O come all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. Indeed the season of Advent and
Christmas brings out something in us and does things in us and provoke us to
remain "Faithful, Joyful and triumphant". In a world filled with faithlessness
and betrayals, sorrow and sadness, and defeatism the Christ of Christmas
descends on us once again. To those who receive Him, "The dear Christ enters
in" and He makes us by His grace, "Faithful, Joyful and Triumphant". The world
without Christ looks bleak and dark, chaotic and confused, devastated and
fragmented. The people around the world without Christ "walk in darkness and
dwell in
the land of the shadow of death". Once again WE GET TO SING
the
Songs of Advent and Christmas. Once again we get to receive and give. Once
again we receive the GIFT and we are transformed. Praise the Lord for the power
and person of the Christ of Christmas. Praise the Lord for the sights, sounds,
and songs of the Holy Season.
In the Gospel
according to Luke there are Four Songs. We might call them Christmas songs.
One of them, found in Luke 1: 69 ff, is the song sung by the priest Zechariah.
It is called the Benedictus. It was one of the readings for last Sunday. The
Benedictus was composed by Zechariah. Luke 1 tells the story of how an angel
predicted that he and his barren wife Elizabeth would give birth to a son who
would be the forerunner of the Messiah. Zechariah didn’t believe the angel, so
his power of speech was taken away from him for the nine months of Elizabeth’s
pregnancy. When the baby was finally born, Zechariah named him John (as the
angel had instructed), and his speech was immediately restored. In that joyous
moment, as he held his son in his arms, Zechariah broke forth in a song of
praise to God. That song is the Benedictus of Luke 1:67-80. 2. Zechariah was a priest who was
steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures. As Zechariah broke forth into song,
his words reflected his Old Testament heritage. The Benedictus sounds partly
like the Psalms and partly like the prophets, but it sounds wholly like the Old
Testament. These words of Zechariah bring us to the very edge that
separates the Old Testament and the New Testament. Here is a snapshot of Jewish faith on the eve of the
Incarnation of Jesus. These words, uttered a few months before Jesus’ birth
take us behind the scenes and into the heart of the Old Testament. They tell us
what the coming of Christ meant to the people who had waited so long for him to
arrive! The theme of the
Benedictus is not hard to find. Zechariah uses one key word at the beginning
and ending of his song. Verse 68 says, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of
Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people.” Then verse 78 says
“the rising sun will come to us from heaven.” In both verses the verb phrase
comes from a root word that means “to visit personally.” It is the very word
Jesus used in Matthew 25:36 when he said, “I was sick and you visited me.” The
word was used in the Greek Old Testament for God visiting his people in order to
bring them great blessing. It has the idea of seeing someone in distress and
intervening personally in order to relieve their misery. It’s what happens when
you hear about the death of someone you love. You don’t just send a sympathy
card. You don’t just call on the telephone. You go over to the home in
person. To “visit” means to be so moved by the misery you see all around you
that you get personally involved in providing a solution.
All of that is
on Zechariah’s heart and is comprehended in this one single truth: At long last
God has visited his people!! At long last God has kept his promise. At long
last God has arrived on the scene. The Visitor from heaven has come to
us.
Another verse from the song of Zachariah tugged my heart.
That is, “the
dayspring from on high has visited us.”
A check in the dictionary reveals that “dayspring” is a synonym for
“dawn” or “sunrise.” It means the break of day, that moment when the first
rays of the sun appear on the eastern horizon. I am a morning person. I woke
up before 5:00 AM this morning. If you have ever done any camping, or if you
have been outside all night, if you have been caught in the darkness, you know
long those last few hours can be. At 3 AM it seems as if morning will never
come. The same is true at 3:30 AM, 4:00 AM, and 4:30 AM, but when 5:00 AM
comes, you know that if you can only wait a little longer, the sun will finally
begin to peek over the edge of the earth, and little shafts of light will pierce
the darkness.
We like to say that
“God helps those who help themselves,” but the opposite is more nearly
true. If Christmas means anything, it teaches us that God
helps those who admit they can’t help
themselves. That’s what
the coming of Christ is like. He is the “dayspring” who brings the light
into the darkness. Other translations use different
expressions: “The rising sun will come to us from
heaven” (NIV). “God’s sunrise will break in upon
us” (MSG). “A new day from
heaven will dawn upon us” (NCV). The NLT uses the
beautiful phrase “the morning light
from heaven.” Here is the whole passage from Luke 1:78-79.
The
rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.
“The rising sun will come to us from heaven” (78). When the light shines, we
see everything differently. When the light shines, our problems don’t seem so
large. When the light shines, we have courage to keep on
going. Christ is the light! He has come into this world and nothing can ever be
the same again. One writer notes that “there are a great many dark places
in our life, but there is no darker place than our sins.” We all have those
“dark places,” and we don’t know what to do about them. The wisest philosophers
and the most illiterate peasants have no answer for the problem of sin, but when
Christ shines his light, he doesn’t merely condemn us, He says, “Come to me and
live.
O come and Let us
adore Him.
In
Him,
Brown
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