December 17, 2025 Show with Allen S. Nelson, IV. on “The Gospel According to Christmas: Celebrating the Incarnation Without Losing the Plot”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday.

And today, I'm losing track of my memory as far as what date it is, so perhaps my guests can remind me of what date it is. What's today's date, Alan?

The 17th.

The 17th. Sorry that I lost track of the date because I just got off the phone with the wife of a dear friend of mine who passed away, and I'm deeply saddened by this news. For those of you who haven't heard it already, one of my favorite guests to interview on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and his name should not be unfamiliar to people who listen to this program regularly, but his name is Roger Salter, a Reformed Anglican minister who was the rector at St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

He was originally from Tasmania, Australia, and was educated in London, England, and was called eventually to minister in Birmingham here in the States. I interviewed Roger many times, and I have been told by his wife, Maureen, and three of his adult children that being on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio was a highlight of his life.

They told me how much he got so excited to be a guest on this program, and he went home to the Lord God, Savior, King, and Friend that he served for so long, so well on December 13th of this year. He was 80, and the Lord's taking him was truly an act of mercy because Roger had been quite ill, and it was becoming more and more difficult and arduous and uncomfortable and painful for him to even breathe.

And then finally, he just peacefully began to cease breathing and went home to be with Jesus. And the funeral will be live-streamed on Friday from Birmingham, Alabama, and I will give you all updates on that on tomorrow's broadcast, how you can view that if you so choose to do so.

I highly recommend, after this live program, of course, that you go to the archive of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, ironsharpensironradio .com, and type in Roger Salter, and he spells his name S-A-L-T-E-R, not the Psalter that we have in many churches, which is the book of Psalms, put to music, but this is S-A-L-T-E-R, and you can be blessed by all the times that I have interviewed Roger.

And in fact, on the current website, it does not even feature all of his interviews, because I began interviewing Roger way back when we started broadcasting this program out of Long Island, New York on WNYG Radio, and my webmaster, because of the monumental task it would involve, has not yet archived all of those recordings.

So, many of those recordings with Roger have not yet been even archived yet on the new and current website. But I just want to let everyone know who has been sending me wonderful words of praise for Roger, that it means the world to the Salter family.

They have been reading these messages that you have written and posted in social media, and it has been a blessing to them during this difficult time of grief and mourning. So, I appreciate you praying for the Salter family, and Roger is survived by his wife, Maureen, and his son, Alex, and his daughters, Helen and Melanie.

And I've had the privilege of meeting all of them and spending time with them and having a fellowship over meals with them, and I hope to get that opportunity again in the near future, obviously without, unfortunately, Roger's presence.

But that reunion will certainly come eventually when we are all in glory together. But today, I am very pleased to have a first-time guest and very fitting for the Christmas season. Today's guest has written a book that should get us all mentally and spiritually prepared to celebrate the birth of our Savior in spirit and truth.

Today's guest is Alan S. Nelson IV, a pastor at Providence Baptist Church of Perryville, Arkansas. And we're going to be addressing his book, The Gospel According to Christmas, Celebrating the Incarnation Without Losing the Plot.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Alan Nelson.

Yes, sir. It's quite the honor to be welcomed. Brother, I'm grateful for your show. I've been able to listen a few times, and I've also seen you at various conferences, and so I'm grateful and humbled to be one of the many guests that you've had.

Yes, well, I am honored with the privilege of having you. And tell our listeners something about Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

Yes, thank you. We are in central Arkansas. We're in the town of Perryville. I joke, if you don't know where that's at, we're just on the outskirts of Toad Suck.

Toad Suck?

Toad Suck, yes, sir. That's a little community just east of us.

Now, did that—. That that I've heard that there are some toads, and I don't know that there are

Named

You could ask Dr. White about the Toad Suck. He's been through—he's been through before.

Does he know the origins of that name?

I don't think he does, or maybe—I'm not sure if he's researched it, but what I gather from, you know, the research I've had and just grown up here, basically, it was a landing spot for people traveling the Arkansas River, and there was a tavern there or something, and basically they said those guys were getting— sucking on whiskey like a bunch of toads or something like that, basically.

Yeah, it got—that's how it got the name. But it's a real place, and we—yeah, so we're a Reformed Baptist church. We confessed the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession. We have a plurality of elders, myself and another brother.

We have 42 members, and we take membership seriously. We were a previous—I've been here 10 years. We were previously a Southern Baptist church, and just over the years, we were— we've Reformed according to the Scriptures, and God's been very, very good to us.

And so, yeah, that's a little bit about a church there.

And if anybody would like to find out more about Providence Baptist Church there in Perryville, Arkansas, you can go to their website, especially if you happen to live in that area or you have family, friends, or loved ones who live in that area, or if you know you're going to be passing through that area on vacation or for some other reason and you need a solid place to worship on the Lord's Day, go to ProvidenceBaptistAR .com, ProvidenceBaptistAR, for Arkansas, dot com.

And God willing, we will repeat that information toward the end of the program. Before we get into the topic at hand for us today, the gospel according to Christmas, I would love for you, as we have a tradition to do here, I would love for you to give us a summary of your salvation testimony, since this is your very first interview on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances the Sovereign Lord rose up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.

So let's hear a summary of your story.

Yeah, I tell people that I grew up in a moral home, wasn't a Christian home. My dad one time said, well, of course we're Christians, we're not Muslims. And so that was the kind of mentality. To fast forward real quick, my dad is a believer.

My mom and dad are believers now, and they are actually members now of the church. So the church I'm at, I grew up in the, I graduated from high school here in Perryville. I didn't grow up in this church.

So I'm back in my hometown. So that gives a little bit of context. And my parents are members of our church now and so very grateful. But growing up, it wasn't that way. It wasn't a bad raising. It wasn't, you know, I mean, it was a good home, but it was not a Christian home.

And so when I was 10 years old, I was at a church camp in Solemn Springs, Arkansas. And I don't know if I'd heard the gospel before, but I heard it then. And it was clear to me that if I were to die, I was not going to go to heaven and I needed Jesus.

And there are some things I'm sure I couldn't articulate well as a 10-year-old, but that's the time I believe I turned from my sins and put my faith in Christ, by God's grace, of course. But it was over the next few years, I really didn't understand church membership.

My parents really didn't take me to church. Maybe every now and then my mom would take me. And so when I was 15, we had a very good youth pastor at a Southern Baptist church in town. And he discipled me, talked to me.

I understood, wait, I need to join the church. I need to be baptized. This is, it's not just about confessing faith in Christ. There's more to Christianity than just saying that you believe in Jesus. So I believe I was converted at 10, but I followed the Lord and believed his baptism when I was 15, joined the church.

And that's it in a nutshell. Over the next few years, I grew my understanding of what the Christian life is. I wound up being surrendered to ministry in 06. Anyway, that probably gets more than you wanted, but that's the basic in a nutshell.

Now, how did you come to discover and eventually embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace, a .k .a. reform theology, a .k .a. Calvinism?

In 2006, I was, I surrendered. Well, it's kind of a phrase we say around here, surrender to the ministry. And so in 06, I realized that I really believed God was calling me into the ministry. And so it was in a couple of years later, I graduated college and I decided to go to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

But prior to going there, I'd had a few conversations about the doctrines of grace, Calvinism, and I laughed at it. You know, I'm like, who, what kind of people could believe this? Really, some of the main teaching I got about Calvinism was in the public school when we were studying the Puritans.

But it was in a very negative light, you know, these people. And so I just, you know, I was like, whatever. Well, I didn't go to Southern, I went to Southern, I was looking at Southern and Southwestern.

And brother, this just gives you God's kind providence to me because I was looking at these two because they're the closest in proximity to where I live. Southwestern in Fort Worth is closer. But it was a church in the Louisville area that contacted me about being a youth pastor.

I'd sent out my resume to some places. And so my wife and I took that as the Lord's leading. We're going to go to Southern and we're not going to go to Southwestern. So when I got to Southern, at that point, a lot of talk about Calvinism, Reformed theology.

So I began studying and wrestling. And of all the places, it was actually in Don Whitney's class on spiritual disciplines. And he gave us this statement. He said, Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

How are you men going to minister the people of God if you haven't read every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God? And that convicted me because I was reading my Bible, but I'd never taken the Bible and said, OK, I'm going to make sure I've read the entire book, you know, cover to cover.

I repented of that, started doing it. And as I was doing that, I was wrestling with, well, here's this seems like free will here. No way. This is the sovereignty of God here. And it was really reading the entire scriptures that I said, OK, I surrender.

This is God is absolutely sovereign. And so that was in that was in the fall of 08 that that began to take shape.

Praise God for that. How did you become convinced that the Lord had put the call to pastoral ministry upon your life?

Well, this was prior to I to going to seminary. And I wouldn't do this. And I don't think it's a good idea to do. But I'm very grateful my pastor did do this. And that is one Saturday we had done a work day as a church.

And one Saturday I told him that I wanted to preach. I felt like I could preach. And so he said, OK, you can preach tomorrow. And but by God's kindness, I preached the next day and the Lord was good and the church encouraged me.

And so I began at that point. That was in 06 that I began to say, OK, I think the Lord is calling me to be a preacher. And it took a little bit longer for me to say, OK, that means pastor, because I've changed my position on this now.

But back in those days, I was like, I'm going to be a youth pastor and that kind of thing. But it was really a combination between a desire to preach and then the God uses his people. And so the local churches that I was a part of seeing that in me encouraged me in that and saying, we believe that you're called to this.

And so that all kind of coalesced really probably in by the fall of fall of 09. As I really began to say, OK, I'm called to be a pastor.

Praise God. Well, you have written a book on a very timely subject because, as everyone knows who's listening live, the Christmas season is here and we will be rapidly arriving on Christmas Day next week, actually.

And can you tell us what were the catalysts that placed a burden on your heart to write this book? And who is your primary targeted reader? Is it the unbeliever or is it the believer? It's very wise for believers to hear repeated over and over again, truths that they may already know in their minds, but they need to be reminded of these truths.

I can even remember my friend, the late Peter Jeffrey, wrote a book years ago called Christians Need the Gospel Too. But tell us about who you intended this book for.

Yeah, thank you, brother. So, you know, growing up, I've given a little bit of background, but not really a Christian home, but a moral home. But Christmas was a big deal and it really wasn't like there would be nativity scenes and there would be, you know, maybe mentions of the Lord Jesus.

But it was more about presents and family and cookies and Santa Claus and all that kind of stuff. But it was a precious part of my childhood. I loved it. I still love I'm grateful for those memories. Then I became a Christian.

Then I grew in my understanding of, you know, what this is about. Then I entered into the reform world and I realized there's lots of different positions on the celebration of holidays and such. But I began to understand, I mean, a number of years ago, that I think it's right and good.

Maybe we can talk about this later. Who knows? Maybe the big question. But I think it's right and good to celebrate the Incarnation. But I want us to understand why we celebrate the Incarnation. I had a friend.

Now, this came back after the book was already out. So this did not give me the desire to write the book. But it does give the kind of mindset I had. I had a friend that was on sabbatical. He's an older pastor friend.

He was on sabbatical in October of this year. He went to a church and the man there preached on Micah, the book of Micah. Now, maybe my friend was being a little hyperbolic. I'm not sure. But I think he was being quite frank about it.

He said in the whole service, he can't remember the name of Jesus being preached or being said one time. Yeah. And I know that maybe some of your listeners might find that unbelievable. But I live in the Bible Belt, and sadly, that's not unbelievable to me at all.

That you could have a service and the name Jesus might rarely be mentioned. And so as we celebrate, the whole point of the Incarnation is the very, not the crux of the gospel. The crux of the gospel is literally the cross.

But it is the very heart of the gospel is that God became man. And so I really have a twofold. I hope I've met the threshold here. I have twofold in my mind desire to write the book. One was to remind believers like this is what the gospel is.

Explicitly understand that this is a gospel and this is what Christmas ought to center around. And then secondarily, and we've used this at our church in this way, and I hope to see some people in heaven because of this.

But we've just tried to do a large swath of just passing this out and giving it to people and asking them to read it. Because we want unbelievers to understand this. This actually is what Christmas is about and to come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

And so there's a twofold desire there. One, yes, to reach the unbeliever, but also to encourage and challenge and even exhort the believer to understand this is what we mean when we say Christmas.

Yes, and unfortunately, the lost and even rebels against Christ find comfort in a baby Jesus that they view as posing no threat to them. He is physically harmless. He is in pictures on greeting cards and in nativity scenes and in movies and so forth.

An adorable little baby. And people can forget the very reason he came was to die for the sins of his people. And this is something that we need to have constantly a part of our Christmas message. Not that we have to be cosmic killjoys and inviting people over our home who are not true believers.

We don't have to immediately hit them in the face with a bucket of cold water where we're telling them that they are sinners headed for hell without the blood of Christ. But at the same time, we should not be removing that from our conversation and our lives just to spare the feelings of people.

Am I making sense here?

Absolutely. Yes, I think feelings really dictate our culture today, particularly around where I live. And that is the idea that if you say something that makes someone feel bad, then you are not being a good Christian.

And the reality is the gospel comes with, it's very, very good news, but you don't understand the good news unless you understand the bad news. And so this is, in my opinion, a wonderful time of year to focus on the centrality of God becoming man.

And yeah, I'm in agreement there.

And we're going to go to our first commercial break. And when we come back, we're going to get more in depth in our discussion of this book, this very timely book, The Gospel According to Christmas, Celebrating the Incarnation Without Losing the Plot.

And our email address, if you have a question of your own, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Christmas, although it can be one of the most joyful times of the year, as it likely is for most people, even if they're not Christians, but at the same time, it can be a season for pain.

I am no stranger to this. I have lost loved ones whom I can no longer on this earth celebrate Christmas in their company, including my precious late wife, including my parents. So I can have empathy for those who have their Christmas season tainted with pain.

But at the same time, the deeper and greater message behind the Christmas story transcends a holiday, transcends a season. And I'm not speaking ill of the things we do, like the greenery and the Christmas tree decorated and lit and the hot cocoa and all the things that we do, the gift giving.

But the true issue of Christmas far transcends, infinitely transcends these temporal things. And we want to make sure you don't lose the message behind what can be the madness of the Christmas season.

So we hope to hear from you with your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost and the glory of our triune God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.

We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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That's royaldiadem .com. And we are now back with our guest today, and this is his first time on the program, and I'm thoroughly enjoying our interview already, Pastor Alan S. Nelson. And we are discussing his book, The Gospel According to Christmas, Celebrating the Incarnation Without Losing the Plot.

And perhaps it would be a good idea, even though we likely take it for granted that 99 of people listening to this program understand the core meaning of Christmas. Even unbelievers are reminded of that when they see a Charlie Brown Christmas special.

And I don't even know if anyone involved in creating that animation, which I watched when I was a kid, which my late wife used to love watching every year, even as an adult. I don't know if there were any true believers involved in that, but the core of the gospel is presented and proclaimed in that child's cartoon.

So most people have some awareness of what Christmas is supposed to be about and what it's supposed to mean. But why don't you start by giving us the core message of the gospel through Christmas, and then tell us how many typically have the plot eclipsed by other things, and they really lose the plot of Christmas.

That's a fantastic question, and I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to answer the question with going to the end of the Bible and then back to the beginning. So without getting into eschatology, if you just read Revelation 12, it talks about this woman, and she's going to give birth.

It's my position that the woman represents the people of God in the past and in the church of all time. Anyway, so the woman is going to give birth, and the great red dragon is waiting there to consume the child.

And then the child is born, and he's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. He's caught up to heaven. Well, what that sets the picture for is that Christmas is kind of the central event of the entire storyline of Scripture.

Now, Chris, I'm not taking away the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Of course not, but I'm saying it all goes together. You don't get the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ without the birth of Christ.

And so that's the end of the Bible. And then the beginning of the Bible is in the book of Genesis. And in Genesis 3, we have this beautiful promise that there's going to be this seed of the woman in Genesis 3 .15, and it is the seed of the woman that is going to bruise the serpent's head.

And so that's the bookend of the Bible, Genesis and Revelation. And they both highlight this reality of a child that is going to come. And then, of course, as you get through the whole storyline of Scripture, you start wondering.

I mean, we already know the answer, but if you're reading it, you can think, okay, maybe it's going to be Noah. Well, it's not Noah. Maybe it's going to be Isaac. Well, it's not Isaac. Well, maybe it's going to be David.

Well, it's not David. Well, it's going to be a son of David. Okay, well, maybe it's going to be Solomon. Well, no, it's not Solomon. You kind of have this anticipation all the way, building, building, building.

And then you get to the New Testament. You say, no, this son that's promised, it's going to rule the nations. It's going to crush the serpent's head. It's going to bring us deliverance from our sins. This one promised in Isaiah, Isaiah 9 .6, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given.

The government should be able to shoulder. This one, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's God in the flesh. God has come to dwell with us. And you know this, but just to articulate this carefully, the incarnation does not happen at the birth of the Lord Jesus.

The incarnation happens at the conception.

Yes.

When the Holy Spirit overshadowed, and this is a mystery, right? I was like, how does all this work? I don't have all the answers, brother. I just confess it, and I know that it's the truth. This beautiful mystery of the hypostatic union with two natures in one person, and that is the divine nature, the son of God, united to the human nature in a way that the natures don't mix.

Beautiful. And this is what happens in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And then nine months later, this child is born, and this child is the son of God. And that's the central point there of Christmas, but we don't want to

I'll stop, but we don't want to just get to that without talking about the purpose of him coming and the fullness of the gospel, of course, but I've been kind of blabbering there for a minute, but that's

I wouldn't call that blabbering, brother. I loved every word of it.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So we get then to the whole reason that he comes. Why does our Lord Jesus not just come down, take on human flesh, die on the cross for our sins, go back to heaven? Well, there's a reason.

He's made like us in every way except without sin. He takes on a true humanity. And I think a missing element, at least around here that I hear in gospel presentations is we don't just need, brother, someone to pay for our sins, though that is crucial, but we also need someone to obtain a righteousness for us, the righteousness that lost in Adam and that we would never gain back because of our sin.