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That's PRCUA.org. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God today? I mean, really, when it comes to If Not For God, Mike, when you think of the whole word Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of fits right in there. And, you know, interestingly, you've got the man who wrote the book, basically, The First Words of Jesus, about Christmas with you today in the studio. So here we go.
Absolutely. Stu Epperson Jr. And I was thinking about the the old song. And when I think about that song, you know, one of the things that we talk about all the time is miracles and stories of how Jesus has changed people's lives. But Stu Epperson Jr., the owner of the Truth Network, has a book that's out and it's called The First Words of Jesus, which is really awesome. And we were talking with Robbie and talking with Stu about this, but there are some people who say, well, I can't be a Christian because there's no evidence for Christianity. But Stu, you have something else to say about that.
Is that right? Well, there's so many people celebrating a distinctly Christian message holiday right now. And we know Jesus wasn't actually born on December 25th and this and that, but the language of Christmas, the hymns that you sing, the music, to be in a completely pagan retail outlet, to hear Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King. So it's all around us, and the evidence of His love and the wonders of His love are all around us. So you can go back into the Old Testament and there are over 300 prophecies of the coming King. The one that we celebrate His birth at Christmastime, Jesus the Messiah, that He would come, where He would be born, the circumstances, where He would grow up, all the circumstances related to His life, His youth, the virgin birth, just a supernatural miracle, without which we would be doomed. So there's all these prophecies.
Joshua Dowell is a lot better than this than me. The likelihood of one of these prophecies being fulfilled, is taking three feet of silver dollars and stacking them across the state of Texas, that landmass, and taking one silver dollar, dropping it from 5,000 feet randomly, with a blindfolded person dropping it on the state of Texas, amid three feet of those silver dollars, and then having someone blindfolded, walking through and picking that exact silver dollar out of that mass, talking about the seas, the sands of the sea. That's the statistical, mathematical likelihood of one of those prophecies of Jesus, the exact town He'd be born in, the specific Bethlehem.
There were two Bethlehems. The exact specifics of His birth, the prophecy that there would be death, this horrible bloodshed surrounding His birth, a little bit after His birth, it's remarkable, Mike, that we have the facts before us, but facts aren't enough to produce faith. Because even Herod had the facts in front of him. What did he try to do? He tried to murder the baby Jesus. And that's true of so many people, Americans. That was true of one million plus Jews in the wilderness. Psalm 95 says, they did not enter into the Promised Land because of their unbelief. Hey, they said, Lord, show us facts.
We want to see some facts. So what did God do? Mana from heaven. Here you go, you hungry? Boom, there's your food, dropped right down. That's a pretty cool door dash right from heaven, mana.
And then He hits the water, talks to the rock, water comes right out of the rock. Then they're tired of the mana. They want some dove, they want some quail, they want some meat. Well, God provides that for them. Then their enemies are attacking, and God conquers their enemies. It says they did not enter into the Promised Land because they did not believe. There's a power of unbelief, even amid the evidence, but there is so much overwhelming evidence for Christmas. Yeah, one of the verses that I was looking at this weekend was Matthew 21, 22.
And it says, in whatever things that you ask in prayer, believing you will receive. And so faith is huge. As a matter of fact, when you were talking about that, Stu, I was thinking about a story of Ted Williams, the great baseball player. He hit over 400 one year, and maybe for his lifetime. But he was phenomenal, but he was an atheist. And so one time, he was actually up in his airplane.
He had a personal jet or personal plane. And he was flying, and the plane was going down. And he said, Lord, if you're real, save me from this and let me live. So he went down, and he actually lived. And he said, well, after that, he continued to be an atheist.
So it's not, maybe there's more to it than people just... Well, there's a lot more to it. There's God. There's God with us.
There's Emmanuel. There's Jesus. There's people that saw Jesus raised from the dead. There's people that saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. Yet they still persisted in their unbelief. So God's got to change the heart.
And that's why we have Christmas. That's why Jesus came. And he didn't come to a hallowed hall. He didn't come into some palatial setting, into the mansion. He didn't come to... You would think, you know, if God had some sense, in modern day America, if he came today, well, he would come to a major town, New York, L.A., right?
The White House. Well, he came to, I heard this pastor say this the other day, he came to rural hall. He came to, you think of the smallest, tiniest town that has a tiny citizenry. Well, that's where he came, Bethlehem. There may have been a hundred families there.
You know, based on the number of wells there, they can deduce that there weren't a lot of people in Bethlehem. It was a hick town. It was a nowhere. It was a small, little, tiny sheep town. You know, cattle town.
Very agrarian. But of all the places, he came there. And he came into the squalor of a stinky, dank cattle stall.
Imagine the smells that accompany giving birth to the King of Kings. I love that little image, and I put that in my book, First Words of Jesus. The picture of a manger.
You'll see these maims all over the internet and Facebook. It's got the picture of a baby on a big bed of straw, and it says, A king-sized bed indeed. Isn't that cool? That is cool.
That is cool. So you, what prompted you to write this book? Well, it was crazy you asked. I wrote this book, Last Words of Jesus. And that was the first book, and everyone still wonders about that.
I never was good on my order, my sequential order. I probably need some more help there. But as I'm finishing up the manuscript for this book about the cross, Jesus' final words right from the cross, I was on, if not for God, for that book. It was great.
Thank you for having me on for that. Father, forgive them, all these things. It is finished, all these things he said from the cross. As I'm wrapping that up, it's Christmas time.
So I'm finishing up a very cross-centered, Easter-type book. And it's in the middle of Christmas. And all my kiddos are on stage dancing in the church Christmas pageant. My four daughters, Hope, Grace, Joy, and Faith. And I can tell you before God that my kids are angels. Because they were in the Calvary Baptist Christmas pageant. Church, you went to as a kid, too. And so they were in the pageant, and I'm watching them dance.
And if you're the parent of a kid, and Robbie, you've been there, you go to everything. If there's five programs, you go to all five programs. Well, I'm going to five programs, but I'm on a writing deadline. So I've got my little phone here, and I'm going over edits about the cross. About, oh sacred had thou wounded, about Christ being beaten, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, by his stripes were healed. I'm studying all that intensely, right, and going over the sacred hymns of the cross, when I survey the wondrous cross upon which my Savior died, and so on and so forth. I'm in the middle of a Christmas program, and when my kids aren't up on stage, I'm writing.
But when they're up, phone down, elbow from the wife, focus on my daughters dancing, the angels, the shepherds, and all that. Well, as I'm writing this, I'm starting to listen to these Christmas hymns. Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. And I'm hearing about in these Christmas, these sacred songs of Christmas, that this baby was born to die. I mean, what baby is born to die? When you go to a birth, you celebrate.
Think about when your kids were born. You're showered with gifts, and it's a huge time. And Christmas is a huge time, because we're celebrating the birth of the king and the trumpets, and some of the best music, by the way, you'll ever hear, is at Christmas time. But this baby was marked for death before he was even born.
And I'm hearing these songs, and I'm literally, I'm hearing these songs, and I'm literally crying. Tears are coming down, and I'm like, wow, and the Lord in that moment said, you've got to write a Christmas book. And so I literally started writing first words of Jesus before I'm even done with last words, and the whole point of that is to connect the cradle to the cross, so that we can see the crown. And so there is an end of that song, Crown Him With Many Crowns, is in this book, because one of the stanzas in Crown Him With Many Crowns, which we sing, The Lamb Upon His Throne, one of the stanzas is Crown Him The Virgin Born Son. So there's all this, there's all the birth of Christ, and the cradle of Christ, connected to the cross of Christ, to ultimately be in the crown of Christ.
When you look at those Christmas carols, they got it. They connected the two, and so God said, write a book, very simple, very much like last words of Jesus, seven chapters, first words of Jesus, that gets into this, like this is, why lies He, what child is this, why lies He in such mean estate? Here ox and ass are feeding, good Christians fear, for sinners hear, the silent word is pleading. Listen to this song from What Child Is This, this stanza is in What Child Is This, and this is the one stanza that people don't even sing anymore, but it's in there. Nails spear shall pierce Him through, the cross be born, for me, for you, hail, hail, the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary.
You know that song, we sing it, but the nails, the spears, this is morbid. They were in a celebration of a birth, but He had to be born of a virgin. He had to die so we could be reborn. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary. The Holy Spirit conceives the Son of God in us.
We are born from above when He comes into our life. Christ in me, we are in Christ, Christ is in us. So there's so many rich comparisons to the incarnation of Jesus at Christmas that connects to the cross, that connects to the Christian that the Lord said, put it in a book, and basically this is a compilation of kind of all these things. And I've got probably over 20 of these hymns, we talk about the wise men, the shepherds, it's all in here, you know, connecting the cradle to the cross.
Yeah, and that's good, Stu, and one of the things that I actually heard this past week was J.D. Greer, and he was preaching, and one of the things that he said was, he says, would you rather be hit by a big semi-truck, or would you rather be hit by the shadow of a semi-truck? And he said, what happened was, was that Jesus was hit by the truck, so we just had to be hit by the shadow.
Amen. That's exactly right, and he took the wrath of God, and this right here is probably one of my favorite Christmas hymns, O Holy Night, which by the way, I tell the story in here, I won't go into here, but I tell the story of the, it was actually written, the music to this was written by a Jewish man who wasn't a believer, and the words were written by a wine, a seller of wine, a guy who was a French absolute party animal guy, and somehow God brought those two together, and this song was the, one of the first ever songs, and it was the first ever song played on the radio, believe it or not, on Christmas Eve 1906, and here's the words, Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn, Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born. And this is the greatest tragedy of Christmas, is it through all the singing, all the messages, all the sermons, all the traditions, will your soul feel its true worth, and the worth of your soul can only come from its creator, and that's why Jesus came. God didn't send a plan, he didn't send a program, he didn't send a bunch of principles, he sent a person. John chapter 1, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, Jesus Christ, the embodiment of that, and he took the wrath of God, he took the semi-truck of God Almighty, so that we could live with him forever, so that our soul could find its worth, but there had to be a price paid for our sin, and he was born, his people, to deliver. He came, God rest you merry gentlemen. Hey, think about that song, right? Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.
Ready for the next word? To save us all from Satan's power while we were gone astray. There you have the whole gospel, and so you have this gospel message in all of these things, and you have Mary, imagine that. Hey, who is the very first person to have Jesus living in them?
Think about that, right? We talk about accepting Jesus into your heart. Mary had Jesus Christ in her stomach.
Can you imagine caring? Christ was in her physically, right? And then he dwelt in her spiritually. So Christ was born of Mary, but Mary was born again of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary, right? But Christ would be conceived by the Holy Spirit in her heart and soul and save her. And she was the only one present at both his physical birth, giving birth to him, and at his physical death, watching him die to give her a new birth. So she could be born again.
So you and I could be born again. What child is this? See? That cute, cooing, cuddly baby. Imagine Mary playing with those little fingers. Little tiny little fingers. Those hands that would bear the nails. Those little cute, precious little feet that would be scarred, nails would be driven to those feet so that we could be saved and healed and forgiven. What child is this who's laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? That's it.
That's it. And when you're talking about all this, it makes me think, man, we ought to give the Lord praise. We ought to praise the Lord, and we don't do that enough. I mean, matter of fact, I'm looking at Psalm 107, verse 31 to 43. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders. He turneth rivers into a wilderness and the water springs into dry ground, a fruitful land and a barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. He turneth the wilderness into a standing water and dry ground into water springs, and there he maketh the hungry to dwell that they may prepare a city for habitation, and sow the fields and plant vineyards which may yield fruits of increase.
He blessed them also so that they are multiplied greatly and suffereth not for their cattle to decrease. And one of the things that I'm thinking about is that so many times we complain about everything that's going on around us and all the problems that we have and this and that, but you actually told a story of Joni Eareckson-Tada. Oh, man. What a story. She has had a huge impact on my life, and if you don't know the story of Joni, J-O-N-I, Joni Eareckson-Tada, you've got to look it up. You've got to Google it. You've got to watch the movie. You've got to read her books.
She's amazing. Chapter 3 or Chapter 4, I talk about the dark side of Christmas. Like, Christmas is a hard time for a lot of folks. You think about people you've lost. You know, I'm not going to have my first Christmas.
I talked to a friend the other day. His first Christmas without his dad. Struggling.
It's tough. A lot of tears at Christmas. Well, you think about Christmas, we tell the story of the wise men, right, and all the plays and everything, and it wasn't right at his birth. It was a little bit after. Christ would have been a little bit older than that. But when Herod came, it was bloody. He murdered all the little baby boys to try to kill the Messiah. The serpent was trying to knock out the seed of the woman, right, from Genesis 3.15 all the way up. And Herod was part of that.
He wanted to destroy the Messiah. And so in that Chapter 4, I talk about how God used this woman who's had so much pain. Joni Eareckson-Tada, one of her favorite hymns is What Child Is This?
And she, I was reading a book where she talked about how the fellow that wrote that song, What Child Is This, wrote it after coming out of an almost life-threatening illness, combined with a battle of deep depression. This guy grew up in the home of an accomplished surgeon, and everyone had him like, this guy's gonna be the next doctor. Well, he wasn't. He became an insurance salesman. An insurance salesman. How about that?
How about it? But he was also a poet. He was also a gifted writer.
I'm thinking about the gifts you have, you know, and all that you do. And he went on to write, in the deepest, darkest moment of his depression, he wrote one of the most famous Christmas carols ever penned, What Child Is This. I read it earlier, you know, that verse in there.
And so he knew the suffering. And so Joni Eareckson-Tada talks about that, and so I wanted to include her in the book, and she graciously, I didn't know this at the time, but she graciously, the gentleman's name, by the way, was William Dix, D-I-X. And the other famous book he wrote in 1859, the other famous hymn, Not Just What Child Is This, but As With Gladness, Men of Old, another very famous one. So Joni Eareckson-Tada really talked about, and I talk in the book about how she's been confined to a wheelchair from a diving accident in her youth for over 50 years, and she's led millions of people to Christ from that wheelchair. And so she's a family friend of ours, and we've carried her programs, we've known her for years, and so she graciously gave me permission to include in the book First Words of Jesus, the artwork.
About a decade or so ago, Billy Graham gave her commission. He commissioned her, she draws, she's got a beautiful angelic voice, she sings, and she draws with her mouth. So he commissioned her to draw this print, a painting, for his Christmas card.
And he didn't give her a lot of directions, he just said, draw something. Well, she couldn't get over the fact that the shadow of the cross was over the entire life of Christ, right? And from the prophecies to when he was born, everything he did, growing up in a carpenter's home, working with wood, he would die on a wooden cross that had been carved and prepared, and all these things. And so she drew this beautiful print of Mary holding baby Jesus with the three crosses in the background. So she allowed me to include that in my book and a little bit about her story, which is such an encouragement that yes, things are dark, things are rough, but we have Jesus Christ.
We have the light of the world. He is the hope. He went through hell so we could have heaven.
He is the gift, and he's the gift that keeps on giving. And he's the gift that inspired the shepherds to go tell it on a mountain. They didn't have theological degrees, they hadn't been to Bible college, they didn't even have Christian Radio Truth Network to listen to. But they encountered Jesus Christ, and they wanted to tell every living, moving, crawling being about Jesus. And that inspired slaves 300 years ago in a rough area to write the song, Go Tell it on the Mountain. And we don't even know the names of those guys.
You know that? It's in chapter 7 of my book. I go into more detail. We don't know the names of the authors of the song. A very famous songwriter took it and put it and codified it and took their work and made it into an amazing song.
An African American, very accomplished, gifted musician. But these slaves wrote Go Tell it on the Mountain. Even in the pain and the brutality of slavery, they celebrated that Jesus Christ is born. We've got to tell somebody. No matter how hard it is, Michael, you may be having a hard day, but guess what, buddy? You're on your way to heaven. The gift of Jesus has come to you.
You've received it. You're a son of God. And guess what? The world out there, let me tell you what's bad about their day. They're on their way to hell, to a Christless eternity, to live under the wrath of God for eternity, to suffer for their sins, and you and I have the message. We have the message of peace, the message of joy to the world. Jesus has come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing. Am I singing that?
Am I inviting hearts to prepare him room? Or am I so clouded and crowded? Is my life so full that there's no room at the end for Jesus? Just like in that first appearance in Bethlehem, right?
When they ended up in this barn, in this stall. And so the message is, do you know him? Have you received this amazing gift of Jesus? And are you, if you have, who are you telling?
You better be a super spreader of that message. Yeah, Chip Ingram, the wonderful pastor who's on the Truth Network, I was listening to him, and one of the things that he said was that, I'm preaching a sermon right now on telling people about Jesus and opening up your mouth, this and that, he said, but I was on a plane flight. There was a young lady next to me, and he said, I started talking or whatever, and I started thinking to myself, well, she wouldn't want to hear it or whatever. And he said, I almost chickened out, and she went over there and did that. And he said, what compelled me to tell her about Jesus, and it ended up working out, was not that I felt like I had to, but was that a love for her?
How can I not tell somebody about the love of Jesus and about eternal life and what could happen if she doesn't accept Christ? It was a love that compelled him to tell her. John 3.16 is written all over this whole Christmas story. For God so loved the world that he gave. The gift of God is a person. The gift of God is God himself, God who became like us so we could be with him. And that's the story of Christmas.
We've got to make sure we're telling people about it. When you notice the words Merry Christmas, when you write it out, and this was really cool, the Lord gave this to me actually when I'm writing letters to all the people about my book, and I wrote Merry Christmas over and over again, right in the middle of that word is a cross. Have you ever noticed that? Just write out Merry Christmas and notice that T right there in the middle of Christmas. Right in the middle of Christmas is a cross. And so now whenever I write Merry Christmas, I make that T real big and I make it a big cross. And underneath I put, because of his cross, we have hope.
We have life everlasting because God made him who had no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And that's why he came. And that's why we have joy to the world. You have joy in all these songs. Hundreds of Christmas carols have the word joy in them. In fact, I think it's chapter 6 I have the word joy. Every Christmas song has the word joy. And the wise men were filled with exceedingly great joy in Matthew 2. That literally is a triple joy in the Greek language. It's remarkable. But that joy can be that joy something inside that Joni Erickson-Tada has. Even though she's confined to a wheelchair, she has more joy than most human beings because she has the joy of Jesus Christ living in her. Absolutely. And if you haven't, pick up the book First Words of Jesus by Stu Epperson Jr. Thank you so much, Stu. If not forgot. If not forgot.
