A Multitude Praising God
“How many angels do you think were there to sing the night Jesus was born?”
Gail and I were at a performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera. The spacious and magnificent church sanctuary resounded with the voices of 90 singers, the largest chorus I had ever seen perform the Messiah. It was powerful and vibrant. It was gorgeous.
“Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest! And peace on earth! Good will! Good will! Good will, toward men!” The chorus sang the angels' song from the night of Jesus’ birth.
Fifty years ago, one of my favorite Christmas traditions had been to go to the annual Messiah performance at the Naval Academy in Annapolis with the Academy’s Men’s Glee Club and a woman’s chorus from Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. They had been good, but nothing like this.
Ninety singers produced such a big sound! It was staggering. If I’d been standing the voices would have knocked me over.
That got me thinking. Luke wrote that on the night that the incarnate God was born in Bethlehem, an angel announced his birth to shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock. And then suddenly, along with the angel, “there was a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.”
I’d never wondered before, but how many were in that multitude? How large was that heavenly host?
I leaned over to Gail and asked, “How many angels do you think were there to sing that night?”
“All of them,” she said.
All of them. Whenever I’d thought of that night I’d always pictured, maybe, a few dozen angels. But of course, it would make sense that when the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, entered our sad and broken world to live among us, to share in our sufferings, take our sins, and give us his righteousness, the thing that all of history had been leading to, a thing most magnificent and wonderful and glorious, that all of the angels would rejoice.
How many angels are there? I don’t know. But certainly, more than a few dozen. More than a chorus of ninety.
Thousands? Millions? Billions? Maybe. Imagine what it must have been like, so powerful, so beautiful!
I’ve also been thinking about the message the angel announced to the shepherds that night.
“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
It struck me what the angel did not say. He did not say, “I bring you a new way to God. I bring you a path of enlightenment. I announce to you a 10-step plan to follow. I come to announce that if you will just work hard enough you will find God.” He did not say any of those things.
He said today a Savior has been born for you. A Savior has come to you, for you. A Savior is coming to rescue you.
Jesus Christ, the Savior had come.
Christianity is not about what we must do to get right with God. Christianity is about what God has done for us, to come and get us, to rescue us, to save us.
Later, Jesus would say, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
“You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,” Paul would write. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:1-5).
This is the true meaning of Christmas. The greatest of all gifts, God's grace for sinners dead in their trespasses and sins, sinners like you and me, has come. Jesus came for us, to find us, to rescue us, and to save us.
That is what the multitude of the heavenly host, maybe millions strong, thundered with their song into the night, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will toward men! For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!”
Much love, Barry