter and the like, but you know if you watch that YouTube presentation while he's saying this, you don't see any smiles in the crowd. Christmas hits too close to many people's hearts. It's a subject that has many emotional things attached to it. It's this time of the year that we face a lot of challenges that we don't face during the rest of the year. We’re asked questions like, "Do you have your tree up yet? Have you finished your buying for Christmas? Do you have your lights up in front of the house?" You know, one of those really big challenges each year are those Christmas songs.

I mean, how often do you walk into a store, I know if one of those gets started and you just can't get rid of it. It just goes and goes and goes, and don't worry, I'm not going to start singing one. Don't worry about that.

Now Christmas is one of those times when we have to really, very openly shine our light. We don't have the lights out in front of our house. People ask us questions and we have to say, "We don't participate in that event or in that... in the Christmas." So we make a big statement during that time, you know. I grew up in a, what I call a mixed household. My dad was a Lutheran, so we went to Lutheran church twice a year, Easter and Christmas. And we kept Christmas until I was about 10 years old. My mom was in the faith, so we learned very quickly about Christmas and where it came from and whether the Bible said it was in there or not. You know, Christmas was fun as a kid. I enjoyed getting the presents, but I very early on realized there was no Santa Claus and at a certain point in our lives, we had to make a choice. So I'll be happy when this season's over again. I can turn my car radio on and not have to listen to Christmas songs. Though it's at this time of the year, I'm really happy for my playlist on my phone. If it wasn't for that, I'd be in trouble.

So today I'd like to take a quick look at the history of Christmas, and then ask the question, "Does it really matter if we keep Christmas?” Does it really matter if we keep Christmas? So turn with me if you would, to Romans 1 as we delve into the subject. Romans 1, beginning in verse 22.

Romans 1:22-25 we read about the way of man from his beginning. Even though mankind professes wisdom and thinks he knows best, in reality he's a fool. Romans 1 beginning in verse 22, "Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things." You know, for millennia, man has worshiped these idols in the past of various images. "Therefore," continuing in verse 24, "God also gave them up to uncleanliness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature, or the creation, rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen."

You know, this world continues to go astray. It's been going astray from millennia since Adam. We, or the whole world has listened to the lie, the well-crafted lie of how to worship God in many ways, and Christmas is one of those. All those trappings and trimmings of Christmas are based on lies and aren't Christian at all. And it's very easy to figure that out by going to the internet or even back before the internet, you could go to a library, and in a very short period of time, you could find out the beginnings of Christmas.

So let's take a quick few moments, taking a look at the origins of Christmas and where it came from and review it. Most of us know this, but it doesn't hurt to have a review at this time of the year. You know, if you want to watch a very interesting program about the history of Christmas, you can go over to YouTube – after I'm done speaking – and do a search on the History Channel presentation called “Christmas Unwrapped: The Story of Christmas.” “Christmas Unwrapped: The Story of Christmas.” It's about 45 minutes long. It's from the History Channel. It's a very good presentation. I found it quite interesting.

I'd like to read to you from several sources about Christmas and the early Christian history of that, up until about the 1600s. So here are some findings as far as the historical background. So according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, early Catholic church fathers, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who wrote between 170 and 210 AD did not mention Christmas in their list of Christian feast days. In fact, in his writings, Tertullian reports that the early Christians did not join in with the pagans in their holiday customs and refers to trappings of Christmas and New Year's that continue down to this day. He stated, "On this day of gladness," talking about the winter festivities, "we Christians neither cover our door posts with wreaths nor intrude upon a day with lamps," similar to the way we have lights around our houses. "At the call of public festivity, you consider it a proper thing to decorate your house like some new brothel. We are accused of a lower sacrilege because we do not celebrate along with you the holiday." The Encyclopedia Britannica from their article on Christmas says, "The actual observance of the day of Christmas…of Jesus' birth was long in coming. During the first two centuries of Christianity, there was strong opposition to recognizing birthdays of martyrs, or for that matter, of Jesus."

The Columbia Encyclopedia states in their article on Christmas that, quote, "The observance probably does not date earlier than AD 200 and did not become widespread until the 4th century." This is all talking about Christian Christmas. The Catholic Encyclopedia again says about the date of Christmas, "The well-known solar feast, however, of Natalis Invicti, celebrated on 25 December, has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date." And it writes that Chrysostom, who was the Bishop of Constantinople in the 4th century, he wrote the following, "But our Lord, too, is born in the month of December, the eighth before Kalends of January." That would be the 25th of December, "But they call it the 'birth day of the Unconquered.' Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord? Or if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun," S-U-N, "He is the Sun of Justice."

You can see how, over time, it began to become integrated into the Christian religion, how they began to take this date, the 25th of December, and put a Christian spin on it using the word sun, S-U-N, to S-O-N. The World Book Encyclopedia in their article on Christmas states, quote, "The first mention of December 25 as the birth date of Jesus occurred in AD 336 in an early Roman calendar. The celebration of this day as Jesus' birth was probably influenced by pagan festivals held at that time. The ancient Romans held year-end celebrations to honor Saturn, their harvest God, and Mithras, the god of light." Continuing on with some historical background, the Encyclopedia Britannica states in their article on Christmas that, quote, "The New Testament provides no clues in regard to the birth of Jesus Christ." December 25 was first identified as the date of Jesus's birth by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221, and later became the universally accepted date. One widespread explanation of the origin of this date is that December 25 was the christianizing of the day of the birth of the Unconquered Sun, a popular holiday in the Roman empire, and it was moved over to be Jesus's birth.

One last quote concerning this from a book called Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook by Mary Beard and others, says about the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia. "The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the "Birth Day of the Unconquerable Sun" festival on 23 December. The popularity of Saturnalia continued into the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, and as the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, many of its customs were recast into, or at least influenced, the seasonal celebrations surrounding Christmas and the New Year."

So this is kind of a historical period. When it was changed, many things were brought in that were pagan or associated with pagan worship into Christianity. And you might ask, and this is probably a good time to stop for a second and say, "Do we really believe that these ancient traditions could have been accepted into Christianity or even encouraged in Christianity?" Now that's to say the answer is yes. It's even happening today. When I was in South Africa several years ago, I happened upon a TV show. There was a bishop of a very large denomination down there, Christian denomination, and they were trying to determine how they could bring in, and he was explaining how they could bring in more Zulus into the Christian church, how can we do this? Because the Zulus, many of them, still believe in ancestor worship, still have witch doctors, and his comment and suggestion, the recommendation was that they take many of the things that the Zulus do and apply a Christian name to it, and allow them to continue keeping a lot of their old traditions, but actually make sure that they somehow connect Christ to them. So this actually happens even in our world now. So it isn't far-fetched that these things happened back in the 200s and 300s and 400s AD.

Let's take a little look at more modern time. We will come up to the 1600s and see where Christmas fell within that time period. From the Christmas article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, talking about England in the 1600s, it says, "In Britain, the 25th of December was a festival long before the conversion to Christianity. In 1644 the English Puritans forbade any merriment or religious services by act of parliament on the ground that it was a heathen festival and ordered it to be kept as a fast. In 1640, the act from parliament of Scotland abolished Christmas celebrations. The English translation of that Act says, "This kingdom is now purged of all superstitious observances of days. Therefore, the said estates have discouraged a discharge and simply discharged the foresaid yule vacation and all observance thereof in time coming and rescind and in annul all acts, statutes and warrants and ordinances whatsoever granted at any time, therefore for keeping of the said yule vacation." And then from 1652 to 1659, the English parliament outlawed Christmas because it was not sanctioned by the Bible. In fact, they ordered that churches be closed on that day and that shops remain open on that day. And then here in America, from 1659 to 1680, the Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited the observance of Christmas. One of their documents says, "Whoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such account and as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay a fine of 5 shillings." So if you kept Christmas at that time in that colony, you actually paid a fine. Moving up into the 1800s, the New York City, the "Daily Times," 1855, December 26, "The churches of Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists were not opened on December 25th. They do not accept the day as a holy one, but the Episcopalian, Catholic and German churches were all open. Inside they were decked with evergreens."

So you can see the history of Christmas has not always been a solid observance even within the Christian church. So, knowing this, the history of Christmas, it's very easily found out about, yet most people see no problem with keeping it, even if it is based on something that God did not promote. In fact, they believe very similar to this one church from their website. They say, "We can't let centuries-dead pagans dictate what we can do or can't do. They have no authority over our calendar." So let's ask that question now. Does it really matter? Does it really matter if we keep Christmas? You know, can we keep it in a Christian fashion? Keep it as an observance of Christ? Put Christ into Christmas?

What I’d like to do is read a portion, to start this section out, from a transcript of a well-known preacher, conservative, and conservative TV evangelist and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. They have a program, and you can find this interview on the internet if you look at CBN Christmas pagan, CBN Christmas pagan, you can find this interview. This evangelist is being interviewed in this program, a program called Bring it On-Line, because it's an online program. And there's a CBN host who asked questions of this evangelist, ones that were sent in to the program. And one of those questions on this show was from a person who had a question, and I'll summarize this question. His question was, "I have friends that don't keep Christmas. They say it is pagan. How should I answer them? How should I answer them?"

Let me actually read just a little section of that transcript of what his answer is. I'm going to take out little pieces that are superfluous to it, but we'll see what kind of answer he's got and what advice he had. Quote, "Well, in a sense," this is his response to that person, "While in a sense, tell them that they're right." You see the winter solstice, a couple of days later, was the shortest day of the year and the pagans had something called Saturnalia, and it was a time of lawlessness because all the laws were suspended and people would actually wander the streets naked singing. It was a mass thing. Well, when the Catholic church came along and Italy and the Romans and others didn't want to give up their holidays, so they said, ‘Okay, we'll christianize it.’” Well, this is from this evangelist, well-known evangelist. He says, "I mean, what was going on?"

"So all this business about mistletoe…" This is his response, "All this business about mistletoe – pagan, Christmas trees – pagan, giving out gifts – pagan, every bit is pagan. Every single bit of it is pagan. We have christianized it all, and so that's good. And so we have time, we celebrate Jesus, and everyone gets misty-eyed, but the truth of it is, they are all pagan." That was his response. And then the host says, "But the intent is what it's all about." And the evangelist then says, "Well, exactly. So we have christianized all these things. We give gifts in the name of Jesus, we celebrate His birthday, and it's a nice thing."

And that's what this Christian evangelist says. And then he goes on to talk about the best Christmas he'd ever kept. So then other than a few statements in this… if you watch this, other than few statements in this, it actually could have been said by us. You could have actually found it in one of our documents, one of our booklets. Probably wouldn't have been quite as blunt coming from us, but he was very blunt. It's pagan, it's pagan. So, the bottom line is that, it's all pagan. It's christianized pagan. Are we free to christianize a pagan practice? Can we change something that comes from an ungodly practice or worship of idols or other gods into something that's holy? Will God bless that? Well, no, He won't. He won't. He won't.

This is what occurred over those early centuries as Christmas came into the church, that church, a worldly church. The New International Dictionary of Christian Church, page 223 states, and I quote, "December 25 was the date of the Roman pagan festival inaugurated in 274 as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun, which at the winter solstice begins again to show an increase in light. Sometime before 336, the church in Rome, unable to stamp out this pagan festival, spiritualized it as the Feast of the Nativity, of the Sun, S-U-N, of Righteousness."

Turn with me to Isaiah 5, Isaiah 5. So let's look into whether we can actually do this or not. Whether we can christianize pagan things and what God feels about that. Isaiah 5 beginning in verse 20, because can we spiritualize away things and make them Christian or make them godly? Can we christianize something and make it good? Isaiah 5:20-21 says, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." Verse 21, "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight." So we can see that just because something looks right or acceptable doesn't mean that God approves of it. We can't christianize something. We can't make something holy. God can do that. In Leviticus 23, Leviticus 23, Moses declares the feasts of the Lord, the feasts of the Lord of Israel. And we read about God's Holy Days, those days that God instituted for mankind in Leviticus 23. We see that God made those days holy.

It was He who made them holy. In fact, in Leviticus 23, the word "holy" is found 12 times, and the phrase "feasts of the Lord" is found 4 times. Let's read a couple of those. Leviticus 23:2, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be a holy convocation, these are My feasts." Verse 4, "These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times." Verse 7, "On the first day, you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it." Verse 8, "The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it." Verse 21, "And you shall proclaim the same day that it is a holy convocation." These are all talking about the different feasts and Sabbaths of God that He made holy. Verse 35, "On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it." And verse 37, "These are the feasts of the Lord which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations." God gave Israel His Holy Days, His days of worship. He called them holy. He made them holy, and He warned nation Israel against doing as the heathens did, against bringing in heathen practices into the worship, the holy worship that God had.

He warned Israel against "christianizing" heathen things. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 12, Deuteronomy 12, because here God's given Israel advice about their future. And He tells them as they enter into the land of Israel, the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, He tells them how they're supposed to worship. Deuteronomy 12, beginning in verse 1, "These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree." Verse 3,"And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names in that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things." Verse 4 clearly states that we're not supposed to be using these other religious practices to worship God with. We're not supposed to be mixing these things in with godly worship.

We really can't spiritualize or christianize a practice that God does not want us to do. Drop down to verse 29, "When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you shall go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land," verse 30, "take heed to yourselves that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, that you do not inquire after their gods saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.' You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination of the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods." Verse 32, "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it." In these four verses, the words "careful" and "take heed" are used in connection with these admonitions. That they were supposed to be careful and take heed that they did not mix in these other practices with God's practices. Just as we're not supposed to mix in worldly practices that aren't right in with our practices and with God's practices.

And we know what happened to Israel in the end. They eventually went into captivity. Let's read about that. 2 Kings 17, 2 Kings 17, they went into captivity because of their sins. 2 Kings 17 talks about the nation of Israel going into captivity by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria. 2 Kings 17, beginning in verse 5. "Now the king of Assyria went throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." Okay, why why were they taken away? What caused them to go into captivity?

Verse 7, "For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods, and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. Also the children of Israel secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. There they burned incense on all the high places, like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them; and they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger, for they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, 'You shall not do this thing.'" Two reasons that God gives for Israel going into captivity, here, are one. Israel walked in the statutes of the pagan nations around them.

If you remember earlier on, God had told them that they were supposed to destroy everything that was idol worshiping, from all these nations that they were supposed to dispossess. And the second reason they went into captivity is Israel took on the religious trappings of other religions and worshiped other gods. Those are the two reasons. It should be a history, that history of Israel should remind us that we need to be careful about not doing that ourselves.

Let's take a look at a couple of times in Israel's history where they tried to merge the worship of God, the true God, with paganism. Turn with me to Exodus 32 for the first example, Exodus 32. Now, this is the point in Exodus where Israel had just recently left Egypt. It's very fresh in their mind, and God had recently given them the Ten Commandments.

And as we begin in Exodus 32, God had called Moses up to Mt. Sinai to give him instructions that he could give to Israel. But to the people, they thought, "Well, what happened to Moses? He hasn't come back. Is he lost? Is he dead? He hasn't come back yet." So let's pick up the story in verse 1. Exodus 32:1, "But when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, 'Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.' And Aaron said to them, 'Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.'" Verse 3, "So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron." And verse 4, "And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then he said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.'"

This wasn't throwing away the true God who brought them out of Egypt. They were just changing Him a little bit so they could better identify with Him. They still called this image the "god who brought you out of the land of Egypt." Verse 5, "So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And an Aaron made a proclamation and said, 'Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.'" If you take a look at your Bible, how is that word "Lord" written? It's one of those all capitals. That's the name of the true God. It's the Yahweh, the Jehovah, however you want to pronounce it. He was saying that tomorrow is going to be a feast to the real God. So Israel wasn't doing away with the real, real God, they were just changing how they were going to worship Him.

That calf was supposed to be worshiped as the true God. What did God think about this? Verse 7, "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Go, get down for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped and sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.' And the Lord said to Moses, 'I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people.'" Verse 10, "'Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.'" God is angry at this. He's angry at what's happening. He's angry that Israel has changed the proper worship into a pagan worship, changed and added something that's wrong to the worship of Him. God wants us to worship Him His way. He doesn't want us to invent new things, to mix things in with His worship. He doesn't want us to create our own way of worship.

So we've seen many of the practices from Christmas are actually from other religions, other gods. This calf that Israel put together, that was a calf that they had probably seen in Egypt and brought along. They had been used to possibly worshiping a calf before. It made it easier for them to identify this new God, but you can't christianize a wrong practice.

We actually find another example of a calf showing up in similar like in another place. 1 Kings 12, 1 Kings 12. We see another golden calf showing up in the history of Israel. And this time, it's actually connected very closely with holy days. 1 Kings 12, if you remember, this is the time when Solomon was dead and Rehoboam is made the new leader of Israel. And people come to Rehoboam and they say…and Jeroboam is one of the men who comes and say, "You know, your taxes are so much. Are you going to lighten our load?" And after counseling with his counselors, Rehoboam comes back and says, "Well, my taxes are going to be worse than Solomon’s ever were." And at that time, Jeroboam quickly goes up and goes, “Everybody to their camps,” and they start this new nation of Israel and separate themselves from Judah.

And it's a time when Jeroboam has a time he can create this nation that follows God. He's got a chance to do that, but what does he do? He doesn't do that. He sets up a blended religion again. 1 Kings 12, we read about this time. 1 Kings 12 beginning in verse 26, "And Jeroboam said in his heart, 'Now the kingdom may return to the house of David." He's afraid they're going to go down south, become part of Judah. "'If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam king of Judah.'" So Jeroboam's worried, "What's going to happen to me if these people go down to Judah, worship the true God? They're going to want to go back to Judah. They're going to want to go back. How do I keep this from happening?"

Verse 28, "Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, 'It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.' And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Now this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan." Verse 31, "And he made shrines on the high places, and made priests of every class of people, who were not of the sons of Levi." Again, Israel goes back to golden calves, hearkening back to that time in Sinai, when they had just recently come out of Egypt. But if you notice what Jeroboam said, what did he call them? These gods where the “gods that brought them out from the land of Egypt.” He is mixing the true God with his own religion.

He doesn't tell Israel, "Hey, let's go ahead and worship some totally different God." He brings back the true God. Let's look at verse 32, "Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the Feast that was in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made. And at Bethel he installed the priests of the high places which he had made." Verse 33, "So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month which he had devised in his own heart. And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and offered sacrifices on the altar and burned incense." Feast in the 15th day of the 8th month. The Feast of Tabernacles is the 15th day of the 7th month, just one month different. He was modifying and changing even the Holy Days and giving new meaning to them.

The Bible Commentary from the UCG.org website says this about Jeroboam. "Jeroboam was a practitioner of syncretism, the blending of traditions, beliefs, and elements from different religions with God's true religion, which God strictly forbids in Deuteronomy 12:29-31," which we already read. "Some elements such as priests, worship centers, and religious festivals, to some degree imitated the worship system God had established. Yet Jeroboam added his own twists for his own ends and purposes. He palmed off his plans under the guise of making worship easier for Israel. Why have all Israel go to Jerusalem in the far south?" And then continuing on further down in the article, it says, "Jeroboam's new religion, it should be pointed out, was not really all that new. He still worshiped God in name, but with his own changes. Idolatry was sanctioned, acceptable places for worship were changed and a new priesthood was inaugurated. Jeroboam did not rush wholesale into apostasy, the worship of a foreign god. Instead, he merely ‘made things a little easier’ for Israel to worship the God of Abraham. Such gradual change is typically the pattern of apostasy-and we must always be on guard against it."

If you remember those comments I made towards the beginning of this message about that bishop in South Africa? That's what they're trying to do. Make it easier for those Zulus to become Christians. That's not what God wants. You know, what was God's reaction to mixing these, the idolatry with the true religion? If we move over a couple of chapters, chapter 14, we see the punishment that God gave to Israel.

1 Kings 14 beginning in verse 14, "'Moreover the Lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam," this king who had put this into place. This is the day. What? “Even now. For the Lord shall strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land which He gave to their fathers, and will scatter them beyond the River, because they have made their wooden images, provoking the Lord to anger. And He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and who made Israel sin." Again, just like the first time of the golden calf, God was not happy. And we already read earlier on where the king of Assyria came down and took Israel captive because of their sins. God clearly does not want us to mix true religion with unrighteous practices. We can't christianize something that isn't Christian. You know, someone in the Home Office once told my wife that worshiping God by celebrating Christmas is like marrying somebody who was married before, and they wanted you to do all the things that they had done with their previous spouse. It would be like them asking you to go out to the old restaurants they had gone with the other spouse, watching all those old movies they had enjoyed together or TV shows. Even asking them to maybe wear the perfume of the person that you are no longer married to and they really liked, asked you to start wearing your hair like that other spouse, maybe the clothes like the other spouse, maybe even grabbed out of the closet some clothes that they had worn and said, "Here, please wear them."

You start thinking that maybe that person really didn't love you, but they were still in love with the other person who is no longer their spouse. Can you imagine what God feels like when people bring in practices that aren't part of His true worship and say, "I want to worship you with these practices"? I think He would feel a lot the same." We cannot christianize pagan beliefs. Like that evangelist at the beginning of the sermon said.

You know, going back to that evangelist, there's a little bit more that he had in his little transcript. I'd like to read just a couple more comments from it. The evangelist says, "I hope I didn't shock you or was irreverent, but it is the way it is." Then the host asked, "Well, when are you putting up your Christmas tree?" and chuckles. And the evangelist then talks about the tree he had bought and had put up in his house and then the evangelist says at the end, "I like all the decorations, very pretty, but, pagan," and he chuckles, "christianized pagan."

Should we keep Christmas? To most people on the streets, this would seem like a crazy question. What's the difference? But we can see clearly that does make a difference to God. It does make a difference to God, and the answer is "No." We cannot keep Christmas. It makes a difference. It does really matter. If we know it's wrong, it becomes sin and there's no way you can put Christ back in Christmas. There's no way you can christianize it. Instead of Christmas and those other holidays, God has given us a set of feasts by which we're supposed to worship Him. We keep the Passover, keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, keep Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the other Holy Days that God gave to Israel. God gave to us, to mankind to worship Him on and to keep. He gave those to ancient Israel and they're still valid for us today, and these are the days that He calls holy. They're still relevant to us today. They're not abandoned by God or His true saints. They haven't been replaced by Christmas or other days. The days that God has given to us, these holy days, teach the world and teach us the plan of salvation to mankind.

But that's another story for a whole new set of sermons.