Go Tell it on the Mountain

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. After he talked about the death of Jesus Christ and how the Messiah would die for our sins, Isaiah says this in chapter 52 verse 7, how beautiful upon the mountains, go tell it on the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Today you're in for a special treat as the Summit worship team opens our message with a stirring rendition of the popular Christmas classic, Go Tell It on the Mountain. It's the first message in a short new teaching series that we've titled Carols.

It's always great to know the backstory of something popular, isn't it? So we'll be looking at the history and meaning behind a couple of popular Christmas songs over the next few days. So if you're not quite in the Christmas spirit yet, let us nudge you ever so gently with today's message. But before Pastor J.D. begins, let's join the Summit worship team.

All right. We do not know exactly who wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain, but we do know that it was a slave song, most likely composed in the South sometime between 1840 and 1860, right before the United States Civil War. The text of the song goes like this, while shepherds kept their watching over silent flocks by night, behold, throughout the heavens, there shone a holy light. The shepherds feared and trembled when low above the earth rang out the angel chorus that hailed our Savior's birth. Down in a lonely manger, the humble Christ was born and God sent us salvation, that blessed Christmas morn.

He made me a watchman upon the city wall. And if I am a Christian, I am the least of all, go tell it on the mountain. Over the hills and everywhere, go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born.

So much wonderful imagery in this song. The song appears to be based on two primary passages of scripture. First, obviously, the story of the shepherds in Luke chapter two. And second, maybe less obviously, Isaiah 52, seven. If you have a Bible, I'd invite you to open it to Isaiah 52, seven. Isaiah 52, seven, where the prophet Isaiah foretells a day when the good news of the Messiah will be announced throughout the whole earth. Isaiah wrote these words nearly 750 years before Jesus Christ was born. And after he talked about the death of Jesus Christ and how the Messiah would die for our sins, Isaiah says this in chapter 52, verse seven, how beautiful upon the mountains, go tell it on the mountain or the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says, whose Zion your God reigns. So the writer of this carol, this slave says, go to the mountains and tell this good news about Jesus being born.

I'll explain the importance of the mountain imagery in a moment, but first know that the apostle Paul is going to use this exact same text in Isaiah as his primary text for establishing the Christian mission, which is what Christians now call the great commission. In Romans 10, 14, Paul explains the urgency of the gospel, how Jesus Christ has died to make a way for every people of every time to be able to come to God and that people need to accept the gospel and they need to receive it for themselves if they're going to be saved. And then Paul concludes that explanation of the urgency of the gospel with these words, Romans 10, 14 and 15, how then will they call on him and whom they have not believed and how are they to believe in him and whom they have not heard and how are they to hear without somebody preaching and how can they preach unless they are sent as it is written, Isaiah 52, seven, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. So what this song does in picking up on Isaiah 52, seven, it does what the apostle Paul did is it takes this verse and it connects the Christmas story to the great commission and it highlights and so doing it highlights three very important and I would say rather surprising things about the good news, about the good news of Christmas and they are these three. Number one, to whom the good news comes. Number two, what the good news brings and then number three, where the good news sins.

Number one, to whom the good news comes. This song notes in the first three verses of the song that the message came first to the shepherds. Now that the slave who wrote this song felt drawn to the story of the shepherds is not surprising since shepherds were considered to be the lowest class of people in Jewish society at the time, much like the slaves would have been considered the lowest class in their time. We have this romanticized version of the nativity, I often tell you this, where shepherds are these good-looking strapping young men in cool outfits with sashes and bandanas, which we assume were cool in a first century kind of way.

Their faces are reverent, they're sitting there humbly pondering the mysteries of the Christ child. That is not at all the picture that you get if you understand the culture of the Bible. Shepherds were basically homeless people, they were always dirty. I mean, they stayed outside with animals for weeks at a time.

They were the kind of people that you could smell before you saw them. When you were a grown man and you were still a shepherd, that meant a total life fail. When you were asked at a party, what does your son do? You never wanted to answer, he's a shepherd. You know, cause the next question will be, well, what went wrong?

You know, why, what happened? He had so much promise. They weren't considered respectable citizens either since they had to work seven days a week. And this, so they couldn't take the Sabbath off, they never went to temple.

Shepherds were so low in Jewish society that rabbinic tradition tells us their testimony was not even accepted in court. So needless to say, they're not the typical candidates to receive the first announcement about the birth of the King of Kings. I have a friend who is a CEO of a really successful startup company here in the triangle. In 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama asked if he could launch his campaign in North Carolina from the steps of this guy's office building in the research triangle park. It's not hard to see why his company was very successful. It was young, it was innovative, it represented the future. And so that campaign wanted to identify itself with that kind of young aspiring successful leader.

That's not hard at all to understand. What is hard to understand is why the angels would choose to inaugurate Jesus's beginning of his kingdom with a group of people most despised in Jewish society. Why did they do it that way?

The answer is very simple. It was to demonstrate from its inception on earth, the very nature of the gospel itself. You see, in coming to the shepherds, God reached down to those that everybody considered to be on the bottom, showing that there was no one too broken, no one too poor, no one too insignificant for Jesus's kingdom. In fact, you're gonna find out in the ministry of Jesus that he prefers the poor and the broken.

Why would he prefer them? It's because they're in a better position to receive the good news. They realize they need it. The essence of sin you see, the core element of sin is pride. And pride is just the idea that we don't really need God, that we're sufficient without him. And whenever you're rich in something, whenever you're successful, whenever you're respectable in some area of your life, it often usually deludes you into thinking you don't really need God in that area of your life. So those who are rich in money feel like they've got enough money to guarantee tomorrow. So they don't think much about needing to stay right with God in order to guarantee their security for the future, because they got enough money to guarantee their future. That's why Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven.

Why? Because they don't ever come to a point where they realize just how much they need God. Those who are rich in talent or good looks feel like they have everybody else's approval. So they don't really think that much about God's. If I got everybody else telling me I'm awesome, I'm not that obsessed with whether or not God thinks I'm awesome. Those who are rich in moral goodness, those who are respectable, those who are looked up to assume that if God's going to accept anybody, well, he's going to accept them. We all kind of think that God grades on the curve and we're like, if God accepts anybody, I'm definitely respectable and people think that I'm awesome like this.

And so he's going to accept me. But this sense of self-sufficiency, this sense of respectability is all an illusion. One conversation with a doctor that you weren't expecting after a routine checkup can shatter everything in your life. And some of you know that from experience. One conversation, one phone call telling you there's been a wreck, there's been a wreck involving your wife and your children can destroy everything that you cherish most in life.

One unexpected summons into your boss's office on a Friday afternoon could ruin all your financial prospects. And if you think that you're good people, respectable, decent people, it's just because we compare ourselves to the wrong standard. I've told you before that whenever I start feeling good about myself, which happens from time to time, it's always because I'm just comparing myself to somebody else and thinking I'm doing a lot better than they're doing. But see, then I look into God's word and I start to see what Jesus said about those who enter the kingdom of heaven. Then he makes statements like this. He said, Matthew 18, that I had to be so surrendered to him if I wanted to go into his kingdom, that if he told me to sell everything and give it to the poor, I would do it without a second thought. He told me that if I wanted to enter in the kingdom of heaven, my heart had to be so full of love that when somebody stole my jacket from me, my first impulse, my instinct, was to offer them my shirt also.

He told me that if I wanted to enter his kingdom, Matthew 5, my heart had to be so pure that I'd never even thought lustfully about somebody who was not my spouse. I started looking into the right standard and I realized that underneath all this religious makeup, I know that I'm a dark-hearted sinner. And maybe I am better than you, some of you in certain areas. And maybe you're better than me, but the point is once you, this means that we know how to put our makeup on better. Then once you strip the makeup away, you see that you are a dark-hearted sinner just like me. Throughout my life, throughout my life, I realized I've been one of the most self-willed, rebellious, deceitful people I've ever known. And maybe that's just because I know what's inside my heart more than I know what's in yours. But see, I always thought that I knew best and I've always wanted to do things my own way.

The person who has lied to and disappointed and broken more promises to me than anybody else is me. I am a dark-hearted sinner and I have no hope of earning God's favor. So the question is no longer how good do you have to be to earn God's favor?

That's a non-starter. The only question when you understand things are, do you realize you're so bad that you can never earn God's favor? God's favor has to be received as a gift. It's the only way it can be received. It cannot be merited or earned and shepherded shepherds and slaves are usually in a better position to be able to realize that. That's why Jesus in Luke 18 tells a story that was scandalous.

If you think about it today, it's still scandalous, but it was especially scandalous back then. He says two men go into the temple to pray. One man everybody recognizes. It's the religious leader in the local synagogue. It's the guy everybody looks up to. Don't think religious hypocrite by the way.

This is not what Jesus was presenting. We're talking about the kind of guy in the summit church that everybody knows. There's your prayer leader. Man, when it's time to pray, that guy's always there and he's praying loud and he's praying hard. He's the guy greeting everybody at the door. He's the guy that does childcare, volunteers when nobody else will volunteer. He's the guy who serves on the deacon team.

And we're talking somebody that you're like, that guy's awesome. And Jesus says he comes down front to pray because that's where people like to see him. And he goes down front and while he's praying, he's thinking about all the righteous things he's done and how God must sure be happy because all those righteous things that he's done and that kind of guarantees his place with God. Jesus said, there's another man who stands in the back.

He stands in the back for two reasons. One, everybody hates him. He's a tax collector and tax collectors in their day were the lowest of the low morally speaking because they were traitors. They extorted money from Jewish people to give it to the Roman oppressors.

And so we're talking bottom of the barrel for them. So he's standing back there cause he's hated, but he's also standing back there because he knows that he is so wicked that he doesn't have any place in God's kingdom. And he stands back there and all he does, he doesn't pray and think about his righteousness. He lays on his face and he beats his chest.

He beats his chest. And Jesus says, he says over and over again, God be merciful to me a sinner. And then Jesus says the most scandalous thing. He says, one of those men went home justified. One of those men went home right with God.

And it's not the one that the Jewish people and not the one that many of us would think it wasn't the man that everybody looked up to. It was the tax collector because this man came in, this good man came in with his righteousness, which was no righteousness at all in God's sight. And he left with that righteousness, but that tax collector came in with only the knowledge of his guilt. And he left with the gift righteousness of Jesus Christ and the gift righteousness of Jesus Christ is righteousness indeed. And because he was in a place where he knew he needed it, then he was more liable to receive it than those who were morally respectable. You see shepherds and slaves and tax collectors are usually in a better place to receive the gospel than those of us who are not any of those three things.

Because when you're flat on your back, you're usually looking the right direction. You don't have to be a shepherd. You don't have to be a slave. You don't have to be a tax collector to be saved, but you have to have the heart of one to be saved. You have to become like a child, a slave, a tax collector and a shepherd, because you have to know your need. In Christianity, all you need is need, but you need need.

If you don't have need, then you won't have Jesus. Number two, what the good news brings to whom the good news comes. Number two, what the good news brings. Like many Negro spirituals, this song focuses on God's promise of relief from suffering. You see as slaves, the world they lived in was a terrible world, full of injustice and pain, but they knew that the birth of Jesus Christ was bringing about a new world in which sin and suffering and slave masters would no longer reign over them. So again, Isaiah 52 seven, that the writer of this carol is thinking about how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness and publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. The most famous Christmas carol in the world, Joy to the World, was written by a man, Isaac Watts, in the midst of intense suffering. And Joy to the World was a declaration that sin and suffering and injustice did not reign.

They would not have the last word, that God reigns. In fact, that's the way he phrased it in the song, Joy to the Earth, the savior reigns. And in one of the most, my favorite phrases from that Christmas carol, he says this, he comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found. Everywhere the curse is found, everywhere the curse has touched, everywhere the curse is broken, that's where the savior is gonna reverse the curse.

He's going to heal what is broken. This slave that wrote this song had felt the sting, felt the sting of the curse in just about every area of his life. The curse was felt in the shame of his subjugation. The curse was felt in the injustice and abuse that he had endured at the hands of others. It was felt in the thankless toil that he endured at the oppression of others. It was felt in the broken family that he was probably a part of.

We've all heard the horror stories of families in slave culture when the kids get old, the slave master takes the kids and sells them and separates these families, separates husbands and wives and fathers and sons and mothers and daughters so that they never see each other again. This man had felt the curse in every area of his life and the good news that he is declaring is that all of this is temporary. And that Jesus one day will reverse all of that in establishing a new world. Y'all in my opinion, we don't talk about this aspect of the gospel enough. We talk about salvation as God's forgiveness of our sins, about him wiping the slate clean, about him removing our guilt before God and that the gospel certainly is. But the gospel is also healing. Jesus didn't just die to take away the guilt of our sin, he resurrected to reverse the pain of our sin. His resurrection is a reversal of the curse. A recent study I looked at showed that two-thirds of evangelical believers, which just means people in churches like this one, don't think we'll have a body in heaven.

They don't think we'll have a body. And we just kind of are up there and we're just sort of in the presence of God and we're floating around and we're playing harps and you know, some and that kind of stuff, but that's not what heaven is. In fact, the Bible's name for heaven is, listen, the new heavens and the new earth, right? So new heavens and new earth means old heavens, old earth, not something fundamentally different.

We're talking about something that's like the old one, just not broken down and just a lot better. And you know, I gotta be honest, I love sitting around imagining what that is. What's that like? What is a glorified ribeye tastes like? I bite into a ribeye and I'm like, if that's the cursed one, what is the healed one tastes like? You know, I don't think we'll eat meat in heaven. Jesus ate fish after he resurrected from the dead.

So boom, and God put that in the Bible for people like me. What's the heavenly Grand Canyon look like? What does the heavenly Hawaii look like?

I'm like, if that's the cursed Hawaii, what does the real Hawaii look like? Where is the curse? Where's the curse touch the earth? Because that's the place that God's going to reverse it.

He's going to heal it. Where has it touched you? Is it in your marriage? Is that where the curse touched you? Is it in your physical body? Is it in your, with your children?

Is it in your job? I've been reading Isaiah this week in my own time with God. And I came across a verse that all I absolutely love.

And I just forget about that. I've been, I read it again and I'm like, Oh, I love this verse. Isaiah 49, 22. This is what the sovereign Lord says.

Listen to this. In that day, I'll give the signal. What's that signal going to be like? And then they will carry your little sons back to you in their arms. And they will bring your daughters back to you on their shoulders.

What does that mean? Well, to the slave, it meant that that family that had been torn apart by injustice would one day be restored, right? It means that that parent who's lost a child, lost a son to an untimely death is going to see that son brought back, I would assume by the angels in their arms or that lost daughter who died when she was four years old, carried back to you on the angels, on the shoulders of the angels. What a glorious day that will be. And see that's good news for shepherds. And that's good news for slaves. And that's good news for people who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. And it's good news for people who suffered. And it's good news for people that are in pain.

And it's good news for you and for me. Number three, where the gospel, where the good news sends to whom it comes, what it brings. Number three, where the good news sends this Christian brother of ours, this slave says, you got to tell this everywhere. You see if the good news really means that there's nobody too lowly for God to pursue. If the good news means that there's no one so insignificant that God would overlook them. If there's no one so guilty that God would forsake them. No one's so broken that God wouldn't heal them. No one's so lost that God couldn't find them.

If Jesus really is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God through faith in his finished work, then you got to tell this everywhere because there is no element of society, no people on earth, no brokenness that this message of salvation will not penetrate and heal. Let me now explain the mountain imagery because I think we're in a place where we can understand it. You see in those days, most cities in the Middle East were settled between mountains. And so in a day before cell phones and before radio communication, when a city was awaiting some kind of news, maybe it was a battle that was taking place that threatened their kingdom. The city waiting on this news would look up to the top of the mountains because that's the first place you would see the messenger come carrying the good news. So you had the watchmen on the city walls who are waiting and watching, looking on the crest of the mountain for the messenger to come over the mountain with the flag.

And there was a certain flag that represented this is good news. And then the watchman would begin to publish the news that the messenger is coming. The battle has been won and we have been saved. That's why the writer of Go Tell It on the Mountain uses that in the fifth verse, the watchman on the wall, the watchman upon the city wall. He made me that watchman. I'm the one who has seen salvation.

I'm the one who has experienced it. And now I get to tell the rest of the city. I get to tell these people that salvation has come. You see Isaiah 52, Isaiah imagines groups of people scattered all over the world in different cities, different nations, different languages, different situations, different classes of people, all waiting, all waiting, overwhelmed and oppressed by the curse, scared of death, without hope. And here comes the messenger to announce the battle is over and the kingdom is and the kingdom has been restored.

There is nowhere and no one for whom Jesus has not won the victory. So we go tell it on the mountains, over the hills, everywhere to all groups of all peoples in all places. With a message titled Go Tell It on the Mountain, you're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. If you enjoyed today's message and music and you'd like to hear it again, you can do so online, free of charge at jdgreer.com.

I think we can all agree that 2021 was not significantly better than 2020, to say the least. Our world continues to face heartache, hardship and uncertainty, and it may feel like hope is in short supply, but it doesn't have to be. Right, JD?

Yeah, I know what you mean, Molly. We have all had to find a new normal as we enter yet another year of not knowing what the future holds. I will tell you, my family could not have made it through thus far without the support and encouragement of our family, our local church here, the Summit Church, and folks like you, our Summit Life audience. You know, the Christmas season, it reminds us that our God is not a God who is a far-off God, a God who is unfamiliar with pain, a God who leaves us alone in our loneliness. He enters into it with us. So as we close out 2021, I would love to ask you to consider becoming one of our first 500 gospel partners in the new year. That's a monthly giving commitment that enables us to take the gospel to new places and plan to impact people.

One of the things we love to say around here at Summit Life is you don't give to Summit Life as much as you give through Summit Life. You're giving to impact people with the gospel. And it's our joy to be able to be a partner with you in doing that.

So I want to thank you for those of you that are involved that way. And I want to invite you to prayerfully consider being one of those 500 gospel partners going into this year that will enable us to take the gospel to more people and more places. And if you become a gospel partner this week, we have a special offer for you. In addition to our 2022 Summit Life Planner, we'll also give you a signed copy of Pastor JD's new book on prayer called Just Ask. Won't you partner with us monthly so we can extend this gospel message even further?

We can't wait to have you join the family. Ask for a copy of the 2022 Summit Life Planner when you give a one-time donation today of $35 or more. But don't forget about becoming a monthly gospel partner as well and get your signed book. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. I'm so glad that you joined us today. And make sure that you listen again tomorrow when Pastor JD concludes this message titled, Go Tell it on the Mountain. That's Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.