What is the True “Spirit of Christmas?” W/ Pastor Andre Rusch

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have a special Christmas episode.

I came here complete with my ugly Christmas sweater. This is like the ugliest sweater that I own.

It's got like a cat on it. Actually, I'm more of a dog person, but cats are okay. At any rate, we're gonna be talking about really

Christmas and what it's all about. I know that kind of sounds generic, but I have a very special guest that's going to be joining me this afternoon or this evening, and I'm excited to jump into this discussion.

So I am not normally on at five. I usually do late, 9 p .m.

Eastern time. So I'm not sure how many people will be listening to the live discussion here.

However, as we move on, it is usually the case that people come in later on towards the middle of the discussion.

And so if we do get a crowd and you have any questions, apologetics questions, theological questions, or as you'll see, my guest is actually my pastor.

If you have any pastoral questions, then you can shoot those over and we will try our best to tackle some of those.

And yeah, and so we'll take it from there. So real quick, just by way of reminder, if you've been watching my last few live streams,

I've been reminding folks of the Epic Online Calvinism Conference. We're going to be covering the issue of Reformed Theology Calvinism.

It is not your generic TULIP acronym conference where we talk about total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.

Actually, we're gonna be covering some various aspects and some details of important areas within Calvinism.

So I'll be speaking, Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Vignon, Scott Christensen, Sai Ten Bruggen, Kate will all be presenting different aspects of Calvinism.

Why did I use Calvinism and not Reformed Theology? I've named it that on purpose because I know the word

Calvinism triggers people. It really does. A lot of people don't like the label. I suppose

I don't like the label, but when you hear the word Calvinism, the topic, you know, people typically recognize the topics that are involved.

And so that's the idea there. If you're looking to support Revealed Apologetics, signing up for this conference is one of the things you can do, or you can like this video, share this video, or go over to iTunes and give a positive review, preferably a positive review of the podcast.

All right. Well, that is it for that. That is January 21st. And you can sign up for that by going to revealedapologetics .com,

click on the pre -sub you drop down menu, and you could RSVP there. All righty. Well, without further ado,

I'd like to introduce my pastor, Pastor Andre. How are you doing, brother? Hey, awesome,

Eli. Thanks for having me, man. Well, it is an honor, and well, it's a pleasure to have you.

You're an awesome guy, and you're pretty sharp too. And so just to give people some context here, you preached an awesome sermon about the spirit of Christmas on Sunday.

And I was like, I have to get Pastor Andre on the show to talk a little bit about this, because I think this is the perfect time to do it.

So why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself before we jump right into our conversation? Well, I am a

Midwest guy. Grew up in Northern Indiana, just South of South Bend, Notre Dame fan.

And then left and never went back. Actually spent eight years on the

Island of Guam in ministry, as well as about 18 to 20 years in Cincinnati, Ohio area.

And then here about three and a half years in North Carolina. Awesome.

And just to let folks know, I know some more people are trickling in. So Pastor Andre is my pastor.

We go to the church at Clayton Crossings, which is in Clayton, North Carolina.

Folks who followed me for quite some time, if you haven't heard, I no longer live on the Island of New York. And some people are like, you're not in New York anymore?

It's been a while. So this is where we go now. We love it. And we are greatly, really blessed to be sitting under the preaching of Pastor Andre.

So I wanna jump right in here. You know, Christmas is right around the corner. You preached a sermon.

What was the title of your sermon? And what was kind of the goal? What were you shooting for in terms of picking the topic that you picked?

Well, I just began to think through the disruption of Christmas, honestly.

And the real meaning of Christmas, if we really understand and it's really disturbing, then it is almost comforting because it's disturbing because it reminds us of a few things.

It reminds us that we're really not okay. And that Jesus had to come for a reason because if we were just okay and we were fine, then there would have been no need for Jesus to come.

There'd been no need for us to even celebrate Christmas. So actually Christmas reminds us of the disturbing nature of our nature, which is the sin nature that we have that we needed

Jesus to come and rescue us from. I thought that was the point that stood out to me.

I mean, there were a bunch of things that you said that stood out to me, but this was really kind of a smack in the face in terms of the traditional perception of Christmas.

We think of sugar plums, candy canes, and all of the stereotypical things that go into the holidays.

But I loved how you highlighted the blackness of the world. That is the backdrop of the light of the world who's come to save us.

You kind of focused on how, when I talk about the gospel, I like to set it up in terms of like law and gospel.

You can't know the good news unless you know the bad news. And I think you captured that well, not giving us something that we can feel like nice and warm inside, but really, hey dude, remember you're a sinner and you don't deserve salvation, but God has shown us his grace.

Now that's awesome. Now, can you explain to us from your understanding, what is the problem with the

Christmas season in terms of like popular culture? What is it that culture is getting wrong that kind of buries the truth of what

Christmas is all about? Well, look at every Christmas classic that plays, right?

You think of a Miracle on 34th Street. You've got The Grinch that Stole Christmas and Christmas Carol, like when

Bob Cratchit comes in late towards the end. My favorite rendition of Christmas Carol, it seems like it's redone,

I don't know every year, but my favorite rendition is, I think it's 2009 with Jim Carrey. And at the end, it's just so animated.

He's so animated in the way he does it. And in all of them, Bob Cratchit comes in late at the end of the movie.

And this is after Ebenezer Scrooge has been somewhat transformed and all the good

Christmas vibes is rubbed off on him from the ghosts of Christmas, present, past, and future. And he wanders in late,

Bob Cratchit does. And then Scrooge says, what does this, what do you mean coming in late?

And Bob Cratchit comes in and goes, you know, just starts doing all this. And he goes, listen, you can't come in here late.

And he says, therefore, I'm gonna give you a raise, which, hey, wouldn't that be great if we came in late and we ended up getting a raise?

But it was this warm, fuzzy feeling of the Christmas spirit that made these changes in his life.

And it's almost as if we think that, oh, hey, if people could just be good one day of the year, right?

Kids, if you couldn't ruin Christmas one day of the year, kids, if you couldn't, right?

And parents, if you could just not be angry one day of the year, it would be Christmas. The problem is, is that the spirit of Christmas doesn't have any power to transform anybody's life long -term, right?

That's where the power of what Jesus Christ did is makes what it does the transformation process.

And so that's the whole thing with the spirit of Christmas and where the world gets it wrong is it's not lasting change it's temporary change.

It's a warm, fuzzy feeling that doesn't change people, but maybe temporarily, even if that, if you can hold back those things, but it's

Christ that makes the difference in a life. So would you say the spirit of Christmas for people today is kind of just this feel goody one time of the year where we need to try really hard to be good.

It's almost like a works, it's almost like assumes a works -based salvation, right?

It's like, well, if you're good, then fill in the blank, right, where that's kind of, that's completely contrary to biblical categories is we believe that salvation is by faith and not by what we do.

That's right. A holiday is basically, it's celebrated in the spirit, but it's not a substitute for the spirit, right?

And that's the difference there. Yeah. How do you think the common kind of traditions of modern

Christmas has made ambiguous the true meaning of Christmas? It almost seems like so much tradition has been added over on top and kind of encrusted over the true meaning of Christmas.

What do you think of that? What do you think of this idea of a lot of the things we associate with Christmas kind of clouding and ambiguating the, making ambiguous the true meaning of Christmas?

Well, I think all it does is clutter things up. And I think a lot of people that have just been inundated with that feeling of, oh,

Andre, why would you poo -poo on Christmas, you know? Poo -poo on the spirit, are you serious? Is this something you're really gonna get worked up over?

Yeah, it is because it clouds. It literally, what it does is it puts a haze so that you don't see truly clearly on what really matters.

And as we celebrate, you can debate all day long whether Jesus was really born on that day or whatever.

It's a date that we've chosen, right? To celebrate the birth of Christ. And if he had to come, he came for a reason.

And so what was that reason rather than what it's become is just this spirit of the holidays, rather than the actual spirit of the living

God and what he came to do, which wasn't to stay as a baby, but it was to die on purpose.

And so that's what we're having to look at instead of all of the, what do you call it?

The accoutrements, it's decorated and you're not really seeing the truth of it.

So someone would ask you, just like walk up to you in the street, Andre, what is the spirit of Christmas?

I always hear people say, you know, it's the spirit of Christmas. It's the spirit of the holidays. Like, can you define it for us from your perspective?

What captures the essence of what Christmas is all about? And I say this acknowledging, like, listen, this is an apologetics channel.

We focus a lot of theology. Obviously we wanna base things on scripture and there's nothing in scripture that commands or condemns for that matter, the celebration of something like Christmas.

I get that. But at the core of this holiday, there is something to it that I think is very biblical.

To you, what is that? What is that nugget, that thing that you think defines the true meaning of the spirit of Christmas?

I think we go back to when I talked about that we're not okay, there's a reason we're not okay.

It's because of sin, right? Romans 3, 10 tells us for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

But it brings us back to focus what our greatest dilemma that we've ever faced in. And that's not my diagnosis that I got, right?

It's not that my kid's away from the Lord. It's not any of the things that we would probably put up as our greatest problem, but our greatest problem is our sin debt, right?

And the solution, the bad news is, is that we're all enemies of God.

The good news is, is that Christ came so that he could break down that barrier and become the bridge between us and God, right?

Because the dilemma was God's holy, right? And we're sinful. And so how can

God accept then someone like you and me and bridge that gap?

And there was only one way to be right with the God of the universe and one way to have the peace, right?

This peace that is so elusive around this Christmas time day, can we truly have peace with God?

Well, the answer is yes. And God couldn't just overlook sin or be like, ah, you get a free pass today.

But the amazing thing is found in the following verses, right after verse 23 of chapter three.

It says, they're justified, right? Freely by his grace through the redemption that is in the spirit of Christmas.

No, it says that is in Christ Jesus. So it's not in the things that we think are gonna make us good.

Going to church, right? Checking off the list of, I'm in a small group.

I used to go to so -and -so's church and all of a sudden I've built this resume up to something that I'm standing on rather than in Christ and Christ alone.

And that's the solution that God gives us. And we've somehow mixed our own bag in there with Jesus and good things and good vibes and all these things.

It's Christ and Christ alone, period. Now I noticed, I used to go to a church where you'd have certain people go most of the year and it wouldn't be too packed until you come to like the holiday season.

All of a sudden, everybody's a Christian. That's right, that's right. As a pastor, and again,

I don't know from within our church now. I mean, we have quite a few people.

I don't know the numbers because I'm not seeing it from like the front. I'm kind of just in the crowd.

Do you notice kind of a heavy influx of attendance during Christmas? And do you notice seeing people that you never see throughout the year?

Oh, look who's here. Is that something that concerns you? If so, why is that a concerning thing?

And why do you think people do that? It doesn't concern me one bit. I just think it's an incredible opportunity to preach the gospel to people that wouldn't normally hear it.

You got your Christers, right? Your Christmas and Easter people. And I just think what a great opportunity.

And our church is really a weird mix of young families that on holidays, most churches are really down.

We're up because people come here and people bring their family to our church.

So it really just gives us an opportunity, especially Christmas and Easter. Like our Christmas Eve service is coming up here.

We'll probably easily have, I don't know. I'm just gonna spit ball four or 500 extra people here that wouldn't normally be in here, whether it's friends, family, neighbors that wouldn't normally come during this time of year.

And is it disturbing to me? No, I think it's the opportunities that every church should take extreme, incredible advantage of and preach a very clear gospel message.

Otherwise, I think you're really missing the point of this. Now, Andre, I do need to say something real quick.

Sorry, I had to tell my wife to get me my charger in my haste to set up the charger. So we're gonna be talking about what is the true meaning of Christmas?

Go, and then we just go black. We don't want that to happen. That's nice. Definitely don't want that to happen.

All right, well, okay. So that's, I like what you say there. I mean, that creates an opportunity.

And let me just plug myself in real quick here. Do you know any Christmas jokes, Pastor? You know,

I'm probably the worst at jokes. Usually you don't hear me say a lot from the pulpit unless it's a funny situation that I've been involved in, but I usually miss the punchline or just flat out blow the joke.

And so never really a good situation for me. No worries. All right, we're plugged in. Good, we're not going anywhere.

All right. Okay, okay, so now something that makes me, that when I think of Christmas, this pops into my head and I think it's so important.

And a lot of people kind of stay away from this because they kind of save it for like discipleship classes or like, you know, seminary and things like that.

But why is it important for Christians to understand not just what Christmas is about as a holiday, but the theology behind Christmas?

I mean, there's packed within Christmas doctrine that is biblical. As I said before, Christmas itself is not in scripture, but the theology upon which it is based, that central focus of what we take, you know, to be the essentials of Christmas, there's a lot of doctrine there.

What do you think of that? In what way should this remind Christians the importance of doctrine when we consider what

Christmas is about? I think we need to understand the incarnation of Christ.

We need to understand the virgin birth. I think it really highlights so many arenas of theology so that if I really started in September to mine the things that we think of when we think of Christmas, you really couldn't really even unpack it all.

And so obviously we use different series and things like that, but Christmas is an awesome time to unpack, especially, you know, why

Christ, you know, the whole thing of who Christ truly is and why he came and just begin to unearth and unpack all of those things.

So it's, there's so much there. I don't know, what are your, you know, what do you mine out of those?

Yeah, well, I mean, theology for me and doctrine, which is derived from the authoritative word of God is the soil out of which everything else flows.

You know, I take issue with preachers and teachers who focus mostly on the pragmatics without giving the foundation as to why those pragmatics work and why they're good and why we should be doing that.

So doctrine for me is life. Doctrine helps us get a better knowledge of who

God is. Jesus says that this is eternal life, that they know the one and true living God and your son whom he sent.

And so eternal life is associated with knowledge of God. And so we wanna make, for me,

I try to make the distinction between knowledge and knowledge, okay? So the

Bible says in Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four and five, that hero

Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. And we are to love the Lord, our God, with all our hearts, with all our soul, with all our, Jesus clarifies, with all our mind.

The heart and the mind are kind of inter, they're interchangeable. I think they're actually referring to the same thing.

So the heart within biblical categories, I take to be the center of one's will or that aspect of the intellect that goes into decision -making.

Christ is to be Lord over that and kind of dictates everything that we do. So when we learn doctrine, we can learn it here, but to know him relationally requires kind of a heart engagement coupled with the knowledge.

So it's not an either or, I think we grow in deeper relationship with him when we learn doctrine derived from scripture.

And I think Christmas, Easter, and a lot of these other holidays are great opportunities to remind people of some of the doctrinal truths upon which these holidays are based.

So that's kind of how I take, and you said something about the incarnation. I mean, a lot of people think of Christmas as kind of a time to celebrate the birth of Christ.

And that's one way of looking at it, but it's kind of like, I kind of address this issue for the same way that I look at kind of the four gospels.

Let's take a look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us a lot about what Jesus did.

And to a certain extent, it tells us who he is, but the gospel of John places a great emphasis upon the who.

That's why at the beginning of John, you don't have the genealogies. You know, you have this person begat that person, begat that person, begat that person.

John's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. So John is very much interested in the who, of who he truly is.

And I think doctrine connects us with the who, as long as it is connected with that relational aspect.

So holidays are just an excuse for me to be reminded of theology. What do you think of that?

Do you resonate with that at all? I do. I have a guy in my office that is a perfect illustration of that.

His name's Michael Jordan, all right? I can know everything about him, right?

I can have all the head knowledge of, right? Every statistic and everything.

I've had him in my office since 1994, by the way. By the way, Jordan is Pastor Andre's inspiration when he's writing a sermon.

You should see him write a sermon. He writes a sermon with his tongue out. He went, he's been to Guam with me and back.

We've not parted since. But I've never met the man. But I know all about him.

I know his stats. I know this. You know, when we all watched the last dance and I watch you trying to do your slow -mo moves on, is it on Instagram?

I think it's on Instagram, right? All right, so you can find Eli's, because they're gonna go quick.

The window you have, Eli, literally for those moves, closes very quickly.

I just wanna let you know that, all right? Well, I'm not in as good a shape as I used to.

Even there, after I did that 360, I was out of breath. I have no doubt.

I have no doubt. Well, my point is, yes, you can know all you can up here, right?

But I don't know the man. I have no idea. I've never met him. I've sat in a Charlie - I heard he's in America.

I've been in Hornets games where I just stare at him when he sits at the end of the bench, but I've never shaken his hand.

I don't know the man. And so there's a lot of people that have been in church their whole life and don't truly know him and have a personal relationship with him.

And that's really what I'm talking about. This, even this Christmas Eve, and if anybody's listening to this, that's coming to our

Eve services, the whole point is, is that there are people that missed Christmas. And it's possible in this culture not to miss the spirit of Christmas, because that's everywhere.

You're never gonna miss the day. If you are, you're completely aloof, but it is possible, just like the innkeeper who was too busy,

Herod, who was a control freak, and the religious leaders who wanted to hold onto their power and traditions to truly miss

Jesus. And that's what we're gonna unpack on a Saturday night in our two services is how do we miss

Jesus? And the plea is, if you've missed him year after year, after year, after year, you don't have to keep missing him.

You can have a personal relationship with him, beginning tonight.

You don't even have to listen to Eli's podcast just to do that. You can receive Christ right there.

Awesome. Yeah, I was thinking of Jeremiah chapter nine, verse 23 to 24.

Here, this is what the Lord says. This is God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah. It says, this is what the Lord says.

Let not the wise man boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the

Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. For in these things, I delight, declares the

Lord. God desires that we know him and in our knowing him, literally,

I mean, think about this. God delights in that. You can have God delight in you as you desire to come to know who he is.

And finding every opportunity to do that, whether it's during the holidays, whether it's just during your daily devotions and your daily scripture study and prayer,

God delights in those things. And I think kind of these holidays are excellent opportunities to bring us back to the importance of, do we know our savior?

How well do we know our savior? Can I know him more? In the next year that's coming up, people come up with new year's resolutions that are rarely fulfilled.

I think growing in a deeper relationship with Christ is a good goal if we have kind of dropped the ball on that in terms of this past year.

So yeah, so good stuff, man. I also wanted to kind of explore a little bit, now a little bit of apologetic application here.

We can't do an episode without making apologetic applications, literally called Revealed Apologetics.

That's very true. But from your perspective, what do you think is the apologetic value of knowing the, you know, in terms of Christmas, what is the apologetic value of understanding what the scriptures say about the birth of the

Messiah? I mean, and I'm thinking in terms of like what the Old Testament has said and how that fits with the New Testament, what value does that have in sharing our faith and actually giving evidence in a sense of the veracity of the

Bible? Maybe like some prophetic issues there with Messianic prophecies. What do you think about that? Well, the whole

Old Testament is written pointing to the one who's gonna come, right? So it's always saying, hey, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming.

Isaiah, you've got different passages in the prophets in the Old Testament just constantly saying he's coming, he's coming, he's coming.

Then you got the gospels screaming, you know, John, behold the Lamb of God which take away, he's here, he's here, right?

And then you got revelation going, he's coming back, he's coming again. And so you've got all of this fulfilled prophecy and you've got all of this value, if you wanna say it apologetically, that the one who came to take away the sin of the world actually came and he did it.

It wasn't, we're not still waiting. He's here, he's done it and he's coming again, right?

So that's really the ultimate thing right now that we need to continue to tell people is that, hey, by the way, the first time you might've missed him, right, the second time, you're not gonna miss him.

He's coming and he's coming in major big fashion that not one person on this planet is going to miss in that way.

And so all of those things, you talk about just a trove of ways that we're able to apologetically just tell people about Christ because he's the one that's been prophesied and these prophecies are the one and Jesus is the fulfillment of these prophecies.

And he's, this is why he came and this is what he did and this is why you need to trust him.

Yeah, awesome opportunity to kind of just share the gospel. When I think of Christmas and I think of the birth of Christ, I think of kind of one piece of a bigger puzzle, right?

In John 5 39, Jesus says, you studied the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it's they that bear witness of me.

He's talking about the Old Testament. The Old Testament bears witness of Christ. Awesome evangelistic and apologetic tool there to know what the scripture says about the

Messiah. Luke chapter 24 verses 13 through 35, we have that story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

I just wanna read this real quick. Jesus says, after hearing the disciples kind of discuss their distress about the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus says, how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

That's a reference to the Old Testament. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then later enter his glory? And I'll check this out.

This must have been, Andre, the greatest Bible study in the history of the world because it says here,

Jesus says, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

And so he literally gave them a Bible study from Genesis. So you got the Pentateuch from Genesis all the way to the last prophet, how it all points to Jesus.

And we see this reflected in Hebrews chapter one, long ago and at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

But in these last days, he has spoken to us through his son. Jesus is the climax of scripture.

And so in my opinion, Andre, I think, and maybe you can speak to this. I think that apologetics, defending the faith and evangelism, one of the ways in which we see this done in the

New Testament was heavily reliant upon the Old Testament scriptures and the use of prophecy being fulfilled in Christ.

Do you see today, the average Christian, do you think that the ability to understand prophecies and how they connect to the

New Testament, is this a lost art, a lost skill with many

Christians in our modern context, say like in America, or do you see Christians typically have a firm grasp on understanding that connection between the

Old and the New Testament? What do you think? No, I think we've lost some things with that and in the way that we used to have a ton of, our churches were filled with just classes and classes and classes of this, you could take this.

And I think we've exchanged that a little bit, but I also think that we're trying to drill down a little bit more in some grassroots discipleship things.

But I think when you don't teach a lot of the New Testament things and prophecies and those types of things, you do lose some,

I guess, understanding of the connection between all of that. I think those of us that have been to Bible college and things like that, you have classes on this type of stuff.

And so sometimes you forget that, hey, you know that, but the average pew sitter hasn't been taught that, and that you just glaze over it.

Just trust me what I'm saying. And then you move on to the gospel without the connection of, or I guess you could talk about the strength of that weave of connection that would be stronger there.

So, yeah, I think we've lost some things. I think it probably needs to be re -addressed at some point in the church, for sure.

Yeah, excellent. Now, I'm gonna ask a question, what your favorite, because when

Jesus and the apostles quote scripture, they're quoting from the Old Testament. So most of the evidence for the

Messiahship of Jesus is going to be from actually the Old Testament. Although we have, of course, the resurrection and the

New Testament miracles performed by both Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament, which confirmed their teaching.

But as you reflect upon your knowledge of the Old Testament, what would you say is your favorite, and you would probably say the most compelling

Old Testament prophecy about Messiah, that even when you're in your own time, you're kind of thinking like, wow,

I can't believe this was predicted so long ago. And look, Jesus fulfills it perfectly. And that kind of has the effect of kind of building up our faith and just kind of standing in awe of the beauty of God's word and just the fact that he's entered into humanity and done all this.

Which is your favorite prophecy that you think refers to Jesus that you think is just an awesome piece of scripture and a good tool for people to kind of bring up in conversation when they're sharing their faith?

I think you've got several passages in the book of Isaiah. I think

Isaiah is my favorite go -to to talk to, especially if you're talking to somebody who doesn't believe that Jesus is the

Messiah. So you take them to Isaiah chapter 53, Isaiah chapter four, and you just begin to walk them through, well, who could this even be talking about, right?

And it talks about Christ who was going to come and he was gonna suffer and he was going to be marred beyond, you can't even recognize him.

And lo and behold, that's fulfilled in Christ. And otherwise, then what else are you talking about or who are they talking about?

So to me, I feel like passages like that, that really, really highlight, it's hard to mistake it.

You have to wrestle with who is Jesus. And especially if you're somebody that doesn't believe in the

New Testament, you have to at least, if you're an honest intellectual, you have to at least take an honest look at who is

Christ. And if you really believe in the Old Testament, who is Christ in light of then these prophecies?

And so I think you have to honestly look at that. It's too many people just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

I don't believe that. Sure, yeah. Well, I remember listening to a radio show and folks who listen to this channel will know who

Matt Slick is of karm .org, the Christian apologetics research ministry .org. Highly recommend people go there.

A lot of great articles that answer apologetics questions, theology questions. But Matt Slick over there at Karm has a podcast and I remember listening to it and an atheist had called up and he's like, the

Bible is just a joke. It's not true and there's no evidence for it.

And so the Christian host, he says, well, let me run something by you. You let me know what you think. And then he begins to read.

He says, they pierced my hands and my feet. They surround me like dogs. All my bones are out of joint. They gambled for my clothing.

He's like, who am I talking about? And the guy's like, oh, that's easy, that's Jesus. And so the Christian responds. He says, well,

I actually quoted from you Psalm 22, which was written a thousand years before Jesus was born and hundreds of years before crucifixion was invented.

Awkward silence, because, I mean, again, the Bible is not just one book.

People forget this because we kind of hold our Bible. I mean, it's comprised of 66 books, 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the

New Testament, written by over 40 different authors in three languages on three different continents. These people didn't know each other for the most part.

That's right. Yet you have this continuous story that unfolds and finds its climax in the birth of Christ.

It is, and I still am amazed at this. As I reflect about my favorite prophecy, it's found in Genesis chapter three, verse 15.

And theologians refer to this as the proto -evangelium, the pre -gospel, that when Adam and Eve first sinned and God is cursing, well, he declares his punishments upon Adam and Eve and mankind.

And then of course he declares his punishment upon the serpent. And he says something very interesting to Eve, which a lot of people miss.

I think this is very powerful. God promises a redeemer. All the things that Adam and Eve messed up.

He says this, check this out. This is for our listeners. I'm sure you're familiar with this, Pastor Andre. God says, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.

Now that's a very common passage. Most people will be familiar with it, but think with me just a moment.

Women do not have seed. Think about that, right?

Renowned English Baptist pastor and scholar and theologian John Gill said this on this passage. He says, quote, the person spoken of in Genesis 3 .15

is called the seed of the woman and not of the man, which can agree with no other than the

Messiah who was to be born of a virgin, who which afterwards is more clearly revealed in Isaiah 7 .14.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. The seed of the woman, women don't have seed, yet she has seed.

Some people think that is a reference to the virgin birth, which I think is amazing when you take that together with Isaiah 7 .14.

Right there at the beginning, we're promised the Christmas hope right there in Genesis. And I think that's such a powerful promise that we see unfold with more clarity throughout the rest of the scriptures.

So were you familiar with that reference, that application there, Andre? Not with the way you drew it out.

I think it was one of the first things I learned as a young Christian though, was this Proto -Evangelion.

And so, but yeah, great, great application. I like that. I'll use that, all right? That all sounds good.

All right, well, I have one more question and then we'll take some questions from the audience.

There are just a few of them. Usually I go a little later and there's, we have a larger crowd, but that's fine.

And if we can't answer any questions, I will give you, I will be an answer, I will point to an answer.

So if I can't answer your question directly, I know where you can find people who can. So contrary to popular belief,

I don't know everything. I tell people, I say, listen, when you're sharing your faith, the biggest fear is that someone might ask you a question that you don't know.

And I say, when someone asks you a question you don't know what you do, if you wear glasses, you take off your glasses, you lean forward and be like,

I don't know. That's a good question. See, admitting you don't know is very important.

So, so my final question for you, okay? And maybe - I don't know. Yeah, well, you can't do that beforehand.

Unless you're a Pentecostal and you have the gift of prophecy and foreknowledge. Forehead, yeah, forehead.

Before I ask, what is your advice for people who want to reach out to family members who are kind of, they've kind of become cold to Christianity and cold to the holiday seasons.

What can you say to encourage people to kind of break through kind of difficult personalities within the family, especially during the holidays to be able to share the gospel with them?

I think you have to do everything you can do to show that you care for them and in kindness.

And the only platform you ever get with family, and this is the difficult thing. And I find this,

I don't think any of my family are going to be watching this, especially those that don't know the

Lord, but it truly is you being intentional of building that relationship with them.

And at some point, it's not if, it's when suffering comes, like the cancer diagnosis comes.

The, hey, I'm on my deathbed. Hey, this just happened. Can you explain this?

So when you're a person of faith, most of the time, when things are going great in your family's lives, you're probably not gonna make very much headway or a breakthrough.

But when it comes, when the questions happen, when

COVID hits, right? When whatever else happens, tragedy strikes something, there are questions come up about how could a loving

God do this? How could this happen? And it gives us the opportunity then, in the break that we've been praying for, hopefully seasoned with salt and kindness and love and that we're able to hopefully chip away at the exterior that they're putting up, which is there, which

I think all people that say they don't, it's convenient for them until it's not.

Then when they have questions, then I think you've got a bit, you have that inroad and opportunity.

So I think you wait, it's a waiting game a lot of times. I don't know that there's anything you can say that's clever enough to break through on somebody until they actually become curious.

And how do I salt the oats? So to say, I think you gotta come ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.

And when you're ready for that and the opportunity comes, I think that's when you go.

You're not gonna bust in to the family gathering and shove the gospel down everybody's throat.

And I've done it how many different ways, right? Hey, Andre, you're the pastor. Why don't you pray for our Thanksgiving meal? Well, Lord, save Uncle Joe.

And you preach the gospel through your prayer. You know, you do whatever you can do, but that doesn't work.

It's, they're just there to eat. They're like, just hurry up and get through this, right? If the gospel has not warmed their heart, right?

It's gonna be really hard. That's why prayer is really, really important. And we can't, a lot of times people don't care about their family matters and that comes across, right?

And so you really have to genuinely care. Wish them a happy birthday on their birthday so that when these opportunities will arise, you have a platform.

Yeah, so you would suggest, so it's not like how do we break through to kind of our hardened family members at the holiday season.

You're not saying, oh, well, here are some things you should consider. You're really suggesting that we need to play the long game.

It's not about getting to them during the holidays. It's being there for them and loving them throughout the year.

It's kind of a long game, not just, you know, give an argument, make a point and they respond a certain way.

We need to love people. And that extends beyond kind of like our singular conversations over the table and over the table during the holidays.

Is that what you're saying? Kind of the long game? That's exactly right. I don't know that anybody's ever converted their

Republican dad or their Democrat dad to a Republican and Democrat over a conversation.

And I'm not saying that Christianity is similar, but it's as polarizing as far as religion goes and everybody's backgrounds and how they feel.

It really does come down to the long game. And I don't know how else to play it. I really don't until someone's open, right?

And let's just think how you and I, any one of us that's listening to this podcast has come to Jesus, right?

Your eyes were literally open. The scales fell off. You didn't do a whole lot to do that.

It was Christ that opened that up and that God granted you, right,

Timothy, first Timothy, that he granted you repentance. And he's gonna do the same thing to your relatives when he grants them repentance when he allows them to see their own sin.

And we gotta pray and press in and truly care. Right. I think it was

Greg Koukl, author of the book, Tactics. I highly recommend that if folks are kind of wanting to learn how to have conversations about these sorts of things with people in a non -weird and non -awkward way, you can, the example you used was perfect.

Thank you, Lord, for this food. Please save everyone who is on their way to hell at this table. Those don't really work out.

But Greg Koukl said something that I think is very helpful. He says, you know, we're not looking to kind of see someone saved immediately when we have our conversations with them, but we want them to leave the conversation with a pebble in their shoe.

If anyone's ever had a pebble in their shoe, it is really uncomfortable, especially when you're like walking around a theme park and you have something in your shoe and you've tied your shoelaces really tight.

You don't wanna bend down and like take off your, so you kind of deal with it. It's not super painful. It's annoying, but not so annoying you don't wanna get it out, but it's uncomfortable.

That's what we wanna aim for. You know, be able to speak some love into their life, maybe some words of wisdom, maybe an apologetic encounter comes about and you give them something to chew on, but we don't wanna kind of throw all our cards in.

We want to have them leave the conversation with a pebble in their shoe. And of course, engaging them with gentleness and respect as 1

Peter 3, verse 15 tells us. So it's very helpful. Well, thank you,

Andre. This has been really cool. I hope this has been a blessing to folks. And there are a few questions. So we'll see.

And again, if I can't answer it or Pastor Andre can't answer it, that's okay, we'll just move on.

But let's take a look here. Let's go through some comments here. So Alyssa Scott says, I love this channel. Merry Christmas, Eli.

Thank you so much. I wanna give you a shout out, Pastor Andre. Dee Ortero says,

I never thought of it that way. Wow. And this is in response to your explanation that Christmas reminds us that we're not okay.

And I think that's a very, an excellent point that you made there. So thank you so much,

Dee, for that. Yeah, Dee. Robbie says, how do you respond to the claim that Christmas was just piggybacked onto a

Roman winter festival that involved a week of rest, food, family, gifts, and partying? Are you familiar with the history of Christmas at all,

Andre? It's definitely not an area of my strength. It's not. My whole thing is, is regardless of how you feel about everything pagan, everybody, everybody can say, this was pagan,

Easter's pagan, that's pagan, this is pagan. And I'm sitting here thinking, right, our job as Christians isn't to make sure everything's the way, our job is to redeem these things, right?

And allow God to speak into the darkest places.

And if, let's just say whatever he's saying is true, right? Food, gifts, partying, okay.

We've chosen this day to celebrate Christ's birth. And how do you respond to that?

Well, God can redeem any pagan. He redeemed this pagan. He can redeem a pagan holiday and use it for his glory for sure.

So it doesn't, none of those arguments really affect me because I just think that's why

Christ had to come. It was to redeem all the pagan things. Excellent.

Now, again, just to address this more directly, by the way, I love the way you answered that because that means, in other words, if you don't know the history behind the holiday, that answer can still, that question can still be answered by Christians who are opposed to this question because it really gets down to, well, what's important of all this?

Is it so important that we trace the roots of every single thing and every single tradition that we do or the important thing that God can redeem?

God can bring redemption. I think that's an excellent way you answered this. Now, if we were gonna answer it more specifically, if we were to say, is

Christmas pagan? No, there are common misconceptions about how the traditions of Christmas have developed over the years.

For a more detailed analysis of that, for folks who have the patience to kind of listen to a presentation and show why it's not pagan in the way that a lot of people think it is, you wanna check out, is

Christmas pagan over at Inspiring Philosophy. That's Michael Jones' YouTube channel where he deals specifically with holidays like Easter and Christmas and a whole bunch of other holidays.

And he digs into the history behind it and actually debunks a lot of the myths about the pagan connections of a lot of these holidays.

And he's got some good scholarship to back up a lot of his claims. So I would refer Ravi to Inspiring Philosophy's channel.

All right. Tiger says, what is the veracity of December 25th and January 6th as the possible birth date of Jesus based on Zechariah serving in the temple according to Jewish records?

Are you familiar, Andre, with the way certain events are dated based upon kind of like temple service and Passover's and things like that throughout the

New Testament? I would have to do some more digging on that, but not off the top of my head.

Now, have I studied some of it? Sure, but not to the point to answer that in probably a way that would help

Tiger. Right. Yeah, no worries. Same here. I'm not familiar with, I mean, I'm familiar with the way people derive certain dates for certain events and things like that, but not enough to answer that specific question.

Well, people say, well, Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. Yeah. My response is, so?

Yeah. Who cares, right? That's not the point. That's not the point. But sorry about that, Tiger.

Let's see here. Tiger said, thank you to your wife. Yes, thank you, honey, for getting me the charger.

Otherwise we wouldn't have made it this far. Let's see here if we have anything else. And I think that is it.

All right. Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for listening in and thank you, Pastor Andre, for giving me of your busy schedule to talk about Christmas.

Thank you so much. You bet, man. My pleasure to be here and thank you for all you do to reveal the apologetics of people that are asking real life questions.

And I appreciate what you do in our church and the many people that you impact in and outside of it.

Thank you, Eli. I appreciate that. Are there any parting words you'd like to give my listeners in terms of the

Christmas season? What would you like to say to people before we kind of close things off? I do. I'll give one statement as I kind of close is

Christmas was God's first step, right? Into giving us a disturbing solution to our greatest dilemma.

And so that's Christmas, right? It was God's first step to a disturbing solution to our greatest dilemma, and that's our sin debt.

And so it was the cross that Jesus had to die on, which was the solution to the sin debt that we had incurred.

And so Christmas was just that first step for us. Awesome. And it's free.

Salvation is free, right? That's right. We're justified by faith, so that's amazing. Well, thank you so much,

Pastor Andre, and thank you so much, everyone, for listening in. Until next time, take care and God bless.