Well, the next time you hear my voice on things unseen, if you're able to listen to the

next podcast, it will actually be Christmas Day.

And yes, there will be a podcast, and I hope that even if you can't listen, you will

still be able to find a few minutes of peace and quiet to give thanks to the Lord.

In all this week we've been thinking about our need to have this expensive power of

a new affection for the Lord Jesus.

But today I want to focus on Christmas Day itself.

I think it's important for us to say there's no special Holy Days now for believers.

Yes, the life of an old covenant, Old Testament believer was punctuated by Holy Days, because

God's people had national holidays, actually they had a lot of them, but they were religious

Holy Days, and actually that's where the word holiday comes from, isn't it?

And you probably know that before the Protestant Reformation, the church had created a whole

calendar of Holy Days, Christmas being one of them.

And there are farmers, especially in my own country of Scotland, reacted against that.

It felt the church had been insisting on observations that went beyond scripture, and sometimes

against scripture.

And so all these special days came to an end, including Christmas.

In fact, when the Scots commissioners went to the Westminster Assembly in the mid-17th

century, they assembly where the famous confession and catacasms were written, the Scots

were appalled to discover that people were not working on Christmas Day.

So even when I was growing up in Scotland, Christmas Day was only a half day holiday.

Now I've Christian friends who maintain that old tradition, because scripture doesn't

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