12/26/2025
I wanted to share a devotional written by Jeremy Taylor, our Chief Ministy Officer at Tyndale House Publishers. Jeremy wrote all about Messiah! He and his wife participated in a Chicagoland sing-in for many years before it shut down. With his permission, I'm sharing it here.
----------------------------------------------------------
George Frideric Handel composed Messiah over the course of just 24 days.
It was late summer in London. The composer worked for 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes more, at a writing desk in his rented home. He skipped meals. He worked late into the night. In just over three weeks of feverish intensity, he produced about 260 pages of score, representing roughly two and a half hours of music that is widely regarded as among the greatest achievements of the Baroque era.
By any measure, producing so much music in such a short time is a stunning accomplishment.
It also isn’t precisely accurate.
Why not? Because some of the music was already written. Pressed for time and operating under a tight deadline, Handel incorporated and adapted previously composed material, a common and accepted practice in the Baroque period.
If you know the tunes of some of Messiah’s better-known sections, you can easily imagine the Italian wording in context: The lyrics Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi from a secular love duet became the majestic proclamation “For Unto Us a Child Is Born.” The pastoral chorus “All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray” was originally Quel fior che all’alba ride, from another duet. And the regal “The Trumpet Shall Sound” started out as an instrumental melody perhaps intended for ceremonial use.
Handel’s reuse of existing music is far from a shortcut. Rather, it was a means of bringing existing material to its fullest expression, serving a far greater theological and artistic purpose. The majority of the tunes in Messiah were brand new, and even the recycled songs were significantly reworked as simple duets were transformed into large choral masterpieces and melodic lines were reshaped to fit English biblical text. If anything, Handel’s ability to carefully select exactly which pieces to reuse, in exactly the right ways, with such a theologically and musically rich result, should enhance our appreciation of the classic oratorio.
I bring this up not just because Act I of Messiah tells the story of Jesus’ birth and thus serves as an incredible soundtrack for this week’s Christmas festivities. There’s a biblical principle at play here as well. Because God, the ultimate Composer, shows his glory not only in making new things (Isa. 43:19) but also in making things new (Rev. 21:5).
God created the world ex nihilo—out of nothing. And the theme of God’s creative action recurs throughout Scripture in passages like Psalm 33:6, Isaiah 45:18, and John 1:3, among many others. But the wonder of the Incarnation—and the entire gospel message—is that God also redeems what he has already created. Just as God’s uniqueness and glory are on full display in his creation of the heavens (Ps. 19:1-6) and the earth (Ps. 104:24), his mercy and grace are displayed through his forgiveness (Isa. 1:18) and regeneration (Tit. 3:5) of his fallen creatures.
When Christ was born as a human baby, the angel chorus proclaimed (hum along with the tune from Messiah if you like), “Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest! And peace on earth, good will toward men.” The Good News that the shepherds heard in the fields and the wise men discerned from the sight of an unexpected star is the reason we celebrate this time of year. God became a man in order to redeem humanity from sin and, through his death on our behalf, restore us to a right relationship with him. No wonder the angels sang!
This Christmas, when you hear (and maybe sing) the familiar strains of Handel’s Messiah, consider the fact that just as the human composer repurposed what he had already written to help bring the gospel to glorious musical life, the Divine Composer became what he had created to bring restoration and transformation and will come again to make all things new.
And that is worth singing about!
