Dec. 21, 2024 - 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, known 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.
We have something very special here, ladies and gentlemen.
Dare I say something precious here?
All of these years, all of the people we've worked with, this is Christmas time on our program, and it just cuts a level above.
It is next level.
Welcome back to the third and final hour, our last hour before Christmas.
And it has been our tradition, our privilege over the last few years to bring on Pastor Brett McAtee of Christ the King Reformed Church in Charlotte, Michigan, to present the biblical account of the birth of Jesus Christ.
And as I was telling Brett in the break in between hours, that I never want to get to the point where I expect that we will always be able to do this, that he will always be able to peel away an hour from his last Saturday before Christmas to be with us.
It is always to our benefit and the credit to the program to have him on to present this message.
It is an honor to be able to present him to you and to have his time.
And Pastor, this year, doubly so as you kicked off the Christmas season, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, and at least for those who are not amongst our Orthodox friends or wrapping up the Christmas season this weekend, thank you for being with us again, my brother.
Thank you, James.
It's really, I am humbled for the opportunity.
I'm always thankful for the warm welcome I get from you and also from the messages I get from your listeners out there.
In our time together this evening, as we consider again the theme of Christmas, I want to consider Christmas in terms of its implications for our everyday thinking.
In other words, I don't want to only consider the outward trappings of the Christmas nativity, although we are going to include those.
We're going to look at the meaning behind the visitation of angels and the virgin conception and the wise men traveling and astronomical signs.
But I want to also consider the impact of those truths on our thinking.
We'll start with one of the purposes of the coming of Christ, and that was to deal with man's sin problem.
We don't typically talk about man's sin problem at Christmas because, well, because sin is such a cringe subject for even the 21st century Christian, however, talking about Christmas without talking about sin is, well, it's like talking about losing weight without talking about your calorie intake.
So the connection between Christmas and sin is found there in the Christmas passage in Matthew 21, 21.
After the angelic visitation to both Joseph and Mary announcing the coming of Christ, the angel tells Joseph this, and you shall name his name Jesus, for he shall save his people, and you know how this ends, from their sin.
So closely is the subject of sin tied up with Christmas, that the name of the child born of a virgin is the name that means Jehovah is salvation.
And as we know, that salvation is salvation from sin.
The authors of our many Christmas carols, they put this idea in our mouths as we sing our Christmas songs.
And we sing our Christmas songs, not the winner songs offered up by certain peoples in the mass media.
We sing our Christmas songs, and it goes way back.
For example, Ambrose in the early church, one of the early church bishops, he could write, and they were singing, Thou the Father's only Son, hast over sin the victory won.
Boundless shall thy kingdom be.
When shall we see its glory see?
We likewise sing in our Christmas carols, for example, in O Holy Night.
I almost want to break out in singing here.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
And hark the herald angels sing.
We belled out, peace on earth and mercy mile, God and sinners reconciled.
And God rescue married gentlemen.
We find hints of this problem of sin that Christ at Christmas comes to deal with.
We sing, remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
In the hymn, Lo, how a rose air blooming, it likewise speaks of sin.
True man yet very God from sin and death now save us.
And in the old little town of Bethlehem, we sing, oh, holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray, cast out our sin, and enter in, be born to us today.
And this is only a Whitman sampler.
We could go on and on for this segment.
In most of our Christmas carols, there is this idea that the one whose name means Jehovah is salvation, that he entered into this world to deal with sin.
And so herein is the good news of Christmas.
The good news of Christmas is the proclamation that Christ has dealt with the sins of his people.
And as we know, sin is defined as selfishness.
It's the attempt to put ourselves at the center of all reality.
It's the attempt to de-God God and end God ourselves.
Sin is treason against God, but also treason against ourselves.
Sin is the determination that God and his word will not rule over us and the determination that we ourselves will be God.
And as the Heidelberg Catechism teaches us, sin makes us miserable because we carry this guilt that apart from Christ, we can never escape.
So the human race had a sin problem where no permanent solution was present until the coming of Christ.
And the message of Christmas is that there's now a permanent solution for this sin, this misery, this guilt.
And that permanent solution could be found nowhere else than in the Jesus Christ of biblical Christianity.
That is why the angels could sing peace on earth and goodwill towards men upon whom his favor rests.
In this sending of Jesus the Christ, the triene of God has demonstrated his goodwill by providing an answer to our deepest problem.
And our deepest problem is our sin problem.
So we're alienated from God.
We're under God's just wrath for our sin.
We're alienated from others and we're alienated from ourselves.
But because of the coming of Christ, it's now why we can sing with Isaac Watt, no more let sins and sorrows grow.
A few years later, after the incarnation, Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, will say, Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.
And so Jesus the Christ comes as the answer to man's greatest problem, his sin problem.
And Christmas cannot be understood unless we understand that Christ came to deal with man's problem of sin.
Even the fact that Jesus the Christ is both 100% God and 100% man is in consideration of dealing with man's sin.
Jesus is born very man, very man, because as man's sinned, only man can pay the penalty, the just penalty against sin.
Jesus is born very God and very God because only God can withstand the just penalty against sin in man's place.
So if we don't understand this sin problem, if we don't understand our sin problem, then we'll not understand Christmas.
We might get caught up in the majesty of the choirs.
We might get caught up in the feel-goods of the friends and too much eggnog.
We might get caught up in the family around us and the general festivity of the season.
But unless we understand that Jesus Christ was born to save peoples, to save nations, to save the cosmos from theirs and its sinful treason against the triumphant God, we'll miss out on the joy of Christmas.
We will instead recite only one verse of Longfellow.
In despair I bowed my head.
There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
So in this Christmas season, we are reminded that because of the coming of Jesus the Christ, we who by God's grace alone have centered our whole lives on Jesus as our sin bearer have reason to be full of mirth and laughter and merriment.
It is to us, it is indeed a Merry Christmas where our sin has been taken away.
We have reason for all the joy that's found in the Christmas season.
Our joy is found in the reality that Christ is coming and has been our sin bearer and our sins have been forgiven.
We have reason for hope, hope in this life, in all of our sundry ages, but also hope when this life begins to ebb away as we grow old and evil.
We have great joy during this Christmas season because the penalty of our sin has been paid for.
We have reason for confidence.
We have reason for courage in the face of all that the enemy can bring.
Because our sin has been paid for, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ who loves us.
Because our sin is dealt with each and every Christmas can be rightly characterized as Merry.
As we continue to consider the ideas that are in Christmas, I want to talk also not only about sin, but this idea of salvation.
And of course, sin and salvation are cheek by jowl.
They're implied in one another.
And we're reminded again here that the name of the baby Jesus was to be, was to be Jesus.
And as I said earlier, because he would save his people from their sins.
And so we see not only the idea of sin, but salvation.
And when the top of the hour comes back on, we'll start probing more this idea of Christmas and salvation.
As only Pastor Brett McAtee can, if your spirit is being stirred, please check out charlottetreformed.org.
There you can, as other TPC listeners do, join him for his service online every morning from his brick and mortar church in Michigan.
We'll be right back.
Hello there, everyone.
It's Lacey again with a friendly reminder from James Edwards that TPC's Christmas fundraising drive is now underway and your response would mean so much to us.
20 years ago, this radio program was the first of its kind and paved the way for so many others that would follow.
Today, TPC continues to lead the way in mainstreaming our movement by attractively presenting our message in a way that comes across as well-reasoned, relatable, and trustworthy.
We remain so thankful for the relationship that we share with our incredible audience.
Nothing would be possible without you, and it continues to be an honor to serve you.
As our 20th anniversary year comes to a close in December, we look forward to building on the unprecedented success that we have shared together.
Our Christmas fundraising drive is by far the most important of our quarterly appeals, and we would be thrilled if you could remember TPC during this season of hope and goodwill.
Thank you for your support of this groundbreaking broadcast.
Merry Christmas to you and your family from all of us here at TPC.
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Receiving text messages even now in real time.
One of the ladies who was with us in the last hour texting, I love Brett.
And to know him is to love him.
Pastor Brett McAtee have a Christmas card right here on the desk at the studio from a listener in Kentucky.
In fact, a pastor in Kentucky.
And he writes, Dear James, I love your program.
It's like going to church because you teach the truth and encourage others to tell the truth.
Truth is rare on the radio, TV, books, or newspapers.
You have great guests who know the truth and speak it.
And he writes that this is my favorite program.
If you are struggling to find a church that is giving you spiritual nourishment, I know there is no substitute for a brick and mortar church, but Pastor Brett McAtee is the shepherd of a brick and mortar church in Michigan.
You can find it at charlotte reformed.org.
If there is not one in your local area, do as other TPC listeners do and join him online.
Pipe him into your house every Sunday morning or whenever you will be ministered to in a way that is strong, masculine example of Christianity.
And we're so thankful to know Pastor Brett as my own lifelong pastor texted me this week as we were sharing Christmas hymns together.
He wrote, the babe that laid in an animal's food trough is in fact the incarnate Son of God.
And people ask, do we really believe that?
The answer is yes.
We really believe that.
Pastor Brett, back to you.
Amen.
I really believe that.
Amen.
So we were talking about sin in our first segment in relation to this Christmas season.
Can't understand Christmas without understanding the reality that Christ came as the answer to our sin problem.
But the answer is the solution to our sin problem that's presented in the birth of Jesus the Christ.
Christ comes as our salvation.
He is God's salvation.
He is Emmanuel, God with us.
So the idea of salvation includes the idea of deliverance or the idea of rescue or the idea of full health.
And Jesus is our salvation because as a Messiah, he came to pay the penalty that our sin deserved.
And the just penalty for sin is, well, as we know, is death.
The scripture teaches that the earned pay or the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
And Jesus delivers us from our sin and provides deliverance from sin's penalty by paying the death that we rightly owed as the proper penalty of death.
So the idea of Jesus being our salvation by his death is present in the Christmas account.
First, we're told in the Christmas narrative of these shepherds, the shepherds who are keeping watch over their flock by night, and they're visited by angelic choir.
And the angels tell them that they would find Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
And these shepherds, as God's design would have it, were shepherds who were responsible for watching the flocks of sheep, out of which some would be used for the sacrificial rites in the temple worship.
So these were not just your ordinary shepherds or your ordinary sheep.
These are for the particular purpose of sacrifice.
And those sheep, in order to be sacrificed, had to be without fault or blemished.
And this was the means by which sin was procured before the coming of Christ.
And Christ is the one that was anticipated by the sacrifice of these sheep that these shepherds watched.
So you have shepherds who are keeping their watch over their flocks by night, departing from their charge, their job, at the injunction of the angels so they could keep watch over the one who would provide salvation by bearing the death penalty that sin required.
They had been working their whole lives on with sacrificial lambs, and now they're going to see the Lamb of God without spot or blemish who taketh away the sins of the world.
These shepherds are instrumental and integral to the Christmas narrative.
And we are the richer for having them.
And when the shepherds finally arrive, they find the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
Well, as it would be, shepherds knew something of swaddling clothes as they would use themselves swaddling clothes, that is, tight linen, when baby lambs are born.
They would tightly wrap around these newborn lambs the swaddling clothes in order to give them, that is, the lambs, a snug feeling of remaining in the womb.
So these Levitical shepherds who keep watch over their lambs used for the sacrifice of sins in temple worship were told to go and see he whose name was God is salvation.
And what did they see?
They see a child swaddled like their lambs were swaddled.
And all this pointing to the fact that they were now witnessing the fulfillment of all their sacrificial lambs pointed.
Because of this child providing deliverance by his death, salvation, the sacrificial system would forever end and they'd be out of work.
So salvation by the death of this Lamb of God is right there in the Nativity scene.
Like the requirement in the Old Testament for sacrifices to be without spot and blemish, this Lamb of God, this child of the virgin, is without sin and does not pay for his own sin, but can pay for the sins of his people.
But salvation by death of a substitute is also hinted at elsewhere in the Christmas scene.
In the arrival of the wise men, some two years later, they bring gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
And we sing about this myrrh gift when we sing We Three Kings.
We sing as if we are the kings presenting the gift of myrrh.
Myrrh is mine, we sing.
It's bitter perfume, breeze of life of gathering gloom, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
Myrrh was a product of Arabia, and it was obtained from a tree by making incisions in the bark and allowing the gum to flow out.
It was a spice, but it was a spice that was used for embalming.
It was also sometimes, interestingly enough, mingled with wine to form a libation.
Such a drink then was given also to our Savior when he was dying on the cross.
So myrrh symbolizes bitterness, suffering, affliction, and death.
And it's all there in the Christmas scene.
And it's all bespeaking the fact that Christ has come to do the work of salvation, to deliver us from our sin and misery.
So during this Christmas season, our merry man is anchored.
It's anchored in the fact that the Son of God, who was and is 100% God, 100% man, was born with the purpose of fulfilling all that God had promised through the centuries, as recorded in the only place where God's word is recorded, that is the Holy Scriptures.
For generations and generations, God's people have been looking for the one who would deliver his people.
And now, now, now that moment had come with the birth of Christ.
Angels sing, shepherds gain, gaze, wise men worship.
Kings are troubled that they'll be replaced.
And all of this is because the long-promised salvation and savior has arrived.
It may strike us as counterintuitive that the scripture exploits with all this joyous frenzy over the virgin conception and the birth of a child who came to be, as Isaiah says, despised and rejected by men, as Paul can say, making himself of no reputation.
But all of this is in order to provide our deliverance, our salvation from sin by a sacrifice and the cross whereby he pays for our sins and he reckons to our accounts his obedience so that we can now have peace with God.
This is why in the small church I serve here in Michigan, every year at this time we place we place on the daos and in the front a cross and a cradle.
We do this to communicate that the wonder of Christmas is found in the fact that it's all prelude to God being glorified by the obedience of the Son and providing salvation from the just penalty of sin that we should have paid but could not have paid.
So Christmas demonstrates the faithfulness of God to his promises made all through the scriptures from Genesis to Malachi.
God promised to provide salvation and the Old Testament is largely one long account giving us the prequel of the New Testament which is the fulfillment of all the prequel anticipated as in the Old Testament.
So listeners in this Christmas 2024 where are you have you found yourself caught up in the New Testament account so that the salvation provided for by Christ for his people is now your salvation?
Jesus said, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
There are those perhaps who are seeking to bear their own sins that are listening and they're discovering the misery that comes with the attempt of self-salvation.
So in the name of Christ as his minister, as his spokesman, I tell you that you could be done with all your guilt, with all the misery, with all your rebellion, and know for the first time the joy of Christmas.
And so we find that Christmas brings salvation and it brings salvation to all who call upon the name of the Lord.
And there's no more fulfilled life.
There's no more blessed life than to have and know that your sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ our Lord.
As we continue to consider all that's in the Christmas story, pursuing the implications of Christmas, we want to talk a little bit more about the narrative.
We've learned so far that we are wedded to certain truths regarding sin and salvation if we believe the Christmas story.
What we're doing here then is just limiting out for us something that a church father at the beginning of the 20th century said in a quote I want to give you.
His name was James Orr.
He said, quote, it's not a long quote, quote, he with his whole heart believes in Jesus, the Son of God, is thereby committed to much else besides.
He's committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation history, or to a view of human destiny found only in Christianity.
And so that's what I'm trying to unpack in our time together: to say, here it is, we believe in Christmas, we believe in all of the is told in the Christmas story, but there is the implications that have to continue to be worked out.
And as we come back to the next segment, we'll continue to look to tease these things out.
This man, Pastor Brett McAtee, what a message.
The last Saturday before Christmas, and he even knows when to take a cue.
He hears the music.
What a guy.
Check him out at charlottereform.org.
We'll be right back.
Thank you for your message, Pastor.
Stay tuned.
Pursuing Liberty, using the Constitution as our guide.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
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Well, the government taking some major banks to court, charging them with fraud risk linked to a popular money transfer tool.
The federal regulator has sued J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says the banks failed to protect hundreds of thousands of consumers from rampant fraud on the popular payment network, Zell, in violation of consumer financial laws.
That is correspondent Ron Taylor.
Now, two of the banks are disputing the allegations, as is the company that operates Zelle.
Since it was launched in 2017, Zelle has become one of the most widely used peer-to-peer payment networks in America.
Drivers and airline passengers, get ready.
It's shaping up to be another record for holiday travel in America.
AAA predicts more than 119 million people will travel at least 50 miles.
Breaking news and analysis, townhall.com.
Grubhub will fork over $25 million to settle a dispute over alleged deceptive business practices with Illinois' Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission.
Attorney General Kawame Raul said that consumer complaints prompted the investigation.
Raul and FTC chairperson Lena Kahn said Grubhub misled customers about delivery costs and the benefits of a Grubhub subscription, deceived drivers about the amount of money they could make, and listed restaurants without their knowledge or consent.
Grubhub has denied the allegations but says the settlement is the best way to move forward.
John Scott reporting.
Baseball Hall of Famer and stolen bass king Ricky Henderson has died.
He was 65.
He had a lengthy career, 25 years, but he turned out to be the greatest bass stealer of all time.
More on these stories at townhall.com.
God tells us in Hebrews 10, 25 that we should gather together to worship him.
This isn't a request.
It is a command.
Going to church isn't an option.
It is your Christian duty.
With the hellish apostasy of mainstream churches, attending church these days can be difficult.
That is why your King James Only, traditional services in the ancient Church of St. Mary Magdalene, are live online.
And I invite you to gather with our congregation to study God's Holy Word.
Join us every Sunday at the TemplarChurch.com and especially on the first Sunday of the month for Holy Communion.
This do in remembrance of me is also a command that all Christians must obey.
I'm Reverend Jim Dowson, ordained Puritan minister, nationalist, and a veteran pro-life campaigner.
Tune in to my weekly sermons at thetemplarchurch.com.
Based in Ireland, this old-time religion is the faith that built America.
God bless you.
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Come to the night, he who's the angels sing.
Come adore and be Christ the Lord of you will keep us day of God.
As Pastor Brett McAtee said earlier, ladies and gentlemen, there is something about it that makes you want to sing.
And every carol that he cited tonight, we have played earlier in the program.
If not, while he was on the air with us this evening in this, our third and final hour before Christmas, this is Christmas, and this is our program at its best.
And it's a privilege, an honor.
What could I say that I haven't already said before?
But to do this show, to do this hour, Pastor Brett was on with us a few weeks ago, and as he always does, seamlessly reconciles our spiritual and cultural and yes, our racial heritage.
He was on with us the first Saturday and after Thanksgiving to talk about the Faith and Heritage compilation.
He has been attacked by the SPLC.
He has endured the injustice from the so-called mainstream media, and he has never backed down, nor has his congregation that supports him.
And I know, Pastor, this night is about the one in whose name we celebrate Christmas.
It is not about us, but I think I would be remiss if I did not mention just a little bit of the feedback here that we have received so far.
Brett is a very good preacher.
We have been listening to him for years, even when we went to a local church.
Another, Brett is the real deal.
Thanks for having him on.
Another, I have never listened to a pastor that is so well read and understands how the churches have gotten into such a big mess.
And still more, thank you for hosting Brett.
He is a giant.
Brett keeps getting better and better and more comfortable on your show.
I agree with all of that.
I know that is not the reason for your appearance tonight, but the fact that it is resonating, there are a lot of organizations out there that talk about some of the things that we talk about.
I love being able to talk about this through the lens of the Christian faith.
And never is it in sharper focus than when you are on with us, Pastor.
And with that having been said, I've taken up too much time this segment.
Back to you, brother.
Yeah.
To God be the glory.
What we're doing here, another way we can speak about it is we're just attaching the worldview that we have to own in order to be able to embrace Christmas.
If you wanted to put it in $10 words, when we look at the doctrine of sin, the first segment was the $10 word is Hamartiology.
We have a particular doctrine of sin as Christians that we have to own.
The second one, the $10 word is soteriology, which means the doctrine of salvation.
There is a particular doctrine of salvation that we own.
And make no mistake about it, every philosophy, every worldview, every person that you meet is trying to be saved.
They're just not trying to be saved by Christ.
In this third segment, we throw out another idea that's found in Christmas.
It's a big word.
You probably haven't heard it.
We'll explain what it means.
It's just the word of ontology.
And in its broadest meaning, it means the idea of the study of being.
It considers the nature of reality.
And what I'm suggesting is that the Christmas text obliges us to have a certain understanding of the nature of reality.
As we come here, we understand that the ontology looks at the idea of what categories, if any, we can sort put existing things into.
What is the nature of reality?
How do we understand that?
First, there, we have the reality that we find in the Gospel of John in this Christmas season.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
Now, when we're looking at ontology, or that is that we're trying to understand how do we put things into different categories, sometimes we use the word metaphysics.
This Christmas text of John 1-1 teaches us as Christians that we hold to an ontology or a metaphysic that insists that there is a world that is objective to us and is outside of us.
In other words, the world isn't our projection.
What that means is everything is not subjective.
Because the world was created by the word, who was in the beginning with God and was God, because the world was created by the word, there is in the world ultimately an order that is rational and so has objective meaning.
And so we understand that when we accept Christmas, we accept this idea that the world ultimately has order that is rational and so is meaning has meaningful meaning.
And during this Christmas season, we're reminded that there is therefore a creator-creature metaphysic.
That is to say that the creator and the creature are distinct.
And when we're talking about ontology, there is a distinction between the creator and the creature.
As creatures, we're not little gods who can impose our arbitrary meaning on the cosmos.
Christmas reminds us that there is a creator-creature distinction.
That is our ontology.
Unlike modern man, who loves to play God and delights in thinking he can impose his arbitrary meaning on reality.
Or unlike modern man who wants to say that everything is material and there is no such thing as a spiritual.
Christianity comes along in the Christmas story.
And when John 1-1, we find that there are other categories of reality besides material or subjective.
The Christmas text teaches us that there exists the categories of the natural and the supernatural, of material and spiritual.
And their reality, the reality that we live in is comprised of each.
Look at the text.
The text is at the beginning of chapter 1.
It gives us the natural genealogy of Jesus.
Now I'm talking about Matthew 1.
In Matthew 1, another Christmas text, we have 14 generations chronicled into three epics.
The whole purpose is to demonstrate, by the way of the natural, that Jesus belongs to the line of David.
And so it can be the promised Messiah spoken of all through the scriptures.
When we turn to Luke in the Christmas passage, it does the same thing with Mary's line.
So both by patrilineal and matrilineal lines, Jesus is the promised Messiah since he's the line of David.
Something that had to be true of the Messiah.
And all this, we might say in one sense, is very natural, though, of course, you would say it was all guided by a supernatural providence.
But reality is not merely made up of the natural.
A Christian ontology insists that there's a supernatural category that we see plastered all over the incarnation or the Christmas narratives.
There is Elizabeth, the old woman cousin of Mary, who conceives when her time of fertility had long passed.
There is Mary, maybe 12 or 13 years old, the virgin giving birth to a son.
There are angels freaking everywhere in the Christmas narrative.
There is this inexplicable star that guides wisely to their destination.
The supernatural abounds.
And so if we're going to be Christians and accept the Christmas narrative, we have to have an ontology that says there's a natural and the supernatural.
There is this duality that exists in unity.
If we are to believe the Christmas narrative, then we must have to have this ontology.
And of course, that immediately rules out people who want to assist that all realities, as I said earlier, as material, or those who want to insist that all reality is non-material.
And those exist.
Those are the new age types that you bump into.
It's interesting that when we consider the supernatural scripture, we see it in Genesis and creation.
But after that, most of the supernatural, what we call miracles, happens in only three relatively brief periods of redemptive history.
You have the time of Moses and Joshua.
You have the time of Elijah and Elisha.
And you have the time of Christ and the prophets.
If you look through the scriptures, these are the times when the miraculous or the supernatural explodes upon the scene.
And aside from those three intervals, the only supernatural events recorded in scripture were isolated incidents.
So in these times that we find the scriptures of the exploding supernatural, one finds advancing points in redemptive history.
So a Christian ontology, again, has to embrace the idea that reality has a duality and unity aspect to it.
There's a supernatural reality and a natural reality.
As Christians, we affirm that we have a supernatural component about us, ourselves.
We have a soul, but we also have a natural component.
We have a body.
We have a corporeal aspect to us and our brains.
We could cut our heads open and find them, but we have a spiritual aspect to us.
We have minds, and you can't find a mind.
Any Christianity that does not embrace this duality and unity, this ontology cannot make heads or tails out of the Christmas narrative where we find the supernatural and the natural cheek by jowl.
We find these genealogical tables and we find angels serenading peasant shepherds.
Neither makes sense without the other.
This is our own Christian ontology.
This ontology is everywhere present in our confessions.
When we speak of Jesus being 100% God, 100% man, we are speaking of a Christian ontology that finds the supernatural and the natural in our Lord Christ.
When we speak of the inspiration of scripture, this ontology is right there.
It's right there with us as we say the scripture is 100% breathed out by God, but also 100% characteristic of the writers who penned it.
The Bible is a human-divine document.
There is duality and unity.
Whereas about Christianity, this fantastically mind-expanding truth that the supernatural and the natural are not strangers, but exist as duality and unity.
That's another example in the means of grace.
As we come to the table and to the baptismal font, the natural and supernatural are always present together.
And so we have in our Christmas narrative the reality of a particular understanding of reality.
And we'll talk more about this in our next segment.
One more segment, the final before Christmas.
We're spending it in a way that I could not improve upon with Pastor Brett McIntyre.
Stay tuned, everybody.
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What a beautiful, what a glorious, what a triumphant time of year.
This year where the spirit of family and togetherness is palpable.
We have something special here with our community, our listening community, our family of listeners.
And Pastor Brett is with us this week before Christmas.
There is something special that is happening here.
I hope you can feel it.
I feel it.
I think you do.
Another message in, I'm looking at Brett's website, and we hope to incorporate his sermons and teachings.
This is from a wonderful family who listens to this program.
Pastor, this is Christmas time.
I want to thank you again for sharing this message with us.
When it all comes into focus, the battle begins anew with the dawn of another year, but not tonight, not yet.
Tonight, we focus on the one whose glory we are here to illuminate tonight.
And Pastor, with that having been said, the last 10 minutes of our broadcast before Christmas is entirely yours.
Very good.
So we've been looking at the Christmas Nativity account, the narrative, the scriptural account, and we've been seeing that in those accounts, we not only have the joy of what happened, but we're looking at the fact that inside of that worldview, there is an understanding or a worldview that we have to have to really be able to embrace this account.
We've looked at the doctrine of sin that Christmas requires us to embrace.
We've looked at the doctrine of salvation that Christmas requires us to embrace.
We looked at the doctrine of the nature of reality or ontology as Christmas.
And we end this evening by looking at the doctrine of knowledge or how do we know what we know?
And how does Christmas speak to that?
And the $10 word for that is epistemology.
Epistemology asks the question, how do we know what we know?
And this is something that's involved in every worldview.
Everybody you meet has an answer to that question.
How do they know what they don't know?
They may not be self-conscious about knowing it, but they have an answer.
And for the Christian, he looks at the Christmas narrative and he finds that the epistemological question or the answer to the question, how do I know what I know, is right there in the Christmas narrative.
When we look at the account of birth, we ask ourselves, why is it that we take this account as authoritative?
The inspired narrative requires the reader to ask the question, how do I know that I know that this account is true?
And as I said, this is the epistemological question that all men must answer.
The answer the narrative requires in order to answer that question is because God's revelation tells me.
If Joseph and Mary had owned a worldview that answered the question, how do I know what I know, with some version of autonomous right reason or natural law or mystical intuition, they may well have disobedient what was reported to them by way of revelation.
But as it were, we see from the Christmas text that all that happened was a test for their willingness to base their belief on the authority of God's word.
Mary, as we know from the text, initially questioned God's revelation.
And Joseph reasoned in a way that I would have reasoned, hey, women don't get pregnant without being intimate with a man.
And as Mary and I have not come together, it's impossible that Mary should be pregnant, except that she's been intimate with somebody else.
Only a subsequent visitation by the angel of the Lord changed Joseph's mind.
So Joseph's initial epistemology of skepticism, and that lives on today.
And there are many who come to the scriptures of the worldview that does not allow for supernatural revelation.
These types are so skeptical that even if a visited by the angel of the Lord, this skepticism would not vanish.
This is because the worldview presupposes that the supernatural can't happen and it isn't possible.
And with that epistemology in place, they reinterpret all the passages, including the Christmas passages, in such a way as to lock out a supernatural revelation as an epistemological explanation for the virgin birth.
When I first came to Charlotte 30 years ago, hard to believe, I ended up, this is a long story, I'm going to reduce it and condense it, but being, I had to be mentored by a chap that was up the road.
And in the first meeting with the chap, he came out and told me he didn't believe in the virgin birth.
Well, yeah, he would say that, but he would say it as if it was a myth.
And I walked out of that place thinking, oh, they, what have I gotten myself into?
And so there's a whole school of thought out there that wants to accept these miracles, but only accept them as myths.
They didn't really happen, but that's what the first generation believed happened.
That's what the early church taught, but we're smarter.
We know that those things don't happen.
And the problem there is that their epistemological basis shifted from thus saith the Lord to, well, if it passes my smell test, then I'll accept it.
So the Christian worldview, their epistemology presupposes, as I said earlier, the supernatural.
But it's interesting that there, in that Christmas passage, you have Matthew quoting from the Old Testament text.
And as you read the passage, it's almost as if Matthew is saying, okay, all this happened so it could be fulfilled that the virgin will be with child, quoting from a text in Isaiah.
And it's almost as if Matthew is saying here, yeah, there are angels going on, but what really is important, what really you should pay attention to, is that this was prophesied in the Old Testament, and that's our authoritative source of knowledge.
And Matthew does this all the way through his gospel.
Over and over again, Matthew is saying, and this was done so as to fulfill what was written.
Or Matthew will say, and as it stands written, over and over again, Matthew will appeal to the Old Testament scriptures as his epistemological base, as the answer to the question, how do I know what I know?
I know what I know because it's all anchored and lodged in God's supernatural revelation.
So the Christmas text there in Matthew moves us towards this idea that my understanding for authority has to be anchored and lodged in God's revelation, not someplace else.
That is my epistemological basis.
It's not in reason, naked reason.
It's not in mystical intuition.
It's on the idea of revelation.
So we have this kind of revelation where we accept the supernatural because that's what God's word teaches.
But as I said, there are other types that believe that which is supernatural are just different theories.
For example, there are those who think that virgin birth is just one theory of the incarnation that might be chosen from a host.
This is called the Barthian school or neo-orthodoxy or modernism.
And they teach the old doctrines don't correspond to anything eternal and permanent.
These doctrines really symbolize general principles of religion.
And those symbols are arrived at by what is useful or helpful or practical and not by what is true.
And if they are useful for one generation, that is the doctors, well, that's great.
But if they're not true for another generation, well, then they just need to get changed out.
There have been in history those who have even said that the father of Jesus was a German soldier in the Roman army.
There are those who will embrace the Virgin Conception on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays while denying it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays while splitting something down the middle.
What they do is they're using dialectical reasoning to marry opposites together.
At the end of the day, you don't have anything.
So usually these chaps will see the miracles of Christmas, of angels speaking to shepherds, of angelic visitations, Joseph and Mary.
They'll see all of that as just as just myth, as just being symbol.
And then they'll encourage us to take a blind leap of faith.
And we don't really believe it, but because it's needed, we'll take a blind leap of faith.
And it works out about as well as the chap who takes the blind leap of faith off a 10th story ledge.
And so in the Christian church today, we need to return to this idea of having an epistemology that's anchored in supernatural revelation that is anchored in the scriptures.
And that's what this Christmas story teaches, and that's what we find all the way throughout the gospel accounts.
And so we live by revelation, special revelation.
And when we read natural revelation, when we read the natural law, for example, we read it through the lens or through the grid of this supernatural revelation.
That's the only way that natural law can make any sense is if we have those glasses that presuppose the reality of the supernatural, the supernatural that we find all over the Christmas account.
So this Advent narrative not only requires us to believe the immediate text, it requires us to have a worldview where we answer the epistemological question, how do we know what we know with a rousing answer of only by way of revelation and any good and necessary consequences arising from the text.
And so during this Christmas season, we are a people who are who bleed bibliomed.
We are a people who are constantly returning to the law and to the testimony.
We are people that are constantly looking for the implications of scripture so as to know how to think in this current age.
And we are the ones who are standing on solid ground.
And everybody else is standing on quicksand who wants to answer this question in any way but thus saith the Lord.
And so for this Christmas season, we rejoice that we have this revelation, this supernatural revelation as given by God.
And so this is the Christmas story.
This is why we have reason to be merry.
This is why we have glad tidings all around us.
And this is why I continue to be confident that we're going to win the fight.
With men like you at our side, Brett, we cannot fail.
Folks, if we have whetted your spiritual appetite tonight, go to charlottereformed.org.
If you can spell Charlotte, as in Charlotte, North Carolina, it's the same spelling, different pronunciation.
Charlotte Reformed.org.
And he writes as well as he speaks.
Check out the Iron Inc. blog.
It's all there at charlotte reformed.org.
You can catch his Sunday sermons at his very brick and mortar church there in Michigan.
And that is, of course, the Christ the King Reformed Church.
Pastor Brett McAtee, happy Christmas to you, as our English friends would say.