For almost three decades, Classic FM have been successful in making the world’s greatest music accessible to many. They have sparked an interest and an appreciation for quality music that has a timeless appeal and doesn’t go out of fashion. Generally speaking, the music grows on people and with well over 5 million listeners weekly, the audience base is growing.
For one month of the year they do something even more significant than preserving music that has retained its popularity over a few hundred years. Carols are sung. Since those carols contain essential biblical truths concerning our Lord, the legacy will echo into eternity.
Unlike the confusion amidst our current paradigm of post-modernity, the eternal gospel never needs to be rewritten or re-imagined and provides perfect clarity.
Carols speak of the incarnation, God being present with us and being pleased to dwell with us. The verses articulate precisely; the prophecies our Lord fulfilled, proving that the Lord Jesus alone is the Messiah who accomplished the hopes and fears of all the years. The Messiah had to be born of a virgin and come from the tribe of Judah; and Bethlehem Ephrathah was the designated birthplace. The human nature of our sin is exposed, and the remedy of the Saviour is revealed. Our sin needs to be cast out and our Saviour needs to enter into our lives and transform us to conform to His image.
We consider our Lord’s birth and recognise that we need to be born again! Reconciliation with God isn’t just possible but is vital since without that we are at enmity with God and face judgement. Only the Lord can bring an everlasting peace so that we can have peace with God and the peace of God, in our lives and in our life circumstances.
There is a great irony. We love to hear the carols sung and they make us feel nostalgic. We may be able to recite whole carols or parts of them. Yet if we truly stopped for a while and traced the words contained therein with the Bible accounts and understood and believed the truth of them, we would realise that is the greatest news ever, concerning the greatest true story ever told. If we believed what the carols proclaimed, our lives and far reaching society would be transformed not just for a single month of the year or even for the rest of our lives but would pass a legacy of truth to the next generation that will have everlasting blessings.
One more thing… If you are a believer and understand what the carols mean in addition to singing them and care for the souls of others, invite your friends to carol services. Then by all means explain to others what they mean by matching the carols to the Bible. How so? Ask others, “what is your favourite carol?” That way you have an opening and if someone responds by stating their favourite carol, ask them “why is that your favourite carol?” Then tell them what your favourite carol is and in doing so, explain what the carols mean in relation to Scripture and why our Lord needed to be born, dwell amongst us and die and rise victorious so that we might be reconciled to God and have a second birth.
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