Dec. 19, 2020 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, going across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Silent night, Olympia.
All is come.
All is bright.
Very few things, nothing actually, can stir the spirit, stir the soul like a song like that at a time such as this.
Christmas is the one day of the year where we can lay down our swords and allow ourselves to reflect on the beauty and the majesty, the wonder and the enchantment of this special and spiritual season.
The battle, as always, will begin anew in the year to come.
But tonight, I encourage you to allow Jesus Christ to stir your soul and bring your spirit to life.
We are here to protect and preserve a culture and a faith that has given light to a dark world.
And it is our duty to ensure that this flame is never extinguished.
This is an hour, ladies and gentlemen, our last hour of our last show before Christmas that is always so very special to me in the annual calendar of TPC.
And for so many years, my personal pastor, my personal minister, David Rogers, has been the one to deliver this message.
As you know, he suffered a stroke a couple of years ago.
And as much as he wanted to be on tonight, he feels as though he does the audience a disservice, as he put it.
It is not the case, but at the same time, I wanted to be respectful of his wishes and let him know how much I love him.
And we'll be breaking bread together before the end of the year.
And we'll be getting together again very soon.
But tonight to stand in his place is a man who we certainly didn't trade down to get.
It is the incredible pastor Brett McAtee, who has become another very dear friend of ours over the course of the last couple of years.
Pastor Brett is the husband of a wife without peer, the father of three children who walk as heroes in the land, and a grandfather of nine.
He is the author of Iron Inc, which is committed to thinking God's thoughts after him.
And he has pastored Christ the King Reformed Church in Charlotte, Michigan for over 20 years, a real brick and mortar pastor.
Pastor Brett, thank you for being with us here at Christmastime.
Well, thanks for having me, James, and Merry Christmas to you and the crew there at Political Cesspool.
Well, thank you so much, brother, and Merry Christmas to you and yours and to your congregation as well.
And as I told you earlier this week, and as we talked about tonight before the show, it's a little bit different appearance tonight, inso much as it's not going to be as conversational.
It will be conversational, but not as much.
I want you, if you don't mind, to present basically a sermon, so to speak.
I want you to share the biblical accounting of the Christmas story, reading from the Holy Scriptures, and take as much time as you need.
I'll be here to take us in and out a break.
We'll start in earnest this segment.
We've got the full hour to develop and cultivate it, and then we'll have a very special message in the final segment of this hour.
But this is how I always enjoy and prefer and really feel the need to spend our last hour before Christmas.
Thank you for being a part of it tonight.
Take it away, Pastor Brett.
Sure.
Well, when we consider Christmas, we are reminded that it doesn't stop in Matthew or the Gospels.
Indeed, the whole Old Testament is about the promised deliverer.
And we understand as we consider Christmas that the reason there was a need for the coming of the deliverer, the Messiah, the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, the reason there was a need for that was the fall in the garden.
And we take that as a very historical fall.
We take Adam and Eve as very historical people.
We understand that they had flesh and blood, and if you'd cut them, they'd bleed.
And so we don't think it's mythology or fairy tale.
We understand it's true, true history.
And what we find in the garden is that God's law, His Word, has authority, and Eve decided, along with Adam, to flout that authority on their own autonomy to say that their word was over God's word.
And as a consequence of that fall, sin entered the world.
And the reason for Christmas is to overturn the effects and the consequences of the fall.
We see that first promise in Genesis 3:15.
We call it in the fancy language the proto-evangelium.
And it's actually the that just means it's the first announcement of the evangel, the gospel.
There in Genesis 3:15, we read, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, and I will crush your head and you will strike and steal.
Here, God is pronouncing curse on the serpent, and here we have the first promise that there's a deliverer coming.
He's described as one who would crush the head of the enemy.
He crushes the head of the serpent.
And this is the kicking off of the Advent, the first advent.
God here is promised to deliver.
And now, fallen but promised redeemed man must wait for this offspring who will crush the head of the serpent.
And as we're now living on the other side of the first advent, we yet remain in a waiting and anticipating mode as we await the second advent of our Lord Christ.
We get hints throughout the scripture in the Old Testament who this Savior is supposed to be.
That's why knowing the Old Testament scriptures are so important because it tells us who our deliverer, who our Messiah, who our Redeemer is going to be.
And as the scripture unfolds from that first promise, Genesis 3:15, we find developed who this Redeemer is in all of his glory.
And it's the Christ, it's Jesus who we worship that the Old Testament speaks of throughout its language, throughout its record.
And so we see that the promise is first there in Genesis 3:15, but it's developed as it goes along.
The first thing we know from Genesis 3:15 about this coming Savior and deliverer, this coming seed, is that he's a destroyer of the entity that would destroy God's creation.
This tells us that who Israel is waiting for is a warrior king and who we worship today remains a warrior king.
This coming deliverer that we see in the New Testament is not some sentimental Hallmark greeting card.
He's more Conaian the barbarian than he is some Lennox figurine.
He comes as a destroyer of the destroyer and the destruction will be bloody.
We know it'll be bloody because The prophecy says that he's going to crush the head of the serpent, and there's no head crushing without blood.
So we find in that promise in Genesis 3 that the coming deliverer will be a head crusher.
And there is the promise that in the crushing of the head, the enemy of the enemy, there will be salvation of God's people.
So as Christ comes, Pastor Brett, the music just came up.
We have to take our first break tonight.
Pardon the interruption, and please pause your most important message right there.
We will pick it up and continue right there, right here, where we're leaving off.
And we continue with Pastor Brett McEntee.
Stay tuned, everybody.
A special Christmas.
Hi, I'm Patty, wife of former Congressman Steve Stockman.
In Congress, Steve saw an impeachment of Eric Holder for his corruption of the Justice Department and his fast and furious gunrunning that caused Border Agent Brian Talley's death.
Steve called for arrest of Lois Lerner for her contempt of Congress as it investigated her targeting of conservative nonprofit groups.
After four years, four grand juries, and millions of tax dollars, Steve Stockman is in prison.
His case involved four checks to nonprofits.
DOJ has one standard for Hillary Clinton, but another for folks like President Trump and my husband.
We've spent all our savings, all Steve's retirement, and much of mine.
Steve Stockman has fought for you and America.
Won't you join me now to fight for Steve?
To help text fight to 444-999, text F-I-G-H-T to 444-999 or go to defendapatriot.com, defendapatriot.com.
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Hey, mom, dad, Mark here.
Wow.
I love college.
Really?
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Truck your message.
Press seven.
So, here I am at college.
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From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I have a question.
Can a nation conceived in liberty carry its head high if it denies protection to the youngest and most vulnerable of its citizens?
Can a country founded on God-given rights continue to thrive without understanding that life is a precious gift from our Creator?
I believe that great nations and great civilizations spring from a people who have a moral compass.
I don't think a civilization can long endure that does not have respect for all human life, born and not yet died.
I will be in earnest.
I will not equivocate and I will not excuse.
Will not retreat an inch and I will be heard.
One thing I promise you, I will always take a stand for life.
We talk about a lot of important things on this radio program throughout the course of the year, but there is nothing more important than this.
And it is nights like this that I regret that we have to take the commercial breaks.
A guest like Pastor Brett McAtee presenting a message such as this at a time such as this at Christmastime, there is nothing more important.
I am thankful to God for the opportunity he gave me 16 years ago to have a radio program that is able to bring this message.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing more important.
If you're looking for a church, if you need fellowship with other men of the faith and you can't find it, that is a separate topic for a separate show.
We know that's a problem, but there is Christ the King Reformed Church in Charlotte, Michigan.
That is the church pastored by Brett McAtee.
Check them out online.
We have listeners in this very audience who congregate with them through their web sermons at charlotte reformed.org.
Now, Charlotte is spelled, as we would know it as, Charlotte, like Charlotte, North Carolina, charlotte reformed.org.
Check it out and make this your fellowship.
If you are searching for a church home, let this be that until you can find an in-person fellowship.
Pastor Brett, if you can continue where you left off.
Obviously, the story of the birth of Christ, the Christmas story, doesn't begin in the Gospels.
It begins in the Old Testament.
That was the point you were making before the break.
Right.
And so we looked at Genesis 3:15.
We noticed that it was the first announcement of the gospel.
We said what it tells us about the coming Messiah, who they were looking for, is that he's going to be a warrior king who does battle.
And I emphasize that because too often in the modern church, the Jesus that is described from pulpits is, well, frankly, he's effeminate.
And so we want to look at Genesis 3:15 and see that he was a warrior king.
He came to crush the head of his enemy, that serpent.
Now, of course, that serpent is emblematic in Satan, but he also crushes those who are the serpents, or the seed of the serpent, the servants of Satan.
And that should give us great hope in this climate.
Christmas reminds us that Christ has come as that promised warrior king in Genesis 3:15 to vanquish and crush his enemies.
And we can take great stock in that.
And that's what he did on the cross is he shed his own blood, but he continues to sit at the right hand of the father.
He is the father's ambassador to be king over the nations.
And Genesis 3:15 begins to give that promise.
Now, as we move through the scriptures in Genesis 12, we find another promise in Genesis 12 where God says to Abraham, He's going to show him a land that he's going to give him.
He's going to make him a great nation.
He's going to make his name great.
He's going to bless him.
And he will bless those who bless him.
And those who curse him, he'll curse.
And then he says, and you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed.
Now we know that ultimately that promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
He is the one to whom the promises come to.
He is the blessing of Abraham to the nations.
But what I want to emphasize here at Christmastime is this promise, Genesis 12, that's spoken of, it's not just for Israel, it's not provincial, it's global, it's for all the nations.
And it reminds us then that the Messiah they were looking for was not only a warrior king, but he's a warrior king that was going to bless all the nations.
And that reminds us and moves us towards an optimistic eschatology.
That is an understanding that Christ is not only going to be some kind of servant of Israel, like many faiths teach, but that he is going to bless all the nations, and all the nations are coming under his authority, and all the nations will bow to his authority, and all the nations will worship him.
And you know what?
Christmas reminds us of that reality.
If we take the Jesus seriously, whom the prophets understood, whom God promised in Genesis 12, we understand that we serve a Jesus who has come at this Christmastime.
We serve a Jesus who is Lord of Lord and is intent to bring all the nations under his authority.
And so that's the next picture we get of Jesus as the one whom the promised blessing comes to.
He is the one that Abraham's seed is blessed.
And we continue to look at that and we continue to understand and build on the idea that we find in the Old Testament who this Christ is that they were waiting for and who this Christ is that we serve.
And we get more and more pictures of who this Christ is.
We see Christ is pronounced later in Genesis as the one they're going to wait for is going to be a king.
There in Genesis 49, it's said that as a lion, it says the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Again, that's plural.
It's another idea of nations.
But here, what we're being taught in Genesis 49 is that the Messiah that's coming is going to be not only a warrior, and he's not only going to be not only over all the nations, but he's going to be royalty.
He's going to have a scepter.
He's a king.
Now, we don't think in terms of kings anymore.
We've lost the sense of majesty being a republic or a democratic people, but there is grandness and splendor in the idea of kingship.
And the Messiah that we serve is king.
And of course, as the scriptures unfold, we learn that he, that is the Christ that we serve, the Christ that came on Christmas.
He is king of kings and lord of lords.
And all obedience is due to him.
So we learn that the specific line the Messiah will come through is the line of Judah.
So we begin to learn more and more information about who this Messiah is that's coming on Christmas, who this deliverer is that will rescue us from the effects of the fall.
We've learned he's a warrior.
We've learned that he's going to make the enemy pay.
He's going to crush his head.
We've learned the reality that all these promises are coming to not just Israel, but to all the nations to us.
We learned that he is going to be a sovereign king.
And as the scriptures continue to unfold, we learn more and more about this Messiah.
We get to Exodus and we get a picture of this deliverer that's anticipated.
And Moses becomes an anti-type of Christ.
He's the picture of the deliverer who's coming.
And Moses becomes the one who delivers God's people out of Egypt's bondage.
And the deliverer here in Moses is connected to the idea of head crushing.
Because as Moses stands before Pharaoh, we have to keep before our mind's eye the idea that Pharaoh is standing there with this emblem on his head that has both a vulture and a serpent on it.
And that is staring at Moses as Moses comes to challenge Pharaoh under God's authority.
Moses is going to be the deliverer of people, and he is facing a serpent.
And we know as the story unfolds that this picture of Christ, that this Moses, that he ends up crushing almost literally the head of Pharaoh as God drowns Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.
And this reminds us again of the task the deliverer is going to accomplish.
The deliverer is going to crush the head of the serpent.
We find this theme all the way through scripture.
Even in Romans, we get the idea that the God of all peace will soon crush the serpent under your feet.
And so again, you want to be the revelation.
It's the serpent that's being cast out.
So again, this theme is over and over articulated, and the Messiah has come this Christmastime to defeat the enemy.
And so no matter what the odds are that are prevailing against us, no matter how dark it may seem, Christmas reminds us that Christ has come to defeat his enemies.
And I trust the fact that our enemies are his enemies, as Christians.
And so there's good tidings, good news in this.
It is the most triumphant story that has ever been told, and it is a real story.
It is a true story.
It is the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.
He was born.
He died.
He rose again.
We are talking about the birth of Christ with Pastor Brett McAtee.
What a wonderful message.
What a timely message.
A message needed for the world.
We'll be right back.
Your daily Liberty Newswire.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
USA Radio News with Dan Narocki.
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Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
Let Earth receive the King.
Let every heart prepare him rule.
And heaven and nature see.
And heaven and nature sing.
And heaven and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns.
Let men their songs apply.
While fields and floods, rocks fields and blaze.
Repeat the sounding joy.
Repeat the sounding joy.
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
There is so much good in this world, but there is nothing better than that.
That is what will bring the strongest of men to his knees.
The majesty of Christmas, the majesty of Jesus Christ, it is not just a story.
It is a true story.
I believe it with every fiber of my being that really happened.
We will win in the end.
This is the most important message we could bring to you on the radio tonight or any night.
And I am so thankful again to have Pastor Brett McAtee with us this evening to share the message.
So, Pastor Brett, we're talking about the story of the birth of Christ, the biblical accounting of the Christmas story.
Now, I think most famously, when people think of the biblical story of the birth of Christ, they go straight to Luke and that telling of the story in the Gospel of Luke.
I'm sure we'll get to that this segment.
You've done a fantastic job thus far.
I'm afraid we're going to run out of time.
We only have one more segment remaining after this.
And I want to let people know how they can have a personal relationship with Christ.
And we'll talk about that in the next segment.
When it gets down to Christmas, the star, the manger, the wise men, that whole story that we all know so well.
Take it away, Pastor Brett.
Sure.
So that's part of what I'm trying to do here.
I'm trying to set the stage from the Old Testament.
Maybe I'm trying to cram a gown to a court jar tonight.
But all I'm trying to communicate is that the Old Testament sets us up on who to look for on this Christmas morning that Matthew's account and Luke's account tells.
It tells us about a coming king who's coming to defeat the enemy, to deliver his people, to reverse the curse and the effects of the fall.
It tells us about a great high priest that is coming, that is going to be the one who is speaking to God for the people.
He's representing us as a great high priest.
And as a great high priest, he's going to deliver us from our sins.
He's going to be our kingsman redeemer.
All of this is the dynamics that are going on that's leading up to this great sense of anticipation for Christ.
For 2,000 years, God's people are expecting this deliverer.
And then, only then, do we find the Matthew account and the Luke account making this incredible sense because finally, the one they've been looking for forever, who was a king who was going to bring peace to the whole earth, to all the nations, the one who was going to be the great high priest in the order of Melchizedek, the one that was going to be a prophet greater than Moses.
That Messiah, that deliverer who arrives there in Matthew's gospel and Luke's gospel.
And he comes, as John later says, John the Baptist, he comes as a lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.
And so we find in Jesus Christ, as we come to Matthew and Luke, is this wonderful, beautiful combination of a Messiah who comes in grand exaltation, so much exaltation that the kings of the Orient come and bow before him, bringing various gifts.
So much exaltation that Herod feels threatened by this child, so threatened that he has to try to wipe him out.
This is the king that was promised.
And yet he comes at the same time in this humiliation, this humiliation where his own parents can't find lodging.
This humiliation wherein he's wrapped in swaddling cloths, that is death blossom.
This humiliation that finds him being born in Bethlehem, one of the least of all the cities.
That is, there is Bethlehem, which means the house of bread.
And there in Bethlehem, that house of bread is born the bread of life that comes down from heaven, that is food for our souls.
And this is the grand story of Christmas.
And this is who the Christ is that we've been waiting for.
And there he is, this Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.
And that bespeaks the idea of his coming atonement.
And Christmas speaks then of our atonement and his saving work on the cross of his shedding the blood.
Not only is he our priest, but he's also our sacrifice.
He offers up not the blood of bulls and goats that could never satisfy for sin, as Hebrew teaches.
He offers up himself as the Lamb of God, as the substitute.
To what end?
Well, the scripture teaches us to save his people from their sin.
You shall name his name Jesus.
So even in his name, do we find the magnificence of Christmas that all of the guilt and sin that is on our shoulders is taken away or can be taken away by those of the elect who look to Christ savingly to have their sins taken away.
For he bore our sins and infirmities, as the Old Testament teaches in Isaiah 53, he bears our sins and infirmities.
He is our substitute.
He dies in our place.
And he not only takes away our sin from us, but he also gives to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that his perfectly lived life is accounted to us.
So now when God looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
All of this is happening on that Christmas morning.
Take, for example, the shepherds that are out watching their sheep.
Many scholars believe that the sheep that those shepherds were watching were the very sheep that were going to be offered up in the temple sacrifice.
And so the angels appear to these shepherds.
Again, humiliation.
They were considered the lowest rung of the social order.
They wouldn't be accepted as witnesses in courts.
God pronounces to these shepherds who are watching those sheep who are likely going to be sacrificed as blood offerings, take away sin.
He takes them out and away from them, and he brings them to the Messiah to worship.
And so they are taken away from those sheep that were anti-types and brought to Christ who is the fulfillment to view those, the one that they had, that had been promised, that is the Lamb of God.
And so the beauty resounds throughout the passage.
Everything reaches an apex point when you come to Matthew's gospel and the Luke's gospel.
And you really can't appreciate all that's going on there in that wonderful account unless you understand everything that started from Genesis 3, 15 and has motored all the way through Malachi.
And now there's been 200 years of silence and God speaks.
And he speaks and he says the time has come.
All the waiting, all the anticipation, all of the wondering if this child is going to be Messiah is now ended and Christ has arrived to the voices of angels, to the visitations of kings, and to the visitations of shepherds.
Here is the Messiah who takes away the sins of the world.
Here is the answer for man's problem.
Here is a way to deliver man from his guilt and then be caught up in the train of Christ who is leading us from victory unto victory.
This is the message of Christmas, not only that my sins are taken away, praise God, not only that I have the righteousness of Jesus Christ, praise God, but also now that I move in terms of his authority, that is Christ's authority and Christ's victory.
So all of this is promised in the Old Testament and then it's fulfilled there by the king, by the shepherds, by that whole wonderful account of the angels coming and speaking to those shepherds.
All of it's fulfilled in the Christ child, even his name, Jesus.
Jehovah is salvation.
And this reminds us at Christmas season, man has fallen, but it's only God who can deliver.
Man cannot work his way up to God.
Man cannot figure out his delivery for himself.
Man has to look and wait upon God to provide a deliverer, and God provides that deliverer in Jesus Christ.
This reminds us then of the great love of God, the great love of God who sent Christ to be our propitiation, to be our turning away of his wrath so that we know his favor.
This reminds us of the love of God, but also reminds us of the justice of God.
It reminds us of the idea that sold that sinners shall surely die.
It reminds us that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
So God shows his love by sending Christ at Christmas, and he shows his justice in as much as that one that he sent is going to be the sin bearer.
And so God's love and mercy kisses in Christ who's born of the Virgin Mary.
We haven't talked about Mary yet.
We haven't talked about her virginity and how the fact that she was born of a virgin fits into the Christmas story.
We're reminded that man has a sin problem.
So if Christ is born of a normal union between a man and a woman, he's born with a sin nature.
And as such, in his sin nature, if he's going to die, he can only die for his own sin.
But God takes care of that by the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary.
Christ is born without a sin nature and not having a sin nature.
He can now die as a sacrifice for the sins of his lot.
So he doesn't have to pay for his own sins, so he can pay for the sins of his people.
Again, this is the grand story of Christmas.
This is all that's happening.
And so we come to Matthew, we come to Luke, and we see these wonderful stories that they get put in Hallmark cards and make little figurines and we have living nativities.
But there's so much that's happening there.
And I don't want to belittle those ideas.
They have their place.
But I want us to see the grand magnificence of it all and how it ends up from there building men and women who no longer have to spend their lives trying to get rid of sin and guilt and misery,
but instead can take victory in every area of life underneath the authority of Jesus Christ as dominion men and women and can build great societies and great civilizations where wonderful peace and order is established in those social orders they build.
And this is the problem with modern man.
He's forgotten Christmas.
He's forgotten the coming of Christ.
He's forgotten what all that was about, and instead— Hold on right there, Pastor Brett.
Hold on right there, my friend.
We got to take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
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Daddy, why is somebody seal that gold?
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It's stored safely in the UPMA vault, securely and insured.
But the SP 500 of Perform Gold.
Daddy, gold is a bad investment.
Some people do think of it that way, but actually, gold is money.
And as members of the United Precious Metals Association, we can use our gold at any store, just like a credit card.
Or I can ask them to drop it right into Mommy and Daddy's bank account because we're a UPMA member family.
Find out more at UPMA.org.
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Welcome back.
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Faith in Jesus Christ has produced some of the most enduring and endearing works of art, scientific accomplishments, exploration, you name it.
The greatest accomplishments mankind has ever made has been done under the banner of Christ, some of the greatest victories we've ever made.
This is, you can hear the passion in Brett McEtee's voice tonight, ladies and gentlemen.
Every time he's on, it's a show to be circled on our broadcasting calendar.
But tonight, especially, and for good reason, there is that extra passion.
I was just texting with a friend.
Even I am enjoying the show tonight.
I mean, I always enjoy the show, but even I am enjoying just being a listener and listening to Brett McAtee Hold Court.
I want to thank the audience for making this possible, for your contributions to keep us on the air.
I want to thank Sam Bushman and the network for giving us a platform to bring a message such as this.
And of course, Brett, you were talking about the aspect of Mary, the mother of Christ, and the fact that she brought Christ into this world as a virgin.
And we want to get to that.
We want to get to that right now, in fact.
I don't know if we want to cover this first or if you want to tuck this back and cover it at the end.
We have about eight minutes remaining, but there is one thing I want to be sure to have you address tonight before you continue with the biblical accounting of the Christmas story.
And that is, if people are searching for Christ, Christmas is a wonderful time to find him.
But how can they do it?
How can a person have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and find salvation that transcends our existence on this temporal plane?
That is a question I want you to be sure to answer.
It's an altar call.
It's an invitation that is given at most Christ-believing churches.
I want to be sure to give that in with the remainder of the Christmas story tonight as well.
You can take it now or take it later.
We have eight minutes remaining.
Take it away, Pastor Brett.
Sure.
And that's an incredible setup and an incredible question that needs to be answered.
Just as we started the Christmas story, this answer starts with the idea of owning and realizing our sin.
There's going to be no need for anybody to think that they need help unless they first see their sin.
And so salvation begins with the understanding that Man is sundered from God.
And that, and people don't like to hear what they're going to hear now, but that God's wrath is upon man who has sinned against him.
And so the idea of seeing your own sin and seeing God is big go together, God is holy.
We see that in Isaiah 6.
Even the seraphim that announce God, all they can do is shout, holy, holy, holy.
So once fallen man sees God as big, He then instantly also at the same time sees himself as small and as a sinner.
And then the question, then the question burns, how can I find a merciful God?
That was Luther's question.
And the sinner understands that he has to answer that question or else he's coast.
And that's where the gospel begins.
And so the gospel begins with men telling those who are outside of Christ, God is big, God is holy, God is transcended, and man is small.
And then they go from there, they go from there to say, and here's the solution.
Here's how you can find a merciful God who can take away your sin, who can deal with your sin problem, and how you can enter into his presence without fear of his wrath and the wrath to come.
And that answer is found in Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, promised through the Old Testament scriptures, arrived and fulfilled all that he was set apart to do as a son of God.
Jesus Christ is the answer to how we can have peace with God.
All other religions, whether it's Judaism, whether it's Islam, whether it's Confucianism, all other religions are dead ends.
Only biblical Christianity, only Jesus Christ can provide salvation.
And the way that he does it is that he goes in obedience to the Father's design.
He goes to the cross, bearing the sins of the elect, so that God's wrath might be turned away, God's honor fulfilled and justified.
And so men can sue God that, as it were, they can poly to make peace with God because of the finished work of Jesus Christ and Christ alone.
And so we see in salvation that God does all the doing.
He points out our sin, which is great, although it doesn't look a lot yet at the time.
He reminds us how grand he is, how transcendent, how holy, how good he is.
He causes us to see what miserable creatures we are, but he doesn't leave us dangling.
He provides an answer in Christ, who is the one who taketh away the sins of all those who are weary and heavy laden, and he promises to give them rest.
And so if we look to Christ and trust in the Christ of the Bible, we can have salvation.
And what is it that we're delivered of?
We're delivered of and from our sin, and we're delivered to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And that has implications, one of which is that we walk in the ways of God.
We take serious his law word.
We delight in his law both day and night, as the psalmist did.
We seek to live, to make it our goal to please God.
We know him, and now we want to make him known to other sinners as men who were beggars who found bread, who want to tell other beggars where they can find bread.
That's the glory.
That's the glory of finding Christ.
And that's how it is we get rid of the sin and guilt.
That if we don't do it this way, we end up spending our lives trying to foist our sin and guilt on other people, or we are masochistic and beat ourselves with our own sin and guilt.
We want to be real men, free men again, then we have to find a way to get rid of sin and guilt.
And the only place that can be found is in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
That is the gospel message.
That is how one finds belief.
That is how one lives a good life.
Pastor Brett, how inspiring you've been tonight.
This has been, I say again, I said it a moment ago, how much I have enjoyed being a listener to this radio program tonight.
Your message tonight, perhaps the most important hour of radio we've produced all year.
CharlotteReformed.org.
Check it out, ladies and gentlemen.
Be a part of Pastor McAtee's fellowship one way or another.
Receive the message even as we are broadcasting live tonight from our good friends Rich and Janice in Nashville.
Let the audience know where to listen to him on Sundays as we do.
Well, that again is charlotte reformed.org.
And that is Charlotte spelled as if it were Charlotte, North Carolina.
Charlotte Reformed.org.
Give Pastor Brett our regards.
Tell him we're looking forward to tomorrow's message as we do every Sunday.
That pastor is from Rich and Janice in Nashville.
And as I asked you a moment ago, how can people come to know a personal relationship with the Lord and Savior?
How can they find salvation in Christ and live for eternity in heaven?
How can they do it?
They just, they turn to Christ.
They give up on themselves and their own attempts to save themselves because everybody you meet is trying to save themselves in one way or another.
They give up on that and they decide that the only way that they can have life beyond this life and life abundantly in this life, the only way that they can have it is by trusting Jesus Christ.
They seek to follow, they seek to find somebody who will preach the truth to them.
And if people, your listeners, are having a hard time finding that, get a hold of me.
I might be able to point them to churches that will announce this gospel, the gospel that can find relief.
The gospel is good news.
It's the good news that God does all the doing.
He does all the saving as we look to Christ and trust in him.
But there has to be faithful ministers.
How shall they hear unless somebody is sent?
And right now there's a dearth of men who are faithfully articulating the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But there are men out there.
Praise God.
There are men in every state out there.
So if you can't find a church, let me know.
I may not be able to help you.
I may be able to help you.
But even if you can't find a church, you can drop into Charlotte Christ the King.
You can establish a friendship or relationship with me.
I do what I can to help.
I want to be there for God's people.
I want to be an encourager, and I want to help the saints move on and remind them that their only hope is in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Brett, thank you so much for giving us wonderful final hour before Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you.
Thank God for you and your ministry.
Can't wait to have you back on in the weeks and months and years to come.
But tonight was particularly special.
We won't forget it.
Pastor Brett McAtee, everyone, for Keith Alexander, for the rest of our staff, for all the ladies who were with us in the second hour, I'm James Edwards.