Should We Celebrate Christmas?

I won't ask anyone to open their Bibles, because it's a little dark in here. Hopefully you all did receive your candles when you walked in, though, and just a little while after the message, we'll be having a candlelight song.

We're gonna sing Silent Night with our candles going, so that's what those are for. And we're looking forward to, in a little while, having the end of the service and going into a time of fellowship.

So we have a lot to look forward to, even in the little bit of time we have left this evening. Again, I want to thank you all for joining us tonight here at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

We're thankful to have Covenant Church here with us and Pastor Akia, reading Scripture for us and praying with us.

And we are just grateful to know that there are churches that we can partner with and that we can be blessed by and seek to bless them and know that we're all in, and we're all on the same team, seeking to minister the gospel, to the

Jacksonville area and to see Christ glorified. Tonight for our message, we're going to be looking at Galatians chapter four, one of my favorite passages of Scripture.

And we're going to be asking this question, should we celebrate

Christmas? Should we celebrate Christmas? That might seem like a silly question for a

Christian to ask. Should a Christian celebrate Christmas? But even among Christians, there is debate about this subject.

There are some Christians who would argue, well, the Bible never commands us to celebrate

Christmas. So because of the regulative principle, which says we should only do in worship that which

Christ commands, then we should not have any extra celebrations. We shouldn't do anything extra.

We should only do what we do on the Lord's day. And yet, as Brother Mike pointed out in his message tonight or this morning about the fact that the

Festival of Lights was celebrated and Christ went and did that along with the people of Israel.

And so the idea that we can have other celebrations, the Apostle Paul says in Romans 14, that yes, there are actually times when we can have some liberty.

And if we want to have the liberty of celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, then there's nothing that says that that would be wrong.

Another reason people would say that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas is because they argue that it has, it's tied to all kinds of pagan origins.

And that all of Christmas is really just a rehashing of old pagan ideas and rituals.

Like one movie came out several years ago called Zeitgeist. And that movie tried to argue that all of the stories about Jesus from the virgin birth to the resurrection are all just borrowed from pagan mythology.

Well, there's a Greek word for that and it is baloney. That's right, my guys know. The Greek word for that is baloney.

It's not true. The whole movie Zeitgeist was based on some really, really bad information and things that are just factually inaccurate.

It's a bad movie. Thank you for asking. And in fact, I do know this.

A lot of people, when they wanna talk about the issue of paganism and all of those things, the things that are most important about Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation, the virgin conception, the birth of the king, and the fact that he came to save sinners, those things are worth celebrating and those things are not pagan, they're

Christian. Amen. They're Christian. Another reason people say maybe we shouldn't celebrate

Christmas is they say, well, what about the avarice and the greed of the season? And yes, that is true.

The secular celebration of Christmas is tied to much that is not good. Overindulgence, greed, and those things.

But I want you to know there's nothing wrong with giving gifts to your children. In fact,

Jesus, when he was talking to his disciples, he says, even you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children.

I always love that passage because Jesus couldn't help getting a little dig in there. Say, you guys are evil yourselves.

You're sinners and yet you know how to give good gifts to your children. Because that's one of the most blessed parts of being a dad, is that we get to give things to our children and see our children enjoy them.

And then we remember that God is the greatest gift giver of all, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

That wonderful and precious gift of his son is the picture of gift giving from a father to his children.

And we should praise God for that and emulate that whenever the opportunity arises. So yes,

I think there is good reason that we can enjoy the celebration of Christmas.

But most of all is the passage we're going to talk about tonight. And that is

Galatians chapter four, verses four through seven. Now, before I read, I'm contractually obligated to give you the context.

In this church, we're not allowed to read a scripture without telling you what the context of it is, because that's the requirement for good preaching.

And that's what we have to do. So the book of Galatians was written to some churches that were in the area known as Southern Galatia, which would have been in the place where we would right now call

Turkey, but at the time was called Asia Minor. Paul had traveled there on his first missionary journey, and he had planted some churches there in the area known as Galatia.

We read about them in the book of Acts, the churches in Lystra and Iconium and Derbe. That was all the

Southern Galatian area. Well, later, after Paul left, wicked men came in and they brought false teachings into the church of Galatia, into those churches.

And so Paul writes them a scathing letter. It is not like some of his other letters, which start all flowery and loving and grace be upon you.

And like when he writes to the Philippians, it's glorious. But when he writes to the

Galatians, it's very matter of fact. And he starts out with that very sobering thought.

He says, if anyone brings to you a gospel contrary to the gospel that I brought to you, let him be anathema.

The word anathema means to be cut off, to be accursed. He said, if anyone, even an angel from heaven, keep that in mind when the

Mormons come to your door. What do the Mormons believe? That the angel

Moroni brought down golden tablets, gave them to Joseph Smith, right? And that gives a different gospel.

Paul says, even if an angel from heaven comes and gives you a message contrary to the message

I give you, let him be accursed. Galatians is serious business.

Paul's message was to tell the people of God what the gospel was and how it had been perverted by these false teachers.

And when we get to chapter four, Paul is distinguishing between being a slave and being a son.

See, he had talked about one who was a, what was known in Greek as a pedagogos, or a tutor.

The King James calls it the schoolmaster. The one who kept the children in line.

The nanny, as it were. Maybe that's not the best way to translate it, but the idea is the same. The idea of the one who was in charge of the children.

But the one who was in charge of the children was not an heir. That person was a slave.

That person was the family servant. They were in charge of the children. And Paul's point is this.

He said, that child, while they're under the pedagogos, while they're under that tutor or authority, they're under their authority.

But it ain't always gonna be that way because one day that child's gonna actually become the heir.

He's already the heir, but he's gonna grow up and become the owner of everything, right? And so the distinguishing mark between the slave and the son is the son is related to the father.

He belongs to the father. He is the father's son. And so we get to chapter four, and Paul tells us how we become the sons of God, how we go from being merely slaves to sons.

Now, we never cease being the servants of God. Don't forget that. But we do change our identity when we are adopted into the family of God.

We are no longer slaves. We sang it this morning. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. No longer slaves.

We've been bought with a price, adopted, delivered. We're sons now with Christ.

We stand in his righteousness, dressed in his righteousness free. That's the beauty of this text.

And it tells us how it happened, beginning in verse four. It says, but when the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying,

Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God. Let's pray for just a moment.

Father, as I seek to give an understanding of this text, in just the next few moments, I pray that you would take the truth of this text, apply it to the hearts of these people.

Lord, for the believers in the room, that it might bless them, encourage them, and draw them closer to Christ.

And Lord, for those who have come tonight who don't trust the Lord Jesus Christ yet, that they might see that the adoption that they so need to be part of the family of God comes only through faith in him.

And we pray it in his name, amen. In the fullness of time,

God sent forth his son. What does that mean?

What does the phrase in the fullness of time mean? Well, the term fullness of time is another way of saying at the right time, or at exactly the proper or perfect time, at the time that God had determined was best.

This past Thursday, I was preaching at Set Free. I go there every Thursday morning and preach to the men there.

I'm very grateful, been doing that for about seven years now, and I'm always blessed to go and be among those men and thankful that they wanna hear the word of God.

It's encouraging to me. And I asked them, I said, when would have been a time that we might have picked for Jesus to come?

Maybe today, right? Jesus would have the biggest TikTok account in the world. Right, like he could be on social media and he could meet everybody in a lick, right?

This was not the perfect time for Christ to come, even though we might think, because of technology and technology, or the ability of reach across the globe, we might think this was the best time.

No, the best time for Christ to come was when he came. That was the time God had determined.

That was the proper fullness of time. And there've been a lot of people who have argued why that's the case.

Some people believe it was because of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Rome, because of its military might, had subdued the known world and there was relative peace where people could travel and people could meet other people from other lands.

And because of that, people say that's the perfect time. I say, well, if that was true, if that was the perfect time, now would be even better because of our ability to get around the world.

Other people say, well, no, it wasn't really the Pax Romana. It was because of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great had introduced the

Greek language to the world. And now the world had a unified language that everyone was able to communicate in.

And that was the language of the day. And Alexander the Great had made it his purpose to make sure that Greek language and Greek philosophy was spread throughout his empire.

And it was. This is why the New Testament comes to us in Greek and not Hebrew, because that was the universal language.

But again, think about today. We have a universal language. English is pretty much the universal language. All air traffic controllers have to learn

English. Right, you know that? Language of business, language of commerce pretty much is

English. My wife used to work for a company called VIP Kid where she tutored Chinese children in learning conversational

English because they knew that to do business in the modern world, they needed to be able to speak conversational

English. So Jennifer did that. So again, I don't think necessarily it was the

Pax Romana. I don't think necessarily it was the Greek language. Even though those things were important, other scholars might say this.

The reason why it was the fullness of time was because it was the exact time prophesied in the prophets of the

Old Testament. Now, now we're cooking. Now we're cooking. Because when we go back to like the book of Daniel, Daniel lets us know, right?

We got the 70 weeks. Mike could come explain it to you. I'm not as good at that one. I'll let Mike come up here and talk about those weeks and how they add up to the time to the coming of Christ.

Yeah, okay, that's the fullness of time. Is that? That sounds more right to me. But here's the ultimate point.

No matter what the reason from our perspective, here's what we know for certain.

This was the time God had decreed before the foundation of the world.

That's what made it the proper time. When you read Luke chapter two, which Pastor Akai read to us earlier, it says that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

You know why a decree went out from Caesar Augustus? Because a decree went out from Almighty God.

A decree went out from Caesar 2 ,000 years ago because before time immortal, a decree went out from God that his son would be born in Bethlehem.

You see, God's decrees are what bring about all that we see and do.

God is sovereign and we can trust in him. So the fullness of time, it's

God's timing. Now, I told Pastor Akai I was gonna do a 15 -minute sermon and I wanted to hear him laugh because he knew it probably wasn't gonna happen.

But I'm not gonna try to exegete every one of these passages, but I do wanna walk through this a little bit more brief, a little more quickly than I did just then.

So in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. Just for a moment, we could all stop and meditate on the reality of that statement.

God sent his son. I genuinely think we are way too comfortable with that statement.

I genuinely think that has become way too mundane. God sent his son should knock us off our feet.

God's son walked among us should cause us to be exhilarated with excitement.

And yet we sing, God sent his son. God sent his son into the world.

What more amazing thing? And you might say, but wait a minute, aren't we all sons of God? Not like Jesus.

That's right. The Bible says that all men are God's creation.

And therefore all men can claim a certain form of God's fatherhood as if you think of someone as the creator of something as the father of that.

But we are not in relationship with God by nature because of sin.

The Bible says that sin separates us from God. It alienates us from God.

It causes us to be at enmity with God. Do you know what enmity means? It means war.

We are at war with God because of our sin. And therefore, because of that division, we desperately need reconciliation.

God sent his son. For what reason?

The text tells us in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son to do what?

Born of a woman, born under the law. Don't have time to unpack everything, but remember, born of a woman.

I believe this is Paul reminding us, one, that Jesus is born of a virgin. He is not born of man and woman, but he's born of woman.

It's also him reminding us that Jesus is actually a man. He didn't beam down from heaven like Scotty on Star Trek.

He came through the womb of a woman. He was a real man. And the seed of the woman is the promise that Mike told us about this morning.

Remember the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. Born of woman, born under the law.

Jesus Christ came into the world and he was subject to the law of God and he filled it to the full,

Matthew chapter five. I have not come to abolish the law, but to do what? To fulfill the law.

Jesus Christ kept the law perfectly every moment of every day that he was born until he died and every single act he did pleased the

Father. And he never sinned in thought, word, or deed. He was born of woman, born under the law.

For what reason? The text says, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

You know what redeem means? It means to buy back. It means to purchase.

It means to make a payment for something. Christ died so that his life would be given as the scripture says, a ransom for many.

He died as a substitute. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we could become the righteousness of God in him.

Born of a woman, born under the law that he might redeem those who are under the law and do what? And give us adoption.

One of the great confusions in our world is when people say, we're all children of God.

Well, as I said earlier, we're all created by God. But we become a child of God by adoption.

We were alienated from God. And God, in his mercy, adopted us into his family.

November the 18th, 2006. One of the most important days of my life.

We celebrate it every year. We call it Gotcha Day. Because on November the 18th, 2006,

Ashley and Cody, who were not born physically from Jennifer and myself, were adopted into our family.

And they became our children. And I'll never forget standing with the children beside me and Jennifer beside me and we had the grandparents all around.

And the judge, he was a tall man with dark hair. He looked at me and he said, Mr. Foskey, do you understand that when you take these children, they will become your legal heirs?

As if they had been born from your flesh, these children will be yours.

And Jennifer and I, gratefully and thankfully, said yes.

And I tell that story for this reason. When we are adopted into the family of God, the apostle

Paul says we become joint heirs with Christ.

We are brought into God's family and made children of God.

As if we were born into his family, we have been brought in by adoption. And now we can cry

Abba, Father, the intimate

Father. You know, I hear people wanna argue a lot about what should we call God? Should we call

God by the name Yahweh or Jehovah?

Or should we use his express titles in the Old Testament, El Shaddai? And I say all of those are wonderful because all of those describe our

God, but the one that is most precious to the Christian is Father. And when

Christ comes into our hearts and saves us and we are born again, the

Holy Spirit takes up residence in our heart and we can call

God Father. That is something worth celebrating.

And so tonight, my question to you is very simple. Is God your

Father? Have you been adopted into the family of God by faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ? If you have, I say praise the Lord. Continue to walk in the newness of life.

Continue to celebrate what God has done for you in every way that you can.

But if you have not trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, I encourage you, turn from your unbelief, trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Let us pray.

Our Father, we come to you in Jesus' name and we thank you that we have been given this opportunity to hear your gospel again.

And I pray, oh God, that it has been clearly given. And Lord, if there is confusion in the room, if there's someone here who doesn't understand,

Lord, may they seek out myself or Pastor Akai or Brother Mike or Brother Andy.

Lord, may they seek someone out and ask the important questions and have someone pray with them. Lord, that no one would leave this place confused about the condition of their eternal soul.

Lord, thank you for the opportunity tonight to hear your word and to worship you in song, in scripture, and in just a little while, in fellowship.