Christ's Song Hebrews 10:5-7 Sermon 3 December 24th, 2011   Don’t you just love Christmas music? For many of us one of the favorite parts of Christmas is the music of the season. Do you know what the most-often played and best-selling Christmas song of all time is? White Christmas.   While I love that song, it’s not exactly a song about the real meaning of Christmas. The real message of Christmas is obviously – Christ. What a tragedy it would be if there were no songs about the Savior’s coming or if they were all just about snow or reindeer or jingle bells.   Currently, at Grace Church, we’re in a series, Christmas Oldies, and have been studying the first songs of Christmas recorded in the Gospel of Luke, sung by Zechariah, Mary, the Angels, and Simeon.   As I gathered materials for these messages a thought entered my mind, "Did Jesus sing?" My study revealed that the answer is, “Yes.” In fact, it's certain that Jesus sang. Jesus grew up in a culture where singing was an integral part of worship. No doubt He sang the songs of Moses and Deborah and David, the same songs He’d inspired them to write! But what about Christmas songs? Did Jesus sing about His own birth?   Did you know that Jesus sang His own Christmas carol, that He sang about His own birth? We find Jesus' Christmas song in Hebrews 10:5-7, (p. 1006) Let me read it to you this morning: “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired but a body have You prepared for Me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God, as it is written of Me in the scroll of the book’.”   The context indicates that Jesus would have sung this song on the night of His birth. This song forms sort of a farewell, the farewell that would have taken place in Heaven just prior to Jesus' coming to earth. So what do the lyrics of Jesus' song tell us?   1. They remind us that Jesus lived the kind of life we should live, the kind of life we were intended to live. When I say this I'm referring to the fact that the Lord Jesus lived a life of complete obedience to the will of God. Every day of His 33 years He fulfilled the last stanza of His song of Christmas where He sang, “I have come to do your will, O God.”   That's the way we were supposed to live. When God created Adam and Eve it was His intent that they walk in complete obedience to Him and they did… at least at first, but eventually that horrible day dawned when they both disobeyed God by eating of the forbidden fruit. Since that day every single one of their descendants, including you and me, have followed suit. As the prophet Isaiah says, "We all, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isa. 53:6). In other words, each of us live contrary to the will of God. We sin, we disobey God repeatedly, daily…even hourly.   But not Jesus, no way! He lived the way we’re supposed to. Jesus lived a life of complete obedience to the will of God. His every thought, every word, every action was perfectly in line with the will of His Father. His actions and His thoughts, always, every moment of every day were in perfect line with the will of God. As Jesus said in John 15:10, "I have obeyed My Father's commands and remain in His love." Jesus lived the kind of life we were supposed to live. That leads to the second thing Jesus' song tells us. Since He lived the life we were supposed to live…   2. They remind us that Jesus died the death we should die, the kind of death that we each deserve. As He sang in His song of Christmas, Jesus' body was specifically prepared to be sacrificed, to be sacrificed on the Cross for you and me. In Romans 3 the Apostle Paul tells us that the penalty of our sinful disobedience is death. Jesus was born to die in our place, to suffer in our stead...to pay the penalty for our sins.   In his book, The Cross-Centered Life, C. J. Mahaney, shares that whenever people ask him how he's doing he always replies, "better than I deserve." He says this because he knows that as a sinner he deserves God's judgment and wrath. He deserves death. But, because of His faith in Jesus Who died in his place, he also knows that he’s an adopted child of God, forgiven, and headed to heaven.   That’s true of all Christians. We enjoy abundant life and eagerly anticipate eternity in Heaven thanks to Jesus Christ, Who died the death we deserved.   Scholars tell us that Philippians 2:8 was one of the popular hymns of the early church. The lyrics remind us of the purpose of Jesus’ coming. Remember these familiar words? "And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross!"   The Jews understood that death was the required payment for sin. That’s why they offered animals on the altar as an atonement for their sinful disobedience. Under the Old Covenant the priests in Jerusalem were busy all day long in the temple, from dawn to sunset slaughtering and sacrificing animals. It’s estimated that just at Passover as many as 300,000 lambs would be slain within a week. The slaughter was so massive that blood would run out of the Temple ground through specially prepared channels and down into the Brook Kidron. Every year during this week the brook would seem to be running with blood instead of water. Yet no matter how many sacrifices were made, no matter how much blood was shed, these sacrifices were ineffective.   The verses just prior to Jesus' song say that these animal sacrifices were just “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Heb. 10:1). A shadow is made by an interruption of light; that “interruption” being made by the true image itself. Coming events cast their shadows before them so the coming of the true cast its shadow in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant. As a shadow is not real, these sacrifices were not the real work of God in redemption. They only pointed to it. They pointed to Christmas when Jesus would be born because due to His perfect obedience to God, His sinless life, only He was an acceptable, perfect sacrifice.   In eternity past God had willed that only the sacrifice of a perfect person could provide the condition necessary for mankind's redemption and the only perfect Person is Jesus. As Revelation 13:8 says, Jesus was the "Lamb slain before the foundation of the world." This leads to a third truth that we can see in Jesus' song of Christmas…   3. These lyrics tell us that Jesus knew why He was being born. This was the plan all along. Forgiveness was in the heart of God long before sin was in the heart of man. Jesus' death was planned. It was God's calculated choice. As Isaiah 53:10 says, "It was the Lord's will to crush Him." Picking up on this fact, Max Lucado writes:   "The cross was drawn into the original blueprint. The moment the forbidden fruit touched the lips of Eve, the shadow of a cross appeared on the horizon. And between that moment and the moment the man with the mallet placed those spikes against the wrist of God, a master plan was fulfilled. What does this mean? It means Jesus planned His own sacrifice. It means Jesus intentionally planted the tree from which His cross would be carved. It means He willingly placed the iron ore in the heart of the earth from which the nails would be cast. It means He voluntarily placed His Judas in the womb of a woman. It means Christ was the one Who set in motion the political machinery that would send Pilate to Jerusalem. And it also means He didn't have to do it...but still He did. Our Master lived a three-dimensional life. He had as clear a view of the future as He did of the present and the past. So the ropes used to tie His hands, and the soldiers used to lead Him to the cross, were unnecessary."   Jesus willingly came to the earth to die in our place. We know this because He sang of this very fact that night of nights before He entered Mary's womb. Look at verse 7 again where our Lord sings, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”   History records that in 490 B.C. as the Persian emperor, Xerxes, and his army were advancing into Greece, Xerxes came to Thermopylae, a small pass in central Greece. Herodotus tells us that by the time Xerxes got there, he had something like six million troops on land and sea. And gathered there to stand in his way were a mere handful of Greeks, 300 Spartans let by the Spartan king, Leonidas.   When Persian scouts came to check out the pass, they saw these 300 warriors. And as they watched from hiding, they noticed that these soldiers were behaving very oddly. They were spending their time bathing and brushing their long hair and polishing their armor. These scouts went back to give their report, telling Xerxes of the odd behavior of these Greeks saying they had no explanation for their strange behavior. But Demaratus, a Greek physician, and counselor to the Persian court, overheard and assured the king that these men were performing a death ritual. In other words, these men had knowingly come to die. It was their intent to sacrifice their lives in that pass in order to slow the advance of the Persian army. In fact several other Greeks had volunteered for this suicide mission but Leonidas had accepted only those who had male heirs to continue their family name. These 300 warriors were bathing, cleaning their uniforms and polishing their weapons to prepare themselves to look honorable in death.   Their love for their country motivated these 300 soldiers to do this. Love for all mankind motivated Jesus to come to earth for the express purpose of dying in our place, as our substitute. He wanted the sin barrier to be removed so that we could live in harmony with Him just as Adam and Eve did before their sin. He wanted to live in communion with us. As someone has said, “God would rather die than live without us” and so He did! He died in our place. He died so we can walk through life in fellowship with our Creator and Redeemer, and so that we can live forever with Him in Heaven.   Conclusion: As someone observed, “The Wonder of Christmas is that the God Who dwelt among us now can dwell within us!” One of Jesus’ names is Emmanuel, which simply means “God with us.” God has come. He’s visited His people in the person of Jesus Christ and now that same Divine Visitor comes and knocks at the door of your heart. Will you open the door and let Him in? He comes and knocks. Can you hear the sound echoing in your heart? He stands patiently at the door, waiting for you to open and let Him in. Will you drop everything and welcome Jesus into your heart and life? Or, are you too busy to be bothered with Jesus? The familiar words from O Little Town of Bethlehem are so appropriate:    How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming but in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.   My friend, have you let Jesus into your heart and life? If not, please make this a Christmas like no other. Accept God’s gift of salvation and ask Jesus to come into your heart and life today.