For three decades, Classic FM have been successful in making the world’s greatest music accessible to many. They have sparked an interest and an appreciation for quality music that has a timeless appeal and doesn’t go out of fashion. Generally speaking, the music grows on people and with well over 5 million listeners weekly, the audience base is growing.
For one month of the year they do something even more significant than preserving music that has retained its popularity over a few hundred years. Carols are sung. Since those carols contain essential biblical truths concerning Messiah, the legacy will echo into eternity.
Unlike the confusion amidst our current paradigm of post-modernity, the eternal gospel never needs to be rewritten or re-imagined and provides perfect clarity. Many people enjoy listening to carols or going to carol concerts even if they have not given much thought to their meaning.
Carols speak of the incarnation, God being present with us as Immanuel and being pleased to dwell with us. The verses precisely articulate the prophecies Jesus fulfilled, proving that He alone is the Messiah who accomplished the hopes and fears of all the years. The Messiah had to be born of a virgin and come from the tribe of Judah; and Bethlehem Ephrathah was the designated birthplace. The human nature of our sin is exposed, and the remedy of the Saviour is revealed. Our sin needs to be cast out and our Saviour and Redeemer needs to enter into our lives and transform us to conform to His image.
Yeshua was given prophetic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh when he was born. Gold spoke of kingship, frankincense relates to His deity and priesthood whilst myrrh pictured His suffering since He would make atonement for sin through His blood sacrifice.
We consider Messiah’s birth and recognise that we need to be born again! Reconciliation with God isn’t just possible but is vital since without that we are at enmity with God and face judgement. Only the Lord can bring an everlasting shalom so that we can have peace with God and the peace of God, in our lives and in our life circumstances.
There is a great irony. We love to hear the carols sung and they make us feel nostalgic. We may be able to recite whole carols or parts of them. Yet if we truly stopped for a while and traced the words contained therein with the Bible accounts and understood and believed the truth of them, we would realise that is the greatest news ever, concerning the greatest true story ever told! If we believed what the carols proclaimed, our lives and far reaching society would be transformed not just for a single month of the year or even for the rest of our lives but would pass a legacy of truth to the next generation that will have everlasting blessings.