A few words to those among us who have homosexual desires: 1. Acknowledge the presence and pain of a disordered sexuality, with all the ambiguity of where it came from – much like other disorders and disabilities – and do not define your God-given personhood by your disordered sexuality. 2. Put your faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of all your sins and for the gift of God’s righteousness and for the fulfillment of all his promises to you (Romans 1:16-17). The only sinner who can successfully battle his sins is a justified sinner. In other words, you fight against sexual sins from relationship, not for a relationship. 3. Begin to reorder your entire life around the centrality of the glory of God as your highest treasure. Homosexual sinning, like all other sinning, is an echo of exchanging the glory of God for other things. So restore the sun of God’s glory to its place at the center of your soul and all the planets of your desires will begin to return to their God-given orbit. 4. Resolve to live a chaste and, if necessary, celibate life by the power of God's Spirit, with the confidence that if God does not heal now, he will in the age to come; and all the patience of purity of will be worth it (Romans 8:18). May God grant all the single people (and married!) at Bethlehem a passion for purity. 5. Seek wholesome friendships with both sexes, especially in groups… The more we do things in groups rather than pairs, the more opportunities we create for wholesome non-sexual relationships. 6. …There are ministries like Outposts here in our cities that have insights and experience and encouragement and Biblical counsel from a depth of awareness that goes beyond what most of us can bring. This may be something God would use in your life. 7. Take a bold and compassionate stand for truth…and hold up God’s purposes for human sexuality, namely, as an expression of Christ’s love for the Church dramatized in the covenant love of marriage between one man and one woman.
John Piper

When Exactly Was Christ Born

When Exactly Was Christ Born

WHEN EXACTLY WAS CHRIST BORN?

All right, get Luke chapter 2 in one hand, and get Hebrews chapter 1 in the other.

Hebrews 1:10: “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest”–watch it!–“and they all shall wax old as doth a garment.”

The heavens are like a garment. “And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up.” The Lord’s going to change clothes. “And they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.” Then the universe is like God’s clothing, and He’s separate from it.

The materialist makes the universe eternal, and believes in the eternity of matter. But that isn’t true. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” So, that’s something different.

All right, now those things are said to be like clothing. In the Old Testament, what did the Lord appear in on this earth? It was a tabernacle. In the Old Testament, the Lord was in the tabernacle, behind the holy of holies, behind the vail, on down there. Brother Batema and I were talking about the Northern Lights, which he has seen up there in Canada. I’ve never seen them, but I was asking about them. I’ve seen pictures of them; they look like curtains. Like the curtain of the holy of holies, hanging down there. And they are north.

And it’s like the Lord has this thing on, like clothing, and then some day He’s going to take it off–dump it. Then God and His holiness will be revealed. “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the heaven and earth fled away, and there was no place found for them.”

Before you get to Luke 1, on this clothing turn to John, where Christ is getting ready to die on the cross. In the Gospel of John, pick up chapter 19, verse 23. Christ has one piece of clothing, which has a hole in the top. “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it”–tear the coat–“but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.”

When the Bible speaks of Christ’s clothing, it says “coat,” it says “raiment,” it says “vesture.” But one word it never uses is robe. The scarlet and purple robes put on Jesus Christ were put on by the Roman soldiers who crucified Him. So Lloyd Douglas wrote him a book called “The Robe.” And then Beverly Shea gets up and sings, “The robe, His robe, may its glory live forever.”

Let’s hope not!

Christ didn’t have any robe. The only robe He got was from the people who killed him–the Romans.

Now, concerning this last clothing He has, he’s got four pieces. The last piece He has is a pancho, and it’s woven like this throughout, with a hole in the top, like that. And you’re regular pancho is that piece of material; it has a hole up here, and the guy puts it over his neck, and it hangs down over the outside. That’s the garment which has a hole in the top.

Now, I know this is the long way around, but this is gathered by deduction. He says in Hebrews chapter 12 there’s a heavenly Mount Zion. In Isaiah, the devil says, “I’m going to ascend to the sides of the north, and put my throne above the stars of God.” All right, it says, “Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion, the city of the great King, located in the sides of the north.” The picture of the universe is a pyramid in your Bibles–a picture like a mountain.

All right, Genesis chapter 1: the Lord divided the waters above the heavens–the firmament–from the water below the firmament, and called the firmament heaven. He put the sun, moon, and stars in here– evening, morning, so forth and so on. The picture of the universe is a picture where there’s water above you, and water below you, and the universe in the middle like that. Then, up here is the throne.

All right, in Revelation chapters 4, 5, and 6, John was caught up into heaven–the third heaven–and saw a throne. When he saw it, he saw a sea of glass. Christ says, “I am the door.” John said, “A door was opened in heaven.”

Christ said, “I am the door; by me, if a man enter in, he shall be saved, and should go in and come out, and find pasture.” You go up at the rapture; you come back down at the Advent. When you go up there, you go up through water; when you come back down, you come back down through water.

When you go up here, you go up through a place that is frozen, and there’s a hole at the top. The hole at the top of that thing was made when Christ died on the cross, and the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from top to bottom. The Book of Hebrews says, “Enter through the veil, that is to say, his flesh”–likening that rip in the top of the universe to the rip in Christ’s die. And likening that hole in the top to the hole in the top of a seamless garment.

And in all of those pictures the Lord has spoken of it as inside a piece of clothing or a tabernacle, with a hole or a door in the top.

All right, now get Luke chapter 2. Look at verse 8: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.”

All right, now at the birth of Christ, He said the shepherds were “in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Over there in Palestine, they bring them out of the fields before November. During November and December, they’re not in the fields; they’re on down to the stable in the farm yard. Whatever that time is there, it’s warm enough so that they’re still in the fields. So whatever that time is, it’s before it got cold around November and December, or after it got cold around February or March.

All right, the most logical inference from what you’ve got here, is it’ll have to have something to do with the Feast of Tabernacles. Turn to John 1. The Feast of Tabernacles is September or October. John chapter 1, verse 14: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father).” When David is getting ready to build a Temple for the Lord, the Lord says, “Did I ask for a house any place? In all the days I’ve been with you I’ve traveled in a tent and a tabernacle.” That’s in the Old Testament.

Now, there are other secular things you can get from a calendar that’ll bring it down closer. But, from those things there, you can judge that Christ was probably born at the Feast of Tabernacles, which for a Jew is around September 23rd–someplace around there.

Now, the thing that makes it real strong is this: Here is the sun, and here is the earth going around the sun. And the earth does not go around the sun in a complete circle. It’s four days off in that thing. The center of that eclipse is right here, and the sun is right here. The sun is off four days in that thing. This gap right here is four days. You check that thing in astronomy, and it’ll come out something like this. This thing over here is September, sitting here, and I believe this is March; I’ll have to check some things on it. December is sitting up in here; and June is over in here, like that. They dates here, are September 20th, 21, 22, and 23–those days. September 21st there, September 23rd there.

It looks like something started here. And then, four days later, the sun was placed in the center of it. Take your Bible and turn to Genesis 1. What’s the sun a type of, according to what I taught you tonight? It’s a type of Christ. All right, Genesis 1. Now watch this:

Genesis 1:5: “And the evening and the morning were the first day”– September 20th. Verse 8: “And the evening and the morning were the second day”–September 21st. Verse 13: “And the evening and the morning were the third day”–September 22nd. Verse 19: “And the evening and the morning were the fourth day”–September 23rd. Verse 16: “God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.”

So, I’d say that Christ is born the 23rd of September, at the Feast of Tabernacles.