Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 25, 2016 | Adore - What Child Is This

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December 25, 2016 | Adore - What Child Is This · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've given uh the gift of together by being here this morning.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to see you to you who are Christians.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Merry Christmas.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're to you who are Jewish, happy Hanukkah.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: To you who are atheists, good luck.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever you are, whatever you believe, it's great to have you here.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Have us together.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, one good thing about uh losing my voice this month is it gave me an excuse to ask my nephew Abe, he's the son of my sister Ruth and Kenny Maynor, to ask Abe to sort of tag team with me uh the message this weekend.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of fun.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We did four of these yesterday, and uh I was looking forward to doing one more with Abe.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Abe.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched him grow up and uh turn into a humble servant of God and a man of God.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Very uh I've heard from college students that he's a very anticipated speaker at Christian Challenge over here, but I'd never heard him speak myself.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's been a big year for you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see, you're in seminary.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh I'm at Midwestern Baptist Theological in Kansas City, but all my classes are online.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I'm taking classes with some familiar names, Derek Rowe.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I try to take classes with him.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've taken classes with Tim Collins, uh the Wynn brothers.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there's a there's a community of us here in Topeka that are trying to make this online seminary thing happen.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so far, it's pretty cool.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been married Since April.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: More than a year?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Less than a year since April.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is Corey here, by the way?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: She's not.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: She worked a 12-hour shift in the hospital last night.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So she's asleep.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she was here.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: She was here yesterday.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's great.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um Listen, we're gonna talk about uh we're in the Adore series.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, was it Corey who posted this on your Facebook page yesterday?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's my dog Luna.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh does Luna like you or she just went aheadrest, a chin rest?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just using me for my head.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just cute.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this adore series this month, what we've done is uh we decided to uh I decided to pick four traditional Christmas hymns or carols and go through them to help us understand the great theology, help us sing them uh more wisely and better.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we went through Oh come, all ye faithful, Heart the Herald last week, uh come O'Com Emanuel.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The first song, by the way, that the group did today was a pastiche of a sort of a Christmas stew of those first three.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning, What Child Is This?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: It asks uh what I consider the greatest question of Christmas, and maybe that's why the song is in a minor key.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's asking a question.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The song was written by a guy named William Dix uh back at the end of the Civil War, although he was in England and and but this was in the 1860s, and um and the tune is even older, 16th century England, or 15th century, some sometime Greensleeves, I think, is the name of the tune.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna go through the three stanzas of this uh because this question we ask to get to today, you've asked a lot of Christmas questions, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like where am I gonna go for Christmas, or who's coming to my house for Christmas, or what are we gonna eat for Christmas, or what shall I buy the kids for Christmas, or what am I gonna get for Christmas?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the greater questions of Christmas, of course, are the questions about what's the meaning of this thing?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: The questions that the world's been struggling, wrestling with for 2,000 years are the questions, I mean, what's the significance of that whole manger scene?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what child is this?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the question the song asks.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Would you take us through the first stanza?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't take long for us to get to this big question of Christmas.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the title, it's in the first few words.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: It says, What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping, whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and this question, who is this baby?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Who's this baby lying in this manger?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at history, this is a question that has shaped so much correct.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But when you look at history, this is this is a question that has shaped so much of history.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously it shapes how we view eternity.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at the religions of the world, and they they come to answer this question in a number of different ways.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: You look at Islam, and they believe that this baby Jesus is a great prophet, was a great prophet, uh, came from divine circumstances, but he goes alongside the great prophets of Islam.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: You look at uh Jewish tradition, and while they don't believe that he's the promised Messiah that they've been waiting for, they do view him as a great rabbi or teacher, a miracle worker.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You look at Buddhism or Hinduism, and while they have some individual views about who Jesus is, they both overall view him as a holy man, a significant man.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this it these answers don't quite reflect what we see in the Bible or or what we see in this song.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: You look at John chapter 1, it says, God is the Word, the Word is God, and the Word became flesh, talking of Jesus coming to earth.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: You look at John 3.16, a verse that we that most of us are very familiar with, and it says that God sent his only son to earth to die for us.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Titus 2, the great apostle Paul, he writes, This is our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is also simply and beautifully wrapped up in the in the second half of the first stanza when it says, it says, This, this is Christ the King.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting because Jesus himself encounters this question.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: In Matthew 16, verses 13 through 16, he asks his disciples, Who do they say I am?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Who do they say the Son of Man is?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of the Jews, the people that have come and heard him speak.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they they respond, the disciples respond and say, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah or Jeremiah, prophet of old.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus does something really, really interesting.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: He turns his question to the disciples and he says, Who do you say I am?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: What a powerful moment to have Jesus himself look at you and say, Who do you believe me to be?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just amazing.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and Peter, wonderful Peter, in one of his brighter moments, pipes up and says, You're the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this question, who is this baby that has shaped history, shapes eternity, the reason that we have this weekend to celebrate, today to celebrate, all comes down to this simple phrase, this, this is Christ the King.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first stanza.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it asks the greatest question of Christmas, answers by saying he's Christ the King.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the songwriter then moves to really a follow-up question, which is a fair question.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, why then, if he's Christ the King, why lies he in such mean estate, meaning such cheap, such poor, such lowly, such humble place, like a cave in a manger, where ox and ass are feeding.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's it's a weird question for us because we've sung Away in a manger so often.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: We would think it weird if if he had been born in a palace.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're so used to the manger thing, it that's not a question we would ask, though you have to understand it really is a question that people would ask today if a king's child was born in a manger, because you and I know that that kings and queens, when they bear children, there's a lot of hoopla.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not, I mean, I I grew up on a farm, and if I'd gone out to milk the cow at 6:30 in the morning and gone in as I would and get the coffee can with grain in it, and grabbed an armload of alfalfa and gone over to the stanchion before I let the cow in, I'd do this, and then to the feeding trough or the manger for the cow.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'd seen a baby lying there and a couple, you know, sleeping against the wall, I wouldn't have thought, must be a prince, must be a king, must be the son of God, the Messiah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I would have thought, homeless, you know.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and that's what you would think, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and I really, and I think that if you could get inside the mind of Joseph himself back then in the cave, I I think you would have found, I think he would say something like this to you.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think he'd say, poor Mary.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Her first baby.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she had to be both mother and midwife.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when the baby was finally safely delivered, I knew just enough to cut the cord.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I took my undershirt and I tore it into strips and wrapped the baby up snug.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I handed him back to Mary.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't seem like she could take her eyes off of his face.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when she finally, exhausted, fell asleep, and I was starting to doze off.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I took the baby and I looked around for a place to put him.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And finally I settled on the cattle trough because the only other place was the filth of the stable floor.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And leaning back against the cave wall.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I wondered what in the world was going on.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know what you're thinking.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're thinking what I used to think when I was a young man.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think that if just once an angel of God would appear to me, that all my doubts would be settled.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not if the angel comes to you in a dream.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Found myself wondering now if maybe the dream is what you call wish fulfillment, that maybe because of my love for Mary or my desire for everything to work out between us, that somehow I just imagined all this.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it was true that he's a king or the messiah, then how do you explain all this?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do you explain the cold and the exhaustion and the and the cave and the filthy floor?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do you explain me having to shoe animals away to lay him in that place, in that cattle trough?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the question that's legitimate and a fair question, I think, that they uh that the writer William Dix asks in stanza to.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and his answer is startling, it's brilliant, it's theological.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: He his answer goes like this: good Christian fear.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: For sinners here, the silent word is pleading.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is there's a silent message here in the manger.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's a message here for Christians and for sinners.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nail spears shall spears shall pierce him through the cross, be born for me, for you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's he saying?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying he's born in such mean estate because it's all of a peace with his whole life and his death.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna die in mean estate.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why is he gonna die like that?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's for me.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's for you.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Other songs we sing at Christmas, pick up that theme, thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown when you came to earth.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lowly birth and great humility.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: You came to set your people free, but with mocking scorn and crown of thorns, they bore thee to Calvary.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: He came from heaven, all the way down to the filth of a cave and a manger and mean estate for me, for you, which is why Philippians 2 is called a Christmas passage.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Though he was God, he didn't consider equality with God something to hold on to, cling to.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he gave all of that up and he came down to become a human, a slave, even to death on a cross.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So stanza 2 asks the question okay, if he's king, why lies he in meet such mean estate?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then it answers, same reason he'll die in mean estate.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: For me, for you.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which leads us to stanza three.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And William Dix has done a really beautiful job in writing this song and taking us through, walking us through some really powerful Christmas theology.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Who is this baby?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this baby here in these circumstances?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in this third verse, he kind of wraps it all up with what is our response?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: How does this truth impact us?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he does that by bringing forward some really amazing words of action.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So let me read this for you.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: It says, So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh, come rich and poor to own him.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: The king of kings salvation brings, let loving hearts enthrone him.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Raise, raise, the song on high.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: The virgin sings her lullaby.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Joy, joy, for Christ is born, the babe, the son of Mary.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what William Dix saw here was not just a simple, a simple truth, but something profound, something deep, something that just didn't impact thought and feeling, but that also impacted action, impacted the very heart of who we are.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he challenges us with these words.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: He says we should come to him, this baby.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't just wait passively, but take that step toward him.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: He says we should enthrone him and own him as our king.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Taking this baby, recognizing him as Lord and Savior, and saying, I'm ready to take that step toward him and own him as my Lord.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Then he challenges us to sing, to raise our song of adoration, which is what the sermon series has been all about.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Love and worship brought together.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And how out of all of this, just wrapping it all in joy, even though Christmas is stressful and difficult, recognizing that something so much bigger than ourselves has taken place.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: That this baby means we can have joy.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we're supposed to act.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the third stanza leaves us.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we're left at the end of the song.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: What child is this?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I would summarize just by saying it's clear that the most important action that you can take at Christmas, the most important act then clearly is not to buy the best gifts or to make a good meal or even to get along with weird Uncle Harold.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the most important act is to answer the most important question of Christmas.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an option that you must take some time in your life.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You simply must ask and answer this question for yourself.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: What child is this?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who was that baby?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: C.S.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis puts it this way: you must make your choice.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman, or something worse.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's not left that open to us.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: He did not intend to.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you answer that question.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you answer that, get the answer right to that question, then that changes your whole life.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes your death right, and it makes your afterlife, your eternal life, right as well.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Answer that question right.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most beautiful things about this song is not found in the words or the notes, while those are incredibly beautiful.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is found in the story that this song came from.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: William Dix, who wrote this in 1865, was not a Martin Luther or a Chris Tomlin, someone who wrote prolifically songs of worship.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: He was the manager of an insurance company.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just a normal guy.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And at 29 years old, still a young man, he became severely ill.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And while he was severely ill, he began to suffer from severe depression.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, but for me, that sounds an awful lot like what real life looks like.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Here you are, just the insurance of an or a manager of an insurance company, and life takes a swerve.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Things don't go the way you want them to.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then he, in this, in this moment where where life and joy were being sucked from him, he picked up the Bible.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he found this story about a baby who'd been sent for him because God couldn't leave him alone.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because God loved him so deeply.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a renewal that happened within him.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: A change.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: This baby, the story of this baby, changed everything for him.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And as we look at our celebrations through the day, as I look at the amount of food that I'm about to take in, I know that Christmas isn't always what we expect it to be.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't always meet expectations.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: But this baby changes everything.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: This baby changes how we struggle, how we fear, how we hurt.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It changes how our joy, our successes, our failures.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that God looked at us and saw us as so valuable that He wanted to have a relationship with us that was personal.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can almost hear William Dix scratch out the words right at the end of the song.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Joy, joy, for Christ is born.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: A reason to have joy.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: A reason to celebrate.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Found in a manger.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: God, I pray that you would bless this day, that this day we would take a moment to step back and reflect on the amazing gift you have given us.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: How much you love us.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: God, if we are traveling, I pray that you would keep us safe.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Bless our time with family, with friends, to make this a joyful day.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: All because you are Christ the King.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: God, we love you.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's in your name we pray.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.