_1st. Prelude._ Mary and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem. "Behold thy King will come to thee.... He is poor and riding upon an ass." (Zach. IX. 9). _2nd. Prelude._ Grace to welcome my King. POINT I. "THE DESIRED OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME." King of nations He has always been, for He created them; in Him they live and move and are. (Acts XVII. 2). He has been in His earth ever since He created it, governing it, sustaining and preserving the life which He gave, co-operating always with His creatures. We must not think of Him as creating the world and then leaving it to do the best it could till the time came for Him to be incarnate. That is a false idea. His delights were _always_ to be with the children of men and though the Orient did not begin to dawn till the time of the Incarnation, the Light had been in the world all along; the Sun of Justice had existed from all eternity. "He was in the world and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not." (St. John I. 10). But though it knew Him not, the world had enough light to desire Him. Ever since God at the time of man's fall had made His great promise concerning the Woman and her Seed, He that was to come had been to the nations "their desired One." That promise had been carefully cherished, handed on from father to son till Moses came and recorded it in the book of Genesis; and though of necessity one nation had to be selected to which the Woman and her Seed were to belong, yet the promise was given to all nations and all claimed their share in it. The chosen _nation_ through whom all the others were to be blessed was Abraham's. Through him and his seed the great promise was to be fulfilled (Gen. XII. 3). The _time_ was hinted at in the patriarch Jacob's blessing to Juda: "The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till He come that is to be sent and He shall be the expectation of nations" (Gen. XLIX. 10). The house or _family_ which was to have the joy of realizing the promise was David's; the _place_ where the Woman was to bring forth her Seed was Bethlehem. Here "she that travaileth shall bring forth" and here "shall He come ... that is to be the Ruler in Israel" (Mich. V. 2-3). Each subsequent prophecy or promise developed and enlarged the original one given in Eden, but in that one the nations had all that they needed upon which to build up their hopes and nourish their desires--the Woman and her Seed, the "Child with His Mother"--and though the promise _belonged_ to the chosen nation (Rom. IX. 4), the first great promise had been handed down through the other nations and they knew enough to make them _desire_, enough to find the Light if they sought it as did the Wise Kings of the East.