Christ's Day, or Christmas Joys
I. The text does not tell us that Abraham had any distinct foresight of the manner of Christ's birth. That was a mystery which remained locked up in the secret chambers of God's counsels, until it seemed good to the Holy Ghost to reveal it to the prophet Isaiah. But the meaning of the words My dayin the text must clearly be the day or season of Christ's coming, and dwelling upon earth, the day or season of that earthly life into which He entered. This, then, is the day which our father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see, the day of the coming of Him in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, the day of Christ's coming to dwell upon earth, in order that He might deliver mankind from their sins.
II. If we have the spirit of Abraham, if we have the faith of Abraham, we must rejoice, as Abraham rejoiced, in the thought that we are to see Christ's day. The Christian is to rejoice at the coming of Christ, because He who is the Lord of light and life brings both one and the other. This He did, when He first came, to the whole world. The whole world was lying in darkness and in the shadow of death, when the Sun of righteousness arose and turned its darkness into light, its night into day. The whole world was rotten at heart and palsied in all its limbs, when Christ came and breathed His spirit into it, and said, "Arise and walk." And as it was with the whole world, when Christ first came as on this day to deliver it out of its deadly darkness, so is it still with the soul of every one to whom Christ comes for the first time. These, then, are the reasons why we are to rejoice in the coming of Christ; that, whereas without Christ we are blind, Christ opens our eyes and enables us to see; that whereas without Christ we are deaf, Christ enables us to hear; that whereas without Christ we are in darkness and know not where we are nor whither we go, Christ sheds the clearest, brightest light both upon us and upon everything around us: that, further, whereas without Christ we are bound with the chains of sin, Christ came to burst those chains and to deliver us into the glorious liberty of the children of God; in a word that, whereas without Christ we are without God in the world, Christ has set us at one with God that, whereas without Christ we are at war with God, with each other, and with ourselves, Christ came to bring us peace with ourselves, with each other, and with God.
J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church,p. 111.
References: John 8:56. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 20; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p. 151.