Some of us are old enough to remember watching East and West Berliners celebrate as they tore down the wall that separated them. For twenty-eight years twenty-eight miles of concrete and barbed wire divided the German city of Berlin. The Communist East on one side and the Free West on the other. In February 1989, East German President Erich Honecker vowed that his wall would remain for a hundred more years. He was off by ninety-nine years. In November 1989, the wall came down.
The new reconciliation between East and West Berlin provoked raucous celebration. For decades, people on the east side were shot for trying to climb the wall, and now thousands danced on top of it. Champagne corks popped. Car horns honked. Some people took hammers and chisels to the ugly dividing wall, breaking off huge chunks of concrete and brandishing them before television cameras.
The birth announcement of the Savior provoked a similar celebration from angels. In the fields outside of Bethlehem, shepherds saw these supernatural beings burst into the open. It was as if they could no longer contain themselves. They had to shout in praise to the good news that Jesus had been born (Luke 2:14 CSB)—
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and peace on earth to people he favors!”
Christmas began God’s plan for winning a lost world back to himself, and the angels marveled at how God was going to accomplish this. It was going to involve nothing less than the sacrificial death and resurrection of his own beloved Son. As Simon Peter would later write, “angels long to catch a glimpse of these things” (1 Peter 1:10-12). And so, when these heavenly beings looked into the Bethlehem manger they said, “Give the glory to God for this plan!”
I have more to say about this in the third chapter of the book I wrote with John Parker. It’s called Repeat the Sounding Joy! It’s a study of the four “Christmas carols” found in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. Pick up your free copy when you attend a service at Hillcrest or order it from Amazon by clicking here.
--Tom
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.