Go tell it on the mountain

Find the lowest of the low to receive the Good News

In Roman culture, Caesar was a god. Quite literally, the emperor of Rome demanded worship, and should the gods who watched from Olympus come down to give news, you bet that Caesar—or the Augurs who attended him—would be the first to know. Yet in Judea, God came down and heaven did not reveal the news to the king. Neither did the Host of Heaven appear to the chief priests at the Temple in Jerusalem.

The news of the birth of the Savior was given to shepherds, tending their flocks by night in the hills west of Jerusalem—near Bethlehem.

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash

Bethlehem—in Hebrew it’s two words: beit lechem, the house of bread. God, who stands outside time, had planned the moment of His own entry into creation since He walked in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, Mankind in its glorious state unmarred by sin. Now a second Adam was sent by God, who exists in a love bond of three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father sent the Son to earth, not as a conquering apparition or a giant, but born in the way all humans are, according to the natural order created at the beginning. A small, frail baby, watched over by angels, attended to by a mother and a father.

Such a birth would not be fitting for the King of the Jews—the Messiah—to arrive. King Herod in Jerusalem found that quite disturbing, and when the rabbis told him of all the scriptural prophecies regarding the Messiah’s coming, he became paranoid. The chief priests did not know, but Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and Jesus’ uncle, knew. But an angel struck Zechariah mute for his lack of faith in God’s plan.

As the night of the birth of the Son of God, alive from forever to forever, but beginning his short time on Earth, approached, the joy in Heaven was uncontainable. And on the night of that event, the joy overspilled and was revealed to shepherds in the field.

They were told to find the savior in Bethlehem, in a manger, and they did. We are told the story that we might know the lowly—shepherds were regarded as a dirty, smelly, outdoor and undesirable group—would receive the highest honor. We are told to “go tell it on the mountain.”

As this Christmas approaches, let us all prepare our hearts to welcome the news afresh. This morning, my church is performing a version of “Go Tell It On The Mountain”—the one David Crowder performed at the Tommee Proffitt “Birth of a King” show. Yes, we will sing (I do the lights at our church) and we will do our best to provide an excellent presentation for our congregation and friends. But really, the purpose of Christmas singing is to build us up, prepare our hearts, and bring the Good News from the shepherds to the mountaintops.

Enjoy the Sunday before Christmas and may you be greatly blessed. Here’s the Crowder version of “Go Tell It On The Mountain.”