Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater // One Year Ends, Another Begins
, Part 4

<p class="p1">Many people today, believe in God but don’t acknowledge Him as God. Many have a sense of God’s goodness, but they don’t live in that goodness and then they wonder why things life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. When it comes to Jesus, all too many people – by how they live their lives, end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.</p> <p>It’s amazing here we are in another Christmas week with the whole year gone and we’re about to do that whole Christmas thing. A few years ago I was sharing a Christmas message in July with the church in Sydney. And we were singing some Christmas carols and we were having Christmas in July and after the service some people said to me, "You know, it felt really weird singing Christmas carols in the middle of the year."</p> <p>It’s a bit funny isn’t it? We’re somehow conditioned to do the Christmas thing at Christmas time in December. In the same way that people who live in the Northern Hemisphere can’t conceive Australian’s like me having Christmas in the middle of summer. Sitting on a beach somewhere maybe eating prawns or having a BBQ while the snow coming down in the Northern Hemisphere.</p> <p>Actually, it’s quite natural for us to have seasons and festivals. The whole festivals and traditions that surround the things that we do throughout the year, actually to turn out to be very, very important to society. Back in early civilisation sociologists tell us, that the whole issue of regular festivals created some stability, created a heartbeat and a cycle and a sense of celebration periodically which was quite important to the development of a society.</p> <p>Well, what about Christmas? Let’s have a look at, just quickly, at the history of Christmas because it’s a strange history. The early church celebrated the death of Christ that’s Easter and the death of the martyrs of the church but not the birth of people and certainly not the birth of Jesus.</p> <p>The first mention of a Christ’s mass on the Roman calendar was 336 AD. Almost well, three centuries afte