The Characters of Christmas

Joseph, Mary, the innkeeper, Simeon, Anna, and the wise men, all are characters of Christmas, and we'll talk about them today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. These were ordinary people. They didn't know this was coming.

There was not big neon signs saying 25 days till Christmas. God often visits and disrupts our very ordinary lives. He comes among the most ordinary people. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, as we hurdle toward Thanksgiving and Christmas, we take a closer look at the people who populate the story of the ages. Author Daniel Darling joins us to talk about the characters of Christmas. This is going to be such a fun and eye-opening conversation for some because what we're talking about today is familiar territory, but there are some surprises ahead.

You can find out more about our featured resource at fivelovelanguages.com. And our host, as always, is author and counselor, Dr. Gary Chapman. Gary, you've been at the same church in North Carolina for the better part of five decades. That's a lot of Christmas celebrations.

Any memorable things happen in those years? Oh, Chris, I have seen the sheep who couldn't hold themselves together walking down the aisle. I've seen donkeys do the same thing. I've seen Christmas trees topple. I've seen little children jump off the stage. Yeah, I've seen lots of things happen at Christmas time and celebrations. But, you know, you laugh at them later.

They weren't so funny, particularly the sheep when it was going on. But at any rate, behind all of that, we sometimes miss the real heart of Christmas. And that's what we're going to talk about today, you know, Jesus and all the people surrounding his birth.

Yeah. And I think it's going to be great to dig into that story that many people honestly have heard. You've heard it year in, year out.

And yet our guest today says we need to take a closer look at what we think we know so well. His name is Daniel Darling. He's a prolific author and speaker who believes Christmas music ought to be sung all year round. And I agree with him. He currently serves as the vice president for communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He's written The Dignity Revolution, The Original Jesus, and many more. His op-eds have appeared, listen to this, USA Today, CNN, Washington Times, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, National Review, it goes on and on. He and his wife, Angela, have four children. They live near Nashville. And our featured resource, we are proud to say, is The Characters of Christmas, the unlikely people caught up in the story of Jesus.

You'll find it at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Daniel, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you for having me on.

It's an honor to be here with you, Chris, and with Dr. Gary Chapman. Well, you grew up in the church, and you know this story of Christmas. It can become kind of mundane. We hear it every year over and over and over. What motivated you to write this book on The Characters of Christmas? You know, I've always loved, loved Christmas ever since I was just a little kid. All the traditions that we had and growing up in the church, I loved when December comes around.

I still do. Just kind of how our hearts are turned toward the baby in the manger, the festivity, the lights, but most importantly, that we have an opportunity to focus on the story of God visiting us in Jesus, God coming among the ordinary. I've always been intrigued by the ordinary people who are swept up in this story of Christmas, those people around our nativity sets, those people that we dress up to be like in our pageants, and what their lives must have been like in that first Christmas. Why do you think that through the years in our country, Christmas seems to have become more and more commercial, more and more secular, rather than focusing on the sentiment of Christ's birth?

You know, it's interesting. I think there's a couple reactions to Christmas that we can have. I mean, one is to be rightly sort of, you know, one wrong reaction is to get caught up in everything around Christmas instead of the actual story. I think there is a way to sort of celebrate it without actually focusing on the good news of Jesus coming.

I think the other way is to kind of go the opposite. Sometimes Christians can be cranky, you know. I find myself sometimes having to fight that.

We're so much against that that we're sort of the cranky people. And I think at the heart of it is joy, is of God coming to earth in the form of a baby. Because of that, we can celebrate. Because of that, we can give gifts, and we can celebrate if our King has come to renew and restore the world, but also to renew and restore our hearts, and we should rejoice. You know, the whole thing of gift-giving, of course, is a big thing at Christmas in our culture. Kids look forward to the gifts they're going to get.

Even adults look forward to the gifts they're going to get. And sometimes I hear Christians say, well, you know, it's just become a gift-giving thing, and we don't really concentrate on Christ. But we're not against gift-giving, right? I mean, that's one of "The 5 Love Languages" —gift-giving.

Yes, I'm not going to be against gift-giving when I'm talking to the author of the love languages. But I do think—I think you're right. I think there's a way that it gets out of hand. And I think in our families, we have to be the ones that are keeping our kids from making that everything.

What am I getting? And how come I'm not getting this in focusing our kids on the story at hand? At the other hand, you know, being cranky about it, I mean, if Jesus has come, and if this story is true, and he is the king, and he has come to save us from our sins, it's time for celebration. It's time for feasts and for gift-giving to each other.

I mean, all through the Bible we see this, right? That God compelled his people to celebrate with gift-giving and with celebration. So we shouldn't swing the pendulum back so far that we're sort of like these utilitarian, cranky people that no one wants to be around on Christmas.

Yeah. So we're giving. If we just communicate clearly, you know, we give gifts to each other celebrating what God did for us, the great gift he gave us. Tying that together is important, I think, in a Christian home, right?

I think it is. And I think it's incumbent on parents to set the tone. And I think one of the ways we can do that is having regular times where we go through the Christmas story celebrating Advent every day or whatever our rhythms are, and allowing our kids to really meditate on the story in a way that's fun, in a way that helps them interact with Christmas. Christmas is like a multifaceted diamond.

There's so many wonderful spiritual truths that emanate from the story that there's so much that we can easily take several weeks before Christmas and get our hearts ready. Yeah. So what you do in this book is you're really digging into the lives of the people who were there that first Christmas, not just Christ, you know, born in Bethlehem, but the people surrounding all of that, which I think is a fascinating approach to explore the broader picture of what was happening at Christmas.

Yeah. I mean, when we think about Christmas 2,000 years later, all these people are larger than life. They're characters in our Christmas pageants and they're around our nativity sets. But we have to remember that that first Christmas, these were ordinary people.

They didn't know this was coming. There was not big neon signs saying, you know, 25 days till Christmas for the shepherds and the wise men and the innkeeper and Mary and Joseph even. I mean, so it tells us, I think, that God often visits and disrupts our very ordinary lives. He comes among the most ordinary people. And this tells us a little bit something about the kingdom of God. Who is the kingdom of God made up of?

It's made up of the ordinary, the forgotten, those who are humble enough to receive Jesus. Well, Daniel, let's talk about one of the characters in the Christmas story, Joseph. What do we know about him from the biblical record? You know, what I love about Joseph is he is just portrayed as a faithful, devout man. If you think about how this first came to him, the angel comes to Mary, tells her that she's going to be with child conceived by the Holy Spirit. And then Luke says, in kind of cryptic language almost, when Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant. One of the things I think about is we don't know how many days or weeks passed between the angelic visit to Mary and the angelic visit to Joseph. What must those have been like as he's pondering and wondering, what do I do?

How do I do this? But what we do see is that he always did the hard thing, but the right thing. He was going to put her away privately, which was the harder thing, but what would actually protect Mary instead of a public shaming for being pregnant out of wedlock. And then when the angel visited him twice, and I think it's funny that he got two visits, and sometimes guys need two visits, two words from the Lord.

Women sometimes only need one. Sometimes we're a little hard-headed, but he immediately obeyed and did exactly what God told him to do, knowing that this would upend his whole life. His life would never be the same. Mary and Joseph and Jesus, even though they knew this was of the Holy Spirit, not everyone would believe that story. So they would always carry a hint of shame, a hint of scandal around them. But he was willing to bear shame, I think, for the baby that would one day bear his shame. And he is always just obeying, doing the next right thing. The angel says, move your family to Egypt.

He does that. And we see later in the Gospels that it seems Joseph had a formative impact on Jesus and his humanity. He is described as the son of Joseph. And so you can imagine as Jesus had to learn in his humanity and grow, it was Joseph who taught him what he knew.

Yeah, I've often thought about that myself. If I had been Joseph, how would I have responded? We can't put ourselves, I know, totally in that situation. But you can imagine the hurt, the pain initially when he hears the word that she's pregnant.

I mean, you're engaged to this girl and then she tells you she's pregnant. And then she tells you that God did it. I find that hard to believe. So there had to be something about Joseph's relationship with God that helped him work through that. Of course, I mean, he heard the messenger from God, but he believed. He believed what the messenger was saying. It's pretty astounding, his character and apparently his relationship with God.

It was. He's described as being very devout. But as you said, Mary says, this child is from the Holy Spirit. Well, she had an angel tell her that. Joseph hadn't had an angel tell him that.

I'm wondering if he really believed what she said and how many nights passed where he's just sleepless and anxious and what do I do? But again, he always did the right thing. He put others before himself. And I think he's an example of faithfulness, even for fathers. If you think of fathers leading their families and husbands leading their wives, he's a great example of faithfulness and being willing to be selfless for the sake of others.

Yeah. There's another person from the Christmas story is Zechariah. Who was Zechariah and why is he important to the story? So Zechariah was a priest. He was, him and Elizabeth were elderly.

They were past childbearing age. They had prayed and longed for a child and had not come. And he was in the temple for his sort of moment of a lifetime to lead the rituals and the rites in the temple there.

Something that would be kind of a once in a lifetime thing that he would talk about for the rest of his life. And he's in there and an angel appears to him. And let's keep in mind that God had not visited his people. There had not been a word from God, from the prophets, from angels for 400 years. And they were very probably cynical.

They were under Roman rule. They were hanging onto this faint hope of, of a Messiah, having been fooled by false messiahs. And God visits this old man in the temple and says, your wife is going to have a child.

And of course we read that he had disbelief as probably most of us would. And God caused him to be silent. And what I think we can learn from Zachariah is that sometimes God has to silence us in order for us to hear him. I also think this is part of a long theme in scripture of God birthing something new. He comes to Abraham and Sarah and birth something new. He comes to Hannah and birth something new. He comes to Zachariah and Elizabeth and birth something new as a sign that he is birthing something new in Jesus and also in, in us, that salvation is, is a new birth. It's described God as birthing something new in us. Mark Bailey So Zachariah and Elizabeth, mom and dad of John the Baptist, right?

Jon Moffitt That's right. And John the Baptist would be a forerunner of the Messiah, sort of the last prophet, if you will. He would have a special calling on his life. And Zachariah and Elizabeth were faithful to obey God and raise their son toward that calling. We see Zachariah as sort of an encouragement to the young Mary as when Mary goes and visits her cousin, Elizabeth, and, and say, you know, I'm also pregnant of the, you know, of the Holy Spirit and John the Baptist leaping in the womb of Elizabeth as this sort of first prophetic announcement, if you will. And John the Baptist had a unique role and a unique purpose. And they knew that. And they knew it also involved pain that John the Baptist at the end of his life would be martyred for speaking out against Herod. And so all these people are ordinary people, but one's willing to hear and listen, obey the voice of God.

Mark Bailey Yeah. You mentioned the, the, an aspect of that where Zachariah was muted by God, not allowed to speak. Why, why was that? And what can we learn from that? Jon Moffitt Well, I think if you compare the reaction of Zachariah to the angelic announcement of a birth and the, and the reaction of Mary, there's a difference. Mary was, was stunned, was shocked, but she didn't have this kind of cynical doubt. I mean, all of us have doubts. All of us, our faith is not perfect, obviously. But Zachariah's doubt was a little bit more cynical.

And I think in some ways the, the, it's clear from the text that the, his, the silencing of his words was a kind of punishment. But I also see this as, again, sometimes God has to silence us, silence our thoughts, silence our words in order to speak to us. And this silence is something that maybe at Christmastime all of us should pursue, that we should slow down. We should be still and listen for the voice of God and listen to what he's telling us.

Mark Bailey So during the Christmas season, you're right. I think it's a busy time. Most of, most of us are running from one thing to another thing. And I hear you saying there needs to be a time maybe just to sit down and be silent. Do we sit down alone? Do we sit down with a Bible? Do we sit down in the woods? Do we sit down in a park? I'm just trying to visualize this for the average listener when we say, let's be silent. What does that look like?

Jon Moffitt You know, it's different for every person. I think one of the important things at Christmas is to not get so caught up in the machinery of Christmas. And again, a lot of it is fun and good.

Going to concerts and visiting with people and going to parties and wearing our favorite sweaters and eating wonderful food and feasts and gifts. But if we're not careful, we'll hurry through Christmas. And I think the lesson here is to slow down a little bit, to stop, to pause, to take some time to, to rest, to meditate, to dwell on the wonderful news of the birth of Jesus and the truths, the gospel truths that we learn from the Christmas story. Jon Moffitt We alluded to Mary earlier and the difference in her response and the response of Zechariah. What can we learn from Mary's response to God when she was saying yes to what the angel said to her? Jon Moffitt Well, Mary was saying yes to a lot.

I mean, first of all, she's a most likely a teenage peasant girl. She was saying yes to probably quite a bit of shame. Again, she heard from the, from the angel and so did Joseph, but the rest of her family didn't and the people around her didn't. So some would probably believe the story. Some wouldn't. She was saying yes to enduring all the pain of seeing your son go through what Jesus went through from the temptation in the wilderness, seeing him suffered from the, his enemies who would slander him.

And in that community that his name would be, would be slandered. And we, even their own family, you know, we read in the gospels where he goes back to his family in Nazareth and they kind of disown him. She's also saying yes to, to watching in agony as her son is, is cruelly beaten and mocked and put on a Roman cross, which is a, was, was an object of ridicule of being ostracized by the community and sitting at the foot of the cross and seeing her son crucified. You know, as a father, it's hard for me to see anything happen to my kids, even, even small things.

I mean, when my kids were young and they had to have shots when they were like babies, I had to go out of the room and my wife had to stay in there because I couldn't handle them having any pain. And imagine Mary and Simeon said to Mary, a sword will pierce your soul. And so she knew what she was signing up for.

And yet she said yes to God. She was willing to endure suffering, endure hardship for the one who would endure suffering and hardship for her. It's, it's hard to say yes to suffering, right? I'm thinking about us in our lives.

It really is. I think there's a, there's a version of Christianity that says, if you, if you just follow Jesus, your life will be easy. Your life will be, will just be upward and onward into just, you know, riches and health in this life. And we see from the story of Joseph and Mary and many others, John the Baptist, who followed Jesus and suffered for it. I think one of the wonderful things about the Christmas story is that it's not all sentimental. So people who come to Christmas brokenhearted, grieving the loss of a loved one, grieving the loss of a relationship, going through financial struggles, maybe people feel forgotten this Christmas.

No one's inviting them to their Christmas gathering. God came and visited those who were suffering and grieving and God himself suffered in sending his son onto the cross. So Christmas is not just about sentimental and fake smiles. It's, it's also about God visiting us in our distress.

You know, it strikes me, Gary, what the question you asked just a minute ago, what, what does it look like? I think then what we're doing right here, just taking the time to stop and ask questions about the reality of what people were going through 2000 years ago. I think this trip that Joseph and Mary had to make down to Bethlehem, you know, when you just start to enter into the struggle of that, to be pregnant and to be, you know, riding a donkey or however it happened, walking that long way, enter into that and think about what happened. And then at the end of that, of when they get to Bethlehem and don't have a place to stay and they, you know, all of those things that enters into this, just being able to step into that and imagine what it was like, I think is part of it. Don't you?

I agree. And we, again, we know the story 2000 years later and we celebrate it with pageants and nativity sets and wonderful cards and great music and cookies and all that. But the grit and the hardship of that first Christmas of just as you said, he, you know, they have to go back to Bethlehem for the census and they're not seeing the whole plan of God unfold before them. They're just thinking, man, we have to go back for the census that Caesar just arbitrarily decides he wants to do. And then Herod is killing young boys, so we have to go into Egypt and it's moving as hard in the 21st century.

Imagine moving then and the difficulty and the pain, but again, being willing to be faithful and to listen to God. I think that's why Mary and Joseph, I think are very, very much good examples for us. Let's talk about the angels. People get excited about angels at Christmas, but really angels played a significant role in the Christmas story, right?

They really did. And there's a lot of mystery about the nature of angels, but one of the things we do know is that angels are not humans, obviously, that God has a special love for his image bearers that he does not have for the angelic beings. God did not send Jesus to rescue angels, but angels have a courtside seat to the entire plan of God from Genesis to Revelation. They're there in the garden to see Adam and Eve succumb to the whispers of the enemy. They're there throughout the history of God choosing Abraham and calling out a people Israel through the ups and the downs. They're there, you know, on the night that God visits Mary and they're there for the birth and they're there at the end of the book of Revelation when Christ finally consummates his kingdom. When they see this whole plan unfold, you know, this is why they had such great joy in that shepherd's field and the angelic choir. Could you imagine what that was like for those shepherds? I mean, I've been at some pretty great concerts in my life that I've thoroughly enjoyed, but I don't think I've been to any that were as good as the angelic beings lighting up the sky. And why they did that was because they know the story from the beginning of the end and they're marveling at God's great love for the people he created and his great plan to rescue people from sin.

To me, if we can just step back at Christmas and try to take the view of the angels, the long sweep of God's plan of redemptive history, and I think meditate on that. Because we have the broader perspective, much broader than Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all of those, at our juncture in history. But the angels have the whole thing from beginning to end, right? Yeah, they do. And they see it all.

And in my sanctified imagination, I'm just imagining myself as an angel. They're watching this whole thing and they're like, no, no, no, don't pick Abraham. He's going to do them.

Not him. Man, Israel keeps—they messed up in another 40 years. And then they go—Christmas story in the near-miss with Herod, and Herod's wiping out all these boys, and Joseph is quickly shuttled to Egypt. And just watching the twists and turns of God's redemptive plan, imagine what it was like to be them. And I think Peter accurately describes it when he says in 1 Peter that the gospel story is something the angels long to look into.

In other words, they can't experience it because it's meant for human beings, but they long and they marvel at what God is doing. Well, Daniel, this is a great conversation reflecting back on Christmas and the various characters of the Christmas story. Now, there are misconceptions about some of these people. Let's talk about the innkeeper, for example. So scholars disagree on exactly what the conditions were when Mary and Joseph sort of rolled into Bethlehem. Some think it was a, you know, there was an actual inn like you see in the story of the Good Samaritan where there's, you know, kind of roadside inns.

It makes sense for that time period. Some people think that perhaps it's just like a cave. Others say maybe they were staying with family and friends.

We really don't know. But what we do know, and Luke makes a point of saying in his narrative, that there was no room for them. There was not a place for them, which we know is fitting when Jesus says that, you know, he has no place to lay his head, that the one who hung the stars, who breathed the world into existence, could not find a place to be born. We don't know if there was an actual innkeeper, although I've played an innkeeper in a church pageant before. But what we do know is somebody had to be there, right, to say, there's no room here.

Can you try this? But just imagine yourself in the sandals, if you will, of the people at that inn, the proprietor of that inn. This is an ordinary night for him. Another couple rolls in, another, you know, another two visitors. She's pregnant.

Okay, let's try to scramble, make it work. He did not know that on that ordinary night, the plan of God from eternity past was unfolding in, on his property, in his inn, that this was not an ordinary night. This was a holy night where God visited people that were the Son of God, both fully human and fully God would be born. We don't know anything about the people that were there, but you can imagine, years later, him retelling the story, what happened to those people that were there that day that beheld what was going on. He could have written a book, right? After it was all over. Yes, yeah, a memoir.

That would have done really well. So what can we learn from the innkeeper? What we can learn is, first of all, that God often visits in ordinary times.

There was no announcement or bulletin or, Jesus is going to be born, the Son of God is going to be born here at this time and this place, be ready. God visits during the ordinary times. Think of Moses, he's just minding his business on the backside of the desert, and God visits him in a burning bush.

We think of Abraham as sort of minding his pagan life in Ur, and, you know, God visits him and calls him out. God visits us in the ordinary places. I also think we can learn that when Jesus comes, it disrupts our lives. It turns us upside down.

He comes in to change us. The one for whom there was no room is making room for those who trust him by faith. I think that's the main lesson for the innkeeper. Well, we're in Bethlehem talking about the innkeeper. Let's go out to the hillsides, outside of Bethlehem. The shepherds, big characters in the Christmas story.

Talk about them. It really is, and I marvel at the story of the shepherds for a few reasons. First of all, if you were going to announce the coming of the Son of God, the King of Kings, the long-awaited hope and promise, if it was us, we would have had a press release, we'd have a press conference, we'd have a social media campaign. You'd think they would at least announce it in Rome or among the religious elite in Jerusalem, but they come to a shepherd's field. God decides to announce it to a shepherd's field.

And I think it's very intentional in the plan of God for a few reasons. Number one, shepherds are very earthy. Many times they were sort of outcasts in society, but they were humble enough to see and believe and then go tell about what they saw. But secondly, I don't think it's an accident that God chose shepherds. You know, shepherding is a metaphor throughout the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation of the kind of spiritual leadership, the kind of leadership God provides. God describes himself as the good shepherd, and later Jesus would say that he is the good shepherd. David says, the Lord is my shepherd. And I think it's an illustration that this is Jesus is going to be a different kind of king, not the kind of kings you see in Rome, not even the kind of kings you see with Herod in Jerusalem, but a different kind of king.

I also think it's not incidental that the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, the final sacrifice for sins, the announcement would come to those who were caring for the lambs who possibly would be served as the temple sacrifice, as a statement to say that the final sacrifice has come to save people from their sins, the final atonement. Every time I go to Bethlehem and go out on the hillsides outside that little town, there's an awe about it in my mind, you know, to think of the simplicity of that. And of course, the shepherds are still there, you know, they're shepherds and they're still sheep right there. You don't have to use your imagination very much to just kind of see the picture of what happened there that night and realize that, as you just pointed out, it was to these humble men, you know, not to the potentates that he came and made this announcement.

That's pretty powerful. Yeah, it's true. And I've had the privilege of being out in those shepherd's fields a few times as well. And you're right, it's all very similar to how you can imagine it back then. You know, shepherding sheep has not changed much in 2,000 years.

And I think it just shows the simplicity and humility of the plan of God, the plan of salvation. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, there were the wise men, and the song says, we three kings of Orient are... Maybe another misconception, right? Yeah, it is. There's no evidence that there were three of them. Although, you know, my advice to people, to the young seminarians out there, don't be the guy correcting everyone online about that this year. Let everyone know.

You can still sing that song, it's okay. What we see in the wise men is really a powerful story, I think, of how the gospel is not just for the insiders, not just for the Jewish people, but for the nations. Here they come from the east, they come from outside the camp. I also think we see in them honest searching and seeking for the truth. They were honestly searching for truth, and that always leads to Jesus. They were willing to do it at great cost. Wherever the star led them, they would go.

They did it at great personal cost. They listened to the voice of the angel when he said to not tell Herod. And then, most importantly, when they did arrive at Jesus, the response should be the response of everyone who encounters Jesus is they fall down in worship. They give gifts and they worship. Here are these powerful kings or philosophers or wise men who had great renown, and they're willing to bow before this infant child.

It just shows the proper response of the heart when we encounter Jesus. And their gifts, we can learn from that too. They brought gifts. They didn't just come, they brought gifts. So maybe Christmas is a good time to bring gifts, not to the Christ child, but to the living, reigning Christ. Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about that lately, but that'll preach in church.

That's exactly right. And it does show that worship is costly. It's not sheep, it's costly. Jesus demands our all. And I think Matthew's making just a powerful statement here, a contrast, that you have, here's this King Herod who is threatened by Jesus, because Jesus threatens his power and disrupts his life. And so he acts violently against other image bearers. And then you have these kings from the east who, instead of being threatened by Jesus, they bow humbly and submit to Jesus. And I think at Christmas time, or any time, there's really only two responses to Jesus we can have. We can be threatened by him, or we can fall down and worship him. You know, it's interesting because we were talking with Robert Wagemuth and Nancy de Maas Wagemuth about God writing your story, and I see that all through. God is writing this story from ages past.

This is his plan A. And one of the things that I've always heard, Dan, is about the provision, when the wise men show up and they give him the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, that when Jesus had to vamoose with his family down to Egypt, that this is the provision of God that allowed them to be able to do that. Do you agree with that? I do agree with that. And down through church history, a lot of folks have speculated on kind of what their gifts represent.

And I talk a little bit about that in the book, and I think it's really interesting to look at that. But I do think this is, as you said, the practical provision for them to make their way to Egypt. Again, Joseph and Mary were probably not the lowest class, but they were definitely not upper class. They probably had to scrape by. Traveling was probably expensive.

They had to take all their belongings. And so, again, this is God providing in ways. Sometimes he provides for us before we know we need it, right? And the plan of salvation that God would secure them. And if you're Joseph and you're Mary and you're watching these wise men from the East come, and again, they haven't read the whole story.

They haven't read the characters of Christmas. And so these people come in and they're worshiping this child. As it says that Mary saw this and pondered it and kept it in her heart. That must have been for them to bolster their faith at this time that, okay, we took this step.

This is the right thing to do. We can trust the Lord. It seems to me all through the story of history and God's working, there's always somebody there that's out to hinder what God is doing. And Herod seems to be one of those characters. What can we learn from him?

He is. And I think Herod represents sort of the original villain of Christmas. If you think about all of our favorite Christmas stories, I mean, all the ones we watch every year from It's a Wonderful Life to the 50 Hallmark movies my wife will probably watch this year. There's always a villain, someone who's trying to steal Christmas or destroy, whether it's Mr. Potter or it's the developer that comes and wants to tear down the Christmas store and build condominiums or whatever it is in the Hallmark movies.

There's always a villain. I think that good versus evil that we see in our Christmas stories does go back to the original good versus evil story in the scriptures. And Herod is part of a long line of people used by Satan to try to nip at the heels of God's plan. You know, God prophesied in Genesis that the seed of Satan would nip at the heel of the seed of the woman, but ultimately Satan would be crushed. I think we see this here, that he's threatened and people who are in power who are threatened, what do they do?

They lash out in violence against other people. So he does this murderous thing to kill these babies, but Jesus is rescued and goes to Egypt, which is a fulfillment of prophecy, right? Out of Egypt, I've called my son. There's this powerful metaphor in scripture of God rescuing and taking his people from Egypt. That's a sign of God as a rescuing God. But this is just in the long line of God's battle with Satan, which ultimately he won. He crushed the serpent's head at the cross and resurrection.

And so even those of us who are Christians, who sometimes fear the Herod's of the world, we can take hope that Christ has already won. That baby rushed off to Egypt, that infant was really the real sovereign king and Herod really had no power. Let's talk about two other characters that go together and that is Simeon and Anna. What roles did they play in the Christmas story? So they kind of leap onto the pages of Christmas and they sort of come out of nowhere and it's remarkable their faith. I mean, Simeon and Anna, both of them elderly, waiting around in the temple, clinging to this faint promise of the Messiah. They had apparently read the scriptures and understood them better than the scribes who, and the religious people who missed Jesus. I'm guessing if you were them, they were probably looked at a little bit warily by people coming into the temple. These are those people that think, you know, today's the day, right? You know, every Jewish mother thinks that their son is going to be the Messiah.

Yeah, whatever, we've seen this before. But they waited patiently and listened to the Spirit. And one day, the Spirit told them, this is the day, this is the child. You know, again, we know the story, so we think, oh, there must have been a big, you know, halo over Mary and Joseph when they walked in so they knew this. But for everyone else in the temple, they didn't know that this was the Christ child. But Simeon and Anna were listening to the Spirit. And the words that they spoke, Simeon prophesied who Jesus would be, that he would not just be a miracle worker and a teacher, but he would be the one who would have to suffer and die for his people.

Yeah, I think reading what Simeon said and Anna about Jesus is pretty powerful in the New Testament there. You know, in our day, Christmas, of course, is a time of warmth. It's a time of family and friends and courier and Ives. But you also say that Christmas is a violent story.

Why do you say that? We think of Christmas as a sort of sentimental story, and it can be. But it's really a subversive story. It's a story of, you know, this baby Jesus, this king, if you read Mary's prayer, she's talking about how this king would subvert the kingdoms of men and overthrow the kingdoms of men. And in many ways, it is violent with Herod's murdering of infants, predicting that Jesus would go to the cross and have to bleed and die for the sins of his people. And it should give us comfort in some way because God entered a world in the first century that's not unlike our world, a world beset by brokenness and violence and corruption in high places and distrust of religious communities. And sometimes we wring our hands and wonder what's going to happen, how this is all going to end up. But we look to that baby in the manger and we say, Jesus came to renew and restore the world and renew and restore us.

And this is why Christmas should bring great joy, even to those who struggle and who suffer, because we know he's the, he's the, he genuinely is the hope of the world. You know, the way God chose the people that we've talked about today, it's pretty amazing. Of course, Chris and I wrote a book some years ago on the lineage of Jesus in Matthew 1. And the people in that lineage who came before him, they weren't perfect people either.

They were. So, you know, before the birth and after the birth, the people surrounding him were people like us, you know, broken people that God chose to use. How do you suggest that people use this book during the Christmas season? Well, there's several ways to do it. I mean, if you like to celebrate Advent, you could read portions of it every day during the Advent season. You could read it all at once. At the end of each chapter, I have discussion questions for families.

You can also download family discussion guides or coloring pages for kids from my website, the characters of Christmas.com. You might also do it as a church and in your small group study, or just do it for private devotional reading. I think it works in a variety of those ways.

Well, I think it is a good tool. And during this Christmas season, I think many parents especially are looking for something that can help them as a family to really celebrate Christmas and make it what it was designed to be. And that is a celebration of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, because it all goes together. We don't just celebrate his birth. We celebrate his life and the way he lived and what he did, ultimately on the cross and the resurrection. Daniel, tell us about your own Christmas and what Christmas means to you.

Reflect on growing up, what it meant, and what it means to you now. I've always loved Christmas. I remember the traditions we had in our family growing up in church. And I think what is most meaningful to me are, I think of going to Christmas Eve service 11 o'clock on Sunday nights. For some reason, we went at 11 o'clock, and then my dad reading the Christmas story out of Luke to us. I think of the Christmas hymns that we learned growing up that are just embedded deep in my heart and the great theology that you hear that rings back to you, those lyrics and that music.

I think of just celebrating Christmas with my family and meditating on it and the time, I think, to pause and stop and rest and reflect on the one who came and died for us. Well, Daniel, this has been a great conversation today, and I want to thank you for the time you invested in the book in preparation for it and also the time you spent with us today. And I do pray for all of us that this Christmas season will be meaningful in our families, whatever we're going through. And I know that when we go through difficult things at this time of the year, it can make us question, you know, why is God allowing this to happen to me?

But all of history, we've gone through difficult times. And I hope that we'll be reminded that this is the season in which we celebrate what God has done and what God is going to do in the life of all those who believe in Christ. So thanks for being with us today. Well, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be on here and really have admired your work and your witness for a long time. So thank you for having me. What a great conversation as we head toward Thanksgiving next week and into the Christmas season and that celebration. Daniel Darling's been with us today. And if you want to find out more about our featured resource, go to fivelovelanguages.com. The book's link right there, The Characters of Christmas, the Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus. Again, go to fivelovelanguages.com. And next week, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we'll open the listener line for your questions. Don't miss our November Dear Gary in One Week. Our thanks to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd and Mike Powers at Moody Radio Nashville. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.