THIS Scripture, no doubt, seems an odd one as a message for a New Year. We tend to identify it simply as a message for Christmas, but yet it is an example for the whole year, and indeed for every year. The angels came to simple shepherds to tell them great good news, and it was such wonderful news that it caused the angels to praise God in these glorious words. Having declared the good news of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, they ended with these words of praise as they contemplated the glory of the message they had be given to declare. This example of the angels is an example which needs to be our constant action every day throughout this New Year.

As we contemplate the good news given by these angels to the shepherds, do they cause the same reaction of praise and thanksgiving in our hearts? Is this reaction of the angels something that resonates in our hearts and minds every day? As these angels contemplated the message they were commissioned to proclaim, it filled them with praise of God, highest over all.

There are two parts to this action of praise. The first is found in wonder of the glory of God which they saw in the gift of God of His well beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The second is found in the salvation which they proclaimed found in the gift of God in giving his Son. As we commence this New Year let us seek to enter the mind and understanding of these angels, so that we may every day have the overwhelming desire to praise as they did. When we engage in prayer, do we begin with praise and spend time in praise and giving glory to God; or do we immediately launch into petition and intercession? When Jesus gave his prayer to the disciples, we find that the opening was given first to praise and glorifying God – 'Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven'.

GIVING GLORY TO GOD.

As the angels contemplated the wonder of the good news of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, they were filled with this song of praise and glory to God. What did they see that caused them to give such glory to God?

a. The angels were amazed at such incredible love.

God's incredible love is revealed in that he loved the world that had rebelled against him. Every human being is a progeny of Adam and Eve. We inherit from our first parents the rebellion which they showed when they rejected God and chose to believe and follow Satan. They doubted God's love in the blessing of Eden, and each one of us inherits this allegiance to Satan's dominion that Adam and Eve chose for their progeny. This terrible condition is expressed in 1 John 5: 19 – where it tells us that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We are the rebels. God had no obligation to love us, the unlovable. Yet God so loved this world of rebel humanity that he gave his most precious gift of his Son to deliver us. When Joseph was facing the extraordinary pregnancy of Mary, he was told that the pregnancy was by the Holy Ghost, and that he was to call the child Jesus, because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1: 20-21). Joseph was also told that this child conceived by the Holy Ghost was a fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7: 14. This son was 'Immanuel, God with us'.

How incredible is this divine love where God gave himself in the person of his Son, in order to bring salvation for rebellious fallen sinful human beings.

b. Faithfulness of God.

Then the angels saw the faithfulness of God. At the moment of the disobedience of Adam and Eve when in rebellion they believed the lie of Satan and gave themselves to his dominion, God made a promise in Genesis 3: 15 where God said that the offspring of Eve would crush Satan's head, while he Satan would afflict all the redeemed offspring of Eve, and specially Jesus with his malice and hate. Here we have a promise made by God at the moment of human rebellion that he would provide a Saviour, human of the nature of Adam and Eve, who would crush the head of Satan, and destroy all his dominion over those who he was given to save and deliver them from Satan's dominion, and the death which Satan brought into the world.

God kept his promise in the birth of Jesus - Immanuel, God with us; Jesus, the Saviour of his people. The world waited over 4000 years for the promise to be kept, and a few more years before this Saviour accomplished the final victory over sin, Satan, death and hell in his vicarious death and resurrection, but God was faithful to his promise. As we read through the history of these 4000 years in the Old Testament, we behold the way God in faithfulness preserved his promise so at his good time the Saviour would be born

The angels saw all this amazing faithful sovereign power of God when they were sent to deliver the good news to the shepherds, and this caused them to give glory to God. To us, as we follow the story of God's faithfulness in the Bible, it may seem that God took a very long time to keep his promise, but to God it was but a moment. God, is the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity. His plans and wise purposes to him are in an eternal present. He created time for this universe in which we live. James tells us that a thousand years is but a day to God, by which he expressed the eternal fact that God's wise purposes are eternal, so what appears to us to be an eternity, is to God already accomplished.

c. The wisdom of God.

The angels gave glory to God because as they viewed the rebellion of humanity it involved an impossible problem to omnipotent and holy God. How could God forgive and save such rebellion without executing eternal punishment on the rebellious creatures who had rebelled against him. To even the holy wise angels this seemed an impossible problem, but as they considered the will and mind of God, they gave glory to him for incredible wisdom that solved this problem that God could at the same time, uphold his holy justice and yet justly forgive and save rebellious sinners.

The angels gave glory to God as they beheld this wisdom of God in sending his well beloved Son to be the second Adam, to overthrow the devastation brought on human beings by the first Adam. Adam failed to fulfil all the required righteousness of God in selling humanity to Satan. The angels gave glory to God that in our Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam, God would fulfil all righteousness and so be able to justly forgive and save those who through faith were in him as their righteousness.

How was this righteousness to be obtained. God in sacrificial wisdom sent his Son into this world to fulfil all righteousness. For this he had to take on himself the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8: 3) and then live a completely sinless and holy life, and then as the lamb without blemish to give himself as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, so fulfilling all righteousness on behalf of his people, those who the Father had given him before the foundation of the world. This He did, so that us who believe in Him, may be the righteousness of God in him.

Such incredible wisdom caused the angels to give glory to God in this accolade of praise declared so triumphantly to the shepherds. As we behold such incredible wisdom that provides, at so great cost, our salvation, does this not fill our hearts with praise and a desire to give glory to God for such a wondrous salvation? Surely this incredible wise action of God makes it impossible for us, as we seek to come into his presence in prayer, not to commence such activity with the same attitude as the angels and give glory to God in the highest?

PEACE TO HIS PEOPLE.

The angels gave glory to God because they saw the incredible blessing the birth of Jesus would bring into the world, in which there is no peace. This was not always so when God created the world and placed Adam and Eve in the paradise of the garden of Eden. In Genesis 3: 8 we hear of the peace which existed in Eden before the disobedience of Adam and Eve. We are told that Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden. This tells us that before Adam and Eve listened to Satan, they knew fellowship with God as he walked and conversed with them in the cool of the day. There was perfect peace between God and Adam and Eve before Satan deceived them both. Now the truth in the world is given 2 Corinthians 4: 4 where we read 'The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that the they cannot see the glory of Christ, who is the image of God'. Then in Ephesians 2: 2 Paul describes the truth about the world of human beings who live following the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. These Scriptures tell us the truth about this world since Adam and Eve gave their allegiance to Satan, which effected all humanity after that terrible action of disobedience to God. Since that time at the very beginning Satan has destroyed peace, and the history of the world makes this abundantly clear as we go through the history of the Old Testament.

When we come to our present history, the story is of continual wars and rumours of wars is as Jesus predicted in the Gospels. Wars never cease. There is always fighting in one part of the world or another. When we come to the truth about human life, government is never free from sleaze of one kind or another, and promises are made and never kept. When we come down to everyday life the papers sell their publications by reporting the evil behaviour of people in every level of society, because this news is what people seem to love to hear, because in them is this terrible condition which Satan has wrought in society. It was so in the time when Jesus was born. The shepherds knew all about the truth about human society. They suffered from it in their troubled condition.

Christ's birth, as the angels rejoiced over and praised God for, brought peace for human beings again. The word in the Greek which expresses this is 'eudoxia', which has the meaning of men 'with whom God is well pleased'. The angels rejoiced because they knew the fullness of blessing which would be provided by Christ, coming into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin. That is Christ taking our human nature and suffering all the ill effects of Adam's disobedience, which in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ meant that all the evil power of Satan was directed against him so that he suffered all the evil effects of sin, but in victory over Satan remained victoriously holy, and then able to have the final victory over Satan in suffering all the death and hell which the sin of the world deserves, and so fulfilling all righteousness in the sight of God, so that all who, in sorrow for sin and disobedience to God, put their trust in him as their sin-bearer and Saviour, are accounted righteous in the eyes of God and our sins are remembered no more.

The proof that Jesus fulfilled all righteousness and won total victory over Satan is given in his triumphant resurrection, where God the Father testified thereby that Jesus had won peace with God for all who were given grace to put their trust in Jesus Christ as the propitiation for their sins, and their Lord and Saviour.

This is the peace which the angels gloried in. They praised God as they saw that Jesus would bring total peace for every one who believed. Peace with God eternally; peace of conscience; peace for the future; peace in the face of physical death. Eternal peace, the peace which Satan destroyed when Adam and Eve believed his lies. God walked with Adam and Eve in Paradise; now in Christ this blessed fellowship with God, Father and creator, is returned for all who are granted the blessing of faith in Jesus as their Saviour, righteousness and Lord.

This peace is open to all for Christ died for the sins of the whole world, but God's favour to believe is a gift of grace. Sinners in bondage to Satan will not believe because of the blindness Satan has caused on all humanity. So God in sovereign grace intervened to take away this blindness from those he gave to Jesus to fulfil all righteousness for. So Jesus in John 17 could say that those the Father had given him (before the foundation of the world) he had lost none. These are the ones on whom God's favour rests. For these the praise and giving glory to God of the angels must most surely fill our hearts, so that the glorying to God in the highest can do no other than fill our hearts and minds eternally, and every day.