Should a Disciple of Jesus Christ Celebrate Halloween?

I want to talk to us about a disciple of Jesus Christ and the holidays. And so a lot of what I'm going to talk about, I'm not going to teach on Christian liberty today.

You can find it in Romans chapter 14 where Paul teaches about Christian liberty. A lot of this may pertain to Christian liberty and things like that, but I do want to express some thoughts today from the word of God.

So I'm going to take a scripture from Isaiah chapter 5 verse 20. And he says, woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

And so we're going into this the holiday season and I want to address a few things, a few things that I think we should consider as disciples of Jesus Christ. And I'm going to focus on Halloween, but really this applies to all of the holidays that are coming up in the season ahead of us.

So Halloween, Halloween is heavily debated in the Christian realm. Is it harmless? Is it a celebration of darkness that the followers of Jesus, you know, the followers of the light should have no part in?

Or should we celebrate Halloween or not? And what what does the scripture say? And I think that's should always be our default question. Anytime we have a question about anything is we should default to what does the word of the Lord say?

What does the word of God say? And then conform to that. So what does God say about this? So there's a there's a few categories that I believe that we could fall into as professing Christians when it comes to specifically Halloween.

And the first one is total abstinence, meaning just totally abstaining from any type of participation in anything to do with Halloween.

And they may this Christian and this group may have celebrate the harvest or have harvest theme party or or something along those lines.

Or they may celebrate the time of year, the fall season that's at hand. And so this first view on Halloween says that Halloween is there's a lot of darkness.

There's a lot of death, decay, a lot of witchcraft and and all these things are satanic. And so why would I participate in a day that glorifies which is called evil?

And so the Bible the Bible says to abhor that which is evil, which means to to be repulsed by or to be disgusted by what's evil. The fact of the matter is evil and good are just complete opposites and we should not celebrate evil.

So the group that believes that this is, you know, that not to go trick or treating, but what they maybe they celebrating the harvest, celebrating fall, celebrating the sweater, the sweater season, celebrating pumpkin spice and everything nice and all that kind of season.

And this first stance or option is is like, you know, we don't even want to toe the line here. I don't want to confuse my kids.

And I do believe trying to teach young kids to contrast things can be difficult and hard. Kids are I think it's best kids learn best by having some plain yeses and nos and some very definite absolutes.

And and they learn easier that way. But trying to trying to teach contrast, you know, when things are good and when things are bad, it makes it harder on kids. And, you know, when you're going trick or treating, you're seeing scared, scary skeletons and zombies and mummies and all that and gore and stuff like that.

And you're trying to teach your kids that that's not OK. But then you go to the next house and then it's just pumpkins and whatnot. And you're trying to say, OK, this is OK. And that can be confusing to a young child.

And and so you're like, you know, in you know, I just don't even want to participate in that. And maybe you're concerned about participating in darkness in general.

And so this is that first group I'm talking about of Christians. That's it's not something that you think a Christian should be part of. And I think that's correct and find an understanding and it's an understandable position to take.

And so the first option is just living like it's another day. And this is, I believe, a legitimate and good stance to have as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Now, the second the second stance on this is what would be like partial participation. And that is this teach is this kind of teaching?

OK, I know it's a little different, but I just felt to talk about it. I've never heard anybody really teach this Frank about things like this.

And so I just thought it would be healthy and good for the church body to hear some biblical teaching on this. OK, so the second but that second group is would be like partial participation, I guess.

And that we don't we wouldn't decorate with witches and and mummies and skeletons or glorified darkness. But we do dress up maybe like Disney characters and maybe even like an animal from Noah's Ark or an angel or something innocent of that nature.

And I think this is a category where probably most most Christians, everyday people proclaiming and trying to practice Christianity probably falls into this kind of category.

They just, you know, inherently there's nothing wrong with candy. Right. And candy isn't evil. And and I can choose costumes and that don't celebrate any of the form forms of darkness at all and that type of thing.

And so this this middle position is to participate, but only in ways that doesn't partake in glorifying what the devil produces, which is evil, death, scary stuff, trying trying to be spooky and scary and or whatever.

So don't flirt with evil. Just try to have fun and celebrate with your kids. And we as a church, we've done trunk or treats in the community as a church, which I think we did a Noah's Ark theme and passed out gospel tracks to people that are out in the streets at a big trunk or treat event.

And just try to be a light in a kind of a situation where there can be some darkness. OK. And so that's that's the second option, maybe a partial participation.

And then the third option is just full participation. And the argument for this is that the darkness isn't real. The mummies and skeletons aren't real and and the gore is just fake and it's for fun.

It's no big deal. You know, people are making too big of a deal of it, you know. And in real death and real decay, real demonic activity doesn't look like Halloween where it's just silly.

And death has like googly eyes, you know, and people are dressing up like mummies. And obviously it's not real. And so they think that it doesn't even have any correlation with the satanic at all.

And for that position, I would push back against that position because it although although it's it is a representation of darkness. And even if it's a cartoonish representation of darkness, it doesn't mean that it's something to be celebrated.

OK. Remember, the Bible teaches that Satan can come in the form of an angel of light. And so he tries to make evil good and tries to make good evil.

And he's a deceiver. He's a manipulator. And we know this from the garden where he always tries to turn God's word around. And so remember Ephesians 5, 8 through 11 says, for you were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

And so that's what I'm attempting to do today is to reprove or to expose and push back against the works of darkness. And unfortunately, there are there are there are works of darkness and and all the holidays, in my opinion, that are promoted in this world with Halloween being a big one.

And so when when when when your children see Halloween decorations that celebrate things like death and darkness and decay, we should we should actually make it clear to our kids that we don't participate in those things.

And it's also just not it's not loving to our children. It's not loving to your to your child or children or to your neighbors to to frighten them or to give them some kind of morbid curiosity or interest in the things of darkness because they might seem innocent or silly or cartoonish now, but they actually have a representation in the underworld that's legitimate.

OK, and they have a representation or parallel, if you will, in Satan's domain of darkness and Satan loves death.

He loves decay and he loves scary. Satan loves cultivating fear and anxiety. And we should not participate in anything that purposely cultivates fear and anxiety and glorifies death and decay.

We have to take this thing of living for God seriously. You know, if it were far the people in this room are far past the time to be flirting with God. And and it's time that we really start to live for God in a serious manner.

And we shouldn't. Spiritual warfare is real. It really is. There's there's two sides to the to this thing. And there's light and darkness. And we shouldn't we shouldn't be entertaining and watching horror movies and reading horror novels or anything like that.

If you have a curiosity for for those things, we really need to do need to consider the spiritual implications behind it, because, you know, we might actually be at a point where we need to repent and ask God to help us be cleansed from that kind of stuff.

If that's something that you take interest in, because spiritual warfare is is real. Ephesians six and twelve says for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness and high places.

And the demonic realm is real. And another thing that I would warn us against is if you're if you are for full participation in Halloween and horror movies and and haunted houses or whatever, is that that witchcraft is real.

OK, there which craft is real. Witchcraft is is is not harmless. It's for some reason it's on the rise. It's becoming more popular. More stories are coming out about this thing that we might not have thought about much.

But witchcraft is real. In fact, witchcraft is so harmful and so wrong that it carried the weight of the death penalty and God's word.

OK, if God's people practice in the Old Testament witchcraft, they would be executed. In Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 10 through 12, says there shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire.

Meaning no no no child sacrifice. OK, or that uses the divination or an observer of times. OK, that's talking about astrology.

Horoscopes and things of that nature or an enchanter or a witch or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard or a necromancer.

OK, necromancer. And for all that do these things are an abomination of the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord, thy God, doth drive them out from before thee.

The Bible is clear that there shall not be found among us anyone who burns his son or daughter. OK, no child sacrifice. OK, and the Bible is clear that there there shouldn't be people among us that would sacrifice children, obviously.

Right. And or anyone who practice divination or or tells fortunes or interprets omens or so like a Ouija board, for example.

God is is putting that on the same level as child sacrifice. All these things and these few sentences in Deuteronomy that God's teaching against is all kind of combined together.

OK, so going to a fortune teller or to a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer, which is is one who speaks to the dead, by the way.

God is saying that that this is the same category as offering up your baby to be sacrificed. OK, and that's how God looks at it. That's how bad it is. And God ordered in the Old Testament that you had to die because of that.

God's God's position on these things is because it's so so infecting and so damaging to God's people that God wanted to wanted to eradicate it.

OK, and so we see a law against witchcraft and all works of darkness. And it is echoed in the New Testament as well. It's not just in the Old Testament. And so for a disciple of Jesus Christ, it is not for a disciple of Jesus Christ to fully participate in Halloween or to enjoy horror and scary stuff.

OK, Satan desires you to to to to see evil as fun and as good and cute or whatever. Satan desires you to minimize the importance of the spiritual warfare that we are actually in.

OK, this being a part of the church is not being on a cruise ship. It's a battleship. OK, and so there's there's a war that's going on that's being waged, whether we want to recognize it or not, that, you know, the devil is after your soul and after your your spouse's soul and after your children's soul.

And it's time to wake up and it's time to fight the battles that we need to be fighting and take back our homes and our lives from Satan, because Satan desires you to invite darkness and evil into your home and to your children's lives.

And so I think we should tell Satan to go fly a kite today. And Satan's days are numbered and he knows that. And so as the day gets closer, he's going to try harder and harder.

And we and as he does, we need to reject his ploys and his plots and his plans to desensitize us to his evil and darkness. Amen. We're children of the light and we do not mix with light, light with darkness.

And we're we're supposed to be the light and bring light to a dark place, not play around with darkness. And we're not to participate in darkness. And so we are to be the contrast.

We do we do not want to blur the lines or tiptoe the lines. And so light be the light in the world. Amen. Let Jesus shine through you. Let that spirit that's inside you, that's light, shine in this dark place.

And life and light should be celebrated, not darkness and death. And as far as the all the other holidays go, Easter, Christmas, you know, these are supposed to be holy days, holidays.

Right. Be cautious of the things that have been injected over the course of time by the world and by darkness. And let's find ways to keep these holidays that we're going into in a way that we can glorify God as Christians and disciples of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen. Let's all stand. Amen.