Greetings Redeemer family,

Christmas is just a week away! The sense of anticipation and excitement is all around us. Personally, I can’t wait to see friends and family next week. Food and presents and traveling and carols: all things that point to this being a very special time of year. While it might be easy to get cynical about commercialism and sentimentality, ultimately, we are remembering the coming of our Savior Jesus, the Christ. That celebration ought to make this season the most wonderful time of the year.

Yet, even as I write this, I’m aware of many in our congregation and community that are going through very hard circumstances. Finances are tight. Marriages are strained and breaking apart. Bodies are ravaged by disease. Just before I began writing this e-mail, I got off the phone with a friend that was heading to the hospital as his wife went into surgery. I have another friend who loathes the holidays as it shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the dysfunction of his family.

Paired in this way, these sentiments seem so far apart. If you believe this, I’d humbly suggest that you’ve misunderstood Christmas.

Our service this week begins with an oft-misunderstood Christmas carol. Often we see the title of this hymn written as “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” which makes the second line rather confusing. If these gentlemen are already merry, it seems unlikely they’ll be “dismayed.” However, if the comma is moved slightly, an older English idiom is revealed. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” becomes a prayer of blessing, that God would grant us comfort and joy that comes in remembering the advent of Jesus Christ. He came to save us “when we were gone astray,” that we might know true “comfort and joy.”

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day;
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy.

An irony of the holiday season is that many times we are told to simply forget our hardships and troubles because Christmas is a happy time. Yet the incarnation is all about the God of the Universe coming to dwell with us, amid our brokenness and suffering. Jesus was called a man of sorrows. He was born in a cave, raised by obscure teenagers. He knew hunger, homelessness, rejection, and betrayal. In all of these things, he affirmed the harsh reality of life in a fallen world.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

Our first reading from the Westminster Shorter Catechism focuses on the sufferings of Christ for our sake. The writers of the Westminster Standards aptly called this the “humiliation” of Christ, as the divine Son of God became a man.

Q. 27. Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist?
A. Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.

I love those words: “for a time.” Death was not the end for Christ. Pain and suffering did not have the last word. Resurrection is reality. Humiliation gave way to exaltation.

Q. 28. Wherein consists Christ’s exaltation?
A. Christ’s exaltation consists in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.

Name above all names
Worthy of our praise
My heart will sing
How great is our God

Following the sermon, we will take a time for prayer, bringing our sins and sorrows before the God who came near to us through Jesus Christ. Below is the corporate prayer that we will say together. The words remind us that Jesus is the King who came to rescue His people, and rightfully demands that we serve Him as Lord of all.

Almighty God, all of history looked with anticipation to the coming of King Jesus. We confess that we have not bowed before him and acknowledged his rule in our lives. We have conformed to the ways of the world and have failed to give Christ the King the glory due his name. Forgive us, we pray! By your Spirit, empower us to live as your faithful people, obeying the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who rules over all things, and who will come again to make all things new. It is in his name that we pray. Amen.

After hearing an assurance of God’s pardoning grace, we close our service with a hymn of adoration to Christ the Lord. It is my prayer that this song of celebration would ring in your heart this week, and encourage you to find comfort and abiding joy in the truth that Jesus entered our world as Emmanuel, God with us. We are not forgotten. He died that we might die to self and sin. He lives that we might live in eternal communion with our creator God.

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him, born the King of angels;

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Praying for God’s merry rest,

Tim Sharpe
Worship Director