INTRODUCTION
Over the next few Sundays here in church we’ll be enjoying songs we’ve sung in Christmases past. We’ll also be focusing on three of them to discover how the gospel we’ve just studied in the book of Romans is reflected in these songs.
Christmas isn’t just about a Silent Night, the Little Town of Bethlehem, Shepherds, Wise Men, and Angels We Have Heard on High. It isn’t just about the birth of Jesus itself, but the reasons behind his birth and what his coming accomplished. I hope this brief series will help you to appreciate our Christmas songs at a deeper level and give us all some extra food for thought as Christmas approaches.
Today’s song is a song of anticipation and longing for the coming of Immanuel. In fact it takes a number of prophetic names for the coming One out of the Old Testament to weave together a picture of who many godly Jews in the centuries before Jesus came were longing for.
One of our must=have songs every year is also on one of the oldest Christmas hymns we now have in the English language, O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
The story of how we got this hymn
This hymn, originally written in , takes us back years to monastic life in the 8th or 9th-century. Seven days before Christmas Eve monasteries would sing the “O antiphons” in anticipation of Christmas Eve when the eighth antiphon, “O Virgo virginum” (“O Virgin of virgins”) would be sung before and after Mary’s canticle, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46b-55).
There were seven antiphons. Each of these antiphons greets the anticipated Messiah with one of the titles ascribed Him throughout the Old Testament: Wisdom, Emmanuel, The Lord of Might, The Rod of Jesse, Day Spring, King of the Nations, and The Key of David. (For more, see Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996), 361.)
The Latin metrical form of the hymn was composed as early as the 12th century. John Mason Neale (1818-1866) discovered the Latin hymn in the appendix of an early 18th-century manuscript with a refrain. Neale translated it and included it in his influential collection, Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851).
How is the gospel revealed in this ancient hymn?
1. “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
O come, O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Key word:
The first word that grabs our attention is that strange one, Emmanuel. It is ties in intimately with the promise of the coming of the Messiah.
Isaiah 7:14 (NASB95)
Matthew 1:22–23 (NASB95)
It means far more than the idea that God is with us in some , unfocused way, as we sometimes say when we say “God is with you in the midst of the storm” or some such thing.
No, Isaiah is . He points to the birth of a child through a virgin whose name (that is his being and character) are described by the word Emmanuel, “God with us.” Emmanuel is identified with this child who Matthew tells us was to be born to Mary of Nazareth, who had became pregnant through the operation of the Holy Spirit while remaining a virgin.
Emmanuel, God with us, is a person, Jesus, the Christ, not some unfocused presence of God.
(MULTILINE)
The apostle John said it this way:
John 1:1–2
John 1:14
John 1:18
The gospel truth is that God himself came down and took on flesh to become our ransom for sin.
Key word:
O come, O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
What does a ransom have to do with Christmas? It’s not a word we think of when we think of mangers, shepherds, the birth of a baby or a special star guiding magi to the king of the Jews.
Jesus explained. It was the reason for his coming.
Mark 10:45
1 Corinthians 15:3
1 Peter 3:18
Emmanuel, that is Jesus, came to ransom us back from sin, self, and Satan. His blood shed on the cross paid the ransom price to free us from Satan’s grip and allow us to live eternally with God once we receive his gift of salvation by faith.
Key word:
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
(MULTILINE)
The truth was, God had not left them, but they had left God.
Isaiah spoke this truth to them even before their exile:
Isaiah 59:1–2
It was Israel’s that had caused their exile and left them feeling separated from God. We, too, are exiled or separated from God because of our sin. If we repent, turn from our sin, put our faith in Jesus alone to restore us to God and his favor, trusting Jesus to save us from the penalty of our sins, the good news of the gospel is that we are to God and made a part of his family..
So, as we sing the first stanza of this ancient hymn, we are swept right into the central mystery and the purpose of Christmas. God promised to come and be with us. He did that through human birth. The reason God came was to ransom us from sin and its eternal consequences. God turned us from exiles to members of his family. That’s the gospel. And it’s in this, one of our must-have Christmas songs.
2. “O come, Thou Dayspring”
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Key word:
Dayspring is a poetic word for . The Jews were looking for a rising of the sun, but not the physical sun, but the sun of righteousness, the Messiah.
Malachi 4:2
Luke 1:76–79
John 8:12
The Messiah’s coming was to act as a sunrise, a dayspring, upon the nation. It would dispel the spiritual darkness they were in and allow them to walk in the light of the knowledge and presence of God. Our song anticipates this dramatic change as the sun of righteousness, the dayspring from on high arrives.
Key word:
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
It isn’t hard to connect this word cheer with the coming of Jesus.
Luke 2:8–11
The gospel is full of the promise of joy – joy over, joy over the , joy over a with God, joy over the certainty of a home when we die, joy in the problems of life since , and joy given to us through the indwelling .
Remember what Jesus said:
John 15:11
Remember also what Paul wrote in Romans:
Romans 14:17
Key words:
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Death casts a long shadow over humankind. In Psalm 23 David referred to the valley of the shadow of death, a harrowing image. The gospel reveals that death has been in Jesus, the dark shadow has been removed for those who have received Jesus as Savior. Death is still with us, but one day death will be no more. In the meantime is gone once we come to Christ as Savior.
Hebrews 2:14 (NASB95)
3. “O Come, O Come Thou Wisdom from on high”
O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
And order all things far and nigh;
To us the path of knowledge show
And teach us in her ways to go.
Key word:
Wisdom’s source:
Proverbs 8:22–23 (Wisdom speaking)
Wisdom’s manifestation:
1 Corinthians 1:24
1 Corinthians 1:30
The wisdom from on high is Jesus. He came not just to ransom us through his blood, but to impart his infinite wisdom to us, Through his teaching and through the inner work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, Jesus has taught us and continues to teach us in the path we should go. The gospel not only redeems us but it also transforms. Believers have the mind of Christ and are led by Jesus, Wisdom himself.
4. “O Come, Desire of nations”
O come, Desire of nations bind
All peoples in one heart and mind.
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
Key words:
Haggai 2:6–7 (KJV)
One thing every nation desires is peace. The Nobel Peace Prize was established to reward those who help bring peace on earth, peace between nations. It is a coveted and honored prize because pursuing peace is so difficult
We, too, individually desire peace. We don’t like envy, strife, and quarrels anymore than the nations do. We long for what the Desire of nations can provide us: peace with God, and a way to have peace with others. Only the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, Jesus, can bring it. Perhaps without knowing it, the nations desire what Jesus alone can give them: peace. He certainly can give it to you and I.
John 14:27
The Gospel this hymn celebrates:
God has fulfilled his promises given centuries before it happened about the birth, mission, and life of Jesus the Christ.
God himself has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Jesus was who went to the cross and died for our sins so that we could be freed from sin, self, and Satan, and begin to live in a personal relationship with God. In that relationship we have God’s joy, peace, and leadership.
Emmanuel has come. God has come to be with us through the birth of his Son, Jesus. He paid the ransom price so that we would not have to live in exile and in the fear of death but could live restored to God, walking in the light of his presence, learning true wisdom so we can live successfully.
What can this hymn mean to us?
How have we responded to this amazing news, the coming of the long ago promised Emmanuel, God with us?
John 1:10–13
John says that many receive Jesus when he came, but that those who became the sons of God.
To receive him meant to believe in who he was and to trust him and him alone for forgiveness and for salvation from the penalty of sin.
It may help to visualize what you need to do:
Revelation 3:20
Jesus is standing outside your life, knocking on your heart’s door, and waiting for you to open your heart and receive him, as John said in his gospel. It’s as simple as invite him to come in to your heart to be your Savior and Lord.