Hanukkah, Christmas, & Krampus, Part 3

Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Otz, and I'm glad you joined us today for this special holiday message, Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus. That's right, we all know about the miracle of Hanukkah and the incarnation of Christmas.

But are you aware of the demonic darkness that is invading the sanctity of the Gospel story, mocking the birth of Messiah with evil glee? This is the pagan god Krampus, and he could be coming to a town near you. They were just saying to him, we read it, and earlier in the chapter they said, who are you? Tell us who you are. Who are you? Again and again they asked him in the book of John, who are you? And Jesus waits until Hanukkah, the festival of lights, and says, I'll tell you who I am. I'm the light of the world. I am the true light that lights every man that comes into the world. I didn't come to light a candle.

I didn't come to light a menorah. I came to be the light. Amen? And what did Jesus say to his followers? Let's look at Matthew, the fifth chapter.

Turn to Matthew and see what Jesus says about you and me. Matthew 5, verse 14. You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, and neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick. And it gives light unto all them that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. See, Jesus said in John 9-5, as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world, because he knew he was going to be leaving. Amen?

And so he says to you and me, you are now the light of the world. Just like that menorah in the temple had to be filled with holy oil in order to burn and to shine, we've got to be filled with holy oil in order to be a light shining. David said in Psalm 92, I shall be anointed with fresh oil every day.

Every day. There's no longer a temple in Jerusalem, but there is a temple. There is another temple, another holy dwelling place for his presence. Let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and find out where this temple is. 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 16. Know you not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? The holy oil of God dwells in you? Now if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. So we've got to keep our temples clean.

Clean. Amen? We've got to be free of the defilement of the world and the filthiness of the world.

We can't let it get into our spirit. We can't be like those backslidden Jews were. That they embraced Hellenism. Amen?

And they embraced the Greek religions and the culture thereof. And they defiled themselves. Now we are the temple of God and we are holy. God sees us just as holy as that building made out of stones.

Amen? And he said don't defile. Don't defile the temple. We've got to make sure that we don't allow the worldly influences around us to come in and defile us. And that means we've got to continually be sanctifying ourselves.

What does that mean? Separating yourselves from the world. And like we preached last week, being vessels of honor unto God. Amen? Let's turn over to chapter 6 while we're here in 1 Corinthians and let's look at verse 19. What know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God and you are not your own?

For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. In your body and in your spirit.

And I like the fact that he emphasized both in your body and in your spirit. That is very important because there is teaching out there today that says that when you get saved in your spirit you get the spirit of Jesus which is sinless, perfect and your spirit is sealed. Therefore you can never have any sin in your spirit. If you sin it's only with your body, with your flesh. And you know that means don't worry about your flesh because you're going to get a new body. Your spirit can't sin.

Well that's not what it says here. And that's not what it says in 2 Corinthians 7 where he says I beseech you brethren. Amen? That you cleanse yourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Saying that now you got the spirit of Jesus that makes absolutely no sense even on a logical standpoint. Because before you got saved and I got saved we had a spirit. We weren't spiritless.

James said the body without the spirit is dead. We had our own spirit. It's when we get born again that spirit that is dead to God in righteousness, holiness, fellowship.

It's alienated by the wicked works of our mind. But we had a spirit. When we got saved our spirit has been cleansed and washed by the blood of the lamb. And we still have our own spirit. We receive the spirit of Jesus in that we receive the spirit of sonship whereby we cry Abba Father. Because now we are baptized into the body of Christ. Amen?

And now we can say Abba Father. We couldn't say it before. Because we weren't born again from above. So he said now you have the Holy Ghost in you. Where it says what know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you. And really the idea here is if he's in you he's saying if in fact you have the Holy Ghost. So how many here will raise your hand and say in fact I do have the Holy Ghost. OK. Guess what. If you have the Holy Ghost then your body is his temple. And you better keep it clean. How many see there the onus is put on us.

See he was throwing it out there. You say you have the Holy Ghost. OK. If you have the Holy Ghost then keep your temple clean. Amen. I like what Paul said in Ephesians 5 8. For you were sometimes or you were before darkness. But now are you light in the world. Where are you light in the church house. In the world you're a light. Walk as children of light. And then he said in Philippians 2 15 that you may be blameless and harmless the children of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as lights in the world. I just quoted Ephesians 5 8 and Philippians 2 15 that we can shine in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.

We're lights in the world. You know on one hand we might think boy it's really hard today because the world is so wicked. It's so perverse. It's so crooked. It's so ungodly.

It's terrible. But that says to me that we should shine brighter. We should really stick out. Amen.

Let's go out there right now. How many stars will you see. But wait till nighttime. See the stars shine against the darkness. And it's the same way for us. We actually shine brighter in the midst of a crooked and perverse world and nation. Amen.

We shine brighter. Go buy yourself a diamond ring or something diamond from the jewelry store. They always put it in a black box. You don't get it in a white box or a yellow box.

No it's black velvet. Because they want that diamond to really shine. You say oh man look at that diamond.

I want that. Amen. Oh that's how we are. The worse the world gets the brighter we shine. We don't hide our light under a bushel. We don't say you know I'm just going to go somewhere and hibernate till it's all over.

No that's how you get to let your guard down. And that's what happened to the Jewish people until they offered a pig on the altar. They weren't even upset. They had let their light go out. We shine amongst a wicked and perverse nation. It says nation there.

Did you notice that? America is becoming a perverse nation. The word perverse means to twist something.

To twist it and make it crooked. We're surrounded by wickedness. And this influence is even coming into the church. I'm not this church but the church.

And there's great compromise. Ministers are changing the standards of God's word. Because everything now is about inclusivism. Include everybody. That's the new mode of evangelism. Evangelism is inclusivism. Even sin. Outright sin.

Amen. And there are a lot of people that say oh don't you shouldn't you know you shouldn't you need to love people and you gotta love them. You gotta love them by telling them the truth. The truth shall make you free. The truth shall set you free. You know have you ever been in a predicament with someone in your family or a friend or something where you've had maybe a fallen out or a bad issue came in between the two of you.

And you want to reconcile things but everything is really really testy and really sticky and you don't know which way to come. And so you dance all around the issue. I'm not going to say that and I won't say this and I won't say that. But in the meantime all this stuff inside you're thinking this is ridiculous. This is a lie. This is wrong. This isn't truth. This isn't right. But I want to make waves. I'm going to dance all around it.

And that thing just festers and festers. And finally you gotta realize there's only one way. You gotta speak the truth. Speak it in love but speak the truth. Because only the truth can set you free. You don't do a person favors by lying to them or smoothing over stuff that's wrong.

You're not helping them out at all. Amen. And today in the pulpits they're looking for seeker sensitive churches. People want seeker sensitive churches.

And you know there was someone who actually started this way back I don't know a couple decades ago or something. They wanted their church to grow so they went out door to door in surrounding area and they took polls of people as to what kind of church would you want to come to. What would you like in a church.

Of course no messages on sin. And they gathered all this information and then they implemented it. And they did that exactly what all the people said. No messages on sin so that the church could grow. And it didn't stop with one church.

Amen. Many other churches came in. So they began to draw great converts. Well I'm not surprised you got a huge church if you don't preach against sin.

That doesn't surprise me one bit. Amen. They draw great converts. Let me tell you what Jesus said about it.

This is John the third chapter. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They hate the light and will not come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved. They don't want to quit their sin. They don't want to hear about their sin. So they are not going to go where there's a lot of light shining on their sin. They want to go where nobody has light shining on their sin because they're not ready or willing to give it up. See they not only don't want to come to the light.

Here's where we're going now. Not only do they not want to come to the light but now we've reached a point where they want to put the light out. See not only do they not want the light because personally they're not ready to surrender to the Lord and His word and His truth. But now the campaign in the crusade is shut down the light.

Shut up preachers of righteousness. Amen. Threaten them with lawsuits.

Threaten them with jail time. Amen. They want to put the light out. See if we want to take something away from the Hanukkah story I see two major things we can take away. First of all on a personal level we've got to guard against our own selves lest we become complacent.

Complacent with the influence of the world and this new, new evangelistic inclusivism that's out there. Amen. So that we just say ah you know I don't like to cause trouble. You know they mean well. They've got good intentions.

You know why? They're tricked. The devil's fooled them.

They've got good intentions and he's used their good intentions and getting them to let their light go out. Amen. Saying well we're not going to talk about homosexuality. We're not going to talk about any of that stuff. We're not talking about abortions. We're not talking about adultery. We're not going to talk about any of that stuff because we want to love people.

And that's a good intention to love people but it's terrible theology. And it'll cause people blindly in the blind and they both are going to fall into the pit. I didn't say the ditch. Jesus said the ditch but now I'll call it the pit.

An eternal pit. Amen. So first of all we've got to make sure that we don't let Satan put a muzzle on our mouth. That we don't speak up. I don't mean go around picking arguments with people.

I don't go around trying to cause debates. But when the issue comes up and it's looking at you in the face you don't just stand there and just say yeah. You have to stand up for the truth. And if you don't you're a compromiser. Shame on you.

You're letting your light go out. Amen. You've got to stand against.

You can't just let it come, come, come. You've got to stand up against. You better have a backbone.

But if you've got a backbone the Holy Ghost will back you up. Amen. And hopefully somebody will wake up and later thank you.

Thank you that you told them the truth. Amen. And secondly, taking away from the Hanukkah story, when these ultra liberal secular attempts that are now just coming one on top of the other against the truth rise up. We've got to do like the Maccabees. We've got to stand up. We've got to stand against it. We've got to say doesn't anybody, doesn't anybody stand for the truth anymore? Do any of you care that they desecrated our temple?

Don't you care? There will be some that will stand up. We've got to stand against it. Amen. Now I know there are people that say you just need to leave politics alone.

Don't get into politics. But that's what the Jews did under the Greeks. That's exactly what they did.

Well we're not going to mess around with it and look where it led them. Destruction of everything holy. Death and murder. Their mommies murdered and their babies hung because they dared to circumcise them.

Amen. Because they refused to eat pork. They weren't allowed to worship anymore. That's what they got for not standing up against the political power that was in that time.

Amen. Until the righteous Maccabees rose up and said it stops here. They were willing to give their lives. And I'm sure they had a probably a very good feeling that they probably would give their lives. They probably figured we are going to die for this. But God intervened and gave them a great miracle.

And though they were highly outnumbered they chased the devil out of the temple and out of the city. Amen. Because when God is for you he's more than all that can come against you.

When you stand up for God he'll stand with you. Amen. Now I brought this this morning.

I was already thinking about ministering on Hanukkah. But then I thought well I've done it before. But when I saw this paper yesterday I said that's it. That's it. Friday's paper the Baltimore Sun. I know all of you can't see this but I'll let a few folks see it.

OK. I walk over here and now you have to speak up loud. What do you see. A devil. You see a devil.

What do you see when I open up the main story. Some more devils. You see the devil. Yeah. OK. See this. Let me come over here and show a few folks how many can see that two horned ugly looking devil and there's a Christmas tree behind his head. See that.

And then you open it up to get the rest of the story. See. Yeah. OK. I'm not going to go through the whole church.

And there's the main stories on the front. We got this devil. Let me go over here and show these folks a few things. Amen. Amen. This is the front page on the weekend magazine of the Baltimore Sun. Amen.

Here's the front page. And he had ugly looking thing. And he's got all his little demons with him as posse of demons. Amen. Yeah.

We'll show a few people over on this end. Notice the Christmas tree behind his head. Amen. What a truly eye opening word of the Lord. Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus. The miracle of Hanukkah is a warning to all Christians. What can happen if we allow political liberalism and evangelistic inclusive ism put out the light of gospel truth. It is also an inspiration to rally us to stand against the infiltration of godlessness and paganism in America. When you take a stand for God, he will stand with you and for you.

The Maccabees cry was, Who is like you, O Lord, among the mighty? And God intervened to chase the enemy out of Jerusalem. The incarnation of the son of God is why we celebrate Christmas.

It's not just a particular day on the calendar, but the miracle of redemption when the word of God became flesh and dwelt amongst us. But not only has this holiday been secularized by the world, snuffing out every inference of Jesus Christ, it is now becoming demonized by a new generation of atheistic scorners who have defiled Christmas into a Halloween theme, even changing lyrics of holy carols into profane mockery. And their God is a two horned half goat demon named Krampus, meaning claws, a sinister alter ego of Santa Claus. He is neither jolly nor nice, but evil. And it is dubbed fun, family fun.

But make no mistake, it glorifies Satan and advances his agenda to order Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus. Send a minimum love gift of ten dollars. Request SK 203 to Sound of Faith P.O. Box 1744 Baltimore, Maryland. 21203 or shop at our store at sound of faith dot o r g. But to order Hanukkah and Christmas versus Krampus, send your love gift of ten dollars or more to P.O. Box 1744 Baltimore, Maryland. 21203 and request offer SK 203. And if you appreciate this ministry and the messages we air, please tuck in an extra year end gift to help us maintain Sound of Faith radio. Thank you. Until next time, this is Sharonat saying Maranatha.