O Come All Ye Faithful | Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

This has become one of my favorite hymns. God really used this hymn in me to really just open my eyes and my heart back up to the beauty of the reality of what God coming to us as a baby means. And I'm hopeful that today, if you're here and you're just kind of going through, maybe you sang Hark the Herald today and it just, you went into autopilot. You went into Christmas mode and just singing the song because that's what we do. Man, my prayer is that God would open our hearts and our minds up and our lives up to really understand what it is that we're singing, not just up here, but in here. [00:05:58] (41 seconds)  #SingWithMeaning

It is a legitimate superpower. I can't do that. Yeah, it's beyond me, but he has that amazing ability. And so when I think about hark, I think about that part of that superpower. To hark, it means to listen and to pay attention, to lock in. Like, don't miss this. There's something really important right here. It doesn't matter what's going on around you. Focus in and don't miss it. So when we sing hark, the herald angels sing, like we're saying, hey, listen up. There's angels here, and we need to listen to what it is that they have to say. [00:09:53] (37 seconds)  #HarkListenUp

So growing up, if I was allowed to gamble, I would have put money on the fact that the angel that showed up to the shepherd's name was Harold. I just was, I was like, that's his name. That's what is, what's the big deal? Harold, apparently it's not. Sorry to break it to you if you've been calling him Harold all this time, like me. Harold is a title, not a name. It might be a name. It is a name. It might be someone's name here, spelled a little differently, probably. But a herald is a title for someone who is a messenger, someone who was sent on behalf of the king. [00:10:34] (39 seconds)  #HeraldNotHarold

The king would have an important announcement, a decree to make. He would write that down. He would give it to the herald, and the herald would take that message to the people. And when the people saw the herald standing before them, they would know, this isn't a message from the herald. This isn't that dude standing here telling me what he thinks. He's got a different purpose. He's there to tell me something that the king has to say. The words that are coming out of his mouth are as though the king himself is standing there telling me something. So I should hark, right? I should pay attention. I should listen in. [00:11:13] (33 seconds)  #HearTheHerald

Fear not. It's okay. I know it looks like I can kill you. And I can. But I'm not here to do that. I'm actually here to bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. See, it had been quite some time since the shepherds or the Jewish people in general had received good news. And see, it had been about 400 years since the last record of God giving a message to his people. So you can imagine when the angel said to the shepherds, hey, I've got good news. [00:14:33] (36 seconds)  #GoodNewsAfterSilence

They were like, wait, good news? Like, really? Like, for real? You've got good news? This isn't bad news, another case of bad news that we've got to live with. But you're breaking through here, breaking through this silence to give me good news of great joy. The anticipation and hope must have started to build in that moment. And he says, here's the good news of great joy. Boy, unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. It's happening. The time has come. There's a Savior here. [00:15:08] (36 seconds)  #GoodNewsGreatJoy

The angel points out three things that I want to camp out on for our time together. He says first that the one who is born, that they are here to announce on behalf of the king to tell the people is that the one who is born is a Savior. This is such good news for the shepherds. Because, see, in that day, in that context, it's about 5 B.C., and the people of God were under this oppressive rule of the Roman government. [00:15:45] (31 seconds)  #SaviorHasCome

But the angel doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say, there's a Savior, so go find him. He says, there's a Savior who is born to you this day, a Savior who is Christ. Christ, another mistake that I've made and that often gets made is Christ is not Jesus' last name. Like Harold is not. Christ is a title. Christ is a title for who Jesus was. He was a Messiah. He was the Messiah. He was the long-awaited, long-anticipated one. [00:17:25] (33 seconds)  #ChristIsTitle