In the Bleak Midwinter

Text: Ezekiel 36:24-28

Central Idea of the Text: God is the one who replaces and renews the dead heart with a living Spirit thru faith in His Son.

Proposition: Those who awaken to the Savior welcome Him with Joy!

Purpose: All who hear should make way in their hearts for the King to receive Him with Joy!

Intro

When it comes to Christmas songs, there are clearly some that are superior to others: Some are clearly CHRISTMAS songs

Clearly: Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, O Holy Night, We Wish you a Merry Christmas, I’ll be Home for Christmas, White Christmas, I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. All of these are songs about Christmas.

But there are also a bunch of songs have been branded as “Christmas” songs, but clearly have nothing to do with Christmas as they do winter, myths or folklore. Songs like: Let it Snow, Frosty the Snowman, Winter Wonderland, Jingle Bells, Baby It’s Cold Outside, Deck the Halls & You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch. All of those get branded as Christmas songs, but on their faces they are really devoid of Christmas.

And this, my friends, it what makes picking Christmas songs as the worship leader a hard job. Opinions on Christmas songs are like noses. Everyone’s got one.

There are like 10 songs to choose from. Another chunk that are super traditional. Some that are newer arrangements of old songs. Many people love the old songs, but only if you sing them the way they sang them a long time ago. Some people love the new songs, but there can be too many to choose from. And over the years, there have been some good ones that may have been voted out of your hymnal and out of our Christmas traditions of singing because they were deemed to be “not Christmasy enough” by some Grinch spirited worship leader or music publisher.

I nearly missed out on the gem that is the Christmas hymn that I preach on this morning. I stumbled onto this morning’s hymn, I heard it covered by several newer musical artists. I didn’t sing it with you all this morning because there are many who wouldn’t know it, and its never fun to mumble your way through an old song that you don’t know. But here is a short excerpt of: “In the Bleak Midwinter.” (Play First verse of track)

Honestly, it’s probably a deep cut on some of your Christmas albums, but as I meditated on its lyrics and the themes of Christmas, I found that they paired perfectly, and it has now become one of my favorite Christmas hymns. And one of my Christmas gifts to you is to follow the QR code linked in your bulletin this morning so that you can later listen to one of my favorite versions of this song.

The place I wanted to start this morning with this hymn is by pairing it with one of my favorite scriptures, found in Ezekiel 36:24-28:

Ezekiel 36:24–28 ESV

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

This is the word of the Lord for us this morning.

Let us pray: Lord, we thank you for being a God who is not only great and mighty, but who came near to us as Emmanuel, God with Us. We thank you for the appearing of the Son, who shines to melt the hardest heart so that your Spirit might be present and active in us. Renew us through the word this morning, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

The Hymn Lyrics of “In the Bleak Midwinter” that you are reading this morning come from the pen of a British poet named Christina Rossetti. She wrote this Christmas time poem as a poetic meditation on Christ’s first and second coming. It was published in 1872 in Scribner’s Monthly. It made it into a couple other publications, but did not get picked up or set to music until 1906 & 1909 when two different composers Holst & Darke set the words to music. Holst gave the version you just heard, and Darke set a different tune to the lyrics that was meant for a trained choir.

Now on the face of these lyrics this morning, you might be playing your own Grinch card this morning. “Well, if Let It Snow is not a Christmas song, then this certainly isn’t either!” Or you might have a certain quota of the times that Jesus has to be mentioned in a song before it truly is a hymn about Jesus and worthy of inclusion in our songs of worship. But I promise you, this hymn is a Christian hymn and is deeply rooted in the Gospel message. By the time we’ve more fully examined these lyrics today, I hope you’ll see this Gospel connections and that your heart will prepare the King of the Universe room that he would live with you and in you by His Holy Spirit. I’d like to take the Hymn verse by verse, noting the Spiritual themes, and see that in a very short span of time, the Poet Rossetti makes are persuasive argument, calling the singer to answer the most direct question of the Song, and “give him their heart.”

But we start this morning with verse 1 with ...

The Cold Reception

The Opening verse of the Hymn is where the title comes from, and It has seemed appropriate to us this past couple weeks, hasn’t it? “In the bleak mid-winter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter, Long ago.” Some of you are like, why did they have to put such pretty music to such depressing lyrics? Earth like iron. Wind moaning. Water like stone. Snow piling on snow? It makes a pretty painting, but it’s pretty gross to live and drive and work in. You might be hating the fact that a poet would try to paint such a picture of cold and snow. And then some people really question the Christmas cred of this song when they check the weather forecast in Bethlehem. Have you seen the weather forecast in Bethlehem lately? 50’s and 60’s, with like 90% humidity. So unless there’s been a bunch of global warming happening in the past 2000 years, I’m thinking Jesus didn’t see much earth like iron or water like stone in his time.

But the poet and hymn writer is not ignorant to such things. She is taking a metaphor from the much colder place in the northern hemisphere, and she is applying it as a metaphor to the climate in which Jesus was born. Hymnologist C. Michael Hawn has defended the poet’s choice of words here: “that there was a “harsh spiritual landscape" [existing] at the time of Christ's birth, referring to the political oppression of Jews during the Roman occupation of Palestine. It was also clear that the world that Jesus was being born into was a world that had not changed that much from the time of the prophets. This is why Jesus would speak in parables, and would share in parables such as the parable of the Sower, when only 1/4 of the seed would find good soil and produce a crop. There were some who were ready to receive Jesus when he would arrive but many would not. There were many, as Ezekiel said, who would have hard hearts, hearts like stone and ice. The Lord told the prophet Isaiah something similar regarding the people of Israel that he would speak to in Isaiah 6:9-10

Isaiah 6:9–10 ESV

And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul would recite this same passage with regard to the world to whom they preached. They would preach a message of God’s Kingdom, of sin and repentance, and the way of forgiveness offered in Christ. But many around them would remain frozen, unmoving and unchanged. The Jews would have hard hearts. They had received the words but many were not ready to recognize or worship the king. They would go about their business, they would have excuses, They would even walk away from Jesus and be found among the crowds who would shout to crucify Him. The Romans were no better, lost in their god/goddess worship, their imperial cult, their lust for all things sexual and their devaluing of human life. Sounds like a winter of the human heart if I’ve ever heard of one.

But we are better now, right? Things are different! No more hard hearts and we live in an eternal spiritual spring right? Not so much. Is the Love of God and his word on the rise? Are their vast legions turning away from sin and toward Christ? Every heart is preparing him room? Not so much. We can look around us and see: a culture that hates life, devalues family, trusts in its own goodness, stabs one another in the back, can’t discern man from woman or right from wrong. In other words, we swim in a culture that hates God. And but for the grace of God that would be us too. Do not think a biblical message regarding the hard heart is a message that doesn’t matter or became irrelevant yesterday. Sin and hard heartedness abounds now as it did in Jesus’ time. Thus we need the Good news of Jesus and the rest of this song. The second verse bring us to a ...

The Divine Dwelling

We see a problem that some might have as we explore the second verse: Our God, heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain, Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty — Jesus Christ. It might appear, as we read the second verse, that there may have been some Christmas Grinches that kicked this hymn out of their Christmas hymnal. It is proper, after all, to allow the word to reign over the hymnal and not vice versa. The truth of scripture ought to govern over the hymns of the church. But there were some though the years that took umbrage to the first phrase “Our God, heaven cannot holy him.” On the face of the thing, it might sound like a wrong thing to say. God is referred to throughout the Old Testament, as the “God of Heaven”. Yet, Heaven is not a limiting factor of his identity. He is infinite in power, glory and majesty. That glory and majesty spill over into his creation.

Solomon made this idea clear that the song communicates at the dedication of the newly built Temple in Jerusalem. As he spoke at that temple dedication, he prayed these words in 1 Kings 8:27

1 Kings 8:27 ESV

“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

As well, Solomon’s recorded sentiment in 2 Chronicles 2:6 reflect the same idea:

2 Chronicles 2:6 ESV

But who is able to build him a house, since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him? Who am I to build a house for him, except as a place to make offerings before him?

The main idea of both this hymn verse and these prayers of Solomon is that heaven is not a limiting factor or wall for God. He made is creation. He speaks into his creation. He interacts with his creation, a truth that the Temple and Tabernacle both celebrated. And in the incarnation at Christmas, we celebrate the fact that heaven could not hold Him back from being Emmanuel, God with us.

It is a beautiful verse that celebrates the first coming, in that hardened and frozen world. There would be a space for the savior, and it would be a feed trough of some animals in a stable. Though unbelieving hearts, such as King Herod’s, would not receive him with joy or fanfare, he would arrive in a humble manner, to accomplish the work of God.

The hymn celebrates alongside one another both the first and the second comings of Christ: the one we have seen, and the one we await. Much of our year as a church has been spent discussing this, but the hymn reminds us again of the truths of the scripture regarding Christ’s return. There will be no mistaking it or missing it or hiding it in a stable or manger. Christ himself said in Luke 21:33 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Paul affirmed it in 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” And John’s Revelation matches as well in Revelation 21:1 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

Mankind, lost in sin and frozen in heart, would like to simply ignore God or limit God in his scope & reign. We would like it, in our sinful tendencies, for God to be the God of heaven and for us to be our own little gods on the earth. But the Bible makes clear that this is not to be the case. God is God, and Jesus Christ, the incarnate one, is One with God, the I AM. Heaven cannot hold him, and one day all will give account to Him. This is a core truth of the incarnation of Christ. And it is this truth and Christmas reflection that gives birth to the third verse. ...

The Loving Recognition

The loud and harsh realities of verse 2 yield now to the tenderness of Verse 3: Angels and Archangels May have gathered there. Cherubim and seraphim Thronged the air; But only His Mother In her maiden bliss Worshiped the Beloved With a kiss. This year’s exploration has shown us many scenes of exalted worship of Jesus in heaven. The Lamb upon the throne. The angels and creatures, the elders, the gathered multitudes singing “worthy is the Lamb.” When Christ is seen for who he is in the word, full picture, we see that great powerful angels and beings of the spiritual realms worship Jesus for who he is. Even at the birth of Christ, the praises of angels could not be contained in heaven, but spilled over into the laps of surprised shepherds. They sang their songs in Luke 2:14:

Luke 2:14 ESV

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

As beautiful as that sight and song was, the poet now reflects on that which is not recorded but which we know would be true: the purest and most lovely worship of Christmas. The welcoming of the King by his joyful mother. Perhaps no other human had a better sense of what was happening in the moment of Christ’s birth than Mary. She was a virgin, after all. There was no way she was even supposed to be with a child. It was not physically or humanly possible. But the Angel had made the promise in Luke 1:31 “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” The angel had affirmed how this would happen (Luke 1:35): “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” And “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk 1:37) Mary, her simple question answered, simply trusted the Lord, answering (Luke 1:38): “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Those promises had been with her from the conception until the birth. She knew the truth. The angel was right. She was a virgin. And yet the promised Child had come safely thru pregnancy and been born. The moment of mother and father with child is always a tender moment, but was there ever a more tender moment than this one: The newborn Christ, placed at his mother’s breast, and now her sweet kiss on the head. That kiss is not recorded in scripture, but is recorded here in this song, and that moment was not simply for her motherly love. It was a welcoming of the one she knew to be the king. In this sense, Mary was the first Christian, the one closest to the Lord of Creation. Is it any wonder that the one who would kiss his small head would be the one who would witness the whole of his life: the first miracle, the teaching, the trial, the cross, the resurrection & ascension? One set of eyes would be there to see all of it. And Mary was likely witness #1 when it came to Luke writing his eyewitness account. She knew first hand what it was to recognize the King and to kiss him as a sign of worship.

In that way, Mary is meant to be representative of what it means to receive the King and to prepare Him room. When God blessed her with this opportunity to be the mother of the Christ Child, she simply obeyed. The response of the one closest to Christ should tell us everything we need to know about the response of mankind to Christ’s gift. And that leads us to what may be the most beautiful and meaningful lyrics to us ...

The Fitting Gift

Note Verse 4 of the hymn now, which turns from both the incarnation and John’s revelation, and brings it all back to the reader and the singer: What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a Shepherd I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man I would do my part, — Yet what I can I give Him, — Give my heart. At Christmas, it is a time for gifts and for giving. It has always been at the core of the Christmas story. It’s at the core of the incarnation and the Gospel of Jesus. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That gift of the Son is meant to provoke a response from the hearer and to inspire gifts in return.

In the Christmas story, those gifts are obvious and quite celebrated. The Magi, or the wise men of Matthew 2 brought gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh to give to the King. These were gifts and were of great worth, and gifts that foretold of Christ’s life & death. They were gifts that foreshadowed his roles that he would display in his life and work as prophet, priest and king. They were, in many ways, the gifts that inspired the gifts of our Christmas season.

As we know, there are signs of immaturity and maturity in the lives of people. One of the signs of immaturity is selfishness. That’s why we work so hard on that in our kids, right? When we are little, we cry and fuss about the things we are getting, because all we want is to get and get. Giving is far from the minds of most kids at Christmas. But I think that if we are honest, we know that selfishness and getting is at the heart of many adults at Christmas as well. This is why, even some who talk a good Christmas game about Jesus being at the center of Christmas, ultimately walk away from this holiday and this season unchanged. We’ve not thought about the true meaning of the season, the scriptures and this song. All of these things can be true about Christmas, that Christ came near into a cold, hard world. That Mary gave birth to the Savior of the World, the Christ child, and she worshipped him. We can compartmentalize all those things in our nativities that we get out of boxes and that we put back into boxes each year, but have the habits of the holiday made any difference? Or are you still the same old you?

When it comes to Christmas, we all love many of the same stories that are not nativity stories: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, about a Grinch who has a heart that is angry and is “two sizes too small”. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, about a Scrooge who cares about no one but himself. Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which tells of George Bailey who just doesn’t understand the blessings he’s been given. I think that each of these stories resonate with this Christmas truth so deeply, because ultimately Christmas is meant to be about heart change which leads to life change.

We are confronted this morning by these truths and this hymn of Christmas: If Jesus is Lord, If Jesus is alive, and if Jesus is returning, how will you stand right before him? If we are all honest, without Jesus Christ, we are no softer than the frozen grounds in our backyards, and we are no warmer than the ice that lines our gutters. We stay stubborn in sin, and stuck in old habits of the old way of life. That is where I want to bring us back to the scripture I read early in today’s sermon: Ezekiel 36:24–27 “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” God promised rescue for his people, the Jews, and ultimately for all mankind. But Christ did not come to leave the world as they are, lost and dead in sin. He came to give them forgiveness and a new heart.

That is the ultimate gift of Christmas: from the scripture and the song. Give Christ your heart. Just as it is. He is not waiting for you to clean up your act to come to him. He wants your contrition and your repentance. “What can I give him? Give him my heart.” Not the heart you wish you had. Give him your sin, give him your shame, give him your guilt, give him these things, because that is all you have to offer him. He’s not pursuing you because of your holiness or specialness. He’s coming, pursuing you and calling you specifically because of your sin. This is why David, the man after God’s own heart who was caught in his deep sin says in Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

This is the thing that is meant to sink in and resonate in every human. We need a new heart. Jesus came to give it. God intends to use your prayer of your contrition to do a new work in you. He intends that you would be marked by the water in baptism, yielding to the Savior and being known as a Christian. He intends that he would place His Holy Spirit within you so that you might walk, talk, think and believe in new ways.

The Lord has given so much for you, to purchase you for God. What would you give to him. Give him your sin. Give him your hard heart. Give him your all.