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Foreign It's Friday, December 19, 2025. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. This is the last edition of the Briefing before we go into the Christmas holidays, and we're going to do things just a little bit differently. I'm going to go to questions first, and then we'll end with questions, some thoughts concerning Christmas, Advent, and we'll focus our thoughts accordingly. But right now, let's just turn to questions. You know, Christmas brings up all kinds of questions. The celebration of the church, not to mention the confusion of the culture, it raises all kinds of questions. And there's some really sweet questions that were sent in. A listener wrote about hymns. And by the way, this kind listener had been reading through my Christmas devotional book, recapturing the glory of Christmas. And she noted that I put Christmas hymns incorporated into the text and into the book. And she asked the question, what are my favorite Christmas hymns? What a sweet question. And I'll just say number one. I love the Advent and Christmas hymns. I love the declaration of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. I also love the theme of joy that is so resounding. It reminds us that the declaration of the angels unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. That is just the most astounding statement that human ears could ever hear. It's the dividing point in all of human history between the before and the after. It is the declaration of the best good news that human beings could hear. And that's one of the reasons why I think, oh, Come All Ye Faithful, making a very similar point, is the most majestic of all the Christmas hymns. And I think if you don't sing anything else, you have to sing that. And it's not because it encapsulates, in terms of its words, everything that you want to say about Christmas. Because no sermon can, no text can, no Christmas devotional can. Because we're talking about the infinite truth of the majesty of what God has done for our salvation in sending Jesus Christ. But I think it's important to recognize that when we talk about songs, we really are talking about at least two different elements. And those two different elements are the words and the tune. And that's what makes a song a song, is that it's not just something that is read or something that is merely spoken. It is something that is sung, which, by the way, is so central to Christian worship. Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, they resound in the heart, in A way that speech alone does not. And evidently this is to the glory of God, and it's by the order even of the Holy Spirit. In terms of how Christian worship is to take place, we can declare certain things with words, and we do. We read the Scripture, we declare the word of God, we declare the great truths of the Gospel. And furthermore, we summarize the Christian faith and creeds and confessions, which are words. But there are certain things that can only be sung. And there's a certain experience in declaring the truth of the gospel together through song and the great truths of the Christian faith. And certainly when you're declaring the great central truth of the Incarnation, there's a point at which you have to just stop talking and start singing. But again, this is a really sweet question. And it comes down to what are my favorites. I want to point to two others for a particular reason. One is the text and the hymn O Come O Come Immanuel. And it is because, and this reminds us of the fact that we use the word Advent to remind ourselves that Christmas comes as the fulfillment of a promise. The Incarnation comes as the fulfillment of a promise. And we really need to feel the promise. We need to recognize what God's people, through so many centuries knew was promised. And they were waiting for it. They were looking for it. And thus the prayer oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. By the way, that goes back to a 9th century text. I just love singing words that Christians have been singing for more than a thousand years. That's not to say I don't like new songs. I'm simply saying there's a real weight. A song that has survived for over a thousand years sung by Christians. Guess what? That's a weighty song. You ought to pay attention to that one and the other that I would mention, similar looking forward to the coming of Christ and then declaring the coming of Christ. I think one of them, which is so warm hearted and so filled with right doctrine and right urgency is Charles Wesley's hymn, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. By the way, it's just fantastic when sung congregationally, it is one of those songs. Again, the hymn and the tune come together just beautifully. And Wesley had a way. He was just such a gift to the church to be able to take the great truths of the Christian faith and set them into stanza and into sequence of words and into music. There's a reason why we just love singing Charles Wesley's hymns. And Charles Wesley also, let's just say, found his way over and over again to declaring the sovereign grace of God. And so I'm thankful for that. It shows up in the songs that he wrote, including songs he wrote for the movement that his brother led. Their gifts to the entire church. All right, next, let me just be absolutely candid. This happens every single year. I expect it. Something's gone wrong if we don't get these questions in the sense that the issue is not going away. So the questions won't. And that has to do with Santa Claus. All right, so let me tell you something that might surprise you. There really was, I believe, an historic figure known as St. Nicholas. The problem is that when you get to Santa Claus, you're really mixing all kinds of things together. And furthermore, even when it comes to someone like St Nicholas of Cusa, for example, I was just in Turkey and in Asia Minor. And so, in other words, this was the area in which there was a bishop named Nicholas, and there were things associated with him that did become, over the centuries, associated even with a character known as St. Nicholas or Old St. Nick. That becomes also Santa Claus. You're dealing with linguistic issues here and cultural issues here. And then I think what a lot of people miss is you're dealing with commercial issues. I think this is where a lot of people don't know that the Santa Claus that people talk and think about today was at least in part, a commercial invention. Okay, so let's talk about that for just a moment. Number one, let's just talk about Santa Claus as Santa Claus is in the world today. And especially I'll speak to an English speaking listenership. You know, Santa Claus is this figure who supposedly, you know, delivers all the toys, lives at the North Pole, has a toy factory and, you know, and also has elves and all the rest. This is. This is, of course, a huge problem because this is what so many in the secular world want to talk about. Now, I want to just point to something else, though, that is interesting. And I don't think a lot of Christians have noticed this. There is even a decline in Santa Claus when it comes to Christmas in the American cultural experience, which is to say that even Santa Claus may be too much for an awful lot of Americans who simply want to reduce Christmas to this kind of anodyne family gathering in which you exchange gifts. And Americans have even kind of outgrown Santa Claus in many ways, which I think is just pointing to a further slide, not only in secularization in one sense, but also just in even cultural traditions. But for Christians, the big issue, of course, is that the entire focus should be on the promise of Christ and The fulfillment of, of God's promise and the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here is where we just had to go back to the Scriptures. And the Scriptures are entirely clear. You take the nativity narratives as we find them, in particular in Matthew and in Luke. We're not talking about sweet Christmas stories, something just to be read for inspirational value at Christmas. We're talking about the opening chapters of the Gospels telling us of the coming of Jesus Christ, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and the historical circumstances around it. And for example, we have in the Gospel of Luke the clear declaration of what it means that the angelic host appeared to shepherds and made the announcement again unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. And what did the shepherds do? I preached about this just last Friday. What a glorious text. What did the shepherds do in haste? They went to see what the Lord had done. In other words, they believed it up front. They didn't go to see it to believe it. They believed it and believing it, they went to see what the Lord had done. They went to find the Christ child. And I think that's a good reminder to us just in terms of the priority of Christmas, in terms of the adoration of Christ and the worship of the one true and living God, and thankfulness to the Father for sending the Son for our salvation. But we also have to remember that the story doesn't begin in Bethlehem. It doesn't even begin with the Old Testament promise. It begins in, in the beginning, in the eternal existence of the one true and living God. And thus you have the opening of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So, you know, one of the problems here, I guess I've wandered far afield from Santa Claus here. I think the bigger problem is not the presence of Santa Claus as a part of Christian traditions. The bigger problem for Christians is the sidelining of, of the central truths of the Christian faith and reminding our children, teaching our children, inculcating in our children, the reminder that this is really all about the coming of the Son of God, the incarnation of the Son for us and for our salvation. And thus there are all kinds of traditions that come up around it. And the tradition of gift giving is not wrong. It's supposed to be grounded in the gift that was given to us by the Father and the Son. And with the gifts that the Magi, the wise men brought, it all comes together. And the impulse to give gifts and frankly, the human need for celebrations, for holidays, for commemorations, I think it all comes together and family gatherings, and there's something very warm about that. By common grace, Santa Claus, I'll simply say I have to leave that to the Christian conscience. But you can't lie. I'll just put it that way. So be very careful that you don't speak to your children what you later have to come back and say, no, that. By the way, I didn't mean that to be taken as fact, the way you received it. Just imagine how that can undermine even the teaching of biblical truth. But, you know, it's an issue left, I think, to the conscience of Christian parents as to what you say about what people think about Santa Claus and why people talk about him. And there's a sentence in which I don't think you have to go on a crusade against Santa Claus in order to be very clear about the great truths of Christmas. And I think we all understand that there's a part of. So let's just separate this into the whole issue of fairy tales, folk tales and all the rest. There's a sense in which our children have to learn when we're talking about stories and characters, whether it's, you know, Little Red Riding Hood or something else. It clearly is to be understood as an interesting story and that which is presented as true in space, time and history. That's what I think we must never mislead our children about when it comes to Santa Claus. Now, next, lots of questions about Mary. I think this is natural. Again, it comes and a part of it comes because of the focus on Mary in Christmas celebrations. Is that right or wrong? Well, let's focus on something, and that is the attention given to Mary in the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke. Both of them give an extraordinary amount of attention, especially Luke, an extraordinary amount of attention to Mary and before Mary, even Elizabeth, and the birth of her son John, who will be the forerunner of the Christ. And so, you know, there are two mothers that are major figures, but of course, none larger than Mary. Mary is held up in scripture, by the way, as a model of obedience. Let it be unto me. It's just the sweetest statement of Mary's obedience. Such a shocking word that came to her. She is about to be the mother of the Christ. A babe is to grow within her, and the baby will be the one who will come from Mary. And yet by the virgin birth, the virgin conception, not of the will of. Of a human father, rather, it is the heavenly Father. And yet Mary, flesh and Blood Mary, this little virgin girl, she is greatly honored, even as is declared. She is greatly honored because of her role as the mother of the Christ. She's also honored because of her obedience and her love for Christ, even when you get to the crucifixion narratives. And it's clear that she has a very, very special role in the entire context of God's fulfillment of his promises. But it's also clear that the attention is to be on the child rather than on the child's mother. The child's mother is a model of obedience and faithfulness, but she is also presented as one who is very human in every conceivable way, even when Jesus corrects her, for example, in one situation. But it's very important for us to recognize that you can't tell the Christmas story without Mary and without a lot of focus on Mary. And no one should apologize for that. It's right out of the New Testament text itself. But it's all to point to Christ. It is all to point to the baby rather than the baby's mother. Now, the specific questions include, so was Mary perpetually a virgin? The answer to that is, I believe, an emphatic, textually based no. There are biblical references to the brothers of Christ. And of course, that would mean half brothers because they came from the union of Joseph and Mary. And you take James the apostle, identified as one of them, and also Jude the brother of Jesus. And so you look at this and you recognize, no, this is a statement which is different than a spiritual brotherhood. This is clearly understood to be that they were fellow babes from the mother Mary. And so, by the way, the perpetual virginity of Mary really only functions if in some sense there is an adoration of Mary. And that is something that is not, I think, a rightful part of biblical worship. We are to adore Christ. We are to honor Mary. That's a very clear distinction. But, you know, there are later Marian doctrines. I think most people will be surprised how fairly recent they are concerning Martin Mary that were adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. But I'll simply say, I think Protestants, for very good textual reasons on biblical authority, reject those doctrines. Not only don't believe them, but actually, in honesty, reject them, believing that, once again, we are to honor Mary but not to worship her. Adoration is to be directed only to the child, only to the Son, only to the baby Jesus who is God in flesh. All right, there's an inescapable question, and this is a smart question. Sent in. Listener writes saying, I would like to hear Your thoughts about Christmas and the regulative principle of worship. Okay. All right, so let me just state that there are probably some listeners who don't know what the regulative principle is. That is the principle that is very Protestant and is very Puritan, very Reformed, stating that worship should be regulated entirely by Scripture. I don't see how in the world you could argue with that. I mean, frankly, what's the opposite of the regulative principle? An unregulated worship? Well, I think honestly, many churches I know the answer to that is a graphic. Yes, but even when you say I affirm the regulative principle of worship, there are in the Christian tradition, even the Protestant tradition, basically two different versions. Okay. And so one is a more Calvinist version and the other is a more Lutheran version. And you say, well, what's the difference? Well, well, the Lutheran version is basically negative, which is to say if Scripture doesn't forbid it, you can do it. The Reformed tradition is more positive. You must do exactly what is called for in the Scriptures concerning Christian worship and do nothing else. So those are two very different forms. So in Lutheranism you have the continuation of some holidays that of course in the Reformed tradition just disappeared. In the Lutheran tradition you have, let's put it this way, you go into an historic Lutheran church, you are likely to find altarpieces painted. To find different things like that as artistic representations. You go into a classic Calvinist context, you're not going to find any of that. And that's the difference between the more Lutheran, if it's not forbidden, you can do it, and the more Calvinist, if it's not commanded, you can't do it. Those are two different forms. But I think the way the question is asked, I actually don't get that many questions about the regulative principle from Lutherans. It almost always comes from those who are within the Reformed tradition, where I find myself as a Baptist. And so I'll simply say that even when you say that we should do only what Scripture commands and all the Scripture commands and nothing else, that doesn't answer every question. For instance, there are those who would say that means that since instruments are not particularly mentioned in the New Testament context, then instruments are outside regulated worship. So you know, you can find non instrumental traditions. You can also find some others that again define it in more and less restrictive ways. But let me tell you this. When you talk about the regulative principle, in the sense I believe this listener and many others have asked, it comes down to any kind of service that is a disruption of. From, say, a sequence of normal preaching and normal attention. So I think that's a fair way to put it. So in other words, if you're going to have a season of Christmas where you interrupt, say, an expository series on Ezra, and instead you go to focus on this because it's a particular time of the year, is that right or is that wrong? I will simply say I don't think it's wrong. I want to acknowledge there's a puritan impulse here to say that's wrong. I don't believe it's wrong. I do believe it can be vastly overdone. In other words, I think the responsible church rightly can celebrate Christmas, can celebrate the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ with a special emphasis, understanding, for one thing, that an awful lot of attention is directed to this great truth, this great doctrine, this great affirmation. And I don't think we need to ignore that. I think, on the other hand, that there are some issues and the same thing has to do with honoring the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to order, say, a Sunday, and say we're just going to order the hymns and the scriptural readings and all the rest to coincide with this. I don't think it's wrong. I think, however, we have to make constantly clear that we're not affirming anything. We don't affirm 52 Sundays a year. We're not celebrating something that is unique to this Sunday, but rather, we're doing the same things. And I believe even Christmas worship should be regulated by Scripture. I think resurrection worship should be regulated by Scripture. But I do think there is something to the fact that we need to come back to certain central truths of the Christian faith over and over again. And by the way, I want to separate this from Christmas and the festival of the Resurrection. I don't like to use the word Easter, but the festival of the resurrection, and that is, I think churches really committed to the regulative principle need to be very, very careful that the great doctrines of the Christian faith and the great moral commandments of the Christian faith, of biblical faith, are repeated in a cycle. And I want to tell you why. I've come across people who've said, I have never heard a sermon on X. And it's because often it's in a church that says, we don't preach on X, we just preach on the text as it comes. Well, I'll just say you got teenagers struggling with some big issues. You got families struggling with some big issues. You have theological Issues where great doctrines of the Christian faith are being misunderstood. I think there needs to be some intentional effort by the church to have some kind of cycle in which the great doctrines and the great commandments are made very clear. I think the difference between someone being 4 and 14 is just massive. Between being 14 and 24 is just massive. I think some things need to be repeated over and over again. I think that's the way under the regulative principle, we should look at what is known as Christmas. I appreciate all the questions, and I genuinely hope this has been helpful. I want to end just with a word of Christmas joy and Christmas encouragement, and I want to direct our thoughts to the first chapter of the Gospel of John, beginning in verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness says, not overcome it. And then we come all the way down to verse 14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. I want to talk about the shock of Christmas, the shock of the Incarnation. I want to suggest that many Christians, I think, actually minimize, if not miss, the world's missing. I think most Christians don't miss it, but Christians often are tempted to minimize the shock of Christmas. The shock of Christmas shows up, I think, most clearly in this text. And it comes down to the fact that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. What we need to recognize is how offensive that would have been to so many people, how offensive it is even now, how radical this is as a shock. Because here we are told that the one through whom all things were made, we are told here, this is who we would refer to as the second person of the Trinity. The Word, the eternal Word, the Logos. The very fact that the Eternal Word exists, that is not a surprise. That's a clarification, but it's not a surprise. Where's the shock? The shock is when we are told the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. One of the primal heresies of Christianity is the denial of the authenticity, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The people who said, no, he looked fully human. He was almost human. He was human, like that is not what the text says. And here I just want to ask you to ponder Something. When you see references to flesh in Scripture, are they generally positive or negative? I think we just need to recognize they are generally negative. The flesh. Even in the New Testament, the flesh shows up as a sin principle. It is a shocking thing. John 1:14 is an astounding, shocking indeed. By conventional wisdom. Outrageous statement. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Like flesh. No, flesh. Flesh. Like something other than full humanity. No full human flesh. Born of a human flesh. Mother. This shows us that the eternal plan and purpose of God was that we shall be redeemed from our sin by none other than the Son of the living God, sent by the Father, who assumed human flesh. Born the Virgin Mary, the Word through whom the worlds were made became flesh. And not only that. He dwelt among us. And. And as the Gospel declares, we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father. Full of grace and truth. Marked by grace and truth. No. Full of grace and truth. The Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest news that human beings could hear. It is the great truth that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us for our salvation. For us and for our salvation that there's no better news. This is the greatest news any human ears could ever hear. It's the greatest words any human could ever read. We've set this to song and we understand there's no song that's fully adequate. But we just can't help singing those songs with full energy and full joy. We need to sing them with full wonder and we need to feel the shock all over again. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Yes, crucified on the cross for our sins, he became flesh. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Very God, very man. Truly God, truly man. The shocking part there is not God. It is man. He became as us. Just in summary, what I want to say is that all things can become too familiar to us. And that includes even reading a text like John 1. We just need to pause and understand that to the glory of God for our salvation and for our worship. This text Christmas the Incarnation should come to us as nothing less than shocking. To have our attention and of course, to draw our adoration. I pray for you and your family and for all those you love. A very merry Christmas, filled with the wonder of the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is when we will also take time to be with our family. We'll look forward to rejoining you for the briefing on Monday, January 5, 2026. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to spts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com Lord willing, I'll meet you again on Monday, January 5, 2026 for the briefing. God bless you.