We kick off Advent with Charles Wesley’s Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus—a hymn that compresses the whole theology of Advent into a handful of lines: longing, liberation, rest, and the reign of the King.

Listen to the Hymn

Celtic Worship – “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”

Keep Exploring

Scripture in This Episode

  • Genesis 3:15
  • Deuteronomy 18:15
  • Hebrews 2:14–15
  • Hebrews 4:8–11
  • Matthew 11:28–30
  • Luke 2:25–32
  • Isaiah 9:6–7
  • Ephesians 2:4–6
  • Revelation 4:1-11

Transcript

Hi, this is Jerry. Welcome to Advent of Carols, a VerseNotes audio series counting down the days to Christmas, one song at a time.

Here’s what we’re going to do. Every day this Advent, we’re going to choose one carol—not necessarily to sing, but just to ask where did it come from, what does it mean, what does it teach us about God’s story. We might even read the lyrics.

Some of these songs are ancient hymns that carry, you know, the weight of Scripture. Some of them are modern songs that I just want to take a closer look at.

Each day, I’ll focus on a single carol, and if you’d like to listen to each day’s song before we dive in, you’ll find links in the show notes.

So, grab a cup of something warm, take a deep breath, and let’s start Advent together with our first carol, Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus.

Every time I hear this carol, I imagine Charles Wesley sitting at a desk with his Greek New Testament open to Hebrews, thinking, man, how do I turn this into a song? But it works. What comes out is basically Hebrews in miniature—waiting, fulfillment, freedom, and rest for the people of God. Wesley pours the whole theology of Advent into just a couple of lines of poetry.

In fact, it’s so short that I’m just going to read the whole thing. I’m not going to do this every time, but today, to get started, let’s read it together.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,
born to set Thy people free.
From our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth Thou art,
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a king.
Born to reign in us forever,
now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal spirit,
rule in all our hearts alone.
By Thine all-sufficient merit,
raise us to Thy glorious throne.

Now, depending on how familiar you are with specific lines of Scripture, you may have heard tons of Bible coming out of those lines. And the reason is that Charles Wesley believed that Christians should sing their theology, so he wrote it into every phrase.

He wrote this particular hymn in 1744, and he published it in a little book called Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord that nobody heard of for another 110 years or so—until Charles Spurgeon, you know, that giant Baptist preacher, quoted it in one of his Christmas sermons in 1855. And suddenly it was everywhere, because everyone wanted to know what Spurgeon was talking about. And it turned out to be this amazing hymn written a century earlier by another famous Charles. So this is really a two-Charles hymn: Wesley and Spurgeon.

Charles Wesley, by the way, the younger brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who really hated the idea of leaving the Anglicans; he just wanted them to be louder. And speaking of louder, the tune for this song, at least the tune that I know, is known as Hyfrydol, composed by the Welsh musician Roland Pritchard in the 1830s, which means that I’ve mispronounced half the words of this sentence. It’s a pretty common tune for hymns, actually, and we sing another Charles Wesley hymn to the same tune: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.

Now, Wesley thought that this hymn was about Haggai 2:7: “The desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory.” But I think it’s about all kinds of verses, so we’re just going to pick out a few lines and see how deep this goes, starting right at the top.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus. He’s not kidding about long-expected. The first mention of Messiah in Scripture is actually Genesis 3:15, right at the beginning. See, Adam and Eve have just eaten the fruit, and the serpent convinced them to do it, and they’re all blaming each other, and God is cursing them, and God says to the serpent that the offspring of the woman will bruise his head. That is the first mention of Jesus in Scripture.

But if you think that’s a little tenuous—and you’re not alone—let’s move forward to Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses says, “Hey, you know, God’s going to raise up another prophet like me, and you really need to listen to him.” So from the very beginning, the people of God have been looking for someone over the horizon.

And that someone will release us from fears and sins. We fast-forward all the way to Hebrews 2:14-15, saying that Jesus shares our flesh and blood and destroys the one who has the power of death, thereby freeing those enslaved by the fear of death. That’s us.

And then, let us find our rest in thee. More Hebrews—chapter 4 (Hebrews 4:8-11)—promises that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. You see, the people of Israel had been promised rest a lot. Joshua promised them rest after he conquered the other tribes in Canaan, and David promised them rest after all of his battles, and Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, also promised them rest, and none of it ever happened.

And then comes Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And now you can hear what they heard: rest isn’t a place. Rest is a person.

Now, the next verse talks about the consolation of every nation. That’s Luke 2:25-32, one of the four Christmas carols literally written in Scripture. In fact, they’re all in Luke 2. In this one, this guy named Simeon had been waiting for what he calls the consolation of Israel, which means that he had been promised that he would not die until he had actually seen the Messiah. So sure enough, when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple, he’s there. He takes the baby in his arms, and he sings, “My eyes have seen your salvation.” The consolation of Israel is a person you can hold.

And this person is a child, and yet a king. This is the famous Christmas Scripture, right? Isaiah 9:6-7: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” And this child doesn’t grow into kingship—he arrives with the kingdom already there.

And he’s not a distant king, either. He’s born to reign in us, to rule in our hearts, to be first in our hearts, and then to bring us with him—to raise us to his glorious throne. That’s Ephesians 2:4-6: “God, being rich in mercy…has raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places.” And those heavenly places are described in Revelation. So Wesley packs the entire throne room of Revelation 4:1-11 into a single phrase of this hymn.

Now, for those of you counting along, that’s nine scripture references, and I’ve only looked at seven of the poem’s sixteen lines. But instead of looking at the rest of this song in excruciating detail, I want to bring us back to Advent.

Advent is the silence before the explosion of glory that is Christmas. Advent is not the end of the year; it’s the beginning for Christians. It’s a season of reflection, of waiting, of renewal, and also of looking forward and longing for what’s coming on Christmas. And Wesley takes thousands of years of yearning for the world to be set right, and he turns it into this prayer right in the middle of the song: let us find our rest in thee.

Now, I said earlier that Israel had been promised rest for a long time, and that’s true, but they had also been oppressed for a long time by lots of major powers—in fact, all the major powers of the ancient Near East: Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and the Maccabees, their own people, and then finally Rome, the big one.

Look, if you’re being crushed by the largest empire the Western world has ever seen, your savior is going to look like Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But Jesus steps on the scene and he asks a brand new question: Who wants to conquer Rome when you can conquer death?

This carol begins with longing and prophecy, and it ends with coronation and promise. Christ was foretold. He has come. He is risen. He is reigning. And he will come again.

Hebrews chapter 4 again: “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” We’re not there yet. The world is still restless and noisy and afraid. It’s dark and it’s cold—you know, just look around. But the rest is real. The king is real. The long-expected Jesus came once at Christmas, and he will come again.

So as we start Advent, Wesley hands us a simple prayer to carry through the season: let us find our rest in thee. The waiting people become the welcomed people, welcomed at last into eternal rest with Jesus.

That’s why we sing.

Thanks for joining me today for Advent of Carols. If you’d like to help make more projects like this possible, check out VerseNotes Commons at versenotes.org/commons.

And we’ll be back tomorrow with another carol of Christmas.

Updated: