Sermon Tone Analysis

Well, we're so glad to have all of you with us for the opening week of our series called Do you hear what I hear.

It is a series about the different carols that we sing.

Have you ever thought about the words in them?

I know that most of us know them but have you ever really thought about the words.

The carol that we're going to talk about today is for many a favorite.

We're going to talk about O Holy Night.

Let me give you some context of the history of this song and then we're going to talk about it.

The song, O Holy Night, was actually written in the mid 1800's.

What's interesting is there was a perish priest who asked a guy in town who was actually a French merchant and a poet, his name was Placide Cappeau.

The priest asked Placide, 'Would you write a poem to Luke Chapter Two?' The interesting thing is, Placide was not only not a Christian, but he was also known as kind of a hell raiser.

He was very far from God, didn't go to church at all, but he was a good poet.

So, Placide wrote this poem, and he loved it so much he asked his friend who was also not a Christian, to put the poem to music.

And this song became so popular that it ran through the Catholic Church, was played at all sorts of churches until a few years into it, when everyone realized just who wrote the song and who did the music and they said, 'You've got to shut this song down!' But, by then it was way too late and the song was massively popular as it is today.

Another interesting fact about this carol then, about five decades later in 1906, Reginald Fessenden was a 33-year old Canadian professor who did what many people thought was impossible.

He took, kind of out of his own garage and made a make-shift generator, plugged a microphone into it and broadcast the very first AM broadcast in the history of the world on Christmas Eve in 1906.

He took Luke, Chapter 2:1, spoke into the microphone and broadcast that chapter, starting out:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world, and he read the Christmas story.

Then he took his violin, played into the microphone and the first song broadcast across airwaves in the history of the world was this song, O Holy Night.

Video of O Holy Night

O Holy Night!

The stars are brightly shining.

It is the night of the dear Savior's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

Till He appeared and the Soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees!

Oh, hear the angel voices!

O night divine, the night when Christ was born.

Craig Groeschel:

You know, you can only imagine what it would have been like to be there on that Holy night.

To us today, I think the manger scene; I don't know about for you, but for me it draws so much emotion out.

Maybe because when I was a kid, we had sitting out on the coffee table, it was my job to set it up every year.

You've got the Baby Jesus, and you've got the Virgin Mary, and you've got Joseph, and you've got the cows that were lowing, whatever lowing means, I have no idea, but they were lowing!

And there's this real emotional draw to that, but I really honestly think that the manger scene, as meaningful as it can be, it actually does a little bit of a disservice to us in understanding what that night would have been like.

Because the reality is, if you think about it, there was a teenage girl that was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, which is a whole other round of thoughts that we could have.

And she and her likely teenage fiance travel on the back of a donkey.

Now, you have to picture this, nine months pregnant on a donkey and they traveled somewhere between 80 and 120 miles.

Now, when Sonya was about to give birth, I took her to the hospital in a Ford Expedition and that was rough enough, okay!

Can you imagine on the back of a donkey?

Then they come into town and there's no place to stay, there's no inn.

And so, they go to what is most likely, a lot of scholars believe it was kind of like a cave, it was a place where the animals would go to get some shelter in rough weather.

So, she's giving birth in the worst environment possible.

We're talking about un-sterile, no epidural, if you can imagine, a little girl screaming her brains out, there's no angel going....I mean this is a girl screaming!

I mean, but I have seen my children born.

My wife didn’t do it without epidural.

And I just remember the pain she was going through.

I remember being squeezed, being told to shut up.

I never felt so unloved than in those moments.

But when those children came and saw them beautiful eyes, I remember thinking

1.

I've never been closer to God at this holy moment.

2. Honestly, I was thinking, I'm going to be the freakin' hero of this story and I'm going to tell everybody how awesome I was!

The truth is

1.

It was the closest moment to God I've ever had.

2. Sonya is the hero of that story and I have to stick by it through and through!

I mean, it was chaos, it's screaming, it's panic, and this is what's going on inside this little cave, as Mary's giving birth to the Son of God.

Now, in this song, O Holy Night, there's a phrase that I want to zero in on, and that's what we're going to do in this series.

I may pick out some phrases that may be a bit unlikely to you, but I believe that every time you worship God to this song again, this phrase will jump out to you and you will remember the Holy moment as you experience God together at this time.

Here's the phrase I want to look at:

The song says, ...a thrill of hope the weary world rejoices.

Could all of you say weary world?

One, two, three, Weary world.

Then it says, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

A thrill of HOPE the WEARY world rejoices

For yonder breaks a NEW and GLORIOUS morn

If there's two words that accurately describe our world today, I'd say it's weary world!

Wouldn't you agree?

I mean, it's just overwhelming, there's so much anxiety, what's going on in the economy and relationships are messed up, and every third person seems to have some kind of serious disease and families are struggling.

It's almost like we're fighting to stay above water and I just think so many people today relate to that phrase, 'the weary world'.

But what I love about this song is it says there's a thrill of hope.

Imagine in the chaos of this holy night, there's a thrill of hope that maybe, just maybe, and those who were putting their faith in God, for centuries had hoped that one day the Messiah would be born.

And on that day, everything would be different forever and ever and you can hear that kind of faith that there's a thrill of hope and suddenly the weary world does what?

The weary world rejoices!

And I pray to God that if there's any weary world in you that you will experience a thrill of hope and inside your weary world you will find the faith to rejoice, why?

Because even in the chaos of this night, there is a new and glorious morn.

And every time as you move forward, I want you not to just to think about that holy night, but I want you to think about what happens the next day when the sun comes up, the Savior has been born, and on the new and glorious morn everything is different because a day with Christ can change everything.

Let's focus in on a new and glorious morning.

What I want to do is take you back to the Old Testament, to the Book of Lamentations.

The context of Lamentations in the year 586 B.C., Jerusalem fell and the people were as distraught as you could possibly imagine.

And the prophet Jeremiah, he was lamenting, he was whining, he was hurting along with everybody else and he just pours his heart out full of hurt in this text.

:20-21

In other words, he's not going to just, you know, put his hands over his eyes and, Na, na, na, na, this isn't happening!

No, he's acknowledging that there's some significant life-altering difficulties, but he goes on to say in verse 21 that he will do what.

I well remember them, and my soul is...

What?

Say it aloud, he said:

...my soul is downcast within me.

In other words, he's not going to just, you know, put his hands over his eyes and, Na, na, na, na, this isn't happening!

No, he's acknowledging that there's some significant life-altering difficulties, but he goes on in verse 21 and he says:

Yet I...

Do what?

He said:

Yet I call to mind and therefore...

What do I have?

Therefore:

I have hope.

I love this, he says, 'I'm going to call this to mind.'

I know it's there, but it's not at the front of my mind and I'm going to place it at the front of my mind.

I'm going to call this to mind and because I remember this truth, I will have hope when no one else does because I know this to be true.

I call it to mind, therefore I have hope.

What is the truth?