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5 Error Drops in Your Christmas Sermon
1. Don’t add details that aren’t in the text. For example, the nature of the stable (cave, open-air, wood, etc.); whether there even was a stable; whether or not there were animals nearby; or the number of wise men. Almost certainly didn’t arrive on the night of the birth. And a star wouldn’t have been suspended right above the roofline.
2. Supply spiritual explanations for cultural practices to make them sound biblical. Like the feast wipe napkin at the feet of the buried Christ meaning I will be back. What kind of parent would you be if you didn’t give your child a Christmas present (or, in many cases, a whole roomful of them)? Or, just imagine, if you didn’t celebrate Christmas at all (like the Puritans) and go see Star Wars instead
3. Don’t be embarrassed by the Jewishness (or the Jesusness) of Christmas
4. Dubious challenges to the biblical witness to Jesus’ birth. Matthew, for example, goes out of his way to make clear that Mary was Jesus’ mother, but that Joseph was not his real father. According to Aslan, the early Christians concocted the myth of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem in order “to get Jesus’s parents to Bethlehem so he could be born in the same city as David.” Others, such as Andrew Lincoln, deny the historicity of the Virgin Birth
5. Don’t miss the true birth of Jesus Scholars continue to debate questions such as the year of Jesus’s birth, and whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. They debate the historicity of Quirinius’s census, the year of Herod the Great’s death, the phenomena surrounding Jesus’ birth—the star of Bethlehem
Street Preacherz
I saw part of video from the lecture on Christmas and Canon. I hope to finish it.
Would it be inaccurate then to present “no room at the Inn” and our Lord as a man of sorrows, despised and rejected of men. How about
“Jesus, just a child, and on the lam”
Varnel Watson
May I ask the GROUP for MANY diverse opinions on the so called NAPKIN RETURN of CHRIST which was found to be just more fake news – what was your take on the whole napkin ordeal?
Supply spiritual explanations for cultural practices to make them sound biblical. Like the feast wipe napkin at the feet of the buried Christ meaning I will be back. …..
William DeArteaga can we decide if the napkin was fake news?
William DeArteaga
Don’t have information onthis.
Varnel Watson
Link Hudson surely you’ve seen it on FB
Daniel J Hesse
Kenneth Bailey Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes-it may cause a major paradigm shift for some.
Varnel Watson
True, if first-century Jewish residents of the land of Israel used table napkins, and if there were such a custom as described, and if the handkerchief mentioned in John 20:7 were a table napkin, and if the Greek word entetyligmenon meant “having been folded” rather than “having been wrapped up,” then we might be able to swallow this. I would guess that the detailed description of this supposed custom is an invention triggered in someone’s fertile mind by the archaic KJV translation, “napkin.”
The word translated “napkin” or “face cloth” in some translations of John 20:7, σουδάριον (soudarion), is a Latin loanword, sudarium (see the entry σουδάριον in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.) It was a small cloth corresponding to the rabbinic מִטְפַּחַת (miṭpaḥat), our modern “handkerchief.” In the New Testament the Greek word soudarion appears three other times: at Jesus’ command, Lazarus came forth from his tomb, his face wrapped with a soudarion (John 11:44); the slave whom his master entrusted with a mna hid it wrapped in a soudarion (Luke 19:20); and the handkerchiefs that were carried from Paul’s body, which contained the power to heal the sick and exorcize demons, were soudaria (the plural of soudarion) (Acts 19:12).
Tom Steele
Point 3 says “Don’t be embarrassed by the Jewishness of Christmas.” WHAT??????
Christmas is not Jewish, it’s a pagan holiday rebranded by Christians who apparently forgot to read Deuteronomy 12 before they took the solstice festival of Saturnalia and turn it into something “Christian”. There’s nothing Jewish about Christmas and Luke’s Gospel gives the smoking gun against a December 25th Nativity: Shepherds would not have been living int he fields with their flocks in the middle of winter.
How about we celebrate Hanukkah like Jesus did in John 10?
Varnel Watson
the question you missed was about the napkin
Tom Steele
No, I saw that. Your comments sounded to dumb to respond to. And I do get that you were probably just joking around, but still.
Link Hudson
It may have just been dated exactly 9 months after the resurrection celebration assuming He resurrected the day of the year on which He was conceived.
Varnel Watson
Tom Steele With your acclaimed Jewis knowledge it is quite surprised you have not yet heard of the napkin story. It goes something like this When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it. The table was furnished perfectly, and then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch that table until the master was finished. If the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard, and would wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table. The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, “I’m done.”
But if the master got up from the table, folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table because the servant knew that the folded napkin meant, “I’m not finished yet.” The folded napkin meant, “I’m coming back!”
He (the master, Jesus) is coming back! Hallelujah! It is of course a hoax https://www.truthorfiction.com/folded-napkin/
Varnel Watson
Tom Steele again did not respond to a very valid question about the Jewishness of Christmas preached in many churches AKA the napkin story Link Hudson only diverted from the question with simple math calculation of dating and assuming #sad
Link Hudson
Pls. do not tag me about stuff so long ago.
Varnel Watson
so long ago? do you mean your 2 weeks span or your comment from the other day? Actually yesterday Link