| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The story of Jesus, the reason that Jesus had to come into this world is because since God is infinitely just, he's the standard of justice, he can't allow injustice to go unpunished. | ||
| And we've all been unjust. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| So what does he do in order to not punish us because he's also infinitely loving, he has to find an innocent substitute to punish on our behalf who takes our punishment upon himself voluntarily. | ||
| Where can he find an innocent substitute in any of us? | ||
| He can't. | ||
| We're all fallen. | ||
| We've all done wrong. | ||
| The only place he can find an innocent substitute is in himself. | ||
| So he adds humanity to his deity, and on Christmas he comes into this world. | ||
| In a normal world, and if Charlie was with us, and if things had not gone so haywire over these three months, every year, I usually bring on Rabbi David Wolpe to talk about Hanukkah, and I try to bring on either Bishop Barron, or I've done this with you before, or several other Christian evangelicals. | ||
| doesn't matter the denomination, Christians to talk about Jesus and to talk about Christmas. | ||
| And this is the season. | ||
| And I hope, you know, we pre-tape these things, but I always hope people take a little time away from the computer to be with family and friends and everything else. | ||
| So how can I ask you this in the broadest way? | ||
| I mean, what do you want people to know about Jesus, about his birth, about this time of year that is most important? | ||
| Great question, Dave. | ||
| I think we saw evil live September 10th when Charlie was murdered. | ||
| But evil can't exist unless good exists. | ||
| And good can't exist unless God exists. | ||
| Because if there is no God, everything's just a matter of opinion. | ||
| The guy that shot Charlie had an opinion that he ought to die. | ||
| And obviously the rest of us said, no, he shouldn't die. | ||
| That's just a matter of opinion unless there's a moral standard beyond us that we're obligated to obey. | ||
| And that's God himself, his nature himself. | ||
| So without God, nothing's right or wrong. | ||
| There are no rights. | ||
| Everything's just a matter of preference. | ||
| But we know these things aren't just a matter of preference. | ||
| And we know not only did Tyler Robinson do wrong, but we've all done wrong in our lives. | ||
| I mean, we're not perfect people. | ||
| We've sinned. | ||
| We've done wrong things. | ||
| And so the story of Jesus, the reason that Jesus had to come into this world is because since God is infinitely just, he's the standard of justice. | ||
| He can't allow injustice to go unpunished. | ||
| And we've all been unjust. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| So what does he do in order to not punish us because he's also infinitely loving? | ||
| He has to find an innocent substitute to punish on our behalf who takes our punishment upon himself voluntarily. | ||
| Where can he find an innocent substitute in any of us? | ||
| He can't. | ||
| We're all fallen. | ||
| We've all done wrong. | ||
| The only place he can find an innocent substitute is in himself. | ||
| So he adds humanity to his deity and on Christmas he comes into this world. | ||
| And then he grows up. | ||
| He allows the people that rebelled against him to torture and kill him so he could take their punishment upon himself. | ||
| And then he rises from the dead to prove that he really is God. | ||
| And then he offers us the payment that he actually provided to all of us. | ||
| And the way we appropriate that payment is we accept what he's done. | ||
| We trust in him. | ||
| And then we make that message known to everybody else. | ||
| as I said at Charlie's funeral, that Charlie is not in heaven now because he sacrificed himself for his savior. | ||
| Charlie is in heaven now because his savior sacrificed himself for Charlie Kirk. | ||
| So the reason that Christianity is true is because there's evidence for it. | ||
| But the reason it had to happen is because evil entered the world. | ||
| And when evil enters the world, God comes in and says, I'll take the price of evil on myself so you don't have to. | ||
| And if you trust in me, you'll not only be forgiven, you'll be given my righteousness. | ||
| So that's really the reason Jesus had to come. | ||
| I like to say to people when they say, you know, if there is a good God, why is there evil in the world? | ||
| I say, do you realize that Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil? | ||
| If we had never sinned, if nobody had ever done wrong, Jesus wouldn't be necessary. | ||
| He wouldn't have to come into this world. | ||
| But he did come into this world because we're fallen. | ||
| So the message of Easter or the message of Christmas and Easter is that God came into the world to save ourselves from ourselves, from the evil we've done. | ||
| He takes the punishment upon himself. | ||
| And I always say to people, and I said it at Charlie's Memorial, that there's only two things you can get in the afterlife. | ||
| You can get justice or you can get grace. | ||
| Does anybody watching us right now want justice from an infinitely just being? | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I wouldn't make it. | ||
| I'd be toast. | ||
| I want grace. | ||
| The only way I can get grace is if somebody pays my penalty for me, and that's what Jesus did. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because what I love about that message is to me, in some sense, in a weird way, it doesn't matter if you're a believer or the most devout Christian or a Jew or anything else. | ||
| Like you should be able to hear that message and whether you meet it, whether you hear it in a literal sense, and there's obviously always a debate about the literal nature of all this or a metaphorical sense. | ||
| Like, why wouldn't you take a little bit of that? | ||
| And I guess to connect this to where we started, it's like so many, unfortunately, of the people professing to believe in this are behaving in a different way. | ||
| And that's a, well, I guess that's why we pause this time of year. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| And let me say this about that, Dave, because that's a great objection that people bring up to Christianity. | ||
| You know, if Candace claims to be a Christian or if Frank claims to be a Christian, but he's not perfect, or all these people claim to be Christians and they're hypocrites. | ||
| And I like to ask people a question when they bring up the hypocrisy objection. | ||
| And the question is this. | ||
| When somebody plays Beethoven poorly, who do you blame? | ||
| You don't blame Beethoven, right? | ||
| So when somebody plays Jesus poorly, you don't blame Jesus. | ||
| Look, just because I'm not true and beautiful or Candace or anybody that claims to be a Christian isn't true and beautiful doesn't mean Jesus isn't true and beautiful. | ||
| And so I say to people, Newsflash, Christianity is not Christians. | ||
| Christianity is Jesus. | ||
| Keep your eyes on Jesus. | ||
| So that's the message that I think we need to get back to. | ||
| I can't be good on my own, Dave. | ||
| I'm a fallen human being. | ||
| I have a selfish, sinful nature. | ||
| I deserve punishment, but thanks to God himself who added humanity to his deity, he'll take my punishment upon himself because I don't want justice. | ||
| I want grace. | ||
| That's what I want. | ||
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| How do you blend the sort of commercial nature of everything in the modern world versus the deep religious and philosophical notions that you just talked about there? | ||
| And again, I think this is applicable. | ||
| You know, Hanukkah just ended a few days ago, and there's a version of that where it became about eight gifts, not necessarily about the miracle of eight nights of an oil lasting Christianity or Christmas, obviously, in many ways for a lot of people, just becomes how many toys can we put under the tree? | ||
| How do you blend those two things? | ||
| And I'm sure you're asked about this all the time from parents who want to have the rock solid foundation, but then also celebrate in a way that, you know, that everyone's celebrating. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I think you can always bring it back to the truth that the reason we give gifts is because the greatest gift ever given was the gift God gave to us through his son, who takes our punishment upon himself. | ||
| And of course, the wise men brought gifts to Jesus, knowing that he was, and they worshipped him according to the scriptures, right? | ||
| He's a baby, but they're worshiping him because they know he is the sacrifice for their own sin. | ||
| So gift giving comes from Christianity, comes from the truth of Christianity. | ||
| And my friend Bill Federer, I usually have him on my podcast, the I don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast every year to talk about the traditions of Christmas. | ||
| And they all trace back somewhere to the truth. | ||
| Like St. Nicholas was a real guy who gave gifts to people at Christmas, commemorating the gift that God gave us. | ||
| So it traces back, even though some of these traditions have gone a long way off. | ||
| I don't think there's anything wrong with engaging in some of these holiday traditions that have come up over the past couple of centuries, as long as we know the true meaning of the season. | ||
| Is there anything else we should leave people? | ||
| We're trying to keep this a little bit short because I want people to engage with the season and not just be staring at their screens today. | ||
| Well, what I want to commemorate is, or I want to applaud is you, Dave, because unless something's changed, you're not a Christian, but you're open-minded enough to hear the truth of the Christian message and to put me on your platform to let people know about that. | ||
| Why is it that somebody like you and somebody like me who are on the right can withstand maybe ideas they may not agree with and can be friends and talk about these things? | ||
| But some people, it seems on the far left, I guess there are folks on the right too that do this, but folks on the far left, if you don't agree with their ideas or you don't agree with their viewpoint, they often resort to violence, Dave. | ||
| The Prince of Peace came to end all that. | ||
| And I just commend you so much for hearing this message when you might not even personally believe it. | ||
| So thank you for that. | ||
| As I said before, as I've said to you before, when we've done this several times, and we should definitely do it more than once a year, you know, your own personal beliefs and the traditions that you come from and all of those things, I have no problem hearing things that are coming from good people. | ||
| I have no problem engaging with other people's traditions and history and all of those things. | ||
| And nothing you said here, nothing you said here offends me or anything else. | ||
| I think it's great. | ||
| And I think that's why on, you know, three months ago today, when I saw you standing on that line, we were both on the concession line, actually. | ||
| We were. | ||
| And I saw you and, you know, we hugged each other both with tears in our eyes. | ||
| It was like seeing an old friend, even though we've only met in person once, because we're both on a voyage together that I think more people should probably be part of. | ||
| That's right, brother. | ||
| Well, keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| Keep preaching the truth that you do on your, I'm a subscriber, your YouTube channel. | ||
| I see so many of the so many of the videos that you put out. | ||
| And last time we talked, you know, when I was on and we were talking about Christianity and some other things, I asked you privately, I said, hey, Dave, why do you do this? | ||
| You know, every once in a while, you take a break from the political side of things and you were like, man, I just can't stay in this stuff all the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's so depressing. | |
| Give me a positive message. | ||
| Well, that's what it is. | ||
| And that's, you know, it's just because of the way the calendar worked out this year. | ||
| We're at a studio for 17 days. | ||
| And it's like, I love what I'm doing. | ||
| I love the people I'm working with. | ||
| I love creating the things that we create here. | ||
| And then also being able to get away and being able to have these conversations and know that, you know, politics is here. | ||
| There's something else up here. | ||
| Like if you can't acknowledge that, then you will become all the things that we've talked about here that you don't want to become. | ||
| So I just want to say that. | ||
| Let me give you one last thing. | ||
| Let me give you one last thing from Charlie, if I can. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Charlie, being an evangelical Christian like me, used to say this. | ||
| He used to say that politics is not the most important thing we do, but it helps us do the most important thing we do. | ||
| And what he meant by that was that in our country, at least to now anyway, we have religious freedom, right? | ||
| We can freely worship and freely tell people about Jesus or whatever belief system we have. | ||
| That's not the case in other places in the world. | ||
| And this is why I'm so frustrated with Christians or conservatives in general who say, well, I don't get involved in politics. | ||
| Like they'll say, well, I just preach the gospel. | ||
| And I want to say to them, hey, do you realize that the laws that are made in your country affect your ability to preach the gospel and live the gospel? | ||
| I mean, why are there no churches in Saudi Arabia or Iran or North Korea? | ||
| Because politically, they've ruled it out. | ||
| So if we don't protect our ability to preach and live what we believe, we're going to lose it. | ||
| And that's why I commend what you're doing, because you're for freedom of speech. | ||
| You're for freedom of expression. | ||
| You're for freedom of religion, even though we don't agree on everything. | ||
| So we can be allies on those things and friends, even though we don't agree on everything. | ||
| In fact, Charlie was once told, don't be a friend with such and such a person because you don't agree with that person. | ||
| I think I had to do with Candace. | ||
| And he said, hey, if you're going to say you got to agree with everybody on everything to be friends, are you crazy? | ||
| Right. | ||
| The whole point of Charlie and my friendship when we started was that we disagreed on politics and we would discuss it at these college events. | ||
| Well, look, not only did Charlie do incredible things throughout his life, I mean, it's amazing that even post his assassination, this new book has just come out, which is honoring the Jewish Sabbath and why he as a Christian. | ||
| Well, there you go. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| So, you know what? | ||
| We'll put the link to the book down below. | ||
| Great book. | ||
| He wanted me to edit it. | ||
| I hardly had to change a word, Dave. | ||
| It's brilliant. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| 31 years old. | ||
| Frank, we will absolutely do this more than once a year. | ||
| I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and I thank you for taking the time. | ||
| God bless you, Dave. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
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