Faithbase

Hello and welcome to thinking about the Bible and as you can hear I'm getting some messages on my on my iPhone but I want to read to you from this may not seem like a Christmas topic but I'm gonna read to you from Daniel chapter 7 verses 13 and following I was watching in the night visions behold one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven he came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him as dominion is an everlasting dominion but shall not pass away and his kingdom is the one which shall not be destroyed no dropping down to verse 18 but the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever even forever and ever now what I want to talk about in light of that and what Jesus says about himself is the question of Christmas trees and that kind of thing is that something that Christians should be doing is that a pagan thing that has been somehow brought into the celebration of Christ's birth that shouldn't have been well I think this text right here we see Jesus and I believe this is where he's ascending not when he's coming back for the second time but I believe that this particular portion of Daniel is talking about when Jesus one like the Son of Man ascends to heaven and comes to the ancient of days and he receives a kingdom he receives a dominion glory power and then later it says that that kingdom is actually realized by his followers by his saints in the New Testament Jesus called himself over and over the Son of Man in the New Testament he is called the eschaton Adam the last Adam and he is the one who is who takes hold of creation and brings it under his dominion as Adam was supposed to have done the original Adam was supposed to have done and he did not do and so the Son of Man who is truly human the last Adam who is our our federal head our covenant head actually recaptures the creation that is of his making and brings it under his authority so one of the things that we can do as Christians is say we will take hold of of this aspect of creation whether it be a tradition that has originated outside of the Christian faith and we will remake it and remold it for use in the kingdom of God now you can see this in a lot of different things there's many things that that we might look at but if we focus on just say the Christmas tree we have brought this into the celebration of Christ's birth and we have invested it with with particular symbolism the lights considering those as the expression of Jesus as a lot of the world and the evergreen tree everlasting life and so forth so there's a lot of things that we could talk about here but the main point I want you to understand is that as Christians we actually have the duty to take hold of creation and this is what God did at the very beginning he created the mass you might say and then he began to take hold of that tear it apart if you will rearrange it and improve upon it so out of the earth he brought forth these animals brought forth Adam and even Adam he was rearranged if you will he was torn apart and out of that came Eve and so on so the the point I'm making is that that's what God did and that's what we're supposed to do take hold of creation tear it apart if you will rearrange it and improve upon it and I believe that's what we do when we bring the Christmas tree into the house and we bring what maybe used to be a pagan tradition and we sanctify it in the worship of the one true God and worship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so feel free to do that I think you have no reason not to so today as you're thinking about the Bible think about this think about what we read in Daniel here how the kingdom was given dominion was given to the one like a son of man Jesus the Christ and we as his people realize that dominion