GLAD TIDINGS

Part II

Although God uses man, He is not dependent on man, for directly after the birth of the Savior, an angel was sent to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. One of the blessed spirits from the throne was permitted to deliver the message of the born King of Zion. The tiding is brought from heaven to earth. Thus it is still. God uses people, but the message is one which they have not devised themselves, but which has been given them from heaven. Everything, even today, waits for that. We can do with nothing less. No message is sent to Herod, nor to the Pharisees and scribes, to the distinguished and the great in Israel, but to the shepherds who kept watch over their flocks by night. They were people whom the Lord had looked down upon. They were people who could no longer find satisfaction in the world, but who had found death in their religion, and had learned that all their righteousnesses were as filthy rags. They were people who had not remained strangers to the Divine promises, with respect to the coming Messiah. But they had also learned that the promise is not the Promiser and that the promise must be fulfilled.

They had come with these promises into want and now their soul was lodged in Ps. 130:5,6, “I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait and in His Word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they that watch for the morning.”

To the shepherds it was night, but yet they were awake. When the time of fulfillment draws near, then the promises in the heart of God’s people begin to cry out. They could no longer live on because the want became unbearable. That had not always been thus, but now it was, “O that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy presence,” Is. 64:1. Yea, they experienced among all their strife and temptations that God does not leave His people in endless sorrow. It had become a personal matter for those people. God’s people stand alone in the world, and then finally it concerns them only. The Lord Himself has bound it upon them. They become so restless wondering whether it is still possible for them and whether it is still for them. No, in that fearful distress, we do not concern ourselves about other people. Our concern is about an unpaid debt, an unsolved life, and an unsaved soul for eternity; an unreconciled God, a demanding justice, a cursing law, a convicted conscience.

Yea, there is no room left on our side. Something must happen. People cannot comfort us and reassure us for eternity.

My sackcloth shall not be unbound
Until Jesus I have found.

An ambassador from heaven is sent to the shepherds and in the darkness of the night and of their life, the glory of the Lord shone round about them. Something of the glory of heaven was seen upon earth, and it came, O eternal wonder, not to destroy those shepherds and to cause them to sink away beneath the infinite anger and wrath of God, but to raise them up out of the dust, to encourage and to comfort them, and to fill them with a joy in their soul which they had never known before. The shadows are flown away, and it has become light for those anticipating and waiting shepherds. Now you would say, how glad they should have been with that Divine appearance and manifestation. There was no reason for those shepherds to fear and yet they did fear. How many people there are who become neither hot nor cold, even under the signs and manifestations of God’s Majesty in nature and under the momentous events in the world because they are dead for death and have no fear of God in their soul.

Continually we find in the life of God’s children that fear fills their heart. And no wonder! Who can in this earthly dispensation bear the glory of God? We remain sinners who are absent from the Lord and carry about a body of sin. We must experience that in us, that is, in our flesh, no good thing dwells. We have learned it from our early youth that one of the consequences of Adam’s fall was a terror in our conscience. God’s people will never come beyond that. We must wrestle with that until the end of our life. Whenever the Lord manifests Himself to the soul, then that terror and that fear comes to the fore. They become aware that with the Lord is a terrible majesty. Paul wrote in Heb. 12: “And our God is a consuming fire.” Yea, even though the divine justice has been satisfied in Christ for all God’s favorites, yet a reverence and fear remains for God and His attributes. With all the grace which has been given us, in ourselves we remain rejectable and damnworthy until our last breath. God’s people shall not come above the slavish fear nor be completely delivered until the hour of death comes. Of course, one must struggle more with it than another, but even David said in Psalm 30, when God hid His face from him he was troubled. The special manifestation of God’s majesty and glory has such an overwhelming power, that in this dispensation, God’s people would faint under it. But the Lord supports and strengthens His people. The first thing the angel did here was to remove the fear and declare the contents of the message which would only cause great joy. The Church sings in Psalter 423:7:

“Jehovah’s kindly face
Give happiness and grace
To all that are pure-hearted,
To them is life imparted.”

It gives us an insight into the state of the shepherds within. Their great joy took the place of deep sorrow. Something precedes all the benefits and manifestations of grace which God gives and imparts to His people, something accompanies it and something follows it. There are always three parts: misery, deliverance and gratitude. When we speak about benefits, and nothing preceded that, nothing happened, and nothing followed, then it was all in the head and it has no meaning for eternity. It is and remains a close examination.

“Unto you is born this day.” The birth of Christ is a cause of great joy. The decree was made in eternity already. Immediately after the deep fall and the breaking of the covenant, God already announced from heaven the Covenant of Grace. The seed of the woman was promised, Gen. 3:15, and the Messiah was announced. After so many thousands of years, that promise was fulfilled. The long-expected Messiah came. The Immanuel, God with us, the Savior is born. The second Person, the Son of God, has assumed our flesh and blood, and now as a true righteous Man, He lies in the manger. Now is fulfilled, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given,” Is. 9:5.

Inconceivable and incomprehensible is the miracle of the incarnation of the Word. Here my soul feeds with wondering eye. Paul exclaimed of this in I Tim. 3:16, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh” and in Heb. 2:14, 15: “For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” O, who shall be able to describe and exclaim the riches of that Person. Think of all the names which have been given Him in the Old as well as in the New Testament: The true God and eternal life, the Fairest among the children of men into Whose Ups grace is poured, Who is over all, God blessed forever, the One among a thousand to show unto man His uprightness.

He is born, that blessed Person, Who in one Person is true God and true righteous Man. He is the One upon Whom help is laid; He Who is the Lawgiver, but also the Lawfulfiller. Yea, Who has disarmed the law of its curse, and Who shall deliver the sinner from the greatest evil, viz. sin, and bring him to the chiefest good, viz, fellowship with God. O, who shall fathom the wisdom of the only wise God to devise such a way with retention and glorification of His holy and perfect justice. Who shall be able to express the greatness of the love of God manifested therein, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, so that we should live through Him, I John 4:9. It passes far above all description: “and acknowledge that love of Christ which passes all understanding.”

But the greatest and most important matter in the message of the angel was, “Unto you is born.” At times we may be encouraged by another’s deliverance. But even then that brings the soul into want and strife. No, we cannot describe nor express how deep we may later sink away in ourselves, and what miserable and hostile thoughts may fill our hearts. Also, what listlessness and carelessness may beset us, whereas before we so longingly looked forward for the fulfilment of the divine promises. In such ways we say so often with the heart, “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” At times it is on the border of indifference; no words to pray, no more desire to bend the knees. Man falls outside of everything so that the wonder shall be wondered at when the Lord shall remove the yoke on the jaws, and lay meat unto them. What a change, what a relief, what a joy to hear, “Unto you is born.” “Unto you”, that is personally. Then the soul is enclosed and taken up in that. Then it is no longer “perhaps” between hope and fear, but then giant unbelief is cast down, faith overcomes the world. Then it becomes the language of the soul:

“In God the Lord I rest,
His word of grace I praise,
His promise stands secure,
Nor fear nor foe dismays.”

Psalter No. 152:3

Then faith becomes so active and so strong that they can say with the poet, “I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord,” Ps. 118:17. Then by faith they share in the joy of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. It must be experienced personally to know how much joy filled the heart of those shepherds. When we are strangers of the life of God, then we cannot understand that life. Thus it is with the sorrow after God and with the joy in God through Christ. The intellectual and superficial contemplation of it can never descend into the personal experience of it. The understanding fails to observe the true ground of that good. That which those shepherds had for a shorter or longer period been longing for, the Lord has now granted them. Yea, they received more than they could have ever imagined. Just listen. They receive further directions where and how they would find that Child, and then immediately upon this, the song of the heavenly host, whereby the message of the angel is confirmed. How their heart was stirred to leave everything and to hasten to the manger. There they found the Child. God had found them, and now they were favored to find the Child as their personal possession for time and eternity.

Never during their life were they as happy as that time. Their bonds were loosed, their soul delivered and solved in the good pleasure of God. With that child they ended in God. “That God is our salvation, Who would not fear His majesty, In earth as well as heaven,” Psalter 420:5.

It became Christmas for the shepherds. No sorrow would ever erase that from their memory. They were favored to find that Child, and were enabled to behold through the swaddling clothes the glory of the Incarnate Word, a glory as of the Only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. They were favored to embrace Him by faith as their Surety and Mediator, and thereupon with the Gift end in the Benefactor and Giver. There they obtained something which they could never lose entirely.

O my beloved, how empty then is the Christmas of the world, and how poor is all that superficial occupation with a Christmas joy which does not touch the heart. May it please the Lord to open your eyes before it is forever too late.

Man is without God in the world, without Christ and without hope for eternity. The Child in the manger is the mighty God. He is still able to open the heart by the irresistible power of His divine grace. Now it is still the acceptable time, the day of salvation. God can still make us poor, lost sinners. May we become interested in it. May it become a necessity, “Give me Jesus ere I die.” Depressed souls, in your heart and life there are so many adversaries, so many voices within, so many who endeavor to murder your longing soul and heart. From all sides they are after you to give it up and to say farewell to everything, to deny everything and to sink away in despair. But let this be to your comfort and encouragement, that in His own time, God shall give you beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, Is. 61:3. If He tarry, wait for Him, for He shall surely come, He shall not tarry. Christ satisfied the Divine justice. In Him is a perfect and eternal righteousness. Christ lay there in that manger in abject poverty, with all the sins of His people, so that He would pay with His blood perfectly for all their sins, so that one day He would redeem His people from all their unrighteousnesses.

May He change your sorrow into joy, and call also to you, “Unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” Only His coming can give us perfect joy. May there be no rest until by faith you may enter into that rest, and your soul may be filled with joy which no man shall ever take away from you. If Christ is born in our heart, “O, then it shall be:

“Their joy shall then unbounded be,
Who see God’s face eternally,
Their hearts desire receiving.”

Psalter 420:2

And finally, people of the Lord, acknowledge in humility the benefit that has been bestowed upon you with respect to that unspeakable Gift of God. It is all of free sovereign grace. You have obtained and received that which by nature you never looked for. But He giveth His beloved sleep. Not while asleep, O no, the shepherds watched over their flocks by night when they received those glad tidings. In the practice of your life, you remain a sinner, so that that Savior will ever be necessary, and shall be lifted up and exalted in your heart. The last promise which God shall fulfill for His people in this life is, “And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities,” Psalm 130:8. Yea, to know Christ in His offices, and to need Him, and to meet Him, we must become fools, evermore a poor sinner, a prayerless prayer, always bound and in prison. We must be at our wits end with self, so that Christ shall be and remain Prophet, Priest and King in our heart, to the glory of God. AMEN.

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