Message and Music - O Come Emmanuel

Description

In this special Message and Music service, Russ Brasher, Bryce Vaught, Emily DeAngelo, Jonathan Thiede, and Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explore "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" through Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:22-23, and other key passages, unpacking how God's 700-year-old promise of "God with us" was fulfilled in Christ. Discover how Jesus embodies God's wisdom, fulfills the law, brings light to darkness, and establishes peace—offering hope and presence for your life today.

Summary and Application

The ancient hymn "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" isn't just a beautiful Christmas carol—it's a theological journey through Scripture's most profound promise: God with us. In a recent Message & Music service at Orchard Hill Church, five speakers unpacked the rich biblical imagery woven throughout this beloved song, revealing how Jesus fulfills God's ancient promises and what that means for us today.

The Promise Fulfilled

As Russ explained, the name Emmanuel first appears around 700 BC in Isaiah's prophecy: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). For seven centuries, God's people waited anxiously for this promise to materialize. "That means for 700 years, God's people were waiting, anxiously waiting for this promise to happen, longing and hoping for God to deliver and fulfill this prophecy of Emmanuel," Russ noted.

When Matthew records Jesus' birth, he makes the connection explicit: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel,' which means God with us" (Matthew 1:22-23).

The wait was over. God had kept His promise. As Russ beautifully put it, "Emmanuel is the celebration that God has appeared. God is with us. The promise has been fulfilled. The waiting is over." Unlike Christmas morning that comes once a year, "Through Christ, we can be in the presence of God today."

Wisdom Incarnate

Bryce challenged our understanding of wisdom by contrasting human desire for independent knowledge with God's wisdom. He noted that Solomon didn't ask for "some superhuman intellect. He was asking for God's presence to be near so that he could hear and receive God's wisdom from himself."

This distinction matters. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they were "desiring to have wisdom in and of themselves, independent from a relationship with God." In contrast, Jesus embodies divine wisdom. As 1 Corinthians 1 declares, "Because of God we are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, our righteousness, holiness and redemption."

Bryce's conclusion resonates deeply: "Our wisdom is not just a philosophy or a system of thought. Our wisdom has come in the form of a person."

The Gift of God's Law

Emily helped us understand God's law not as a burden but as a gift—protective boundaries given in love. Describing the dramatic scene at Mount Sinai with its thunder, lightning, and trembling mountain, she explained that "Living by his law, God's people would grow and thrive. We experience peace and harmony when the Father provides law and structure."

But the law reveals something crucial: our need for grace. "Even on our best days of obeying God's word, we cannot earn our salvation," Emily reminded us. The good news? Romans 8:1-2 promises "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...for the law of the Spirit of Jesus has set us free from that law of sin and death."

Jesus didn't come to help us keep the law better—He came to fulfill it perfectly on our behalf. As John 1:17 states, "The law came from Moses. Truth and grace come from Jesus Christ."

Light in Our Darkness

Jonathan's story of being trapped in a dark attic by his brother illustrated something profound: darkness isn't just about what we can't see—it affects us emotionally and spiritually. "There's a component to light and darkness that goes beyond the mental into the emotional," he explained.

Matthew 4:16 describes humanity before Christ: "The people living in darkness have seen a great light." Jonathan emphasized they weren't just visiting darkness—they were "living in the attic."

The hope? "God does his best business in the dark." Jesus brings both present peace in our current struggles and future hope through His promise to return. "God had his hand on the other side of the door. What God loves to do is fling that door wide open."

The King of Peace

Kurt concluded by reminding us that Christmas isn't ultimately about a baby—it's about the coming King of nations and King of peace. While hostility and division still plague our world, the church offers a foretaste of Christ's ultimate reconciliation.

Quoting Don Carson, Kurt explained that the church "is not made up of natural friends. It's made up of natural enemies...Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance."

The vision in Revelation 7:9-10 shows the fulfillment: "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb."

Application Questions

1. How does understanding Emmanuel as "God with us" change your perspective on daily challenges? Rather than treating God's presence as something to earn or achieve, how might you practice awareness that Christ is already with you in this moment?

2. Where are you trying to rely on your own wisdom or strength instead of depending on Christ as your wisdom and righteousness? What would it look like to surrender that area and trust that Jesus has already accomplished what you're striving to achieve?

• References

  Don Carson

  "The church itself is not made up of natural friends. It's made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything of the sort. Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In the light of this common allegiance, in the light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus himself, they commit themselves to doing what he says, and he commands them to love one another. In this light, they are all a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake."

• Transcript

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  Emmanuel: God With Us (Russ Brasher)

  Around 700 BC, we are first introduced to the name Emmanuel in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. It's a Hebrew name that means "God with us." It wouldn't be until about 500 years later, around 200 BC, when the Hebrew Old Testament would be translated into Greek, that Emmanuel with an "I" would be translated and turned into Emmanuel with an "E." But good news—it doesn't matter which version of the word you find, E or I. It means the same thing because it's still the same name. Emmanuel means "God with us."

  When we look back at Isaiah, the first and only book in the Old Testament to mention the name, we find it being used as part of a promise, as part of a prophecy. Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14 says: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel."

  What we see here is part of a prophecy. God makes a promise through Isaiah that as part of God's master plan to save the world, he is going to send a son, a baby who will be born of a virgin. And we will call him Emmanuel.

  Now we have to fast forward in time—in fact, over 700 years. That means for 700 years, God's people were waiting, anxiously waiting for this promise to happen, longing and hoping for God to deliver and fulfill this prophecy of Emmanuel. When you go 700 years from Isaiah, you arrive at the Gospel of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament.

  Matthew is the only other book in Scripture and the only one in the New Testament to mention the name Emmanuel. In Matthew 1, verses 1 through 18, we get a detailed genealogy. That genealogy is there for a purpose—it's meant to set the stage, to show us as we read that God has been working throughout human history to deliver on this promise. In his timing and through his control, he is about to finally fulfill this prophecy.

  In Matthew 1, verses 18 through 25, we get the origin story of the true meaning of Christmas. We get the story of how Jesus' birth came to be. At the end of that, in Matthew chapter 1, verses 22 and 23, we read: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel,' which means God with us."

  Matthew says, "After all this took place"—well, what's he referring to? Everything that we read about in Scripture, everything that we see take place, has taken place so this divine moment can finally happen. Emmanuel. God with us. For 700 years, God's people were waiting for this moment, and it has finally arrived.

  Does anyone know what this is when I show it to you? If you're thinking to yourself, "Russ, that's a piece of garbage," you're wrong. This is a beautiful piece of art—a craft that my five-year-old daughter Avery made at the time. This is an Advent calendar, and why these are so important, especially to kids this time of year, is that once December starts, every kid on the planet has a hard time waiting and longing for 24 whole days until they can experience Christmas morning and finally be in the presence of presents, experiencing the joy that comes with that. As you move a bead from left to right, each bead represents one less day that a child has to wait for Christmas morning.

  If God's people would have had these back when this prophecy was made, as they moved a bead from left to right, it wouldn't have represented a day—it would have represented an entire decade. Maybe some beads were a century, other beads were entire generations waiting and longing and hoping for this promise to finally be fulfilled. Emmanuel means that it has finally been fulfilled.

  This is why we have in the lyrics of the song we're going to look at and sing today, "O come, O come, Emmanuel." The writer tried to capture this long-awaited waiting in the lyrics: "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear."

  Emmanuel is the celebration that God has appeared. God is with us. The promise has been fulfilled. The waiting is over.

  Today when we sing this song, not only is it still true for us that the wait is over—God is with us, Jesus has been born—but even more so, when we sing "O come, O come, Emmanuel," it's a way for us to celebrate and worship God because he is a God who is worthy of worship. He's worthy of our worship because he's a God who keeps his promises. He's a God who is faithful.

  Every year we have to wait for the next Christmas morning to once again experience the joy of being in the presence of presents. But Emmanuel—God with us—means we don't have to wait. The wait is over. Through Christ, we can be in the presence of God today.

  Christmas is a time where everyone wanders around hoping they are more nice than naughty so they will hopefully receive a Christmas present on Christmas morning. But to us, Emmanuel means that we don't have to try to earn God's gift of grace. He is a faithful God who delivers on his promise and does it on our behalf. We don't have to earn God's grace. He comes down and gives it to us in Emmanuel.

  As we look to stand and sing and celebrate through "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," let it be a way to celebrate, to thank, and to worship a God who keeps his promises as he came to be with us.

  Wisdom From On High (Bryce Vaught)

  You don't have to spend a whole lot of time around me to realize that I'm a pretty quiet and reserved guy. Part of that is my temperament. Part of that is just the way I've seen a lot of the men in my life function. I think particularly about one of my grandpas, who doesn't really say a whole lot, but you can tell he's listening and engaged because he always has an answer or a response.

  When I say he always has an answer, typically it's some kind of witty comeback. For example, I remember one time we were all out to dinner as a family, and it's getting to the end of the night. The waitress comes by and says, "All right, how do you want your check?" Without missing a beat, he says, "Oh, we don't want it." He laughed because he thought that was so funny. I laughed because I'd never heard anything like that before. The waitress just kind of stood there a little annoyed, but we went on with the night. All was good.

  That ability to seem like he always had an answer—I think that's what made me really love the story and character of Solomon. If you're not familiar, Solomon is the king right after David. We see that in a dream, God appears to Solomon early in his reign and says, "Ask whatever you wish." Solomon, we're told, asks for wisdom so that he can judge and lead God's people faithfully. God is so pleased with that response that he says, "Not only am I going to give you wisdom, but I'm going to give you fame and fortune."

  I remember reading that early in my faith and thinking, "Well, that's the secret. If you want and need God to act in your life, that's kind of the cheat code to get whatever you want. You just ask God for wisdom—he can't turn it down." But then as I got older, that began to not really sit well with me. One, I don't think Solomon is the only king who's ever wanted wisdom. And also, God isn't manipulated by a secret password.

  I began to realize that my desire for wisdom was wrong. When Solomon asked for wisdom, the original language says he was asking for a shema lev—in other words, he was asking for a listening, obedient heart. Solomon wasn't asking for some superhuman intellect. He was asking for God's presence to be near so that he could hear and receive God's wisdom from himself.

  I remember realizing that and thinking, "Man, my early desire for wisdom was not so much different than Adam and Eve's desire for wisdom when they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil." What they were really doing was desiring to have wisdom in and of themselves, independent from a relationship with God. That one act ultimately led to this theme throughout Scripture where it says everyone just did what was right in their own eyes. Solomon, writing in Proverbs, says it this way: "There's a way that seems right to man, but in the end, it leads to death."

  As the story of Scripture unfolds, God promises this messianic savior figure who's going to come. The prophets paint him with a lot of different attributes and imagery, but one of the attributes he's said to possess is the wisdom of God—the wisdom that was present when God laid the foundations of creation by his power and by his word that created this order for life to flourish.

  Solomon actually personifies this wisdom in the book of Proverbs. He basically makes wisdom a person who's crying out to humanity saying, "Come, listen to me. Hear my words, put them into practice, and be wise and experience life."

  The prophet Isaiah, speaking of this Messianic figure, says in Isaiah chapter 11, verse 2, that this Messiah will have the spirit of the Lord that will rest on him—the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might.

  Throughout Scripture there are a lot of wise characters, but when Jesus comes, he actually embodies God's wisdom. Jesus' teaching confounds the self-righteous. Jesus' awareness brings comfort and strength to the brokenhearted. Jesus' insight opens the eyes of the blind.

  At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, similar to the wisdom figure in Proverbs, Jesus ends his teaching by saying, "Anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice will be like a wise man who builds his house on the rock." Anybody listening in that original audience would have been reminded of Solomon, who built the house of God with wisdom.

  But if we're not careful, we can hear that statement and reduce that call to this idea that if we can just develop a nice system of thought from Jesus' teaching, it will allow us to live a wise, blessed, and good life. But if that's all you get out of it, you fall short. Ultimately, that's what got the Corinthian church in trouble later on.

  In the city of Corinth, people loved to debate and have very advanced types of philosophy for life. People would amass followers, and that idea began to creep into the church, where people were reducing the Christian faith to really just a spiritual philosophy—that if you can just master this philosophy, it will give you some sort of spiritual advantage.

  Paul writes to rebuke this idea. He said, "Look, you don't just need a wise philosophy—you need a wise salvation. We need to be saved from our sin without being destroyed in the process." God in his wisdom provides this in Jesus. As 1 Corinthians chapter 1 says, "Because of God we are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, our righteousness, holiness and redemption."

  Our wisdom is not just a philosophy or a system of thought. Our wisdom has come in the form of a person.

  I think all of us want to be the type of people who have an answer for every situation. But you don't have to live life for very long to realize that there are some situations and circumstances where we just don't have the ability within us to come up with an answer. Here God provides us with the person and work of Jesus to be our wisdom.

  So we call out in prayer: "Come, Lord Jesus, come. Wisdom from on high."

  O Come, Thou Rod of Jesse (Emily DeAngelo)

  I got to know Jesus by singing hymns with my granddaddy when I was a little girl. I've heard some of your stories. I know many people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ through the songs that we sing here at Orchard Hill Church. The words we sing reveal to us the character of God and the history of his people. When we sing together, or maybe we stand and listen to the words sung around us in church, we are affirming and exploring who God is and what he has done.

  The next stanza of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" tells us about the event in history when God was helping his chosen people when they were camping out in the wilderness at the base of Mount Sinai. This third stanza of our hymn today comes from Exodus chapter 19. I'm going to read a couple of verses—16 to 19—to set the stage for what we're going to sing together today.

  Exodus 19:16-19 says: "On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and the voice of God answered him."

  Do you know what the mighty voice of God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai? Yeah, you're right—the Ten Commandments.

  Think about this moment in history when God originally gave his law. Let's put ourselves at the foot of that mountain. The mountain is covered with fire and smoke. It's trembling with the very presence of God. There's lightning, there's thunder. If you live in Pennsylvania, thunderstorms are no joke, y'all. They are powerful. They're awe-inspiring.

  When was the last time you got caught in a thunderstorm outside? Or more likely, you were caught inside without electricity, right? So imagine you were there at the base of Mount Sinai when a trumpet sounded to declare a gift from God.

  God's law was a gift. It was a gift to the Israelites, and the children of God needed this gift. You see, they were God's chosen people. They had experienced the presence and the favor of God for many generations. God had multiplied them. He had grown them into a great nation, even while they were slaves in Egypt. Then God had taken them out of Egypt. He had rescued them from slavery and brought them into the wilderness, where they were going to learn how to live—to thrive and to trust God. He gave them this law so that they could thrive and know how to live by his ways.

  I spent last weekend with my grown son and his wife and their baby. I observed the value of a father providing structure for a child. Because of their tremendous love for this baby—and our tremendous love for the baby—Sam and Berkeley have structured their home life to provide safe boundaries for their baby to keep him safe. They determine his eating and sleeping schedule so that he can grow and thrive.

  I see in this a picture of what God has done for his people. Living by his law, God's people would grow and thrive. We experience peace and harmony when the Father provides law and structure. His law provides us these protective boundaries so that we can thrive and so that we can know how to follow him and to worship him alone.

  So what is this law? Jesus summed it up when a Pharisee came to him one day with a testing question. He said, "What is the greatest commandment in the law?" Jesus answered, "Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus was explaining that it's the whole of the law that we follow. He emphasized the whole of the law because he came to earth to live that law perfectly. He came to earth to fulfill that law with his perfect life and his sacrificial death and his powerful resurrection.

  On the hill of Calvary, where Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, the earth shook. The earth trembled like Mount Sinai that day in history when God gave the gift of salvation for all who would believe.

  John 1:17 says, "The law came from Moses. Truth and grace come from Jesus Christ."

  God's gift of the law reveals for us our need for that gift of grace, that gift of salvation. It's so important to know that God did not give this law to his people so that we could earn our way into relationship with him. Even on our best days of obeying God's word, we cannot earn our salvation. If we could—if the law had the power to bring us to new life—then the life and the death and the resurrection of God's Son Jesus would not have been necessary.

  But God's law is a gift to us because it reveals to us our sin, and it also shows us that we cannot save ourselves. Disobedience to this law is called sin, and sin deserves death.

  But Romans 8:1-2 has some good news for us. It tells us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That means living in faith, trusting in Jesus. It tells us that those who are in Christ Jesus, saved by him alone, for the law of the Spirit of Jesus has set us free from that law of sin and death. Believing in this makes all the difference between death and life.

  Jesus has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. Trusting in his completed work on the cross for salvation gives us the hope to believe in the promise that he is coming again. He is coming again to dwell with us—God with us, Emmanuel.

  In summary, God's law was given to Israel not so that they could somehow earn God's love, because he already loved them. He had already rescued them from slavery into life. God's power has accomplished for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves. And those who believe in Christ can live in that power.

  What I want us to walk away with today is that God loves us so much. He loves you. He loves me. He has saved us from slavery to sin into the power that is in relationship with Christ the Son. This power is ours, and we get to sing about it now as we remember the character of our mighty God and know that his provision to us is through Christ the Son.

  O Come, Thou Dayspring (Jonathan Thiede)

  I want to tell you about the worst thing my brother ever did to me. He's not here to defend himself, so I think this is as good a time as any.

  When I was nine years old, my family moved into a new house. One of the unique features of that house is that connected to my brother's and my bedroom was our attic. We didn't have an attic in our old house, so he invited me to come up the stairs and visit him in the attic.

  We went to the attic, and my mind was just blown. I'd never been in a room like that before. It was just as cold as it was outside. Even though I knew that the sun was shining outside, it just seemed like this is the one room in our house where the sun did not exist. My brother said, "Go deeper. See what you can find."

  If you're an older sibling, you know where this is going.

  I go deeper into the attic, and I start to discover some of the old things that the previous owners left behind. I say, "Jake, come look at this. This is so cool." I turn around and Jake's not there. Where's Jake? Jake's on the other side of the door. Before I can even process the fact that I'm now alone, he shuts the door and turns the light off.

  I was terrified. I had that first-ever experience where I put my hands in front of my face as a nine-year-old kid, and I could not see my hands. I was terrified, I was fearful, I was in shock and horror. What had begun as just a fun adventure with my older brother had turned into this haunted house of horrors.

  Now, obviously, if that's the worst thing my brother ever did to me, he's probably a pretty good guy, right? So why begin this way? Why even tell the story? What's the point?

  The point is that there's a component to light and darkness that goes beyond the mental into the emotional. You see, I wasn't distraught simply because I couldn't see. I was fearful. I had been abandoned. I was alone. There's a component to light and darkness that is emotional, as if we were wired for the peace of God in our hearts, as if we are wired for comfort to know that everything is going to be okay.

  The light not only shows us where to go, but it impacts our happiness. It asks the big question of life, the big question of God: What do I really need in life to be okay? What do I need to have the peace of God in my heart?

  The Bible helps us answer this question. 1 John 1:5 says: "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light. In him there is no darkness at all."

  The good news for us today is that it's almost as if God has created us for himself. There is something about God being light that fills our hearts with comfort and peace to know that everything's going to be okay.

  But have you ever asked that question: What does it really mean that God is light? Is it just a cliché? Is it like a Christmas movie that you watch this time of year where, you know, okay, this doesn't really have an impact on my life, this doesn't really answer any of the big questions, but it makes me feel okay for 90 minutes? Is it wishfulness? Or maybe the idea that God is light is actually something deeper. Maybe it could help you today and help you this Christmas season to see God and to be comforted.

  One thing I think is funny about this symbolism, this metaphor of light and darkness, is how often we use it in everyday life. You've been around a young kid who's going off to college. What do you say to that young kid? "Hey, you have a bright future in front of you. Your future is incredibly bright."

  Let me tell you about Hannah. For Hannah, all the adults in her life—this idea that she had a bright future—this was the constant refrain for her. And it wasn't for no reason. Hannah worked hard so that she could get into her dream school. Even more than that, Hannah was a model citizen. Everyone wanted to be around her. She was never bored on a Friday night. People were always inviting her over. If you can imagine the doorway of Hannah's life, the door of her life was wide open, with light flowing in every single direction. There was endless opportunity in front of her.

  But it was in college that Hannah began to struggle. She found out that her mom was sick, and so she drove back and forth from school to home. This had two results on her life. The first result is that she was unable to spend the requisite amount of time on her studies, and so her grades failed. The second result was perhaps even worse—she spent so much time going back and forth, she was so exhausted all the time, that she began to say no to her social plans, and therefore her friendships fell apart.

  To make matters worse, she filled this time. She filled this relationship void with romantic relationships, hoping that would satisfy her. If the doorway of her life was wide open, she now sensed that things were a bit different. The door of her life was beginning to close ever so subtly, the light dimming.

  It was post-college, after college, that things really started to fall apart for Hannah. Because she was unable to spend the requisite amount of time on her studies, she was unable to get a job in her preferred field. So she had to settle. She justified this to herself by saying, "My boyfriend will take care of me."

  One day she comes home and finds simply a note, a note saying that he's not coming back. As she sits there and cries to herself in his empty apartment, she thinks to herself, "What happened to my life? What happened to the bright future that everyone told me that I had?"

  The question that Hannah has to grapple with is the question that we have to grapple with as well: What does the story of Christmas have to do with any of this? Can you really look me in the eyes and say that the darkness in my life, the things that have kept me awake at night, the things that have made me question God, can all be solved by a baby born 2,000 years ago? What relevance could this actually have for my life? How could this make anything different?

  This is where the good news gets really good. Because the Christmas story is relevant to even the darkest parts of our lives. We find this in Matthew 4:16, where Matthew writes: "The people living in darkness have seen a great light."

  I love that phrase—people living in darkness. They were not just walking in darkness. They were not just visiting the attic to pull down Christmas decorations. No, they were living in the attic. That is the way the world is described before Jesus comes in.

  But how does this help us? The light helps us in two ways—one present and one future.

  Presently, the light brings peace and calm in the face of darkness. The end of that story is that I screamed, I cried out for my parents when I felt that darkness in the attic. Don't you know what a good parent does? They hear the child, and they come in and they comfort them. That is exactly who God is for you today. Even though you may be walking in darkness, even though your life may feel like you are living in your attic, know that God is right there. The wonderful thing about God is that he does his best business in the dark.

  The second thing is that the light gives us hope for the future. Because in the story of Christmas, we see the lengths that God is willing to go to show his love for his people. During the time of Jesus, the time that he was born into—this song that we're singing, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"—it was a time in human history where the door was closing and only a sliver of light could come through.

  The encouragement for you today, the encouragement for me today, is that God had his hand on the other side of the door. What God loves to do is fling that door wide open. Don't you know that's exactly what he's done in his Son, Jesus Christ? He has flung the door open so now that light is bursting through, so now we may be with God again.

  Jesus is the light who comes to bring you peace, to bring you comfort, and to bring you hope this Christmas season.

  "O come, O bright and morning star, and bring us comfort from afar. Dispel the shadows of the night and turn our darkness into light."

  O Come, O King of Nations (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

  I was talking with Rick Gallagher, who leads the music in our chapel service, about today, and he said, "Yeah, I've been to a lot of services over the years that are kind of lessons and carols, but this year we get to do lessons and carols singular."

  We are doing one song primarily—"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"—which is our attempt, hopefully, to explore the verses in such a way that from now on, when we hear the song, sing the song, we'll say, "I know some of the biblical imagery and rootedness of what this song is about."

  The verse that we're looking at now, the last verse, reads this way: "O come, O King of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind. Bid all our sad divisions cease, and be yourself our King of peace."

  This verse has the dual image of a king of the nations, King of peace. This is a biblical image that helps us to say that the song and even the Christmas event is not just about a baby, but about the coming King of nations, King of peace.

  You know when a baby is born how it changes things. A family, when a baby is born, all of a sudden becomes very focused on the baby. There's rightly a lot of attention. The schedule changes to dictate what's best for the baby. The Christmas card has a baby at the center. Christmas, for many of us, is about baby Jesus.

  Yet it's good to remember that as much as there's a baby, the baby isn't the ultimate headline. It is the King of nations, the King of peace.

  Here are just a couple places where this idea comes from in Scripture. In Haggai chapter 2, verse 7, we see this: "I will shake all the nations, and what is desired by all the nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord Almighty." In other words, one day the desire of the nations—he says, "I'll fill that. I will make it come true."

  Ephesians chapter 2, verses 14 through 16, says it this way: "For he himself is our peace, who made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility."

  I don't know how these verses strike you, but I would guess that at least for some of us, we say, "Well, if taking away hostility is part of what Jesus has done, he's still got a lot of work to do because there's a lot of hostility in the world." Just the headlines from the news of yesterday—shooting at Brown University, a shooting internationally—where people are filled with division, with hate.

  This image of the King of nations, King of peace, is not merely a call to compromise, but it is a call to embrace the promise and the hope that one day Emmanuel will come again. In his second coming, he will come as the King of nations and the one who brings ultimate peace. But we can taste it now.

  Don Carson wrote about this years ago. Here's what he said about the church and how this can be an instrument, a place of peace: "The church itself is not made up of natural friends. It's made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything of the sort. Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In the light of this common allegiance, in the light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus himself, they commit themselves to doing what he says, and he commands them to love one another. In this light, they are all a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake."

  Do you see what he's saying? The hostility is taken away not because people just simply decide that they'll get along, but the church is the beginning taste of what will one day be—where because the hostility that people have toward one another is taken away in Jesus Christ, there can be peace between people.

  Maybe it's a little bit like this: Have you ever been to one of these band concerts where somebody has maybe a junior high band concert and all the kids are playing their instruments, and then the conductor goes out and plays the note, or somebody hits a note, and they all tune their instruments to the one note so that they can play in unity? Now, it doesn't work so well in a middle school band concert, but the idea is, as they tune themselves to the true note, then they are in tune with one another.

  This is the image again that we get in terms of where things are moving—the King of nations, the King of peace. The longing of the song is to say, "God, would you hasten the day where the divisions of this world would be obliterated?"

  Here's where we see this at the end of the Bible, in Revelation chapter 7, verses 9 and 10. We read: "After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'"

  Do you see the image? People from every nation, every tribe, tuned to the one note—the King of nations, the King of peace.

  O come, O come, Emmanuel, so that we can see your peace.

  Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and has been edited for clarity and readability. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, some errors or omissions may remain. Please refer to the original audio recording for the most accurate representation of the sermon content.