{"id":3788,"date":"2014-01-14T14:07:25","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T19:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mbbc.me\/seminary\/?p=3788"},"modified":"2022-12-06T01:49:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T07:49:18","slug":"joy-to-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/joy-to-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Joy to the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I was in Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital of Malaysia in late November. Malaysia is a \u201csecular Muslim\u201d country with some interesting political quirks. About two-thirds of the people are Muslim, and Islam is the official, constitutional religion. All ethnic Malays are by law automatically Muslim; any Malay that leaves Islam is no longer considered \u201cMalay.\u201d Muslims are under Sharia law, while non-Muslims constitutionally are under secular law, modeled somewhat after English common law. Evangelization of Malay Muslims by other religions, while technically legal, has resulted in persecution by the government. Most believers evangelize freely among the Chinese and other non-Malay peoples.<\/p>\n

A friend took me to one of the leading shopping malls in KL. It would have passed for any American mall after Thanksgiving. There were lights, decorated trees, angels, garland \u2013 all the trappings of what we would call \u201cChristmas.\u201d Check it out at http:\/\/www.pavilion-kl.com\/content\/happenings_gallery_album.php?gid=87<\/a>. \u00a0After the initial shock (quite honestly, I never expected to see so much \u201cChristian\u201d influence), I realized that this was mainly what it tends to be in some places in America \u2013 one more advertising blitz.<\/p>\n

I love Christmas. I do not love the commercialization. I am unimpressed with the glitz. I am especially troubled by the political correctness of \u201cHappy Holidays,\u201d \u201cSeason\u2019s Greetings,\u201d and other similar non-Christmas references. If a store or business like ESPN wants to go \u201cJesus-less,\u201d that is their choice. To be less than hypocritical, however, they should drop the \u201cChristmas\u201d decorations. If they are unwilling to make any reference to Jesus, then, in reality, they have no holiday to celebrate. When someone wishes me a \u201cHappy Holidays,\u201d I wish them a \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d right back. If a store chooses to ignore Christ, I choose to ignore them for my \u201cChrist\u201dmas shopping; if a store chooses to celebrate Christmas, then I am happy to spend my Christmas money with them. Herod sought to destroy the God-man but he failed, just as some today would love to destroy Christmas, but they cannot succeed. As long as there are Bible believers, there will be Christmas.<\/p>\n

So I love Christmas. I love that fact that Jesus was born to simple parents in simple surroundings. I love the fact that He was genuinely a man of the people. He grew up with commoners. He loved people without regard for their social standing. He ministered surrounded mostly by ordinary people. He died at the hands of the elite, the intellectual, the powerful, but he revealed himself in his resurrection to the common people with whom he had spent his ministry.<\/p>\n

What is most appealing about Christmas is the truth that God became man. A promise was given to Adam and Eve after the fall that a human being would solve the sin problem; this promise was reiterated in numerous ways and enlarged upon for the next 4000 years, until Jesus finally arrived, God yet man, to bring the final solution, to provide himself as the sacrifice for my sin and the sin of the world, to be my way of salvation and the salvation of the world, to bring to me and all the world the joy which we so purposefully celebrate at Christmas.<\/p>\n

This Christmas make \u201cMerry Christmas,\u201d \u201cRejoicing in the birth of Jesus,\u201d \u201cCelebrating the Savior,\u201d and other similar declarations a part of your vocabulary. It is truly \u201cJoy to the World.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I was in Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital of Malaysia in late November. Malaysia is a \u201csecular Muslim\u201d country with some interesting political quirks. About two-thirds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":3817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1727],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sunesis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbu.edu\/seminary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}