What do you feel when you remember the story of Christmas? Indifference and a shrug of “same old story that’s told every year”? Or does your heart pulsate with joy as you hear the old story, even escalating into song? The angels sang when they announced the Savior’s birth. Their song was simple, yet each phrase swells with meaning, “the highest notes of the divine scale of praise.”
In this 1857 Christmas sermon, Spurgeon unpacks the angels’ refrain: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)
“Glory to God in the highest.” At the brink of the entrance of the Savior of the world, the angels offered their highest praise. Not even at the creation of the world were such praises offered. “The whole of God is glorified in Christ; and though some part of the name of God is written in the universe, it is here best read—in Him who was the Son of Man, and, yet, the Son of God.”
“Peace on earth,” they sang. The Incarnation was the inception of peace between God and man. “There had been no peace on earth since Adam fell. But, now, when the newborn King made his appearance, the swaddling band with which he was wrapped up was the white flag of peace.” The gospel inaugurates peace with God, peace with self, and peace with fellow man.
“Good will toward men,” the chorus rang out. How do we know that the Father has good will toward man? He sent His own Son to the manger and the cross. In Christ, we have a subject that ought to move us to sing for joy, especially at Christmas. “No greater proof of kindness between the Creator and his subjects can possibly be afforded than when the Creator gives his only begotten and well beloved Son to die.”
Christ has come to save! If the angels sang with such joy while ringing in the birth of Christ, how should we, the blood-bought people of God, respond?
Excerpt:
And if you say, “Lord, how shall I know that thou hast this good will towards me,” he points to yonder manger, and says, “Sinner, if I had not a good will towards thee, would I have parted with my Son? if I had not good will towards the human race, would I have given up my Son to become one of that race that he might by so doing redeem them from death?” Ye that doubt the Master’s love, look ye to that circle of angels; see their blaze of glory; hear their song, and let your doubts die away in that sweet music and be buried in a shroud of harmony. He has good will to men; he is willing to pardon; he passes by iniquity, transgression, and sin. And mark thee, if Satan shall then add, “But though God hath good will, yet he cannot violate his justice, therefore his mercy may be ineffective, and you may die;” then listen to that first note of the song, “Glory to God in the highest,” and reply to Satan and all his temptations, that when God shows good will to a penitent sinner, there is not only peace in the sinner’s heart, but it brings glory to every attribute of God, and so he can be just, and yet justify the sinner, and glorify himself.
Read the rest of the sermon here.