Welcome to our next installment in our series on the Advent, as we look at the carols of Christmas. Today, we'll be looking at Matthew chapter 12, verses one, starting again, three, two, one. Welcome to our next installment in the series on the Advent, as we look at popular Christmas carols and the texts and the stories behind them. Today we'll be in Matthew 2, verses 1-12. I'll be reading from the English Standard Version, hear the word of the Lord. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written by the prophet, And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen, when it went before them, until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother. And they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. Thus ends the reading of God's holy word. Today we are looking at the hymn, What Child is This?, which is tied to probably, we could point to probably a variety of texts, but especially this text with the wise men coming to visit Jesus. Now the song, What Child is This?, is a beautiful and haunting Victorian Christmas carol. The tune of the song is very old, going back even before the time of Shakespeare. Shakespeare actually references the tune twice in a play, the tune by the name of Greensleeves, and he references it like we would reference, you know, a classic song that everyone knows. We actually don't know where the tune came from. It's so old and its background is so vague. We do know that it was a favorite tune for pubs and used in a great many drinking songs. Now the lyrics of the song come from a man by the name of William Chatterton Dix. William was the son of a surgeon and the manager of a marine insurance company in Glasgow, Scotland. Now insurance seems to have been just the means for William to pursue his true passion, which was poetry. Now this was fitting since his father had named him after a poet, Chatterton, that was his middle name, and actually his father had written a biography about Chatterton. And so with his father's encouragement, Williams studied poetry and classic literature on his own time, but he didn't get into hymn writing until he had experienced a nearly fatal illness that caused him to recommit himself to God and Christ. In 1865, William wrote the lyrics for this song under the title, The Manger Throne. In 1871, his words were paired by someone else with the Greensleeves tune. The hymn was then exported across the Atlantic over to America. who having just concluded the Civil War, received William's hymn gladly. People in the North and the South quickly began to sing What Child is This as part of their own Christmas tradition. Now the song itself is striking. The tune fits well with the words, which represent a kind of confused bystander who's intruded into this scene of beholding the Christ child on the night he was born, and even later in the time when the wise men come to visit with their gifts. It's a song that ponders the person of the Savior. And this bystander asks two questions in this song. First, what child is this? And secondly, why is he born in such humble circumstances? And as this hymn directs us, we are pressed to ask the same questions that are actually asked by many in the Gospels. Who is this Jesus? Herod wants to know. Pilate wants to know. The Jews, the Samaritans, the Gentiles want to know. Why has he come in this way? How is he able to do the things he does? And most importantly, what are we to do with him? And we're still answering these questions in our own time. And we actually find that in the way people answer these questions, they actually come up with many different versions of Jesus. That there's a liberal Jesus, there's the manger scene Jesus, the pale, you know, the ivory pale guy from Iowa. The political Jesus, the fairytale Jesus whose buddies with that great jolly elf in the North Pole. There's the Mormon Jesus, the Jehovah's Witness Jesus. There's almost no end to the varieties and iterations of Jesus. And some might, because of this, be tempted to throw up their hands and say, well, I guess we'll just never know. There's no way to know, but we can know. We only have to go to the word of God, back to the scriptures, and ask those same questions. What child is this? Why was he born in this way? And what are we to do with him today? So let's ask each of those questions of the text. First, what child is this? And the text tells us that he is, first of all, the king of kings. We're told by Matthew that wise men came from the east to Jerusalem. They are wise men, which means men of superior knowledge and ability. Traditionally, it's thought that there were three of the men, but that's only because they brought three kinds of gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Really, all we can say is that there were at least two of them. So it's been estimated as many as eight, or maybe twelve, but we just don't know. We just know it's plural, so there's more than one. It's also been suggested that these men were pagan astrologers from Babylonia, since they followed the star to Bethlehem. The idea that they are kings, think about the songs We Three Kings or the holiday Three Kings Day, the idea of the church tradition that these were kings, it's not exactly certain but it does arise from church tradition based on the interpretation of Isaiah 60 verse 3 and 6 that speaks of foreign kings coming to the light of the Lord in the time of the Messiah. As for the star they followed, you basically have to... it's not exactly, you know, clear. It's not scientifically, you know, written down for us exactly what this was, what this phenomena was. So it's either a natural alignment of planets that caused that extraordinary light, or a supernatural occurrence. Now, I personally lean towards the supernatural as the text describes the star moving and resting over the place where Jesus was. And so, and it should be noted that at this point, Mary and the child and Joseph are no longer in a manger, because that was just a temporary place, an emergency place for Mary to go into labor and have a child. But we need to remember here though, that what the star represents, it represents the divine guidance that God gives to these Gentiles to lead them to Jesus. The men clearly have also become familiar with Jewish writings, for they come to Herod inquiring about the king of the Jews. And when Herod looks into this, he finds out about the prophecy that we actually looked at before, when we looked at the hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem, we looked at the prophecy of the prophet Micah in chapter five, verses, well, specifically verse two, and in that prophecy that in Bethlehem, a king would come forth to shepherd the people of Israel. And so, But we ask, why all the fuss about this child? Why is everybody excited or fearful about this child? Well, because this child is the long prophesied king to come and rule his people. We see a big fuss being made by wise men and kings because here we have the king of kings come to earth. The king who wields his authority as we see him as an adult when he proclaims the gospel of the kingdom. And so he is the king of kings, but he is also the son of God. For the wonder of this child continued into his adulthood. Others asked, you know, who is this? As he commands and the winds and the rain obey him. As he casts out demons, as he heals the sick, as he heals the lame and the blind with a word. God himself actually answers the question of who is this for us. First, we're told exactly who Jesus is at his baptism in Matthew 3, verses 16 and 17. When Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water. Behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Secondly, we are told later on in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 17, verse five, we're told who Jesus is at his transfiguration, where his glory is revealed. His face shone and just the glory was all about him. And then Matthew 17, verse five, he was still speaking when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. This question was even answered by Peter, who was interrogated by Jesus himself, who asked Peter, who do you say I am? Because others say he is Elijah. Others say, some say he's a prophet. But who do you say I am, Peter? In Matthew 16, 16, Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus says, you're correct. And such knowledge is only given by the Father himself. And it is upon this confession of Christ as the Son of God that the church is built. And one more instance in the Gospels, this question of what child is this, who is this, is answered, is actually by the Roman centurion at Jesus' death. Matthew 27, 54. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the Son of God. As we consider the meaning of Christmas, and we meditate upon the child that is born to Mary, who bounces upon her knee at the visit of the wise men, we behold with wonder God incarnate, the Word made flesh, the Son of God, who is the long-promised King of Kings. What child is this? All these people who come up with different ideas of who Jesus is. He's not the greatest man who ever lived. He's not the greatest politician. He's not some ancient guru or some incredible life coach. This is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. The second question that William Chatterton Dix's hymn asks is, why is he born in this mean estate? Why is he born in such humble circumstances? And the general answer we can give is to make intercession for sinners. There's a reason the Savior is born in a barn and not a palace. He's accessible. He can be found by poor shepherds and by Gentile wise men. But more to the point, He is born in this way as part of His humiliation, the emptying of the Son of God for the sake of His people. For the Savior, the second person of the Trinity, the true King of heaven, shed His glory. He enshrouded it and took to His eternal being, a human nature, born under the law and the curse. born poor and despised, hunted by a mad king Herod, because Christ the Son of God is in Himself the divine intercession for sinners. He is our great High Priest, the Scriptures tell us, who is sympathetic to our suffering and misery, to our bondage under sin. He is our faithful High Priest, who intercedes on our behalf, As the scriptures say, He always lives to make intercession for us. Even as a child, we have the grace of God embodied in Him, the salvation of our souls in the Son of Mary. He comes, John says, the Word made flesh, light shining in the darkness, come to illuminate our souls. and make us children of the light. Therefore, to do this, the Savior embraces his humiliation, which includes his birth, his earthly poverty, his suffering, and ultimately his death, for this child was born to be crucified and to be raised from the dead. There is a tragic irony at the end of Jesus' ministry where the Jews and the Romans, notably Pontius Pilate, rightly identified Jesus as the King of the Jews, only they did not believe him. Instead, they crucified him. But this, the scriptures tell us, was the purpose of the Savior's coming, that he came to die for the sins of his people. This is foreshadowed by the murderous Herod, who thinks that he can outsmart everyone. He feigns his desire to worship the promised king and tells the wise men to report back to him on the location of the king when they find him. He says he too desires to worship the king. But when that fails, when Herod's schemes fail, his heart is revealed for what it is. And he has in the darkness and murderous Desire has all the male children under two years old slaughtered just to be sure. This is also why we believe that Jesus was around two years old when the wise men came. What Herod fails to do, others will succeed in. But not until the time of the Savior has come for him to die. It sounds a bit cliche, honestly, to be reminded that Jesus is the Savior at Christmas. But, honestly, we need to be reminded because we are tempted regularly and almost constantly to ascribe other meaning to Christmas. If we don't remind ourselves of the cross of Jesus Christ, then we might start thinking of Christmas as a time of innocence and goodness and cinnamon cookies because it has to do with the birth of the most perfect of all babies. But when angels sing of peace, the peace of God coming to earth, when the wise men functions as pictures of Gentiles coming to the light of the Lord, it all comes through the bloody death of the Savior. William Dix knew this when he wrote the second line of his song. Nail, spear shall pierce him through the cross he bore for me and for you. So it's not morbid to remember this Friday that this child was born to die for us. That's not morose. That's the gospel. It reminds us that Christmas is a time that speaks about darkness and light. It's not just light everywhere, it is light shining in the darkness. We're invited to remember our own suffering and misery under sin and the light of the grace of the Son of God as he breaks into the world and even into our own hearts and souls. And so let us beware of sanitizing Christmas and making it some sentimental cliche. Because Christmas is about salvation that comes through the person of the Savior. His birth will give way to His death and His resurrection. Christmas will give way to Easter. And we are reconciled to God by His work. What child is this? He is Christ the King, the Son of God, come to intercede for sinners by his life, death, and resurrection. We know what child this is. We know why he was born in this mean estate. But now we need to answer the third and final question. What are we to do with Jesus? Well, we know what the wicked do with Jesus. The wicked seek to destroy Jesus. When Herod heard that the king of the Jews was born, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem troubled with him. We've already mentioned the wrath of this wicked man that he visited upon the families of Bethlehem in his paranoid and desperate bid to preserve his power. But Herod is really just a stand-in for the devil. For the devil sought to destroy Jesus through the means of his agents, like Herod. but also he sought to destroy Jesus by twisting him, directly by tempting him in the wilderness. And when that didn't work, the devil sought to destroy him through execution on the cross. And there are still those today who would try to twist Jesus like the devil, trying to fashion a Jesus to their own liking, to the morals and values of the world that has fallen and corrupt. But the problem is that Jesus, that kind of Jesus, is not a true Jesus. It's a false Jesus. It's an idol. There is no politically progressive Jesus. There's no politically conservative Jesus. You cannot put a D or an R next to Jesus's name. There is no fairy godmother Jesus. There is no life coach Jesus. Now others just deny him. And they say, fine, I don't want Jesus. I don't need Jesus. He doesn't even exist. He's not real. But in their rebellion, they are simply affirming His divine rule. The Jews said He was a false prophet. The Romans said He was a political troublemaker. Who do you say He is? For if you believe the Scriptures, if you believe what is said about Him in the Word of God, then there is only one thing that we can do with Jesus, and that is to worship Him. We worship Him with praises like the angels. We talked about last week when we looked at Hark the Herald Angels Sing. But we worship Him also with gifts like the wise men. In verse 11, the wise men come and they see the child with Mary and they fall down and they worship Him. Then they give Him expensive gifts that express their worship and devotion. And so, William Dix writes in the third line of his hymn, so bring him incense, gold, and myrrh. Come peasant, king, to own him. The king of kings salvation brings. Let loving hearts enthrone him. What William wrote about in this song, what is demonstrated to us in this text about the wise men, is that those who truly seek after the Lord will find him. Herod couldn't find Jesus, though he desperately tried. And the devil couldn't destroy Jesus. But Gentile wise men found Jesus. Poor rejected shepherds found Jesus, because God led them to Him. Do you want to find Jesus? What do you want with Him if you find Him? Do you just want a divine idol to complement your lifestyle? Or do you want a Savior who saves you and remakes you? Who frees you from the bondage and misery of sin and pulls you out of the fire and sets you apart for eternal life with Him? A Savior who will rule over you both now and in the kingdom to come. You know, there's something scandalous yet fitting about What Child Is This being sung to a tune that was primarily known for drinking songs in pubs. It means the tune is one that is incredibly accessible to just about everybody. One that is easily remembered and not quickly forgotten. And that is the gospel. For the gospel is accessible to everyone. Everyone who wants Jesus. The gospel that confronts us with our sin and makes us answer the question, what child is this? Why was he born in such a way? And as we learn that he is Christ the King, the Son of God come to reconcile sinners to the Lord by the blood of his cross, we know what to do with him. We come to the manger throne. We worship him with our songs, with our gifts, and with our lives. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time to remember Jesus, to think upon the significance of his birth. We pray, Lord, that you would free us from the cultural trappings that want to give us another gospel, that twist the gospel message that is at the heart of Christmas. We pray, Lord, that in this time that we would remember why it was that Jesus was born, that He is the King of kings and the Son of God, that He is Christ, the Messiah, who has come to die and to rise again for His people, come to die for our sin, to die and to be raised for our justification in our eternal life. And so Lord, we pray that we would seek Jesus. And your word says that if we seek him in faith, we will find him and we will be received by him. And that we will even receive Christ in our hearts by your spirit. And so Father, we pray that you would bless us now. that we would entrust ourselves to Jesus our Savior, and we would place our hope always in Him. We pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.