40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Christmas is Scandalous

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Chad, Daniel and Erick are joined by the hosts of Theocast (Jon Moffitt & Justin Perdue) to discuss why Christmas is scandalous. We hope you enjoy this special episode. Merry Christmas! 1517 Christmas Album 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare Him room And heaven and nature sing And heaven and nature sing And heaven and heaven and nature sing Welcome to a special episode of 30 Minutes in the New Testament, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, and Theocast. We did this last year where the three podcasts come together to do a Christmas special. I don't think we talked about this. We didn't advertise it.

It's just a surprise in your feed, in whichever feed that you happen to be listening to. So I'm Daniel Emery Price. I'm joined by Chad Bird, Eric Sorensen, Justin Perdue, and John Moffitt. Last year, they would have been like, wait a minute, isn't this like a six-guy thing? I mean, isn't this like a three-in-three? But no Jimmy. Jimmy is working. We miss him. We love him.

We do. We do. So Jimmy here in spirit. Maybe he'll listen to it, you know? Yeah, Jimmy's got the jokes, man. He brings in the comic relief, so we'll try and fill in where we can. That's right. Yeah, Jimmy brings in the jokes.

That's right. Yeah, so we didn't do a ton of prep. We didn't have like a text that we were going to go over or anything because we decided we just wanted to talk about Christmas and why Christmas is sort of maybe the beginning of this sort of promised scandal coming to fruition, right? The incarnation, I think last time we talked about the implications of the incarnation and all that that implies, but really when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, you're talking about the fulfillment of a promise from God by his own divine collusion within his Trinitarian self to get a world full of sinners off free. That's what Christmas is about The plan is now In full effect And God plans on

Giving good news To a bad world That I in myself Am going to forgive All kinds of people that don't deserve forgiveness I'm going to pronounce all kinds of guilty people Not guilty And I'm going to gather them up

And bring them into my family Declare them righteous And instead I'm just going to have one guy go and pay the penalty for all of them, which, if this was something that was proposed in the way that we think about justice, we're like, how about this, guys? We think about all the bad people, and then we just take one good person and we kill him instead. How about that? Does that work for everyone? People would be like, this sounds like a gross miscarriage of justice. That is not how any of this can work. And this is why I think that the offense of the

gospel starts with the very idea of what god is going to accomplish that's right yeah well just going back to genesis 3 15 the first mention of the seed right the seed of eve which is always mentioned as the seed of man but it's just the seed of eve or we're looking forward to this but what i love about when i teach people the gospel from genesis is that when you look at god and he gets the story straight so we can hear it yes you completely failed listen to the requirement that God gives Adam and Eve, this is in the quote, this from scripture, it doesn't exist. There are no requirements from Adam and Eve other than anticipate my mercy and anticipate my grace that's coming your way. And that is just, as you were just saying, Daniel, it's so scandalous

because typically when my children, if they were to come in and absolutely destroy my home and I walk in, I'm thinking like, all right, what's the appropriate response here? Like what's your punishment going to be? And God covers their shame and then gives them a promise. And it says, I will take on your shame and I will take on the pain to restore all things. And that is not how humanity responds to injustice, to purity and to holiness. Yeah. When you think about the scandal, you know, there's so many scandalous parts to just the very event of Christmas, all the things surrounding it, and hopefully we'll get into many of those different elements. But just even the idea of incarnation itself in that world, in the Greco-Roman world, in the Jewish world,

there's really no allowance for it. So in the Jewish world, it's offensive. The idea that the divine majesty would come down and dwell with us is offensive. And of course, the idea in the Greco-Roman world that the divine majesty or whatever divinity would actually be incarnated in flesh, which is what incarnation means, that he would take on flesh, is offensive. And so, you know, N.T. Wright and, of course, many others have pointed out that even in the worldview of the time, the very idea of the Christian claim that God actually takes on flesh is offensive in itself. It's a scandal in itself. And it's something that the early Christians have to constantly defend, even as they're getting opponents from all sides saying, no, no, no,

that's insane. So right from the beginning, the very idea set aside the crazy seeming injustice of God reconciling a bunch of unclean people to his very clean self, just the idea that he would take on flesh was already a non-starter for so many that the early Christians are going to engage with you know if you were to investigate the the jewish world of jesus time there was there were plenty of mediators that were set up between god and humanity you had kind of all the angels and spiritual beings so the idea was there's a great divide between god and man and so you have to have these go-betweens uh but the idea that god himself would be the one coming down and not appearing as flesh or not temporarily appearing as a human being but actually becoming fully flesh and blood

a complete human being just like everybody else yeah that was that was scandalous uh and that's that's part of the reason that there were so many uh controversies in the early church where the church had to battle in one way or another all those who tried to downplay the incarnation you know whether it was that's always that he appeared to be human or those who said it was yeah he sort of adopted a human body but then he he you know got rid of it on his ascension so it it remained It wasn't just like at the time of Jesus, but it remained, it still remains today, scandalous, the idea that, yes, you could actually touch God, flesh and blood. That's always been sort of contrary, I think, to our modern intuition. We would think that the scandalous part would be that this human is claiming to be God.

But when you look at sort of the reason for the formulation of the early creeds that are established, the apostles, the Nicene, the Athanasian Creed, so much of it is about defending his real humanity, because there's so much debate and question about that in the Greco-Roman world. Like, that just can't be. That doesn't work. And yet, you know, in our modern time, I would assume that the problem is the opposite, that like, well, who is this human being claiming to be God? But back then it was like, no, okay, we're fine with Jesus being divine. It's the human part we can't get behind. Yeah, it's true. The scandal, it seemed in the early church, was actually the humanity of Jesus, not his deity. Yeah, I preached through Genesis this year, and Genesis 32 is like kind of popcorn in my brain

in terms of thinking about scandal related to the incarnation, related to Christmas. You know, Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with God, is not, contrary to popular opinion, is not about wrestling with God in prayer so that he'll bless you, but this is the God who humbled himself, willingly came down took on flesh and then willingly loses to save his people you know so talk about scandal and talk about what does this say about god the insanity of that you're going to tell me that this is how god is going to save us like that just sounds dumb to me why would he do that why would he limit himself like this why would he willingly come and lose why would he come and bleed for the people you know who are his enemies and so yeah man boys

i've got such a great illustration from spider-man no way home which i saw last night giving away spoilers i'm just saying there's some good illustrative material there all you know you bring your genesis 32 i bring spider-man okay i'm just thank you for not spoiling that's that's good that is that is good if ever we don't want to lose in listeners right then uh half the half the listeners immediately tune out as you about to spoil much anticipated I spoil no things. I spoil no things. Chad, speaking about the Old Testament, it does seem that there's an understanding, and you see this even in the Jewish mind and in the scribes and Pharisees.

Herod even asked people, like, hey, where is the Messiah to be born? So the idea that a Messiah is somebody that is going to be born is not so much this big controversy or scandalous thing. I think the understanding was that the Messiah is someone who is born, but the way in which he is born seems absurd. And certainly the idea that this Messiah is born but then dies is definitely scandalous, like the life that he lives, the things that he says, and what he comes to do, right? So initially being born, while the incarnation is scandalous because of its God becoming flesh and it's scandalous because of the way that it's done, a manger, Bethlehem, all of this kind of stuff, the scandal really kicks up when this person keeps saying that the reason that he was born was to die. This is the reason I came into the world. This is the part that people are like, wait a minute, wait a minute, that's not the sort of Messiah. You can be born and all, but you can't say I was born to die.

Yeah. I mean, there was a widespread Jewish expectation that the Messiah was actually, you know, on the way because it was just prime for that to happen with the prolonged occupation of the Holy Land by the Romans and before them by the Greeks, before them by all these other superpowers. So people were looking for the Messiah. They were glad when he showed up, but they had any number of false views or at least partially false, partially true views of who the Messiah was going to be. But no one was expecting

him to be publicly, shamefully executed by the Romans as the means by which redemption was to be acquired. I've always loved the statement by one of the Emmaus disciples when on the day of his resurrection, Jesus appears to them in Luke 24 and is walking with them. And, you know, he asked them, what's wrong? Why the hanged dog look? And one of them says, well, you know, tells him about this jesus character and says he got himself crucified but we had hoped we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem israel unbeknownst to them of course the very death that they're lamenting is the very means by which redemption had been won but their particular lament is is kind of diagnostic of the jews lack of understanding of the day that actually he did

he not only came to become one of us, to become incarnate, but he actually came then to die. So the scandal stretches from the beginning to the end, in one way or another, whether it's incarnation or whether it's crucifixion. Every element of his mission is going to be scandalous to

the Romans, for sure, to the Greeks, for sure, but also to his fellow Jews. I think one of the striking things is when Gabriel tells Mary, like, hey, this is what's going to happen, and you're going to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins and what nobody has any idea about is what that means

yeah and what like what that's going like what what is going to have to happen for him to achieve the whole purpose for which he came which is what christmas is about christmas is about jesus coming to save his people from sins and what nobody can understand is what all is baked in to that right well in the at the time you would it would make more sense to the listener if gabriel said he's coming to save his people from their sin from all the other people's sins because that was sort of the mindset like from the romans from you know from your occupiers from the people that have caused you so much trouble this was the expectation the messiah was there to set up a kingdom for his people to save them from all the bad guys no no no i'm here to save you from

yourselves like that's that's what i'm here to do you don't many of you don't recognize it right now part of what i'm here to do and you'll hear it when i get to my sermon on the mount the part of what i'm here to do is to bring a lawsuit against all y'all for failing and showing you why you need the redemption i'm going to provide yeah some of the scandal that you guys are talking about think of mark chapter 8 when peter has just confessed jesus as the christ it's like this epic moment and then jesus immediately begins to talk about his suffering and his death and what's going to happen to him and peter then takes it upon himself to correct him and says like hey bro well, you're the Messiah. You shouldn't be talking about suffering. You should be talking

about glory, you know, because this is not at all how this is supposed to go. And then, of course, Jesus rebukes him and says, well, actually, like the way of the cross is the way of salvation, you know, and you too will live a cruciform life. And this is exactly in line with the plan of God to use the weak things of the world to shame the strong, you know, the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. It's how he's always worked. So like you guys are talking about Christmas being about redemption. I think it's a big thing that needs to be stated because I know where I hail from in terms of my Christian upbringing. We don't read the Bible well. We don't understand it well. And so, you know, not only do we turn everything like in the Old Testament into some Christian

version of Aesop's fables or something, but then we take the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and it's kind of like the Christian version of Twas the Night Before Christmas. You know, we don't even know what to do with them. And it's just the sentimental thing that maybe we read around the fireplace on Christmas Eve or whatever. But actually, Christmas is about the saving of God's people from their sins through the life and the death of this one who is born. And so to talk about it that way, I think is jarring for people, because we have all these sentimental whatever and moralistic notions about everything in the scriptures. But then when you drive that home, that no, all of this is actually about Jesus coming to save you as a wretch, and that you

need to read every passage of scripture like that. I mean, on Twitter yesterday, I put up something about Psalm one, not being about you and people lose their ever loving minds, man. And it's like, whenever you start talking in these terms, people are threatened by it. And I think that's true. When we start talking about the birth of Christ and talk about his life and anything, and you make it all about redemption, people are like, yeah, that, that can't be right. There's gotta be something else here that we need to talk about. Yeah. Well, Christmas becomes the, it's the fulfillment of the better you right he's come to fix the problems that you have now and here it's it's not a yeah to make things better now right it's it's it's not there's nothing wrong with me

as far as an essence that's just there's an act that needs to be cleaned up and so jesus is coming to prepare the way and be the example and this is why at christmas time we kind of celebrate there's there's almost this renewal restore things can be better we we hope in that restoration of things that can be better. And Jesus comes in and says, this world is not what I'm fixing. This world is not even where my kingdom is. As a matter of fact, you need to be transformed out of this world. And the only way that that can happen is that you have to be reborn into something other than what you are now, because what you are is dead. And that's what's so hard about, you know, I was a Grinch for many years. I have learned to become all things to all men

that I might win some during Christmas time. I'm not so grinchy. Look, I even have green on during this celebration of a Christmas podcast. You do. Dear listener, I can vouch for that. Only one of us. Only one of us. That's right. It wasn't on purpose. But there's that false sense of hope that Jesus has come to make all things well. And when we hear that, we don't think of our souls we don't think of i need christ's blood to cover my sin we're thinking a better home a better job a better merit it's these things here and the scandal is jesus and this is what you were talking about justin even in mark is we are so earthbound we just think if i can be happy here all is well and that's that's just the lie of satan that i mean that even just goes against

the whole theology of the cross versus theology of glory. We need to be killed and re-brought back up because of our sins, and that being rebirthed has to be done by something that's outside of ourselves, which is Christ. So the scandal is, it's not you need something better to make your life better, it's that you need to die, and that death has to be in Christ. And if it's not in Christ, then you will ultimately die. We've spent some time talking about the broader sort of theological implications of the scandal of Christ's coming and the scandal of Christmas. But, you know, when you look at the micro side of things, just from the very beginning of the angel appearing to Mary, you know, and pronouncing her, you know, pronouncing to her that she'll be

pregnant with him, there's plenty of scandal there too, like in the very micro elements of all this. And I'm sure we'll get into that. But, you know, I can't help but think about just even for Mary, right at the beginning this is she she realizes it's going to literally be scandalous when she shows up to her betrothed joseph and is like okay so here's the deal um i'm with child don't worry don't worry like i i wasn't with anybody i promised an angel came to me and told me that the spirit has conceived me a child i got a dose if you don't think that's scandalous i mean i you know joseph does joseph what new oil did you put on you that's right and you can see in the in the story itself as matthew records it of course that joseph initially was going to to divorce her which

was the way that an engagement would have ended back then and had the angel not appear to him in the dream and told him what mary told you is is the truth then uh no doubt he would have he would have gone through with it uh you know to to his credit he believes the angel just as mary herself also also believe the angel but we also keep in mind that these people lived in a community so are we to are we to actually believe that the whole community came to believe that this was the case i seriously doubt that well we have good reason to believe that they didn't i mean right because there's allusions to them uh you know making fun of him or mocking him illegitimacy of his birth yeah yes yes yeah so yeah this would have been uh right from the get-go in other words

Even before he's born, just in his conception itself, we're already entering into the territory of scandal. And of course, that just continues throughout the rest of his life, you know, whether it's his birth or whether it's his teaching or all the way to his crucifixion. So you don't get a non-scandalous Messiah. You don't get one who kind of bounces it back and forth. And one way or another, he's always connected to that, which is contrary to what people were wanting and expecting. isn't it just interesting to to come to contrast those who present themselves to be a messiah and how it seems like everything is clean like everything's just in it's all proper and yet the true messiah it's not the case a little messy yeah i'm always messy yeah i always thought it was

interesting how you know the scripture refers to to joseph as a just man and but the reason it says he was a just man is not because mary told him this and it doesn't say mary explained to joseph that she was pregnant by the work of the Holy Spirit, and Joseph believed her because he was a just man. It says that she told this to Joseph, and he was going to divorce her quietly

because he was a just man. He wasn't going to publicly shame her. That's why. An angel told me. By an angel. So even the Scriptures themselves don't blame Joseph for being like, yeah, right. In fact, they give him credit for not being like,

I'm going to bring you before everyone and ouch you. and let them ever like no he's a good man he decided he would do it quietly he really cares about mary he's a just man but he wasn't this dude that was like okay i believe you i believe you that sounds good to me i just i believe anything you say no it took it took an angel for him too those are definitely one of those conversations you want to go track him down in glory and be like i walked me through what was going on in your brain because that is pretty crazy yeah when you're celebrating christmas you think okay jesus is here and we love jesus like Like, we just love Jesus.

He was so good, and we like all the things he said, and he was healing people, and, you know, it's just, Jesus is the best. I mean, even the world will try to use Jesus to be like, well, you know, Jesus said this, that, and the other thing, so you're a bad person, you know, because you didn't do that. In addition to that, it's like, and isn't it such a bummer that he died? Like, he was so good, and then, you know, some bad people killed him, and what a tragedy. this is the worst tragedy of all time where what christmas is really about is mankind is at war with god and themselves and the devil and like this there's just just chaos going on and christmas is

about god showing up to fight the battle right so they in the manger is born the victor so he like shows up in the middle of a war to win this battle by dying, which is completely upside down, too. And so I think that even the disciples, they can never— it's shocking to me as you go through the Gospels how many times Jesus will be like, but here's the thing, guys, I'm going to go die, or I'm going to go suffer at the hands of sinful men,

or I'm going to be turned over and die. And they're like, right, listen, we had a question about the glory. Who's the greatest? yeah and they can never and he does it over and over and over again i don't know if they think like yeah he speaks in parables a lot who can understand the words that he's saying i'm gonna try to get an answer so wise we'll understand that one day listen this is one of the reasons that you know the gospel writers were at least had some degree of narratival writing in mind because every time jesus makes a prediction about his suffering the disciples literally say the

stupidest thing in response i mean it's almost as if the gospel writers are like oh man check this out we'll watch what they said right after it's just like cracking up to themselves and the one the one time someone takes it seriously like as john was it with peter you know the one time he's like okay listen i'm getting tired of hearing this uh this i'm going to die business yeah that's not going to happen uh knock it off i don't know what kind of cryptic message you're trying to tell us but it's confusing and you're that's obviously not going to happen he gets called satan and so that i i imagine the rest of the disciples were like okay i'm just not going to talk about that when he brings that up anymore i don't feel like getting accused of the same thing that peter just

got accused of but it's got to be a terrifying moment in history where god of the universe looks at you and says satan get behind me he's like whoa yeah i wasn't expecting that yeah and and this is the thing about uh i've always said that john 3 16 is a christmas text because in this text you have God giving you the motivation that he has for sending his son, right? So it's for God so loved the world in this way that he gives his son that whosoever believes in him might be saved, right? So that's what Christmas is about, is about God saying, I love the world in this way that I'm going to give you my son,

but you're not going to receive him. You're not going to accept him as this gift from me. Instead, you're going to reject him and crucify him. And I know this, and this is all part of my divine plan to love you in such a way that I can welcome you back into my family. You see right away that things are not going to be all peaceful and loving, and let's all give each other a hug in the ministry of Jesus, because it doesn't take long before bloodshed is close at hand. And Herod hears about his birth from the wise men and orders the decree that all the infants in that area under a certain age be put to death. And Jesus, Mary, and Joseph flee to Egypt, which I've always taken that as a kind of a preview of what is to come.

But Herod, as it were, represents the anti-God forces of the world who are going to be hounding Jesus the rest of his life and his ministry. and so you see right away in just those early years that he didn't come down simply to give us a good moral example to follow he came down to engage in in a battle which ultimately will lead to bloodshed but his own bloodshed on the cross yeah we were joking about the disciples and how they say dumb things and worry about all the wrong things well i think you know christmas is an opportunity for us to recalibrate all of our thinking about stuff like chad you were talking about jesus not coming to be a moral example or he didn't come to be this great guy to show us how to live or teach us how to think about this or that or the other. No, he's the second Adam that

shows up. Like he's born in the manger. The original Adam failed. The second Adam's on the scene and he's going to succeed in every way that that first Adam failed. And he's going to die for that first Adam's failure for everybody's sake. And that's why he's here. And again, this stuff just trips people up. I mean, I know in our own church, like our people, we've had to learn this stuff anew because nobody ever said this before. You know, that Christmas is about redemption or that Christmas is really a story of two Adams, you know, where the second one shows up and he's going to do this work. And, you know,

I grew up in a context where like the temptation of Christ, you know, is all about learning how to use the word of God to defeat the devil. And that's the way that we are taught to interpret the scripture. And when somebody comes along and says, no, that that's at best secondary, like don't even worry about that. All you need to worry about is that the Redeemer's here and that the one who is the new and better Adam, like the first one was tempted in a garden. had everything going for him and failed the new one's here you know and he's in a wilderness he

got everything stacked against him and he succeeds right like this is it's just i don't know threatening and unsettling for people sometimes well and this is uh part of the scandal too even goes back uh long before the the birth of christ and matthew does a good job of detailing it for us right in the first chapter when we go through the genealogy and we see that jesus's lineage is, well, in fact, littered with sinners. I mean, and littered with some quite notorious, quite scandalous sinners themselves. You know, the assumption would be with, you know, a perfect man, the perfect Messiah, that you wouldn't want some of the names mentioned in this genealogy to tatter the image. And yet there's no running from that. There's no hiding from that. I mean,

when you have people like Judah and Tamar as part of the lineage of Jesus, when you read that sordid tale in Genesis 38, you can't run away from that story without going, ugh. I mean, it's all gross. God is able to transform sinners and use even some of their most notoriously sinful acts to create incredible good. In this case, to one day bring about the promised Messiah that was of course promised to eve all the way back then and yet he has to do it through people that are scandalously imperfect and it's not just it really isn't just the tamars and the judas of the world folks i mean if you really spend time going through this list i promise you you can find that they're all sinners but they are all sinners there is none righteous well that's

basically what chad and i do every week is uh we just trace the lineage of christ and we just highlight uh how terrible everyone in that lineage is all the idealism of the hall of faith uh you know each week you go through the old testament say yeah they're they're hailed for their faith but uh yeah maybe not all their works yeah but this we did we turn this upside down all the time but we we want to moralize the old testament and see that jesus was just another moral person to kind of carry on his lineage but you're you're right uh eric when you look back you're looking at just wretched people i mean abraham was such a great godly man who led his wife well right i mean not the story but one of the things that's interesting even now just i'm going to say

some things that are scandalous but the political climate it's like jesus you know he set america straight he got it all on the right path and we're messing it up now and because we we're not we're not following king jesus the way we should be america's going to hell in a handbasket and that's like the greatest act he could have ever done his institute of the united states and that becomes the good news of the gospel right and we we put american flags in our churches and and it's crazy in that the most important thing we fight over is the trajectory of a country and yet the gospel which is what christmas is about is completely covered over political jargon and my scandalous statement is officially over and you can edit that out if you'd like no i think it perfectly

fits with what we were trying to say earlier too where i mean what do we what do we always do we make ourselves the the center of the story right so we it's just the typical thing that uh that sinners do and so we make america the center of the story we're making i make myself the center of the story instead of keeping christ the center of the story i think one of the reasons we do that it goes back to what we've alluded to several times and that is that christ did come simply to set us straight or to give us a good model to follow. He did what's contrary to everything that we experience in life. I mean, so if I'm overweight and need to get in shape, I work with where I'm at, right?

I go to the gym, maybe I get a trainer, they size me up, say, here's what you need to do to improve your health, all right? Or I go to the doctor, same thing happens. But we don't go to God or God doesn't bring us to himself and sit us down and say, let me analyze your strengths and weaknesses and let me see what I can work with so I can make you into a new person. no, God comes to us and says, you got to die. That's the only way you've got, you have to die and then be raised to new life. And this is going to happen when you're united to Christ.

So it doesn't work with what we have. He says, what you have is all screwed up. So I'm going to kill it. It's of no avail. There's nothing we can do with you. You have to die. And then once you, once you've died, we're going to raise you to new life in Christ. and then in Christ you will be the way that I want you to be. Now nothing in our life works that way

but that's the way the gospel works. Yeah, pretty good way to end it right there. By the way, the music that I'm going to put on here, the bumper music

at the beginning and the end is the new 1517 EP from Blake Flatley, 1517 Music, his Christmas EP called Jesus Coming Light. So if you want to check that out, it's free everywhere

that you listen to music, Spotify, Apple Music, whatever you want to do. So if you like the way that sounds, add that to your Christmas rotation. That'd be great. And I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas, even the Grinches out there. It is a good time to celebrate because it is celebrating that God has kept his promise that he made over and over and over again to come and to do something about the condition

that we put ourselves in when we could do nothing about it. And he has come and done everything necessary for it. So it is appropriate, even though Christ wasn't born on December 25th. It doesn't matter. It's good to have a day where we acknowledge that and hopefully focus for a moment on a God who keeps his promises, not just to come the first time, but to also return the second time to gather up all those people

who he has brought into his family. And so good stuff. Guys, thanks for hanging out. It was fun. I'll see you on the infamous text message thread later on. Merry Christmas, everybody. Be with you all. Merry Christmas.

Jesus come, light draw near, spark within us hope. Though shadows fire with all their might, they'll never overcome. In brilliance you don't come too blind But only that the blind would see Hosanna, hallelujah Jesus' coming light drawn near Hosanna, hallelujah Jesus' coming light drawn near

Jesus, come, let draw near Inspire within us peace May your children gather in its glow Warmth bids all come and see When you return, we'll need no sound But only Word made flesh to shine Oh, Santa, hallelujah, Jesus, come in light drawn near. Santa, hallelujah, Jesus, come in light drawn near.

Jesus, come in light drawn near. And spark within us joy As a humble hearth you come to dwell Not speeding to destroy Gladdened hearts and brightened eyes Like sparkled rays in winter's day Hosanna, hallelujah Jesus coming, light drawn near

Santa hallelujah Santa hallelujah Santa hallelujah Jesus coming, light drawn near Jesus coming, light drawn near Inspired within us joy Heart of heaven laid among the low In the star glow from above

With love illuminate your church That every soul will know its worth Hosanna, hallelujah Jesus' coming light draw near