THIS MAN'S BIRTHDAY

The heavyweights call a meeting. Things are getting out of hand and they, by all that's good and decent they say, are determined to do something.

We have the minutes of their hurry-up meeting and the pages throb with anger and frustration. From this record we learn why they're angry: "The chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him . . .  So from that day on they planned together to kill Him. . . [they] said to one another, 'You see that you are not doing any good; look, the world has gone after Him.' ”

EPIC FAIL

The men at the meeting are the power hitters in Israel's capital and they're on the march against Jesus of Nazareth, They hate Him so much, they won't sully their lips with His name, but, instead, call Him, "this man." Their plot is to kill Him. Although they spoke in hyperbole ("the whole world has gone after Him") what they so desperately tried to prevent never became a reality. They wanted to erase the name they refused to say, "this man's" name, from history, just as their spiritual descendants wish to do today. But, if there ever was an epic fail, this is it.

How many men at that nefarious meeting can you name? Whose name among them lives on? Do we celebrate the birthday of even one of them? No, not one.

We're not saying that the whole world follows Him as in discipleship, but just look at the facts. In celebration of "this man's" birth, we shut down our federal government, our schools, most of our stores, our doctors' offices, all our post offices, and all our banks. We close our state offices, state courts, city, and county offices. 

EVERYBODY SING!

9 out of 10 of us celebrate Christmas; the very word carries His name. The observance of "this man's" birth includes 81% of non-Christians, 87% of people with no religion, Buddhists (76%) and Hindus (73%). Roughly a third of U.S. Jews (32%) – many of whom have non-Jewish spouses – said that they had a Christmas tree in their homes during the most recent holiday season.

It gets more interesting: far from erasing His name from history, more than 7-in-10 (73%) say that Jesus was born to a virgin and 81% believe He was laid in a manger. And similar shares say that wise men, guided by a star, brought Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (75%) and that an angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus (74%). Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) believe that all four of these things actually happened. (From the Pew Research Center). Those high percentages know more than His name; they know the details of His birth and early years.

LOOK AT THE CITIES AND TOWNS

Communities, large and small, have Christmas parades, Christmas decorations, Christmas pageants, and Christmas festivals, while families gather, feast together, and gain weight together. People of all ages, complete strangers, gather together, wish each other, "Merry Christmas, and sing special songs called carols about His birth, the tunes and lyrics they learned as children. Poinsettias abound around towns. Choirs sing; orchestras orchestrate; bands play. Stores pipe in music for the season.

My alma mater, Texas Tech University, strings 25,000 red, white, and orange lights on 13 buildings of its sprawling campus. Over 20,000 gather from both the school and the city. It's dramatic. The event starts with the Texas Tech University Combined Choirs performing selections of classic holiday songs. At an appointed time, with the thousands in high anticipation, someone throws the switch, and the Carol of Lights is born anew, a tradition since 1959. 

WANT TO TALK MONEY?

Let's talk happy cabbage: Americans will jam the malls, the stores, and the grocery stores, all for the birth of this man. Parking lots will choke with stalled traffic. Impatient drivers will jam Interstates to get there. Stores will open early and keep their lights on until late. Post offices, the UPS, Fed-Ex will hire extra workers. The average American will spend $830 on gifts this year in observance of this man's birthday, totaling more than $465 billion. Wow! 

AND IT'S NOT ONLY US

More than 160 countries celebrate this man's birth. In England, royalty sets the tone. On December 25, 1932, King George V spoke on the radio to a national audience from a small office at Sandringham. This marked the beginning of a tradition which, to many, has become an integral part of the yuletide festivities - the Christmas Broadcast.
 
Since that time, a Christmas Day message has been delivered by the monarch to the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth almost every year.

THE LAND OF LUTHER

In Germany, where the Christmas tree began, they decorate their trees on Christmas Eve, prior to the evening feast. The father usually keeps the children in a separate room while the mother brings out the Christmas tree from a hidden place and decorates it with apples, candy, nuts, cookies, cars, trains, angels, tinsel, family treasures and candles or lights.

The Germans put the gifts under the tree, while nearby, beautiful plates are laid for each family member and filled with fruits, nuts, marzipan, chocolate and biscuits. The decorations finished, a bell is rung as a signal for the children to enter the room. The family reads Luke 2  during this time and they sing carols together. Often, they light sparklers.

REMEMBER THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH?

Although they choose a different day, going by a different calendar, an Ethiopian Christmas typically begins with a day of fasting, followed by church services and a feast that includes stew, vegetables and sourdough bread. Though most friends and families do not exchange gifts, communities gather to play games and sports, and enjoy the festivities together before returning to work.

OTHERS

In France, Japan, and India, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and in the Ukraine, there will be Christmas celebrations. Tourists will fill Bethlehem where people display Nativity scenes and Christians mark their doors with crosses. (Even in their own country, the heavy hitters at that meeting failed to obliterate His name.)

We could go on, but you get the idea.

Today, we continue to see various attempts to erase His name, this time via political correctness and "inclusion." What does all this tell us? It tells us that that meeting long ago failed miserably. It tells us something more than that--it speaks of the impact this Man continues to have on the world.

THE CHART MENTALITY

Talk to any teacher and they'll tell you of a common frustration. Let's call it, "The Chart Mentality." The teacher gives the student a chart for the scholar to memorize. The student does due diligence and commits it to memory, dead solid perfect. It's locked in his brain. That's all well and good. But there's a problem; he doesn't know what do with it. To say it another way, he doesn't know how to apply the chart to a given situation. To him the chart, meant to be applied, isn't applied and the chart is a chart is a chart. Although he's memorized the chart, he can't connect the dots and use it in any practical way. He "knows" the chart, but he doesn't understand it. Frustrating!

To memorize the teacher's chart is a good thing, but if it doesn't go anywhere from there, it's useless. It just lies there, stored away in the vault of the student's mind, only to be reproduced in chart form for a test, should the need arise. That's harmful, but when it comes to the Bible, that's downright dangerous.

MOTHER AND CHILD

How so? Let's think about it.

What's the most memorized, most loved, and most quoted verse in the Bible? "Of course," you say, "John 3:16 is the answer to that question," and you'd be right as rain.

Two weeks ago, a little girl quoted that verse to me. She was right-on; dead solid perfect in her recitation. Her mother listened and nodded her familial approval, proud as punch. Both knew the verse. It was in the vault.

 ". . . whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That's what the last part of the verse says and they knew it.

When I asked them how they knew God is going to let them into heaven, the mother cited (1) her baptism, (2) her personal goodness, and (3) she was raising her kids to be like Christ.

SOMEHOW, SHE SAW THE INVISIBLE INK

Wait a minute. Hold the phone. I don't see those three things mentioned in John 3:16. I see "believe," but not baptism, not being a good person, not raising kids for Christ. They aren't there, but she "saw" them. Why did she mention those three? Why didn't she respond with, "whoever believes in Him" as the answer to my question?

She didn't because she has a chart mentality and she's raising her daughter to have the same. She's not alone. She's legion and that legion is all over the place in our churches. John 3:16 is her "chart," but that chart never came into play when I asked, "Why should God let you into heaven?" She didn't connect the two dots, the chart (Jn. 3:16) and the question, to see that the reason is because of faith alone in Christ alone.

When I underlined the word, "believe" in the verse for them, then the "aha" moment came. The mother connected the dots; she applied the chart.

FLIP SIDE

However, for some, when we connect the dots for them, the "aha" moment is the reverse; the person sees what the chart is telling him, then, instead of saying, "Aha, yes, I see that now," he gets upset. The truth is there, right in front of his eyes as he looks upon the underlined word, "believe," but he bows his neck and goes on the defensive with statements like, "It can't be that easy," "There just has to be more," or "My mother (or pastor, grandparents, father) don't/didn't believe this." (So? Just because somebody didn't/doesn't believe Neil Armstrong went to the moon doesn't make mean that he never walked on the moon.) Instead of becoming noble Bereans and searching the Scriptures with a dot-connecting pen, they refuse to connect the dots leading to the gates of heaven through faith alone.

THERE WAS THIS GUY

There was this fellow I know who was studying for the ministry. In his studies, he read and he heard, "Christ died for our sins." That saying became embedded in his brain and he could easily have quoted it if you shook him awake at 3 AM. Those words were his chart. But, and he'll tell you this, although he could quote it, he wasn't saved.

What? Why not? He wasn't saved because he didn't know, understand, and believe that Christ died for his sins. He had no idea that He needed Christ to die for his sins or he was doomed. He had no idea that he needed to place his faith in Christ alone apart from works. Today, he's a believer, but back in the day when he was studying for the priesthood, he wasn't. (He stopped cold turkey and got out of Roman Catholicism.)

Don't get me wrong, a chart is a good thing, if it leads to application. I got through 8th grade math because I memorized three charts having to do with percentages and the finding of such. (Don't ask me what they were, they're long gone from the vault. Thieves called "Years" broke in and stole them.) For that 8th grade math, all I had to do was to memorize the charts and then apply them to real-life percentage problems and I was home free. Honor roll, here I come!

My point is not that I was hot stuff in math; I wasn't--everything cratered in the 9th grade when I ran into that grief-dealing behemoth called algebra. How I hated, loathed, and despised that monster! I only succeed in the 8th grade because I understood how to apply the charts. I could connect the dots with a vengeance. I never could connect algebra with anything, chart or no chart.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Instead of letting the conversation degenerate into a "he-says-this-then-I-say-that" (which is witnessing by a chart mentality) do what Jesus did--inundate the person with questions. "What does John 3:16 say?" "What's this word in the sentence?" "Does John 3:16 advise baptism, raising children to be like Christ, or personal achievement?" "In what sense is it easy to trust Someone you've never seen, Someone no one living has ever seen, for everlasting life?" "Why do you think the New Testament conditions salvation on faith alone 150 times if there are works involved?" "Could the thief on the cross have done enough good to overcome all his sins in the time he was hanging on the cross?""How much good do you have to do?" "How long do you have to be good--all your life?" "Since you've learned that raising kids for Christ is the way to heaven, don't you think we ought to go right now and start telling everybody what you've discovered about how to get to heaven?"

What is all this? It's Acts 18:19 in action: "They came to Ephesus, and he left them there. Now he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews." It's like Christ on the Emmaus Highway, reasoning with those two men from the Scriptures.

AND WHAT ABOUT DISCIPLESHIP?

Discipleship isn't by a chart, either. The same holds true--there is the dialoguing and reasoning through the Scriptures, there is the real-life demonstration of serving Christ to real life situations. The Christ-like life isn't lived by an outline, yet so much of Christian education is filling out an outline with three points all beginning with the letter, "B," closing the Bible, and going home. There's no such thing as chart mentality discipleship. So much instruction in our churches is chart mentality instruction. When it's all said and done, the just lies there on the page in a notebook.

There's the chart and there's life, and never the twain shall meet. The chart killeth; the Spirit giveth life.

THE MAN WITH THE MEAN, LEAN, AND HUNGRY LOOK

I'm sitting at a table talking to the lady sitting across from me. Standing beside her are two of her children, an elementary school girl and a somewhat older son. Our conversation consists of my asking her the various questions on our Survey Evangelism and recording her answers. We're at an outdoor community Christmas event where there's a parade and vendors are hawing their wares. Except, us, our evangelism team is not selling but seeking to give away living water.

She's a former Lutheran who has left that denomination for a non-denominational church where she likes the music and the in-the pew dancing during the church services. Her daughter likes those things too, especially the dancing, the girl tells me. The daughter is a live-wire kid who can easily quote John 3:16. You can't help but like her; her enthusiastic personality and smile are contagious.

One survey question stumps the nice lady: "What does the word 'grace' mean?" I ask.  (That's my favorite question on the survey and I'm eager to hear her answer.)

But she just sits there. And sits there. I think I hear crickets in the distance. She's thinking, trying to come up with something. Her pause isn't dramatic; it has become awkward. She's heard the word, but has no clue. She's as quite as Mark McGuire before a congressional committee. I break the silence by moving to the next question.

"I'm sure I'm going to heaven," she tells me, "Because I'm raising my kids to be like Christ" and "I'm a good person." She's so sure, she's 100% sure.

The survey is over; the questions, miserably answered, are all done. Now, the last question: "Would you like to hear the Bible's answer to these questions?"

"Sure," she says.

So I begin to answer the questions by drawing the diagram and explaining Christ and Him crucified. She and her daughter begin to listen with intent.

And then it happened.

I hadn't noticed earlier, but standing about 25 feet away, leaning up against the wall of a building  across the narrow street stands a man who fits the description of Cassius: "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look,"Julius Caesar remarked to Mark Anthony.

This "Yon Cassius" calls out, "Let's go!" He was semi-yelling to the lady to whom I was speaking. Like I said, I hadn't noticed him up until then, but there he was.  He's been there all along, standing there with their teen-aged son, who also had the Cassius look, both of them leaning against the brick wall, the backside of a building.

She continues to be intent and calls back to him, "No. He's drawing me a picture. Come over here and see it."

Cassius then makes his move, along with Cassius Jr., and they walk across the narrow street to have a look-see, just as they were told to do by Mrs. Cassius. I say a brief, "Hi," and continue. (Looking back, I should have backed up and started all over again. As usual, my hindsight is 20-20. I'm learning; next time, I'll back up.)

I continue, and as I do, Cassius Jr. starts to go into motion, pacing aimlessly back and forth and then he makes some snide, teen-age arrogant remark that thinks is funny. Nobody laughs. This is awkward. The problem is, I don't catch exactly what he said because he's moving around and teenagers aren't the most articulate of the population. I ask, "What did you say?" He says it again, but Jr. isn't Demosthenes; I still can't understand him. I move on.

As Cassius Sr. stands there, he's silent, standing in pout mode. (Typical; this isn't the first time our evangelism team has run into a sullen husband whose wife wants to hear the Bible's answers to the big questions of life, but he gets all huffy about it. He and his pout won't be the last. Cassius is ubiquitous.)

At the conclusion of the gospel presentation, I ask her, "Is there any reason you shouldn't trust Christ alone right now?"

She says, "No, no reason at all."

I point out to her that trusting Christ alone means not depending on all those works she's mentioned earlier, like, "raising my kids for Christ," and being "a good person." I tell her that I'm talking about trusting Christ ALONE. She agrees. (Cassius is still pouting, just standing there, aloof from me, from kith and kin.) He's silently letting me know that he doesn't like all this. He's trying to punish his wife with his silence. (He calls it punishment; I call it peace and quiet.)

I give her two pieces of our literature and off they go. Cassius is happy now.

What was all this? What was going on with with Cassius and Cassius Jr.? They were, to use a term attributed to Lenin (but that's disputed), "useful idiots." Stalin or Lenin, or somebody, coined the term to describe those in the West who blindly supported the likes of Lenin and Stalin while they committed atrocity after atrocity.

But who was using those useful idiots that day?

What I was seeing is that we often see, and that's Luke 8 in action, although unsuccessful this time: "[T]he seed is the word of God. Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart." When we plant the gospel, there's often someone, a useful idiot, leaning against a wall, standing or sitting nearby who wants to kill it, to snatch the gospel away. He's acting as the devil's tool, the devil's fool, Satan's useful idiot, but he doesn't know it.

There's a supernatural component every time we take the gospel to the lost, and sometimes that component is the wrong half of the supernatural universe. It wasn't only her husband's command, "Come on, let's go," it was also the snide remark of her son; it was also the pout.

The snatching strategy varies. It isn't always, "Come on, let's go." It can be someone standing by who trots out the old tried and true ploy of the devil, "It JUST CAN'T be that simple," they say. (They always seem to put the "JUST" in there somewhere for dramatic emphasis, don't they? It's as if they think they've come up with a new thought.)

Why can't it be that simple? Is salvation only for the brilliant? (As if it's a simple thing to trust Someone you've never seen, Someone no one living has ever seen, and Someone and whose message is in a Book that's been under attack as soon as it's ink was dry, and to trust this Person for the biggest question of them all--How can I have forgiveness for my sins and eternal life?)

She went home, trusting Christ alone. She, now a believer, is there, inside the family. So is the literature. The seed has been planted in the lives of the other four.

That's exciting!

THE WIRE

It's almost invisible, but it's there. It's there and stayed there even when Hurricane Sandy hit. What it is, is the wire, but not just any wire. It's a wire that symbolizes the bondage and lack of logic that is  legalism, yet it's hailed as a good thing.

Jewish law says that no Jew is to carry objects outside the home on the Sabbath. (That constitutes "work," and work is forbidden on the Sabbath.) So, from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, no Jew is to carry any objects outside the house.

Bummer. That would be a depressing and mean no fun for 24 hours, every week, 52 weeks a year, world without end, amen. But it's more than just a no-fun situation. It's a spiritual nightmare. This is what Paul meant when he wrote about the Law, saying, "For the letter kills,"and that it's "a ministry of death."

LEGALISTS FIND A WAY

But wait! Smart legalists will find a way to get around the rule! Enter the wire. The legalists get together and say, "What if we string a wire between two poles in the area in which we live, like say, Manhattan? Let's call the strung wire 'a symbolic fence.' Let's think big and string the wire to almost encircle Manhattan. Wouldn't this mean that if the wire encircled a large, a really large area, like Manhattan, that the 'fence' would mean that that area was our 'home,' like, you know, your fenced-off backyard?"

And that's exactly what they did--they strung the wire from pole to pole to pole, enough to make Manhattan their "home" so that they could carry anything and everything they wanted to carry outside the house because their home was now much bigger. The wire exists today, right now.

PROTECT THE WIRE

A rabbi goes out on Thursdays to make sure the wire is in tip-top shape. If a part of it isn't in good repair, the next morning the rabbi calls a crew to come and fix it. All this doesn't just take valuable time, it also takes $100,000 per year in the upkeep of the "fence."

That's an picture of what legalism does: legalism creates hypocrites; legalism creates situations impossible to live with; legalism creates the illogical; legalism creates the need for loopholes, illogical as they may be; legalism creates harsh, judgmental, abusive people, and holier-than-thou-people. 

This symbolic fence or symbolic wall is now in over two hundred cities and areas. A "symbolic fence?" What's that? A "symbolic wall." What's that? Other than the fact that it's not logical, it's the wire strung from pole to pole to pole. 

WAIT. HAVEN'T WE HEARD OF SOMETHING LIKE THIS BEFORE?

Yet, this is nothing new. The legalists of Christ's day had their inconsistent, illogical, hypocritical rules too. Jesus has just healed a man on the Sabbath, and the man, overwhelmed by joy (who wouldn't be?) violated their rules by carrying his pallet on Saturday. That was "work." 

You couldn't pluck an ear of corn, not one, if you were hungry on the Sabbath. That would be classified in the legalists' eyes as "harvesting."

For another look at the bondage of legalism back then; read on:

"If a man received a cure accidentally, it was very well; but no methods [for a cure] were to be taken with intention: as for instance:

"If a man had an ailment in his throat, he might not gargle it with oil, but he might swallow a large quantity of oil, 'and if he was healed, he was healed' (i.e. it was very well, it was no breach of the Sabbath); they may not chew mastic, nor rub the teeth with spice, on the Sabbath day, when it is intended for healing; but if it is intended for the savor of his mouth, it is free.''

Or how about this rule:

"If a beast fall into a ditch, or a pool of water, if food can be given it, where it is, they feed it till the going out of the Sabbath; but if not, bolsters and pillows may be brought, and put under it, and if it can come out: it may come out:''

LEGALISTS ON THE LOOSE TODAY

The legalists aren't confined to the ancient days of the Pharisees nor are they all living in  Manhattan today. They live and move and have their being among us, north, south, west, and east, infesting and infecting our churches. For example, a fellow was attending a church and in that church they announced that they were scheduling training in evangelism, and from that training, an evangelistic team would go out into the neighborhood with the good news. He attended and learned the how-to of evangelism, but when it came time to join the team and venture forth, they told him, "No, no, you can't go."

Why? He'd learned and done all that was required, hadn't he? Yes, indeed, but the problem was he was an attender of the church and not a member of the church. To go out and evangelize with them, you had to officially join the church. Why? Because that's what the rule said. (To be logical, we might point out that, if that were the case in Paul's day, no one would ever evangelize because they had no such thing as church membership. Paul never heard of such a thing as joining a church. No believer was a "member" of any church, as we conceive of membership today.)

Another case in point: a furor erupted in a church because of a proposal for the youth to serve the Lord's Supper to the congregation on a given Sunday. This eruption spewed lava all over the place. (Legalism will always do that.) The problem: the rules said that deacons were to serve the Lord's Supper. (And these are adults we're talking about. Legalism makes children out of adults; it breeds immaturity.)

In another church, they taught the men that true Christians have their shirts tucked in and belts on. They did allow facial hair, but frowned if a bearded one wanted to be in any position of leadership. (Wait. Didn't some Roman soldiers pluck out the hairs of one Person's beard for mocking sport?)

How about one more, for the road:

Joe is a Christian; he believes it's sinful to consume alcohol. (Joe is in error. Consuming alcohol isn't a sin; drunkenness is. But Joe goes even farther afield.) One day Fred asks him to help with a household move. Fred has packed some of his belongings in strong wooden wine crates that were given to him by Sam. Joe helps Fred move, but outspokenly refuses to handle the wine-seller's crates because they were made to contain alcoholic beverages. Good grief! You can't make this stuff up. Such legalistic activities make Christians look like idiots.

That's enough.

What if you find yourself in a church where legalism carries the day? You know what you should do, I'm sure. If you can't "cast out the bondwoman," to use Paul's analogy in Galatians, get out; get out now.