We have been taking the diff. Sundays in December to reflect on Advent - the coming, the arrival of Jesus Christ into this world. And we have much to be thankful for concerning Advent for as we have seen we had a great, great need, a desperate need for Advent. And Advent was something that every single human being needed. It makes no diff. what your family background is, what kind of upbringing you’ve had or what part of the world you were raised in, what your educational level is, what your talents are. None of the things we think are important to a person’s status matters because the Bible says that there is 1 level where every single human being stands on common ground w/ each other & that is that we have all sinned & fallen short of the glory of God. That is true of everyone.
In preparation for a meeting in a large city, evangelist Billy Sunday wrote a letter to the mayor in which he asked for the names of individuals he knew who had a spiritual problem & needed help & prayer. How surprised he was when he received from the mayor a city directory. We all have a need for Advent because we’re all sinners. We have & we do break God’s law & therefore we are under the judgment of God.
The 2nd Sunday of Advent we were reminded that when God decided to create us, He also knew that we would rebel against Him & there would be no way to make right that rebellion even if we wanted to. So before the creation of anything, God decided to create us but in doing that also decided & promised to Himself that He would come & die for us, pay the penalty that His law demanded for our sin. And so way back before the creation of the 1st molecule, you were in His mind & He made the commitment to come & die for you so that you might know Him & have a relationship w/ Him forever.
Webster’s dictionary tells us that a promise is a declaration that 1 will do the thing specified & also a declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of that specified act.
Before the foundation of the world, God made a declaration. He made a declaration that He wanted you to have an intimate rel. w/ Him & that He would come & die in order to make that rel. possible. He repeated that declaration in more & more specifics beginning in Genesis 3:15. And those who lived before the advent of Christ had the right to expect or to claim the performance & forbearance of that promise. We, who are on this side of the cross lk back & rejoice in the performance & forbearance of God in keeping His promise.
But as we saw last week, humanly speaking it was not an easy promise to keep. For since the beginning of this world, the arch enemy of God, Satan has waged an all out war w/ every conceivable wickedness & scheme & perversion that he could muster to try to thwart God from keeping His promise to send Christ. And yet at every turn, God who is the supreme, unchallengeable ruler of the universe brushed aside Satan’s attempts to derail His promise & as we observe tomorrow - brought into this world, the Promised One, the Savior, the Godman, the Messiah - just as He promised & declared He would before the foundations of the world.
That is what we have covered so far. And I trust this has been a rewarding study for you. Today I would like to wrap this study up by asking the question - how can we respond to these truths we have studied together? And in trying to think of what would be an appropriate response I have gone not to the Bible but instead to a hymn, a hymn that we sing at this time of the year. It is a hymn that is played & sung in thousands of churches & homes each Christmas. This particular hymn is popular not just here in America but all across the world. There are more than 40 English renderings of the original Latin lyrics, which have also been translated into more than 120 languages & dialects. It has been the favorite of generations & of such noted Americans as Robert E. Lee & Theodore Roosevelt. The hymn is "O Come, All Ye Faithful."
The message of the song is clear. It invites us to respond to Bethlehem’s tiny baby. We are not told to bring something tangible or costly & expensive. Instead this 18th century Latin hymn holds out a 3-fold invitation that anyone (rich or poor) can fulfill.
All are called to come
to behold
to adore the King of angels who is Christ the Lord.
That’s the message of this hymn, which makes it kind of fitting that history has chosen to ascribe the lyrics to no man. For to this day, the hymn’s origin remains unknown although the lyrics have been attributed to John Wade, but no one really knows. And so in response to these truths about Advent we have looked at together over these weeks, let’s consider the message of this hymn.
I. COME
First we are invited to come. It is an open invitation to all. Age is not important nor is geographical location. Neither is one’s level of maturity, knowledge of the Scriptures, cultural background, financial status or anything else. The invitation is opened to all.
Moody - Every one of God’s proclamations is connected w/ that word "whosoever" - "whosoever believeth," "whosoever will." I think it was Richard Baxter who said he thanked God for that "whosoever." He said he would much rather have that word "whosoever" than Richard Baxter; for if was Richard Baxter, he would have thought it was some other Richard Baxter who had lived & died before him; but "whosoever" he knew included him.
Just think about who were invited to come on that first Advent.
1. The Shepherds
- from the lowest levels of Jewish society
- looked down upon as being among the basest elements of society
- thought to be crafty & dishonest like gypsies, vagrants & con men all rolled up into one
- uneducated - many could not read
- as far as work, nothing paid less - they could not bring any gifts to Jesus - no money
- not allowed to testify in court because it was assumed they would lie
These were the ones who heard the angels sing. There are only 2 other people in Scripture who heard angels sing: Isaiah & John.]
Lk at the other group that was invited to come:
2. The Wise Men were as diff. as they could possibly be just the opposite of all those characteristics I just mentioned.
- they were men of influence. They had no trouble gaining an audience w/ the King. The shepherds would not have been allowed in the outer courtyard.
-men of wealth
-men of knowledge - were the professors of the day
Yet in spite of the vast chasm of diff. between the 2 groups - both were invited to come. And the invitation is the same today. It is extended to all; no matter whom you are - whether you are important or unimportant in the eyes of people. No matter what you have been through or are now going through. No matter what you have done. The invitation is given to all - Come.
Jesus put it this way: "Come to Me, all you who are weary & burdened & I will give you rest" (Matt.11:28).
Of course when you receive an invitation to come to some event, it requires you setting aside whatever plans you may have had, it requires you setting aside what you are currently doing in order to respond to the invitation & come. The same is true of the invitation to come to Jesus. We must set aside all those things that have preoccupied our thoughts & lives, that have been distractions & obstacles in keeping us from coming - for we all know how easy it is to come up w/ excuses of why you couldn’t make it to whatever the event was. To come requires you laying aside all those excuses.
The invitation to come to Jesus is extended to everyone, but it does require a setting aside of all those excuses you have been making.
II. BEHOLD
We are invited to come; next we are invited to behold him. On the surface there was no diff. between the baby Jesus lying in that manger & any other baby you might have seen. Contrary to what you have seen depicted in paintings, there was no glowing halo around his head. He looked like any other baby. But deep w/in, He was like no other baby that has ever been born. For there lay the unique God-man. And we’re to stop everything & behold Him who has been "born the King of angels."
Webster - to gaze upon - the basic idea being prolonged contemplation. One of the words in the NT for "behold" is the word, which we get our English word "theory" from. Thus the word carries the meaning of seeing something & then theorizing about its meaning. Pondering is a good word - it implies a diving beneath the surface to understand. The Bible tells us Mary did this as she watched the events of Jesus’ life. We’re told she treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart - theorizing as to their meaning & significance.
Concerning Christ’s coming & the salvation He has provided for us, there is 1 group that desires greatly to behold Him. The Bible tells us that these are "things into which angels long to look" (I Pe.1:12).
Maybe when you were a child you thought it how great it would be to be an angel & fly around, doing good & mighty things, being in the presence of God. Maybe you imagined what it would be like to live in their dimension & see the glory of God & witness the battles between the host of heaven & the forces of hell. Such things are a mystery to us & yet what this verse is stating is that our salvation is as much a mystery to the angels as their activities are to us. The angels in heaven are in the presence of the glory & majesty of God. Yet they long to lk into this message of salvation.
The word "long" means to gaze at w/ outstretched necks. Even though the angels have had a part in the coming of Christ & in his life on this earth, there is a real mystery to this whole concept of salvation that God has granted upon us.
The angels must have been totally mystified by the incarnation & everything that followed after that.
Max Lucado - When God Whispers Your Name - ch.8
Come & behold Him. Go back & spend some time beholding, contemplating, theorizing about the truths we have studied during Advent. Slow down & take time to behold what it meant for God to become a helpless, dependent baby. God the Son, who confused the languages at the Tower of Babel & I don’t know how many languages that was, but for Him to think them up meant he could speak them all & yet now as a baby he must learn how to speak. Sometimes when I think about how Christ humbled himself to become 1 of us, I try to think of some of these practical issues. Can you imagine a Ravi Z. or William F. Buckley, someone w/ a great command of language & vocabulary being told that they needed to go back to 1st grade & then to have someone sit down w/ them & read Dick & Jane bks.
I’m not trying to be cute here. Such thoughts provoke in me a greater wonder at the incarnation. I’m afraid because we have heard the story so often that we just put our minds on cruise control & we miss the true wonder of God becoming a human being & a dependent little baby, not that we can ever truly comprehend it but I think we can go much deeper than we do.
ome & spend some time beholding Him, theorizing about Him & His birth!
III. ADORE
Finally, this hymn invites us to adore Him.
Adore - to worship or honor as a deity; to regard w/ reverent admiration & devotion
To adore Him will require more than a casual glance or a curious gaze at the scene in Bethlehem. For the babe in the manger was not sent simply to arouse attention or satisfy idle curiosity, but to bring us to our knees - to cause us to worship Him, to adore Him, Christ the Lord. You can’t adore Him if the only time He really enters your thoughts is on Sunday at 11:00am. You can’t adore Him if you & your wants & your needs & your complaints - if YOU are the center of your thoughts. You can’t adore Him if you don’t take some time to behold Him.
Adoring implies worship. Worship involves giving not getting as we mention often. That’s why so many complain of not "getting anything" out of the service in their church because so many come just to get. They don’t come to give themselves to God in worship. Getting is a benefit of worship. That’s what we are going to do in heaven - giving of our total being to the Lord in worship - but oh, how we are going to receive back as we worship Him.
Another thing about worship is - what we worship determines what we become:
-if we worship possessions, we grow more materialistic
-if we worship pleasure, we grow more sensual
-if we worship self, we grow more selfish
-guess what happens when we truly begin to worship Christ & adore Him?
If you take the time to accept His invitation & come & then begin to behold Him - His character, sacrifice, love, his choosing you before anything was created, his faithfulness in carrying out His promise to you that the Christ would come - as you begin to behold Him in His incarnation, life, ministry, death & resurrection - HOW can you not adore Him? It takes an awful cold, hard, sinful, rebellious heart to reject Him or to only half love Him in light of all that we have seen during this Advent season.
I ask you again, how can you not help but love Him? Would you consider that question as Joe comes & sings that hymn for us.
I invite you to:
-Come - after all, He did all this for you - come to Him, come to Him w/ your disappointments, needs, hurts, come to Him as a sinner who recognizes that you can’t improve yourself to meet God’s standard of holiness. It will take His work in you. Come - the invitation is extended to all.
-spend some time beholding, contemplating, theorizing over the Advent of Christ
-And as you do, let it move you to express your love & adoration to Him.
-I trust you will have a blessed Christmas because you have taken the time to come, to behold & to adore Christ your Savior & Lord.
O come all ye faithful, joyful & triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Come & behold Him born the King of angels
O come let us adore Him
For He alone is worthy...
I pledge Him my allegiance...
O come let us adore Him...
