Welcome to the Mark Driscoll Ministries Podcast to find more Bible teaching from

Pastor Mark, visit MarkDriscoll.org. Thank you for listening and being a part of

Mark Driscoll Ministries. And remember, it's all about Jesus.

All right, Mary Christmas. Good to have you off. You've got a Bible. Go to the book of

Philippians. We're taking a little bit of time, study through this great book of

the Bible and we're doing so heading into the biggest party that the world has

ever known or ever thrown and that's the birthday of Jesus, amen? Jesus is the

biggest person in the history of the world in Christmas is the biggest party in

the world. It's amazing that the whole world stops to celebrate one guy's birthday.

That's how big he is. And what's curious is we know where he was born in Bethlehem.

We don't know exactly when he was born. The Bible doesn't tell us which month

that Jesus was born in. We don't really know. All it says is shepherds were in the

field. That's all it tells us. And so the way we got this particular date for

Christmas, December 25th, the early Christians were part of an empire called Rome.

And it was a pagan empire with lots of pagan holidays. One of them was called

Saturnalia. And the Christians already had the day off and they figured, well, we

don't know when Jesus was born. Let's use this day off to celebrate his birth. So

that's how we got this particular date for the holiday. That being said, we don't

know exactly when Jesus was born, but we know how he was born. We know that he was

born of his mother Mary. She was probably a teenage girl, think middle school junior

high age. She was a peasant gal. And she was given this amazing gift. She's a

tremendous woman to bring Jesus Christ, God into human history. And this would have

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