Lisa Barry: Christmas hymns trigger different responses in all of us. For some, they lead us down a path of remembering back to our childhood. For others, they reinforce the true meaning of Christmas. Today Elisabeth Elliot helps us anticipate Christmas with another look at the hymns we all know and love. Stay with us for Gateway To Joy coming up next.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking with you again today about Christmas. It is interesting to me to notice how often the idea of silence is mentioned in the Christmas carols.

Probably the most familiar Christmas carol in America is "Silent Night"--silence and holiness around the mother and child. "O Little Town of Bethlehem," which has a stanza which begins, "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given." And then another very familiar one is "It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold. Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven's all gracious King. The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing."

What came upon the midnight clear? I want us to think about some of these Christmas carols that probably most of us have been familiar with since before we can remember. And we walk through a jammed department store and we hear these carols piped over the intercom system, the P.A. system, and we hear them on street corners, and we sing them in church and we hear them on the radio and on the TV.

And we really don't think a whole lot about them, but I just want to take this time to sort of go back over words that may be known by heart, but we've never really thought about them. "It came upon the midnight clear"--well, I'm sure that for years and years I never thought about that at all. What is it that came upon the midnight clear? Well, it was that glorious song.

What was the glorious song? Well, it was the song the angels sang to those simple, ordinary, hardworking shepherds that were down there in the fields keeping watch over their flocks. And what was the message? Peace. In verse three, stanza three--I have an Episcopal hymn book here in front of me, so it includes stanza three which is very often omitted from other hymn books.

But this is what it says: "Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long. Beneath the heavenly strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong, and man at war with man hears not the tidings which they bring. O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing."

I was particularly taken by that phrase "two thousand years of wrong," and I have a sneaking suspicion that one reason that this stanza has been omitted from a good many hymn books is that people might think that it was discouraging, too depressing. But Christians are the people who ought to be able to look most steadily and serenely at the actual facts and remember the unshakable and unchangeable promises of God, and the other dimension in which these other things are understood.

So even though it was two thousand years ago that the angels sang "Peace on earth, and beneath the heavenly strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong," the end of that stanza is "Hush the noise and hear the angels sing."

I want to read to you from John 1. I love this passage, and I remember when I was learning Greek that it was the first chapter that I read in Greek as we were studying Koinonia, and it is really very easy to read, especially if you know the English as well as I did. Of course my mind was all the time making an interlinear translation.

It's couched in the simplest words. There is hardly a single word that would be difficult for anyone, but it has the most profound truths. I remember my Greek professor saying to us, "The book of John is the easiest book in the Bible to translate, and the most difficult to understand, to really grasp."

And when you think and ponder words like these, it is mind-boggling to realize who that baby was that came at Christmas time. Here's what John says: "When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was."

Now this "Word" is capitalized. The word "Word" is capitalized here because, as we know, the Word was God. The Word, then, was with God in the beginning. "Through Him all things came to be; no single thing was created without Him. All that came to be was alive with His life, and that life was the Light of men. The Light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it.

There appeared a man named John, sent from God. He came as a witness to testify to the Light, that all might become believers through Him. He was not himself the Light; he came to bear witness to the Light. The real Light, which enlightens every man, was even then coming into the world.

He was in the world, but the world, though it owed its being to Him, did not recognize Him. He entered His own realm; His own would not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, to those who have yielded Him their allegiance, He gave the right to become children of God--not born of any human stock, or by the fleshly desire of a human father, but the offspring of God Himself.

So the Word became flesh. He came to dwell among us, and we saw His glory--such glory as befits the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth."

So what was it that happened? What was that shining in the dark streets? What did the angels sing about? Just this--the first time in God's history, God--in visible, physical form--came to the earth--visible, physical form. Not a full-grown, strong man, but a tiny, wrinkled, helpless baby.

You know, we read the old myths and legends, and again and again this theme recurs of the gods coming to earth. The gods disguising themselves in some human form--perhaps visiting a poor carpenter, or walking through the streets of a village as an unknown beggar. All those stories of the gods, they in some dim way shadow the true story of the true God.

This time it actually came true. This time God, who made the heavens and the earth, the Lord of Hosts, the Almighty, the Ancient of Days, the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the prophets, the God of the Psalms, that God humbled Himself and became an ordinary man. In so strange and mysterious way, the Creator, the Infinite Majesty, via the strange and mysterious way that all of us come, born of a woman--"Unto us a child is born."

Have you thought about the fact that it was for us, for you and me? That child was born for us, for our salvation.

One of the ancient creeds says, "Who for us men, and for our salvation, became man; came down from heaven and became a man born of a woman." Do you believe those words? If you can believe that the Lord God was willing to take upon Himself the form of a servant--the form, first of all, of a helpless baby and to become a servant, and walk the dusty roads of the Holy Land as an itinerant rabbi--if we can believe that He did that, I think we can believe those words that I say at the beginning of every program: "You are loved with an everlasting love."

It was God's idea before He ever created the world that He Himself would have to become not just a baby, but even a slain lamb. All these are ways in which God Himself has revealed the grace and the truth.

And in this passage that I read, that last verse says, "The Word became flesh. He who was in the beginning with God, He actually was God--through Him all things were made--that Word became flesh. He came to live with us, and we saw His glory, such glory as befits the Father's only Son."

I hope that this Christmas is going to be a more meaningful one. All the celebration, all the songs, and the quietness will be reminders of what Christmas means.

Lisa Barry: And those will be the very things that give value to our memories in the years to come. Another place we like to see value is in the gifts we give others at Christmas time. Nobody wants to give a gift that just sits in a dark closet forever or gets put in next summer's garage sale. That's why we've put together a collection of great resources that will put significance back into gift giving.

Call Gateway To Joy and ask about the special gift packages we have for men, women and graduates. They're a collection of books and other materials that get straight to the heart of spiritual matters.

Now I need to tell you that if you purchase a gift package today and you want it to arrive by Christmas, we can do it, but for an extra charge for priority mail. Here's the phone number for purchasing information: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Monday Elisabeth welcomes her daughter Valerie to talk about Santa Claus. Find out her thoughts on the next Gateway To Joy.