Scripture Reading:

• Psalm 96
• Luke 2:1-20

Opening Prayer: 

Father God, as we gather here this Christmas Eve, I pray that you would open our hearts and minds to receive your Word. Be with us as we look forward to Christmas Day with eager anticipation, and help us to remember that the reason we celebrate is because of you. Bless us as we gather here to celebrate the day your Son came into our world to be our Savior and Lord. Amen. 

Introduction:

One of my favorite parts of any Christmas celebration is the music. It amazes me how we can go all year without hearing Christmas songs, but we never forget them. When the Christmas season rolls around we pick them back up as if we never stopped singing them. I love how the old hymns and carols of Christmas are faithfully passed down from generation to generation in an unbroken cycle of praise and worship. 

Did you know that the earliest Christmas carol can be traced all the way back to the year 129 A.D. when Thelesphous the Bishop of Rome wrote,

 “In the Holy Night of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, all shall solemnly sing ‘The Angels Hymn.’”

Christmas carols may go back even further than that, but this is the earliest record we have. Interestingly we don’t know when “The Holy Night of the Nativity” was celebrated, because the formal decision to celebrate Christmas on December 25th did not occur until two centuries later. We also do not know what “The Angels Hymn” sounded like, but most historians agree that it was based on the Angel’s song in Luke 2 that we just read. All that to say, Christians have been singing Christmas carols by night since the earliest days of the Christian faith.

As Christians, we are a singing people, but have you ever wondered why we sing? It is not just because we like music or because singing is a convenient way to fill up the service time. No, good music teaches us truth that will stick with us long after the sermon has left our memory. Music has a way of imprinting itself onto our hearts in ways that few things can. Studies have shown that when people get old and their memories start to fade, music is one of the few things that last right up to the end. I believe that God, in his goodness, designed the human mind to love music so that even if our memories and faculties faded, we would never lose our ability to sing his praises. 

A New Song:

Psalm 96 is a wonderful psalm for Christmas. It is a powerful song of praise, written centuries before the birth of Christ, in order to remind the people of God’s past, present, and future salvation. The Psalmist declares:

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;

    sing to the Lord, all the earth!

Sing to the Lord, bless his name;

    tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

    his marvelous works among all the peoples!

Psalm 96:1-3, ESV

The Psalmist is calling on his audience to sing about the new thing God has done. Three times we are called to “Sing to the Lord!” Whenever you see the repetition in the Bible, it is always there for a reason. God has done a great thing and so we sing, sing, and sing again! We can never sing enough songs to celebrate the great thing God has done through Christmas! 

The Psalmist calls to “bless his name.” The word “bless” in the Hebrew conveys a form of adoration. It is the same idea that occurs when we sing “Oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!” We offer our grateful praise and thanksgiving to God for sending us the gift of Christ! 

The Psalmist calls us to “tell of his salvation from day to day.” The word “tell” in Hebrew does not simply mean “to speak”, it literally means “bear good tidings” or “proclaim good news.” We are told to take the good news of what God has done, in and through Christ, from day to day. 

Lastly, we are told to “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples!” The word “declare” comes from a root word meaning “to keep a tally, to score with marks, or to keep a record.” The Psalmist is saying to make sure we record and remember all the ways God has shown his glory and has done marvelous works among all the peoples. 

When I read about this “new song” in Psalm 96, my mind inevitably drifts to the songs that the angels sang before the shepherds on that first Christmas night. 

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,  and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Luke 2:10-14, ESV

The word “host” means an army of angels! The prophet Daniel described a host of angels as  “a thousand thousands… and ten thousand times ten thousand ” (Daneil 7:10). And what did the angels do? They cried out for glory to be lifted up to God, and they cried out for peace, for good will toward men!

When the angels sing out for “peace” (Luke 2:14)they are referring to the peace of reconciliation. They are declaring that the hostility between God and man will soon be mended. The division of sin and death was now being repaired through the birth of  the “Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). 

What we see in both Psalm 96 and Luke 2 is the fact that praising God results in declaring His glory among the nations. Worship is not a private thing. The best worship leads to a missionary witness and a heart that desires to testify to all that God has done. I do not think it is possible to truly worship God and not have a desire to see others come and worship Him. The best of worship leads to a gospel witness, and the best gospel witness begins with worship!

As the Evangelist G. Campbell Morgan once said, 

“If the song of the Lord begins in the heart, it always grows into the chorus in which others are included in its music.”

Look now to the shepherds response to this angelic choir: 

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Luke 2:15-20, ESV

Notice the shepherd’s excitement. They immediately decided to go and see this thing that had happened. They didn’t say “we will go see this baby in the morning” or “we have to tend to the sheep tonight, but when we get off duty we will go see this Christ child.” No, we are told that they went with haste, not a slow leisurely pace, but as fast as they could. They wasted no time. 

When they found the baby just as the angel had said, they did not keep it to themselves. They came and adored the gift of God, the long awaited Messiah, the Savior of the world, and then they shared their experience wherever they went. We are told that they caused a stir among the people. They caused people to wonder about the things the shepherds saw, their testimony put questions into the people’s hearts “could this be true?”

Tonight we testify with the shepherds that yes, this is true. The Savior King has come to us. So let us give him the honor, and glory, and praise that He is due. 

The Glory of the King:

Why do we sing His praises? The Psalmist answers this question: 

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

    he is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,

    but the Lord made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before him;

    strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Psalm 96:4-6, ESV

Our God is real. He walked among us. He was born to us, showed us his glory, died for our sins, rose from the grave defeating sin and death, and He is coming soon in victory to reclaim all that belongs to Him. Paul expressed the same thought when he declared, “We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4). It may be an unpopular, or even a so-called “hateful” idea to profess the exclusivity of the God of scripture, but Christ does not share his throne. No king but Christ can claim to have “made the heavens” in “splendor and majesty.” He alone is worthy of worship and praise. 

The Psalmist continues,

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,

    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

    bring an offering, and come into his courts!

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;

    tremble before him, all the earth!

Psalm 96:7-9, ESV

Here we see that worship is our bringing something to God rather than our coming to God in order to get something from him. We typically think of coming to church to get something out of the experience, but here worship is chiefly our bringing praise and offerings to God. How appropriate to remember that as we celebrate Christmas, the season of giving, that we would stop and remember to give our offering of praise to the one who gave us Jesus. 

Lastly the Psalmist declares,

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!

    Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;

    he will judge the peoples with equity.”

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

    let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

    let the field exult, and everything in it!

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy

    before the Lord, for he comes,

    for he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness,

    and the peoples in his faithfulness.

Psalm 96:10-13, ESV

In a world marked by so much sin and violence, it can be difficult to remember that God rules over all of history and Christ is on the throne. God sets limits on the evil that He allows, and He still intervenes on our behalf. There will also come a day in the future when God will rule all the world’s nations in perfect righteousness. The birth of Christ we celebrate was the beginning of the dawning of this Kingdom, and we are nearer to its completion than ever before! 

Our psalm began this morning with the command “Oh sing to the LORD a new song” (Psalm 96:1). And while my mind drifts naturally to the song of the Angels that declared the gory of the Lord on that first Christmas morning, I also find myself thinking of the new song in heaven, which we read about in Revelation 5. There we are told of four living creatures and twenty-four elders who fall down before God’s Lamb;

And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll

and to open its seals,

for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God

 from every tribe and language and people and nation,

and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,

and they shall reign on the earth.”

Revelation 5:9-10, ESV

The new song in Revelation was a song of Christ’s victory over sin and death on our behalf, it is a song of a work completed. It is the song of the universal reign of Christ, which is what Psalm 96 anticipates. It is a song that celebrates the salvation that began two thousand years ago, in a manger, in Bethlehem. May we never grow tired of singing the praises of our Savior King! 

Closing Prayer:

Father God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus our Savior and Lord. As we conclude our Christmas Eve service, I pray that you would send us out with a song in our hearts praising you for the wonders of your love and the gift of salvation. Help us to prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of our King, even as we look forward to that day of perfect righteousness. Fill our hearts with worship as we depart from this gathering. Amen.