Latest / The Salty Pastor / The Parents of Jesus [Ep. 145]

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The Parents of Jesus [Ep. 145] · The Salty Pastor

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Secularism has tried to take Jesus out of Christmas.
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You know, like the Senegalese, oh, we want the commercial stuff.
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Cause you know, people make money.
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Oh, we want the gift giving and the decorations and the fun,
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but we don't want no Jesus.
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Well, the problem is, is secularism is the idea that you can take all the
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good stuff that came from something.
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And then like religion, in this particular place, or faith, divorced
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them or separate them and then maintain the wonder of the good stuff.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast
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dedicated to helping you find the greater strength within yourself.
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When you discover who you are, it's your discovery, your epiphany,
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your journey that you must go through, but you can't do it alone.
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We can only discover who we truly are.
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When we meet Jesus, this is the purpose of the Salty Pastor,
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a podcast designed to help you discover who you truly are in Jesus.
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And we are here to help you discover what God's doing in you along the way.
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My name is Jesse Maher.
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I'll be your host and let's welcome the Salty Pastor himself, Dr.
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Douglas
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Peake.
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Well, welcome everybody to the podcast today.
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And it's a very exciting time of the year.
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It's one of my favorite times of the year.
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I love December, because of everything that it's about family and friends,
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and most importantly, what our Lord and savior Christ did, coming into
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this world in order to save us.
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And our goal here at the Salty Pastor, to help you know him better
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to know what you believe about him, why you believe it, because I
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really agree with your statement.
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And that is, is that we cannot find strength.
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We cannot find our courage.
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We cannot find meaning we cannot find peace, all the
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things that our soul longs for.
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Cannot be found until we meet Jesus.
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So I'm pretty excited about that.
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And I'm pretty excited about this time of the year when we
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get to talk about Jesus a whole
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lot.
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Well, I know our new series is titled Jesus Is Christmas.
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Um, which is great because I mean, I think Christmas is.
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One of the most widely celebrated holidays in the world.
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People who don't believe in, in God loves the Christmas spirit, but it's
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kind of been like you surfed, right?
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Like Christmas doesn't have anything to do with Jesus for a lot of people.
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It's just this holiday that has a lot of toy buying involved in scratch
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this year supply chain issues.
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So, um, it is, uh, celebrated all across the globe.
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And in, in one case what's really interesting is Senegal,
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which is a Muslim country.
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They can't get enough for Christmas.
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They love celebrating, uh, Christmas.
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Now they want to keep it secular and commercial.
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But, uh, it's really kind of interesting in that regard.
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So yes, it's very true about people love Christmas.
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And I think the thing about the thing we need to talk about more than anything
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else about the Christmas spirit is to show how Jesus is the source of everything
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that people love about Christmas.
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So if you take away Jesus, everything you love about the holiday is gone.
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And in fact, the holiday itself would cease to exist.
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So even though the Senegalese, I believe I pronounced that properly.
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The Senegalese is a Muslim country that wants to celebrate Christmas
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and make it secular and commercial.
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In the end, if you take away Christ, there will be no Christmas.
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And so I think that's really important to understand is that
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you cannot separate the two.
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Absolutely our society, I think not just the Senegalese, but you know, society as
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a whole Western civilization
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really taken the Christmas holiday for granted.
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I mean, it's, it's taken all the feel-good things, food decorations,
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the music, being generous, and it's kind of separated them from their
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origination, right.
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Like where they came from.
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We can't forget that we do all this stuff.
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Like, um, you know, we have so many traditions and things and all this
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stuff, that's all wrapped up in Christmas, but a lot of people don't
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even know why we do most of them.
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Right.
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They're like, they're, there are surface level interaction.
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Yeah.
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Why do you put lights on your house?
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Why do you get Christmas trees?
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Why do we give gifts?
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Right?
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Do we celebrate Saint Nicholas?
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Why do we, uh, eat?
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Why do we, uh, take the time to get our family together?
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Why, what was all this music originate from and why it is it always talk
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about all of these feel good things.
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And I mean, all their traditions.
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All of the ceremonies, all of the decorations, all of the habits
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and traditions that we have, where do all these things come from?
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That's the question we need to answer.
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Absolutely, having an idea of what it all means and everything
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that we enjoy has an origin.
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So let's take some time and talk about we're here for.
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Well, we're going to begin our series by going to the announcements
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about the birth of Jesus.
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And I think in the announcements themselves before Jesus was even born.
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Uh, we need to understand a few things that the Bible teach
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because the season is Jesus.
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It's about him.
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It's about who he is, why he came, and what he accomplished when he did come.
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So let's talk about how his birth actually came about how he entered into this world.
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So I'll read from Luke chapter one, beginning with verse 26,
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and it says in the six month of Elisabeth's pregnancy now, Elizabeth.
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Was Mary's older cousin.
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So she using probably your mid thirties at this time.
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People believe Mary was maybe 15, 16 years of age, you know, maybe 17,
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but more likely about 16 years old.
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So she wasn't very old.
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And she had an older cousin named Elizabeth.
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Who'd been married for quite some time.
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And Elizabeth became pregnant.
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Okay.
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And she became pregnant with John the Baptist.
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So there is a relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.
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And John the Baptist was about six, seven months older than Jesus.
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And so Jesus then, uh, or John, the Baptist then grows up in
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the wilderness then comes and announces the coming Messiah.
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And he practiced what was known as the baptism of repentance.
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And so he asked the Jews to return back to God.
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So.
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What happened is in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
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John sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth.
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So God sent the angel to a town in Galilee to a Virgin pledged to
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be married to a man named Joseph.
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He was a descendant of David.
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So he is of the seed of David, which is really important for all you Old
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Testament, covenant buffs, because there's a prophecy in the Old Testament that the
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Messiah would come from David's seed.
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So the Virgin's name was Mary and the angel went to her and said,
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greetings you who are highly favored.
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The Lord is with you.
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And Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wonder what
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kind of greeting this might be.
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But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary.
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You have found favor with God, you will conceive and give birth to a
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son and you were to call him Jesus.
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He will be great and will be called the son of the most high.
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So the Lord, God will give him the throne of his father, David.
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And he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever.
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His kingdom will never end.
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And how can this be?
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Mary asked the angel since I am a Virgin.
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And the Angel answered the Holy Spirit will come upon you.
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And the power of the most high will overshadow you.
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So the holy one to be born will be called the son of God.
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Even Elizabeth, your relative is going to have a child in her old age.
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And she, who was said to be unable to conceive is under six months.
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For no word from God will ever fail.
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So here's really interesting is the Angel says.
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She says I'm a Virgin.
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And so in her worldview of where she's at.
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Being pregnant outside of wedlock is not an option.
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There's zero social network.
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There's zero family support.
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There's zero.
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There's zero anything.
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So, if you were born, uh, if you were found to be pregnant outside of wedlock,
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and then you're displaced, right.
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And no one will marry you and you can't go to your father's house,
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and there's no reference to her father's house as a possibility.
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Then you basically are condemned to a life of extreme poverty begging in
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the streets that your life expectancy is cut in half and so forth.
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So it's really interesting because she says, how can this.
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I am a Virgin.
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And so there's a lot of implications to this question.
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Is she asking whether or not a , it's going to happen through
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Joseph after she gets married.
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Is that what she's asking?
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She doesn't know.
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And so the answer, and this is why verse 35, um, is so important because
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the angel basically says, well, as a Virgin, you're going to get pregnant.
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And in her mind, it's like, okay, this is going to completely displace me.
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I mean, who's going to believe that, right?
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Nobody's going to believe that it had never happened ever.
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And it hasn't happened since.
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So who's going to believe that.
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And so she sees immediately the implications, I think, and her response
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in verse 38 is I am the Lord's servant.
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My Mary answered may your word to me be fulfilled.
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And then the angel left her.
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So I find this really interesting because you've, you've kind of laid out.
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She's kind of in a dire circumstances, she chooses to
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believe that this is going to happen.
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Correct.
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Um, in her culture, she's basically like, well, if this happens and I am
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to become pregnant, then I'm done.
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I'm done.
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But she takes kind of a view that I think most people would really struggle
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with, which is I am your servant.
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Right?
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Like that's an attitude we don't, I mean, I don't even know that I would have.
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Do with me as you will.
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Yeah.
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And so talk to me, talk to me about that attitude.
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Do we, does she, is she known to be like a very, I guess like, Does she
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just have an internal peace about it?
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What are, where are we thinking she is at?
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Where she just trusts this fact?
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Obviously it would have been overwhelmingly obvious to her
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that this is going to place her in a very vulnerable position.
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It's going to, it could, you know, it will ruin her life.
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And yet her there's no question about that.
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And, uh, she'd be humiliated.
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She would be, uh, You know, excised or, you know, ex-communicated from her
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community and your family and she's in she's betrothed to be married, which
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basically means she she's married.
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Right.
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Uh, so she's ready to, she's been given away and the dowery has been
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paid and all of this kind of stuff.
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And yet, uh, she simply said, I am the Lord's servant.
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And this is what I think makes her so special.
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Is that, uh, not that she was so young and not that she was a female.
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But that she had an attitude
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very few people have.
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Even people who believe strongly in Jesus.
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Uh, she actually possessed the attitude of complete submission to the will of God.
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Uh, it kinda, it kind of reminds me of, uh, father Damien.
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He was a Catholic priest.
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He was a Belgian priest and he went, he felt called and there was a
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government forced, a colony of lepers.
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They were quarantined.
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Call on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.
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And this is when it was the kingdom of Hawaii.
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It wasn't quite a, it wasn't a state yet.
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Okay.
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And so, he went there to minister, to the people of Molokai this colony.
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And so he went there and he built hospitals and roads and houses, you
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know, they were living in squalor and they'd given up on life and he
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shows up and he starts educating them.
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And so forth.
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And what's really interesting is that leprosy is a bacterial infection
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that just gets inside of you.
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And it just stays for a very, very long time.
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And it's incurable.
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It is technology.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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They have a, it's a cocktail of antibiotics that they give you.
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You have to be on them for awhile, but they can cure it in a sense now.
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But what it does is it attacks the, you know, this, uh, bacteria attacks,
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your nerve endings and so forth.
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And what happens is you stop, it can create skin lesion.
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But it also kills the nerves and so endings.
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And so the biggest problem in leprosy is if you get cut, you know, on your
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extremity and you don't know it.
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Okay.
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And so you can get infected and you think prior to modern medicine, which is only
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been around for about a hundred years.
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And so, antibiotics before that, you know, if you get infected or you get sepsis or
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gangrene, you get all this kind of stuff.
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It's not a good thing.
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Right.
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But he went and what he did is his father, Damon went to this, he felt called, he
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went there, he built an entire community.
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And what's interesting about, uh, the bacteria and bacterial infection,
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is that it's not passed through sexual contact and it's not passed
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onto the children through birth.
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Okay.
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It's usually passed on by being directly exposed to the mucus
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of somebody who's infected.
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So if they sneeze on you or their snot or whatever, their mucus from their
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sinuses is generally how you get it.
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So he was there for a very, very long time.
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He lived among them for probably, I don't know, seven, eight years, nine years.
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And then he got it and then eventually it killed him, you know?
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And so.
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It's really interesting because here's a guy who just said, Hey, I'm going
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to go and I'm going to minister these people and you know, um, I'm going
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to die from it and I'm going anyway.
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And I think what's really interesting is that we don't see this level of
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conviction about anything in our world today, anymore, you know?
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Um, and so, that shocks people.
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And I think that this is, this is something that's so inspiring about Mary.
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Is that here's a young lady who's showing me that I can rise to the occasion.
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I can step up and do things that I never imagined that I would be able to do.
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You know, sometimes things are put in our path and we get news it's really bad.
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Or there's things that.
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Our minds run forward.
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It's like, you know, well, if the Lord's prompting me to do this and I
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do this, the ramifications of it could just be wow, really detrimental to me.
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And so we try to talk our way out of it, you know, whatever it might be.
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And so not Mary, she just said, you know, do unto me for, I am your servant.
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And so I think that is really.
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You know, Mary is so inspirational because she gets this news and
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she doesn't even question it.
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And then she just says, let it happen.
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You know, she has no idea.
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This what's really interesting about the text.
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She has no idea what her parents are going to say, or, and most
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importantly, she has no idea what's going on in Joseph's life at all.
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Well, let's talk about Joseph, cause again, like she's made peace with this,
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but it's like trying to explain that to your husband and be that it's like,
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well, I didn't really know really.
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It was an angel who told me this was going to happen and I'm really a Virgin.
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I promise in that point in time, obviously there's a lot of.
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I mean, he, I mean, there's, there's a lot probably going through his head.
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There is a lot probably going through his head.
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What does the text tell us about Joseph?
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Matthew chapter one.
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Yeah.
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Matthew chapter one.
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It talks about what happened to Joseph.
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And what's really interesting is in Matthew's account and in Luke's
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account, it doesn't say in Luke's account when he talks about.
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That Joseph had any idea what the angel had told Mary.
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Right.
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So Luke doesn't make any reference to that at all.
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Then we jump over to Matthew in Matthew doesn't have any accounting of Joseph's
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knowledge of what the angel told Mary.
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So it's interesting.
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It doesn't talk about that.
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So the angels came separately to each one of them.
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And then in what it says in Matthew chapter one, verse 18, it says,
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this is how the birth of Jesus.
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The Messiah came about.
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His mother, Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before
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they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy
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Spirit.
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Because Joseph, her husband was faithful to the law and yet he did not want to
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expose her to the public disgrace he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
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So he doesn't have it.
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He's going to divorce her, but he's going to do it in a nice way.
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Right.
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Going it's like, yeah.
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Okay.
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But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
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and said, Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,
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because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit, she will give birth to
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a son, and you were to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people
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from their sins.
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And this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said to the prophet.
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The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him
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Emmanuel, which means God with us.
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So when Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded
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him and took Mary home as his wife.
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But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to
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a son and he gave him the name.
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Jesus.
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So we.
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We see this weird kind of terminology that Matthew uses any, any says the
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angel, he took it as a command, right?
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Like what angel said to him.
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Don't be afraid.
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But he took it as a command.
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Right.
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You know, which is really interesting because I think there's
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some basic applications to that.
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You know, first and foremost, what it tells us about Joseph is that his faith
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and his belief was extremely strong.
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Right.
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It's very powerful.
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Um, I remember a debate between a really respected theologian and an
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atheist, who wasn't prepared, for the debate, um, which most atheists don't.
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Uh, because they are just so smart that they do, they think they're super smart.
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Uh, they have a false hood of, uh, intelligence, and then what they do is
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they talk in an echo chamber, right.
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They talk about the only two people who agree with them and, and, uh,
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and they talk to sick offense.
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People who just think anything they say is good, no matter what.
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So the arguments get really, really lame.
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So I remember a debate between a respected theologian and an unprepared
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atheist, and the atheist was trying to argue that signs, wonders,
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all of these things, are simply natural occurring phenomenon
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that people misinterpret.
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So the theologian asked him, okay, what signs or phenomena would have to
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occur in order for you to believe, or to be convinced that there was a God.
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And so the atheist not thinking about the implications of what he was about
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to say, I said, well, if there was, you know, lightening in the sky and
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I had visions, uh, things I'd never see before then I would believe.
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And so then the theologian responded well, based on your own criteria, you
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would just excuse those as natural phenomenon that are being misinterpreted.
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See in, in the, the, the atheist obviously lost that, uh, debate in,
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in an incredible way, because the theologian pointed out an extremely clear
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way that it's your choice of belief.
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Your frame of reference IE: or faith, is what determines how
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you interpret those events.
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There's no abstract scientific way.
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It causes you to interpret these events as purely meaningless natural
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phenomena that people misinterpret.
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And so he's saying what you're doing is you're is exactly what you're accusing
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other people doing is as a falsehood.
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So the theologian points this out.
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And so.
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Uh, it was his way of saying that scientists are actually participating
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in a faith based system of inquiry.
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You really are.
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And this is what is so pernicious in the world today.
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And this is why I did the series on faith and science.
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Is that without faith, there was no would be no science.
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You see, and science in and of itself.
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Is a personification of a faith based inquiry, right?
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You start with a hypothesis and to come up with a hypothesis, requires
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creativity, challenging the things.
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And that requires faith, right?
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Faith on what?
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Before has been established, faith that it could logically be rationalized,
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or reasoned out to this conclusion.
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So let's try that and see what happens.
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So, uh, Joseph's faith was super strong.
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His frame of reference was clear.
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Therefore, when the angel said, don't be afraid to take Mary as your
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wife, he just took it as a command.
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So what that tells me is that his faith was really, really strong.
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I mean, there's no question is mine.
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Uh, this is an angel telling me this.
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Okay.
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It's command.
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No worries.
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I'm going to do on it.
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I'm on it.
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The second thing it did is it speaks to the strength of his will.
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He not only knew what he was going to do, but he went out,
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followed through and did it.
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Even though the point, uh, even to the point where he didn't consummate his
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marriage until after Jesus was born.
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So he goes, he marries her.
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And he can't even, he can't, he doesn't even consummate the marriage right.
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Until after Jesus was born.
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To me, that just really speaks of a strength of will, that he had.
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Um, I see Joseph because of this as a very strong man.
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You know, and I think early on, this was probably very indelible upon Jesus.
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Because you look at Jesus and you look at his life.
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He was a very strong person.
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Right, right.
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He's super strong, super courageous, super focused.
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And so I think, uh, you know, early on this strength of will, the strength
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of character was something that Joseph was able to model for him.
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Third.
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I think that, uh, Matthew doesn't say anything about, the angel
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giving him the details of the plan.
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Right.
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All he says is don't be afraid to marry her.
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He doesn't even say, the angel doesn't say, wait until she gives
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birth to consummate the marriage.
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He comes up with that on his own.
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Well, I don't know about you, but when God tells me to do something particularly
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something that's like way out of the norm.
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I want all the details.
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Right.
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What is the plan here?
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What's the plan?
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Where does this end?
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Uh, how does it work out?
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Uh, God, how are you going to deal with this implication and five years from now?
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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
23:47
How am I going to deal with that?
23:48
How am I going to do with that?
23:49
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
23:50
I went to all the details, but Joseph didn't ask didn't
23:54
get any and he did it anyway.
23:56
And so I think that that's what we're under the powerful things
24:00
that so inspirational about Joseph is that he heard this, he
24:06
took it as a command and then he followed through, without question.
24:11
Not even knowing.
24:12
And as we know from the New Testament is that he and Mary went
24:16
on to have a number of other sons.
24:19
And what's really fascinating.
24:21
And I, I wish it wasn't this way, but I know why it's this way is I wish they
24:26
would have talked about Joseph more.
24:28
It's like, well, what happened to Joseph?
24:30
Why, why is it why isn't Joseph around when Jesus was doing his ministry?
24:35
You know, he was, he had passed away.
24:37
We don't know how, we don't know when, we don't know what for.
24:41
All we really know is this, is that he took Jesus to Egypt
24:47
to flee the Herodians massacre and then he comes back to Nazareth.
24:53
Right.
24:54
And then the last thing we hear about Joseph is when Jesus is 12 years old
24:59
and they go to Jerusalem to the temple.
25:01
Right.
25:01
And then they leave and they can't find him.
25:03
And he's like, well, where are you?
25:05
I'm in my father's house.
25:06
So, um, that's really the last time we ever see or hear any reference
25:10
to Joseph, we just don't know.
25:12
And I wish, I wish there was more in it.
25:14
Cause I'm, you know, Um, I'm annoyingly curious about those things.
25:19
But I think what's so interesting about Joseph though is just this
25:22
little interaction with Gabriel tells us so much about him.
25:26
His, his frame of reference, you know, was not, uh, was not one that
25:31
was confused or lost or wishy-washy he knew exactly what he believed.
25:36
He knew why he believed it and he was faithful to it.
25:39
Well, I think we see so much of that in, like you said, this modeling
25:44
of like, I don't ask questions.
25:47
I just do what God tells me to do.
25:49
We see so much of that from his parents that in Mary and Joseph, that it's no
25:54
wonder that Jesus and I mean, obviously he's part got too, so it's like,
25:58
there's a mixture of nature, nurture, literal Godly nature, versus nurture of
26:04
parents.
26:05
Mary and Joseph.
26:06
Right, and he probably picked the correct parents, right?
26:07
And he
26:07
did it for a reason.
26:08
He selected the correct parents.
26:12
So, yeah, and I think that what all this tells us is that from the very beginning,
26:17
this is what Christmas was all about.
26:20
And if before Jesus was even born, God selected Mary and Joseph
26:24
and Mary, uh, a woman of great faith and great, uh, obedience.
26:31
And obedience, not from the standpoint of, well, I'm just going to do
26:35
whatever I'm told, just from a sense of
26:38
such peace and such a devotion that there wasn't any question.
26:46
I mean, she just walked in the fullness of being God's servant, you
26:50
know, she, I just want to be God's servant, you know, I just want that.
26:53
And so, and then you have Joseph, right?
26:55
A man of character, a man of strength, a man of conviction.
26:59
And even though he didn't have
27:00
all the details.
27:02
He takes what the Lord said to him through the angel is a command and
27:07
then he just goes out and does it.
27:09
Well.
27:09
And they, they fight with that initial fear, both of them obviously, but then
27:13
they come to accept it and find joy in it.
27:15
Right?
27:16
Yeah.
27:16
Absolute joy.
27:17
And I, and I think that's what the, you know, the, this is just the prelude
27:21
to what, why Jesus is Christmas.
27:24
And what I mean by that is you take every feeling, every emotion, every experience.
27:30
Regardless of whether a person believes in God or not.
27:34
About the season of Christmas, and then realize that all of that
27:39
happens, all of that occurs because something happened 2000 years ago.
27:46
And that's something is that God emptied himself and took
27:50
the form of a bond servant.
27:52
He was, he humbled himself, by being born as a vulnerable baby to
27:59
a young girl by the name of Mary.
28:02
To a stepfather by the name of Joseph.
28:05
And that's where Christmas begins.
28:08
Without Jesus without this, there is no Christmas.
28:11
And I think that's really important because secularism has tried
28:15
to take Jesus out of Christmas.
28:19
You know, like the Senegalese, oh, we want the commercial stuff
28:22
because you know, people make money.
28:24
Oh, we want the gift giving and the decorations and the fun,
28:27
but we don't want no Jesus.
28:29
Well, the problem is, is secularism is the idea that you can take all the
28:33
good stuff that came from something.
28:37
And then like religion in this particular place or faith, divorced them or separate
28:41
them, and then maintain the wonder of
28:47
the good stuff, right?
28:49
So they make this judgment.
28:50
Well, we don't want the Jesus.
28:52
We don't want the religion or the faith, but we want all of the celebration.
28:56
We want all of the money and the consumerism, we went, all of the lights.
29:00
We want all of that kind of stuff.
29:01
And what people don't realize, is that this is an absolute, complete failure.
29:07
Because I know p, I know lots of people,
29:10
and that is, is, uh, myself included in that is that my father
29:14
died on Christmas day in 1987 is when he died of a heart attack.
29:20
So I know a lot of people who've lost people on Christmas day.
29:24
Right.
29:25
And so what do you think the lights mean to them?
29:27
What do you think?
29:28
The food and the traditions and all of those things mean to them?
29:32
Well, if there's no Jesus, right.
29:35
There's no healing.
29:36
There's no wholeness.
29:37
There's no redemption.
29:38
There's no generosity.
29:40
It's just empty symbols that mean nothing.
29:42
Right.
29:43
When you take Jesus away from it.
29:44
See, so Christmas has maintained for me one of the most joyous
29:48
times and I've grown up.
29:50
Uh, one of the greatest, uh, disappointments is that
29:53
my children never met their biological grandfather on my side.
29:58
They know their grandfather on the other side has done a great job with them,
30:01
but I, uh, they never met my dad, right?
30:05
And part of that is, is that maybe they would understand why
30:07
their dad is so weird, you know.
30:09
As my mom says, I get it honestly.
30:11
Um, but, uh, but really the essence is, is that you cannot,
30:16
secularism is a failed idea.
30:19
It's absolutely devoid of any rationality.
30:23
Uh, you can't divorce the core principles or, uh, the upstream event.
30:29
And then divorce it from the downstream effects.
30:33
You know, it's really interesting.
30:35
There's an atheist out there pendula of the magical duo, a Penn and Teller,
30:40
and he was written a number of books, three or four books about atheism.
30:45
He's really vocal about it so forth.
30:46
And he likes to make the argument that since he is a moral atheists,
30:51
all atheist can be, moral.
30:53
But this is completely and utterly false.
30:56
If there is no God, then there are no objective morals or duties.
31:02
And it's a perfect example of someone who appears intelligent,
31:06
who makes irrational arguments.
31:09
Eh, that's a nice way of saying it's like someone who claims to be
31:13
wise, but they're really stupid.
31:15
Because they argue in circles and they invalidate their own, argument.
31:20
Because the, you know, the way you defeat his argument is saying is that will, on
31:25
what basis do you build your morality?
31:29
Why build it on myself?
31:30
So then the atheist next to you builds his own morality and his own morality says,
31:35
I want to kill you and take your stuff.
31:37
And it's perfectly fine.
31:40
Just because you have that morality as an atheist doesn't mean anybody
31:44
else moralities in- validated.
31:46
So no matter what, it's just a failed system.
31:50
So secularism at its core is a failed ideology.
31:54
And we see that we'll talk more about it on Thursday is we're
31:58
seeing the applications of it across the board in American today.
32:02
You see, because you can't divorce Jesus from Christmas.
32:07
And maintain all of the good stuff that Christmas does.
32:11
You can't do that.
32:13
There's just, no way.
32:15
Absolutely.
32:16
Well, um, as we wrap up today, I do want to encourage you guys.
32:20
If you are wanting to spend this Christmas season focused on Jesus
32:23
and why, chris, Jesus Is Christmas.
32:26
Um, our Foothill staff has created a really cool advent devotional
32:31
series for you, where you're leading reading one chapter of Luke day.
32:35
And then you get a video sent to your phone with a two-minute devotional
32:39
from one of our staff each day.
32:41
Um, you don't have to give your email address.
32:44
You don't have to have logins, nothing like that.
32:46
It just gets sent to your phone and you get to just spend some time
32:48
really focusing on the life of Jesus.
32:49
Growing closer to him as we get closer to the celebration of his birth.
32:53
So if you're interested in that, we really encourage you to, um, join
32:57
in on that, um, advent devotional.
33:00
And you can do that by texting FH Advent.
33:03
So FH space, advent to 72,000, and you'll get signed up.
33:08
They'll send you a little text message.
33:09
You just click on the link and you get signed up and it's going to be
33:11
really great and it's going to be super fun and it will be great for
33:14
our audiences on the salty pastor and the community at Foothills.
33:17
Be bonding together over the life of Jesus as we get closer to Christmas.
33:21
So we thank you guys so much for joining us today.
33:25
I encourage you guys to be doing some sort of advent study, because
33:29
I think it's really important for you to stay focused on Jesus.
33:32
When the world's trying to tell you that, um, your favorite thing is
33:36
not going to be available and all they want to focus on is the gifts.
33:40
And we're focused on the thing that actually matters.
33:42
So we encourage you guys to do some sort of advent study, whether
33:45
it's ours or somebody else's.
33:47
And enjoy the season for what it really is.
33:49
Thank you so much for joining us.
33:51
And we'll see you on Thursday here on the Salty Pastor Podcast.
33:53
Goodbye and blessings.