In Steve Hopkins' sermon titled 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing,' he reflects on the significance of the manger scene at the courthouse, which prompts individuals to consider the historical birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The sermon emphasizes the role of Christians in spreading the message of Jesus' identity and mission, as described in the Bible, which includes proclaiming Jesus as the eternal Son of God who came to earth to dwell among men and reconcile sinners to God. The hymn 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' is highlighted as a tool for communicating these truths, as it is familiar to many and was popularized by 'A Charlie Brown Christmas.' The sermon underscores the doctrine of the incarnation, asserting that Jesus is God incarnate, and emphasizes the essential belief in the virgin birth for true faith. The speaker also discusses the impact of Charles Schultz's animated special, which introduced many to the hymn and the message of Christ. The sermon concludes with a call to Christians to proclaim the message of Jesus' birth and mission to the world.

It's good to live in a community where a manger scene is still boldly displayed on the lawn of the county courthouse. How many would agree with me on that? Such a good thing. One of the reasons I smile every time I see it is because I know that it makes every person who passes by stop and Remember, stop and ponder, stop and consider, if only for a moment, that long ago, a child was born in a stable in a city called Bethlehem. And they're caused to stop and consider the fact that people all over the earth are still celebrating his birth even today.

And it makes me smile because I know that they know. Deep down inside they know, though they may attempt to suppress the thought that something took place 2024 years ago, so wonderful and so astounding that the world has never been the same. And they can't deny the fact that tens of millions of people from every nation and language group on the face of the earth have been affected by it and continue to proclaim it to this very day. But I also understand that most of those who witnessed the scene understand little of the significance of what they're looking at, little of the significance of the birth of Jesus, that it is a historical fact that they cannot reasonably deny. It's too much evidence.

But they don't really know who He is or what He came into the world to do. And it's our job as the people of God to help them understand. It's our job to tell them who that babe born of Mary in that stable in Bethlehem long ago is and the purpose for which he came into the world. It's our job to tell them that the Bible reveals both the identity and the mission of that babe born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king. It's our job to tell them that the Bible reveals him as the only begotten Son of God the Father, John 1, 14.

You might want to take some notes here. I'll be giving some scripture passages that you may want to jot down. But it's our job to tell them that the Bible reveals him as the only begotten Son of the Father, of God the Father, John 1, 14. That he is, as John put it, the Word made flesh, God incarnate, who came to earth to dwell among men. It's our job to tell them that that babe in the manger at Bethlehem existed eternally with the Father before he was ever born at Bethlehem.

John 8 58. It's our job to tell them that that babe born in a stable at Bethlehem and laid in a manger is eternal in nature and in power almighty, Revelation 1-8, and that in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Colossians 2-9, and that all things were made by him and that all things were made for him and that by him all things consist or are held together. Colossians 1 16. In short, it's our job to tell the world that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. 1 John 4 2.

That the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, came to earth and took upon himself a human nature and the purpose for which he came, and to proclaim his entrance into the world and his mission in the world with boldness. That's the job of the Christian, to go tell it on the mountain, as the Hymn says, over the hills and everywhere, that the babe born at Bethlehem two millennia ago was and is God the Son. Luke 1.35. That he came into the world from the Father, John 16 28, that he took flesh and dwelt among us, John 1 14, that he was born of a virgin, Luke 1 27, that he lived a sinless life, Hebrews 415, and that as the lamb of God without blemish, 1 Peter 1 19, he offered himself up a sacrifice for our sins, Hebrews 7 27, in order to reconcile us to God, 2 Corinthians 5 18. In our opening passage, the angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream, do not fear to take Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Ghost.

And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, which means Jehovah saves, for he shall save his people from their sins. And that's exactly what happened. And it's our job to tell the world. It's our job as the redeemed, reconciled to God, recipients of God's amazing saving grace to proclaim it to all the world. The opening hymn we sang this afternoon, Hark the Herald, Angels Sing, proclaims these truths.

It's hymn 168 in the Trinity hymnal. This hymn is an asset to every Christian because it communicates so many of the truths taught in Scripture concerning the coming of Christ. It's an asset to assist us in proclaiming Christ to the world around us. Why? Because so many of our neighbors are familiar with this hymn.

So many people in the English speaking world today are still familiar with this hymn. And one of the reasons that the hymn, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, is still familiar to tens of millions of people in the English-speaking world today is because on December 9th, 1965, that hymn made its way into prime-time television before tens of millions of people in Charles Schultz animated children's classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, where he told all the world, all the children in the English speaking world, This is what Christmas is all about. It's the hymn that was sung by all the children, all the peanut characters in unison at the climactic end of that program. That's why so many people are familiar with it in the English speaking world today.

CBS, you know, almost canceled the program because network executives thought it would flop. It was just, quote, too religious, they said. The opposite, however, was the case. It crushed the ratings that year and continued as a prime time hit in the Christmas season for the next 26 years in a row and aired consecutively for 56 years. The program's creator, Charles Schultz, was a staunch believer.

Executives at CBS, as they were going back and forth and all their deliberations and all, they pushed and they pushed to try to get Schultz to agree to remove the scripture reading portion. It's just too religious. It's too much. American households can't handle it. Can't handle it.

He was a staunch believer and he would not back down. He said, no, the segment remains. And he was a genius. And he used his genius and his God-given talents for God's glory. He was able to get tens of millions of children in the United States and around the world to memorize seven verses of scripture from the Gospel of Luke.

Many of you may have memorized them from watching that growing up. I did. And there were in the same fields shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. And you know, children were fixated on it. Here's one of their favorite characters.

And he's telling the world, he's telling everyone, this is what Christmas is all about. And he's quoting the Bible. And people are sitting in their living rooms all over the United States and around the English speaking world and they're hearing it. They're memorizing along with line of seven verses of scripture from the Gospel of Luke that proclaim the virgin birth, the advent or coming of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, into the world. And he got those same tens of millions of children to do something else, to sing along with the Peanuts characters to Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

He introduced tens of millions of people to that hymn, many who had never heard it before. The effect on America's children and whole households was enormous, incalculable. I've met people who've told me that it was that simple little children's animation that was the tool God used to open their hearts to Jesus and save their souls. Even now I can hear those characters in my mind singing that timeless Charles Wesley hymn, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king, peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. The hymn proclaims the person and the work of Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ came into the world to reconcile God to sinners and sinners to God. 2nd Corinthians 5 18 says, and all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.

Verse 2 of the hymn says, Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord. The words proclaim the eternality of Christ, that He has always been, that there was never a time when He was not, as we looked at in our session last week, and his worship by the angelic hosts of heaven. Hebrews 1 6 says and let all God's angels worship him. The hymn goes on late in time behold him come offspring of the Virgin's womb. All the great Christmas hymns of history proclaim the virgin birth of Christ.

The virgin birth is an essential of true and saving faith. There are essentials of the faith and there are non-essentials. There are things that must be believed to be a Christian. And there are things that are argued about and debated and deliberated about that are non-essentials. The virgin birth of the Son of God is essential.

No one is a Christian who rejects the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. We read it earlier in Matthew 1-18. Before they came together, that is before Joseph and Mary came together intimately, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And then further on in verse 23, we read Matthew quoting Isaiah's prophecy of the incarnation of the Son of God. Behold, A virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son.

A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son. The hymn goes on, veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Godhead here equals Godship. Some think the word Godhead means the Trinity. It doesn't mean the Trinity.

Godhead means Godship. It means deity. It means the divine nature or essence, the glory of Christ that He was deity, Godship of the divine nature, same divine nature or essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The glory of Christ was veiled by human flesh in His incarnation. It was veiled by flesh, human flesh, in His incarnation.

Yet we see throughout the New Testament bursts of his glory witnessed at times. As in the Garden of Gethsemane where six or seven hundred men armed with swords and with with spears and with lanterns are coming to take Jesus and he comes and he identifies himself, I am. They're coming for Jesus of Nazareth, I am He. And they all fall back onto the ground. There are times where the glory of Christ just bursts through, especially at His transfiguration.

But The fullness of Christ's glory will only be seen when we see Him one day face to face. Hail the incarnate deity. The hymn says, hail the incarnate deity. The hymn goes on. Christ is God incarnate.

God in the flesh. Anyone know Spanish? If I say in carne, what am I saying? In meat, right? In flesh.

Christ is God incarnate, God the Son come in the flesh. John 1, 18 says, No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him, that is, he has revealed him. Hail the incarnate deity. Jesus says in John 14, nine to his disciples, have I been so long with you, and yet thou hast not known me?

Have I been so long with you and you don't know who I am?" And then he says, He that hath seen me, they said, Show us the Father. And he said, he responds, Have you been so long with me that you don't know who I am. He says, he that has seen me has seen the Father. Not that Jesus was claiming to be the same person as his Father, no, they understood that, was not what he was saying. Not that he was claiming to be his own dad.

Not that he was claiming to be the same person as the Father as the heretical modalists claim and oneness Pentecostals of our day, but he who has seen me has seen God in the flesh. Hail the incarnate deity. Colossians chapter two and verse nine says, for in him, speaking of Christ, in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. The hymn goes on, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel. The doctrine of the incarnation is that God the Son has come to earth, taken flesh, and dwelt among men.

Jesus is truly God with all the attributes of God and taking on a humanity in the incarnation, he is truly man, true man with all the attributes of humanity except without sin in one person forever. This is the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, the eternal Son of God. Jesus is our Emmanuel. He is our God with us. We read it earlier in Matthew 1 23, they shall call his name Immanuel which being interpreted is God with us.

God with us. Brothers and sisters this is the message that we are to believe and this is the message that we are to believe, and this is the message that we are to proclaim to the lost and dying in sin and dying world all around us. Our redemption and the redemption of any soul on earth rests on the veracity, on the truthfulness. It depends on the truthfulness of this statement and this doctrine that Christ has come in the flesh. So essential, please hear me on this, so essential is this that John says, whoever affirms it is of God and whoever denies it is not of God.

First John 4 2. Whoever affirms that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, that he was somewhere else before he came, that the eternally begotten Son of God has come in the flesh and taken flesh. Whoever proclaims, accepts, believes the the doctrine of the incarnation, who really affirms the doctrine of the incarnation, is of God and whoever denies it is not of God. Second John 1 7 says, For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. That is, that there is no incarnation of Christ, that God the Son never came and took flesh.

There are many deceivers who have gone forth into the world who do not confess this. And he goes on to say, This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Whoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of the spirit of antichrist. Those who are of the Spirit of God confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. They believe and they confess the incarnation of the eternal Son of God.

You can't be a Christian and deny it. Some people get so consumed with the identification of the Antichrist. I've seen it throughout my decades in the ministry. They just get utterly consumed with trying to identify the Antichrist and they live in the news. They're completely consumed with it.

With eschatology and trying to predict the future. And they're so consumed with identifying the Antichrist that they never mature in the things of God. Yet here it is. Maybe not the man of sin, but men of sin deny Jesus has come in the flesh and you are of the spirit of Antichrist, not of God, lost and on your way to hell. Our neighbors need to understand this.

I was talking to a man yesterday out at Lakeway, went out to buy a little shed, a little well house shed. And, and he just, He wouldn't let me go. He just was again, it was great. It was wonderful. He just, he had so many questions.

Starting off with, okay, you got 16 kids. All right, we got one, but his wife wants more kids and they're just, you know, all of a sudden the questions are coming along. And we're going from homeschooling to wives being keepers at home and men providing and being in the scriptures with your family and just all of these things. He's really had just tons of questions. And we talked for about an hour.

But I said, you understand, because he was really seeking. You could tell God had begun a work in him. He was beginning to really seek. He didn't go to church, just really seeking the things of God. And I said, you realize that the claims of Christ are true, the implications are enormous and eternal.

We can get a lot of things wrong in this life, but if we get this wrong, we get everything wrong. Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. The eternal Son of God has come to earth and taken on a humanity and dwelt among men. It's awesome. We can't really get our minds around it.

We can't wrap our minds around it, our thoughts around it. We can get a lot of things wrong, but if we get this wrong, we get it all wrong. No one will survive the judgment seat of Christ who does not embrace the Jesus of the Bible and his claims. You must embrace the person of Christ and his claims that he is the Son of God, God the Son, that He did come to earth, He came in the flesh. To deny the incarnation of the eternal Son of God is to embrace the eternal death of one's soul.

Christians embrace the incarnate Son of God. And we must proclaim Christ come in the flesh to all the world. That's our job as Christians. Jesus said go into all the world. Sometimes we haven't even gone to those around us.

We embrace the incarnate Son of God, and we need to proclaim Him to all the world. Hail the incarnate deity. Hail the incarnate deity, as the hymn goes on. Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel. Hail the heaven-born prince of peace, there's peace in none other.

There's no peace with God in any but Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved, or we may enter into God's presence, uncondemned, but through the name of God's only begotten Son, Jesus our Emmanuel, who was pleased as man with men to dwell. Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of righteousness!

Life and life to all he brings who embrace him by faith, risen with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by to come to earth, to be born in that lowly condition. Mild He lays His glory by. Born that man no more may die. Born that there might be life to those dead and trespasses and sins.

Born that that man no more may die eternally. Every lasting life is in Him. Born to raise the sons of earth at the resurrection. Born to give them second birth at our spiritual resurrection When we are born again from eternal death to eternal life, born to give them second birth, regeneration, the new birth. Hark, the herald angels sing glory to the newborn king.

It's our job as Christians to proclaim Jesus, the Christ, has come in the flesh. Brothers and sisters, let the dead bury their own dead, but let us proclaim it. Let the dead bury their own dead, but let us proclaim Messiah's birth, that a dead and dying world might come to know that life and life eternal, the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God is through him and through faith in Him and Him alone. Him alone who was born in that stable at Bethlehem of a virgin, two thousand twenty-four years ago, who never sinned and who came and died for our sins. Let's pray.

Father we thank you for the coming of our Lord Jesus. We thank you that you sent him into the world. We thank you Lord Jesus that you willingly came. We thank you for the giving of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We thank you Father that your eternal Son came in the flesh and dwelt among men and that him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and that he came into the world on a mission to save his people from their sins.

And he fulfilled the mission for which he came into the world. He accomplished it. We thank you that he came into the world to save sinners like us personally. We thank you that Jesus came in the flesh. He lived a perfect life, died a perfect death.

A life we couldn't live and a death we couldn't die that we might be reconciled to you, God. We thank you for Jesus. We ask that you would help us to proclaim Him, the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, to this lost and dead and dying world all around us. For the glory of His name, for the glory of the name of Christ, we pray it. Amen.

Amen.