Merry Christmas

Today is Christmas Eve.  I do admire people that work so hard at keeping things religious this time of year.  I think they are doing what the think is best, but we don’t celebrate Christmas as Christ’s birthday.  It’s not that we have anything against the birth of Christ.  It was truly a miraculous event that I’ll never grow tired of hearing and reading about. 

God doesn’t, anywhere, tell us to celebrate Christ’s birthday.  He tells us to remember his death and has given us a simple ceremony to keep the death of Christ in front of us.  This we do on the first day of the week, as God instructed. 

So why not Christmas?  I don’t know why God didn’t choose for us to celebrate Jesus’ birth.  Maybe it’s because He knew we’d make a big commercial event out of it.  Maybe it’s because it is not the most important thing.  Maybe, God wants us to remember Christ’s death above all else.

What is important that we obey God’s word.  We do things His way.  We are not given the liberty to live and worship according to what makes us feel good.  We are told to obey God His way.  I find it interesting that God didn’t give us a whole lot of do’s and dont’s.  He didn’t give us a lot of ceremonial festivities that had to be done just so so.  God did that for the Jews.  That’s what the whole Old Testament tells us. 

God chose to give us a better law.  A law of liberty.  It is so simple, in fact, that we just can’t seem to abide by it.  We always want to make things complicated — because it makes us feel religious.

1. God gave us a simple plan of salvation that involves us changing our lives and humbly submitting ourselves to God. 

2. God gave us a simple plan of worship that involves us individual and collectively singing praises, praying, studying, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

3. God gave us a simple institution (the Church) that has a very loose organization — elders oversee those that are among them, deacons take care of the physical needs of those among them, saints work together to build each other up and help each other to Heaven

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and maybe find some time to dig a little deeper into God’s word to find out what it is He really wants from us.