You have heard of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but have you heard of the Gospel of Emmanuel? Now, I am not presenting a fifth Gospel account of Jesus Christ. I am just looking at the word gospel for what it means, and the name Emmanuel for what it means, today. Hello, church, and welcome back to another video in our series through the books that are in our book rack. Just last Sunday I preached on the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and many of the verses from the Luke chapter 2 account that were lifted into the Christmas carol, and I wanted to go through the booklet that we handed out at our church just last Sunday. If you are new to our church, my name is Ryan Rench. I am the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and these are some booklets we put together as extra resources in addition to some of the sermons that were preached there.
The Story of the Carol
This one on “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is special because of the tradition of the song, but also because of the doctrinal depth of the song, and it is no wonder, because it was written by Charles Wesley. Charles and John Wesley were the founders of Methodism back in the 1700s, and yet they had great, deep thinking in their approach to Christianity, and I appreciate that. They were coming in a season, an era, when in the 1600s Christmas celebrations had been banned, and even after the ban was lifted, there still were not many Christmas songs being written, until Charles Wesley wrote what he called “A Hymn for Christmas-Day.” This is in 1739, and the opening words to his song used to be, “Hark, how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings.” Now, the welkin is the skies, the heavens, the place where the angels dwell. There was some overlap with a popular poem of his day that used the word welkin, and maybe Charles Wesley was pulling from secular society to show that the sacred text connects to all of life. But I do not believe welkin was used all that popularly even back then, and so, in his lifetime, his friend George Whitefield, the famous evangelist, changed the words to “Hark! the herald angels sing,” and many of the words that we still sing today come from the adaptation by George Whitefield. Now, we do not know exactly what Charles Wesley thought about those changes. He typically did not like changes to be made to his songs, lest he become associated with any false doctrine people might change the songs into. He requested that his name be removed if anybody changed the words to his songs. And yet George Whitefield, his friend, changed the song, and that is how we know it today.
Good Tidings: The Gospel of Emmanuel
That reflects the nature of the shepherds being scared to death out there in the fields when, hark, behold, look at this, the angel appeared unto the shepherds, and it says they were sore afraid. The Bible says in Luke 2:10, “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Now, good tidings is the same word as gospel. The evangel, where we get our word evangelist or evangelism from, is coming from the root word for gospel: the good news, the glad tidings. So no, there is not another Gospel account that we have just discovered from archaeology. It is nothing like that. When I say the Gospel of Emmanuel, I am talking about the gospel, the good news, that Emmanuel is here, God with us. Now, the name Emmanuel is not in the Luke chapter 2 account, but that was what was prophesied in the Old Testament, and then, when the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, he said He would be called Jesus, but He would also be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. So Joseph received this miraculous intervention from the angels and was told God is going to come to you in the flesh. I love that the name Emmanuel can point to both His divinity and His humanity, and both are necessary for the Christmas story to be complete. In the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” Charles Wesley wrote, “Christ, by highest heav’n adored; Christ, the everlasting Lord! Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a Virgin’s womb.” Now, there are some today, and throughout practically all of history, who have said, “Well, a virgin birth is impossible. Well, maybe they did not understand how humans were made back then.” And it is like, well, no. It is obvious they understood where humanity comes from. It is not like they were confused about this. Mary said, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” It is not just a changing of the words, as if virgin just means young girl or young woman. No, that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the supernatural miracle of the virgin birth. Now, why would that be theologically necessary? Well, it is because, according to the rest of Scripture, the sin nature is passed through the responsible one, the man. So if the sin nature is passed through the man, and if a woman is never with a man, as Mary was never with Joseph until after Jesus was born, well, then the sin nature could never be passed down to Him. And yet, without the man, some would say, “Okay, then He is just a spirit. He is not fully human.” But Jesus is not just a spirit. He is not just a hallucination. He was still 100% human and went through all the things humans did, and yet, as God, He did it without sin. So by being man, He could relate to us as humans, but by being God, He could actually do something about it. That is the beautiful good news. That is the beautiful gospel of the name Emmanuel: God is with us. God is incarnate. God is here in the flesh. And that is what Charles Wesley captured with his phrase, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.” It is not like He ever set His deity aside, but He was veiling it. It was less bright. It was not exactly as it is in heaven, because He was wrapping His divinity in His humanity.
The First Gift: Joy
So with the Gospel of Emmanuel, I kind of think of it like a gift bag, and inside the gift bag are all these many gifts that keep coming out of this gift bag. The very first gift in this gift of the Gospel of Emmanuel, these glad tidings of great joy, is this gift of joy. As we read in verse 10, “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” In verse 17: “And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” The shepherds who received these glad tidings of great joy were so joyful that they went around telling everybody about it. And you see the words joy and peace around all the time in this Christmas season, and you realize that there is something joyful that transcends all of the problems we are facing, or some of the issues we might have. Jesus came to this earth to bring joy, this settled fruit of the Spirit that transcends circumstances. That is the joy God brings to your soul through Jesus Christ. That is the first gift in this package.
The Second Gift: Peace
The second gift in this package is peace. As I said earlier, we see the words joy and peace. Now, peace does not just mean the absence of problems. It is not just, “Well, we just do not talk about those issues at family gatherings, because this is a peaceful time at Christmas.” It is not just that kind of peace. It is not just, “Well, I want this to be a time of peace, so everyone needs to apologize to me now.” That is not the kind of peace we are talking about. We are talking about the peace that Jesus brings through His blood. The song “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” says, “Peace on earth, and mercy mild,” and then it says, “God and sinners reconciled.” I love that whole concept in the Scripture, God and sinners, or what the Bible calls enemies of God. Now, it might feel offensive to be called an enemy of God before you are saved, but that is what the Scriptures teach. Romans 5:10 calls us the enemies of God: “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Colossians 1, verse 21, says you were alienated and enemies in your mind. But the Bible teaches that God and sinners can be reconciled. Colossians 1:20 says, “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled” So it is a season, it is a gift, of joy, but it is a gift of peace as well. Reconciliation between enemies happens when sinners put aside their pride and accept the free gift of salvation, the free gift of forgiveness of their sins and of the charges against them. Those sins that were making them resistant to God, those sins that were making them the enemy of God, God says, “You are no longer My enemy. Now you are My child. Now you are My friend. Now we can be reconciled.” Charles Wesley captured that very, very well in that phrase, “God and sinners reconciled.” Now, for us, if we have been reconciled to Jesus Christ, well, then that speaks to our reconciliation with others. That is how there can be peace on earth: when we act as Christians toward one another. Ephesians 4:32 is one of the most powerful verses in the Bible, I think. It says, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” So the same way you have been forgiven, you offer that same forgiveness to others. You have received your charges dropped; now you drop the charges against other people and choose to create peace in those relationships.
The Third Gift: Light
So the first package there is joy, and the second package there is peace. I think the third package, then, is light. In Charles Wesley’s hymn he says, “Light and life to all He brings,” and that light is the light of the Son, Jesus Christ. We are having our Christmas Eve services. I am recording this on Christmas Eve, and we are having Christmas Eve candlelight services to celebrate the light that Jesus brought into this world and the light that Jesus can shine through us. Now, John the Baptist was like a light. John chapter 1 says it, but it says, “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.” Now, Jesus said in John chapter 8, “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” There are so many times it talks about that light of life. I mean, right at the birth of Jesus Christ, the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” They were preaching peace, but they came in a light. They were shining the glory of Jesus Christ at that time. The glory of God shone round about them when the heavenly host appeared. There is a great glory of God. That is what Moses experienced when he was up on Mount Sinai. He was there for 40 days and 40 nights, and he asked God boldly, “I want to see You.” Moses said, “Shew me thy glory.” And God told him, “Well, you cannot see Me. If you see My face, you will die. But here, I will put you in this cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand, and you will be able to see My back.” So Moses could be in the presence of God, not in the direct presence, or he would be killed, but just in the presence of the glory of God. And when he came down from the mountain, it was remarkable. He did not even realize it, but his face was shining. I mean, it was like staring into a super bright light, like these platform lights that are shining on me all the time. I had a sermon illustration one time where I had a light, and we were talking about shining the light of Jesus Christ, and I set it up on the pulpit, and it was shining out into the congregation’s eyes the whole time. And boy, people were finally moved to tears in my sermon, but not because of my preaching. It was because a light was shining in their eyes. And that is kind of how Moses’ light was. His face was shining with the glory of the Lord. The Bible says in Exodus 34:35, “And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.” So it is just amazing that the light of the glory of God was shining on Moses’ face. That light is throughout the Scripture. At creation God said, “Let there be light,” and then John chapter 1 connects that to the light that we get to shine. We are not shining our own light; we are shining the light of Jesus Christ to this dark world. He came as the Creator of this world. It is like John looked through the manger and saw who Jesus was, the Creator of the world, a light that shineth in a dark place. There was a lighthouse keeper by the name of Ida Lewis who became the lighthouse keeper at the age of 12, when her father had a stroke. She was at the Lime Rock Light Station in Rhode Island. In her first year on duty, a boat capsized with four young men in it, and she got in a rowboat and rowed out and rescued them. Over the course of her 40 years, she rescued over 35 people, and who knows how many more people she rescued by shining the light every single day. She would trim the lamps, and she would clean the glass, and she would refill the oil to make sure that the light was shining. I think that is a remarkable story. A friend of mine told me a story of a hiking trip that some Oklahoma college students had taken. One group went ahead to the peak, and another group turned back and went back to camp, but the group that went ahead to the peak did not make it down before darkness fell. They almost made it back to camp, but on their way down, there was a cliffside drop-off on one side. There was no moonlight, no starlight, and they had no batteries in their flashlights. They were essentially stranded and nervous about getting back to camp in this pitch darkness, this absolute blackness, and they could not even see to make their way down the trail. Apparently they could see the camp from up there, and yet the camp could not see anything. The folks at camp are starting to get nervous, and they are looking up at the hillside, and it is just pure black, and everyone is wondering what to do. “What happened to them? They should have been back by now. Should we get help? What should we do?” And all of a sudden somebody saw just a little glint of light. I mean, it looked just like a little reflection of light. They could not figure out what it was. And there it was again, just the briefest flash of a quick light. They could not figure that out, and they are thinking, “Maybe this is some kind of signal. Maybe this is our friends. Maybe they are stranded out in the dark, and this is the only way they can get our attention. We do not know what this is, but it is worth looking into.” So they got their hiking boots on and their flashlights, made sure they had plenty of batteries, and hiked up the trail toward this light that looked like it was in the direction of the trail. With their flashlights they illuminated the way, and the closer they got, they realized this was the group that was missing. These were our friends. They reunited with their friends, and their friends said, “Yep, we were looking down the canyon. We could see the campfire below, but we knew that you could not see us. The only light we had was a camera flash.” And they would just repeatedly flash the camera, as though they were taking pictures of the blackness, hoping that just that little flash of light on a camera would be enough to get the attention of the rescuers to come up the mountain toward them. I think of that light piercing the darkness. There might be some who are out there stranded in the darkness, just hoping for somebody to come bring the light to them. They are just asking for the light. They are just needing some guidance in their life. And we who are Christians are like the ones with the light. We are down there by the campfire many times, but we are not supposed to just keep it to ourselves. We are supposed to take it into this dark world. I think Jesus did that when He came to this earth. He came as the light of the world, and then He allows us to shine the light of Jesus Christ to the rest of this world, and that is our job as Christians, to shine the light of Jesus Christ. So that is the third package of our salvation: the light of Jesus Christ.
The Fourth Gift: Life
But the fourth package there is that Jesus Christ brought life. So in this package of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have received joy, and we have received peace, and we have received light, and fourth, we have received life: “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,” John 8:12. And in the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” Charles Wesley said, “Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.” So Jesus was born so that we could be born, meaning you are born as a human once, but then you are born again. You are born of the Spirit, is how Jesus explained it to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Being born again is not just a term Christians throw around. It is the doctrinal truth that you are born as a body and a soul, but your spirit is dead, and when you are saved, your spirit is quickened. It comes alive. It is made alive by God’s power in you. You are born to have this second birth. That is why Jesus was born: so that you could have this second birth, this new life, this everlasting life through Jesus Christ, so that your body may die, but you, the real you, will live on. This is everlasting life. When Jesus showed up to the scene with Lazarus, Lazarus had been in the grave for four days. Mary and Martha were there. They were so sad. Everyone was crying. Now, Jesus could have just come on the scene and said, “Lazarus, come forth,” and Lazarus could have been raised from the dead, and everyone would have been happy. But Jesus took the time in John chapter 11 to stop and explain something. John 11:25 and 26: “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” So before raising Lazarus from the dead, He stops and explains, “Look, all of this is only available through Me. I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” So He explains the beautiful nature of being a follower, a believer, in Jesus Christ. Though this outward man will perish, though the outward shell of our bodies will pass away, you will be resurrected. You will be given life. Your life is wrapped up in the life of Jesus Christ. And then He asks this pointed question: “Believest thou this?” Do you believe that? I think that is a good question for us to ponder this Christmas season. Have I received that life of Jesus Christ? Have I received that light in my soul? Do I have that joy and peace of Jesus Christ? Well, that is the Gospel of Emmanuel, the good news of God with us: He has given us all those things and more in His Son, Jesus Christ. So that is the message of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” In the previous video that we put out, we talked about “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and our booklet Unlikely. These are booklets connected to the sermons we preached at our church, Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and they are available in our booklet rack for free for any of our church members. If you are in the area, we would love to host you for one of our church services. Just join us anytime. Looking forward to seeing you in the next video. God bless you.
