Bob Kauflin: This is meant to fill us with wonder and awe and amazement, not only at Christmas, but all the time.
David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church and encourage those who plan, lead, and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week.
DZ: Hello, welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
BK: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: It is great to be back together again.
BK: It is.
DZ: On a very special episode.
BK: It is a special episode. I wore my green and red shirt because of the specialness of the episode.
DZ: Why is it so special? Why did you wear green and red?
BK: We are talking about what songs should we sing at Christmas.
DZ: Love that topic.
BK: Thank you.
DZ: We really love that topic.
BK: We kind of decided it together…
DZ: Because we have multiple Christmas albums, the most recent being, “Heaven Has Come”.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Which if you’re listening to this podcast, you might be aware of that album. You might not be aware of that and you should listen to it, but we love Christmas music.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: The carols.
BK: Don’t forget “Prepare Him Room”. We have that album too.
DZ: We do. And then what else do we have?
BK: “Savior”, was another album we did many years ago.
DZ: Yep, that’s right.
BK: So basically just sing songs from those albums.
[laughter]
DZ: That’s it, that’s all you need to do.
BK: Just kidding. There’s always this dilemma every year for those who lead the songs, pick the songs, choose the songs, how to figure this out. Like what should we do? So you’ve got the traditional carols. This is why we’re doing this topic. I mean, for some people the answer would be, “What songs should we sing at Christmas?” Well, Christmas Carols, duh. Yes, this is true. You’ve got those, but then you’ve got new songs being written every year. Like we’ve been… We write new songs every five years in tribute to that repertoire. You have new versions of songs coming out.
DZ: Tons.
BK: So I was just looking at a website the other day of songs to sing at Christmas and they would list a song and they’d have like five versions of it. So you could do any of those versions.
DZ: Oh, totally. And then choruses that are added too, yeah.
BK: Choruses added, and sometimes they change the melodies slightly and so do we do those or not? And then what about worship songs? Do you like just cut your worship songs out from just… No. Only… I mean, I have people always, always who email me around Thanksgiving and like if I… The Sunday after Thanksgiving, if I don’t do a Christmas song.
[laughter]
BK: Or Advent song, it’s like, “When are we gonna start doing Christmas songs?”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And I’m just aware. So I start thinking about it like mid-November, like now.
[laughter]
BK: When do you start? So when do you start singing ’em? And then, yeah. So those are the kinds of questions that I think we have to deal with.
DZ: Yeah. And I think when we were talking about this before we got to the podcast, we were just saying, I think there’s a temptation to just, we should pick these songs because they’re nostalgic or because they’ve been around forever and we’re just used to singing them. So really a heart for song leaders and are we picking the best songs?
BK: Yes. Which…
DZ: How do we think through it?
BK: Which to be clear, what we have to offer people every year. And there are a lot of guests at Christmas.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Typically, especially a Christmas Eve service or some service near Christmas, and we’re talking about Sunday services. We’re not talking about big pageants.
DZ: Your Christmas pageants.
BK: Yeah. Cantatas or yeah, that kinda things. Just on Sunday mornings, what are we singing? So you’ll have guests who come and what do we want to move them with? What do we… They’re coming because, well, it’s just something you do. You have Christmas and Easter Christians, they just… That’s the day they come. And we have to ask the question, what do we wanna move them with? Well, there’s nothing greater to move them with than the story of the gospel. The fact that… And we never tire of talking about this on the podcast, and certainly we never want to tire of talking about this or singing about it in our church gatherings.
DZ: Yep.
BK: Jesus, the son of God who has been worshiped by angels from before any of us existed, who has existed from eternity with the Father and the Spirit has come to take on our flesh, come into time, enter the world he created through the birth canal of a woman he created to be born as a baby incarnate. It’s just, it defies the imagination that God would do this. And we have this season when we can celebrate this. The whole world seems to be celebrating it. “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one of being with the Father.” That’s the Nicene Creed.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Athanasius, “The incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial word of God entered our world. In one sense indeed, he was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without him who, while ever abiding in union with a father, yet fills all things that are, But now he entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us.”
DZ: Mercy.
BK: It’s just… Here’s John Calvin, “The son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven, was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the virgin’s womb to live on the earth and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning.” So, it’s an incredible story.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And Colossians 3:16, another scripture we often quote says, “We’re to let the word of Christ dwell on us richly as we sing. So as we think about songs, we’re gonna be centering in on the songs that help us do that.
DZ: Yeah, right.
BK: And I’m not sure we’re always thinking that way.
DZ: Yeah. Well, and to take that one step further, I don’t think we’re thinking always clearly about the Advent event, but I also think beyond that, I mean, it’s not just, especially at Christmas time, you can communicate the fact that it’s not that he just came as a baby.
BK: Yes.
DZ: It’s that he grew up, lived a perfect life and died for our sins.
BK: Yes. Yes. The whole story.
DZ: And for your guests, for people who don’t know the full story, what a wonderful opportunity to take on a Sunday morning?
BK: Yes.
DZ: During this Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s season to say, “This is the Savior of the world.”
BK: Yes. Yes. And to make that as clear as possible.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So you mentioned Advent. This is something that I think I’ve grown an appreciation and others have had an awareness of this for years. I grew up as Catholic, and so the Advent season was very much of a part of my growing up. We lit the Advent candles and did all the stuff, but it didn’t really mean a lot to me. But I think as the church, whether you have a formal liturgy, follow the church calendar, you know, whatever, as the church, we have the opportunity, because Christmas is this universally celebrated holiday, whether it’s tied to a religious tradition or not, we have the opportunity to talk about what happened before Jesus came. So it’s not… It is what happened after he came, but it’s also what happened before he came. God created Adam and Eve in this perfect environment. We rebelled against him. We said we can do this on our own. So God had to do something to reconcile us to himself, to forgive our rebellion. And so Christmas is the story of that. But for thousands of years, they were waiting. They’re just waiting.
DZ: Waiting for the promise.
BK: And God sent prophets to say, “I’m going to send a Messiah.” I’m going to send a deliverer. I’m going to fix this. Well, even now we’re waiting. So they were waiting for the Messiah to come. We’re waiting for the Messiah to come back. Because even though Jesus has come, we live in this age or the already, not yet. The Spirit has broken in to this world. The kingdom has broken in, the new heavens the new earth, in some sense have broken in to this era. Jesus reigns and yet Satan still has some authority, some activity in the world, which God is ruler over. But there’s brokenness, there’s rebellion, there’s lostness, there’s confusion, there’s chaos. Things aren’t right. There’s sickness, there’s disease, there’s war. And so we can identify with this feeling of, Oh Lord, we long for you to come again. So, I think the first place to think about songs for Christmas is to think about songs of preparation.
BK: Songs that talk about, “Lord, we long for you to come.” So one of the most obvious is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” which we took a few years ago and reworded. It was an old tune which refers to the different names for Christ, Emmanuel, Rod of Jesse, Dayspring, Key of David, Desire of Nations, Wisdom, Lord of might. I mean, I sang this growing up. I’m not sure everybody identifies with all those terms. We can teach on it and it’s a wonderful teaching tool. But a few years ago, we reworked it, at least the lyrics and talked about what Jesus did as our prophet, priest and king. And so we sing that. You can sing the old version, but it’s saying, “Lord, we want you to come. And we want you to do these things.” “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”, Charles Wesley, great song to sing. We have another song, “Shine into Our Night” which is…
DZ: Yeah. People wouldn’t consider that Advent off the bat.
BK: No. But it is. It’s, “We are not what we should be, our hearts are bent, our eyes are dim. We’ve seen your glory Lord, and looked away.” Yeah, I can’t remember the words at this moment, but yeah, it talks about our brokenness and our lostness and how we need Jesus to shine into our night. Our hearts are bent, our eyes are dim, our finest works are stained with sin, emptiness has shadowed all our ways. Jesus Christ, shine into our night. Drive our dark away till your glory fills our eyes. Jesus Christ, shine into our night. Bind us to your cross where we find life.” That’s a great song to sing in preparation for celebrating the birth of Christ and it’s a great song to sing for anticipating his return. And then another song I think of is “O Come, All You Unfaithful”, which was on the “Heaven Has Come” album. And in that one we’re just making it clear why we need a savior.
DZ: Yeah, that song should be sung all year round.
BK: Well, it can be sung all year round. “O, come all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable, come know you are not alone.” This would be a great song to sing early in the season because frequently as people are approaching the season, you make the turn at Thanksgiving, at least in America we do, and for a lot of people it’s, “Oh boy, I’m not looking forward to this.”
DZ: It’s a hard season for a lot of people.
BK: Well, if, if someone you love has died recently or that year or your life is just a mess at the moment and you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to be a part of this.”
DZ: Yeah. Christ is born for them.
BK: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Exactly right.
DZ: No, he is born for you. He came to save you.
BK: That’s why he came. So even in the midst of our darkness and confusion and sin, we can rejoice that a Savior has come. And so we anticipate this day we celebrate his birth, but we can anticipate the fact that we live on the other side of that birth, and he really was born for us. So I think that could be a helpful song as well. “Come all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable, know you’re not alone, come barren and waiting ones, weary of praying, come see what your God has done.” It’s like, don’t just look to what you want him to do, look at what he’s already done. Christ was born for you. And then the bridge focuses in on the heart of the gospel. “He’s the lamb who was given, slain for our pardon in our place. His promise is peace for those who believe.” And then so come though you have nothing, come, he is the offering.” So that’s a great song to sing, [chuckle] when people are wondering, “How am I gonna enter in this season with joy?”
DZ: Excellent.
BK: So, alright, let’s talk about Christmas carols.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: One thing that has been odd to discover over the years, I remember when I first realized that, “Okay, the songs are I’m leading at Christmas, they really should tell the gospel story.” And I was struck by how many songs we sang that didn’t really do a great job of that. Not that they’re wrong to sing, but they don’t fully tell the story. And if we have all these guests coming, why wouldn’t we want songs to tell the story? So songs like “Silent Night”, which is a beautiful song, but doesn’t really go into a lot of detail about what’s happening. In fact, a lot of the songs seem to tell a story, but not the story of why Jesus came.
DZ: Yeah. And even a song like “Silent Night”, I think it’s… Sometimes it feels like, “Well, that’s just a given, we sing that song.”
BK: Yeah, yes, right. That’s right.
DZ: “That’s what’re supposed to sing.”
BK: And you hold the candles and all that.
[laughter]
DZ: Yeah. And you totally, absolutely can. I think…
BK: And it’s a beautiful moment.
DZ: Yeah. I do think it is. But I think you nailed it on the head of, it is telling a piece of the story.
BK: Yes.
DZ: But I do think that… I think there’s songs that give a wider sort of 10,000 feet out perspective of what happened that night.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Not only what happened in that night, but its implications.
BK: What it means.
DZ: What it means beyond just that silent night, which is so… I don’t know if it’s irony, but it wasn’t silent.
BK: It probably wasn’t silent.
[laughter]
DZ: It’s probably very chaotic and smelly, a lot of yelling.
BK: “Oh, Jesus, don’t say anything, silent night.” I mean, another one I love to sing, “Angels We Have Heard on High”. When I started doing that on Sunday mornings as a leader, I realized this really doesn’t say a ton. “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” which my daughter, Chelsea always thought was singing about her. “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” She thought, “This is my song.”
DZ: “This is my song.”
BK: But, no, it’s not.
DZ: Well, if you have a daughter named Chelsea, go for it.
BK: If you do. But it just tells… Again, it just tells the story kind of from an external perspective. “Angels, we’ve heard on high, sweetly singing and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains. Shepherds, why are you so happy, why the joyous strains prolong, what inspired your heavenly song. Come to Bethlehem and see, him whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ the Lord, the newborn King.” Again, this song can really be great to sing, but we’ve got to be aware that’s not enabling the word of Christ to dwell in people richly. That’s just saying, “Hey, look at how all these people have responded to this birth, maybe we should tell them why the birth is so important.”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, that’s got some great lines, but again, not really clear. You said you heard “Drummer Boy” sung on Sunday.
DZ: Yeah, Drummer… What? Yeah.
BK: That’s a really interesting one.
DZ: “Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum.”
BK: And did the congregation sing “pa rum pum pum pum”?
DZ: I don’t know if the… I think the congregation was watching us…
BK: Oh, okay. Okay.
DZ: Play. And yeah, again that’s one of those songs where if you take a step back, you just think, “I can’t imagine a drum in a stable.”
BK: Well, it wasn’t a quiet night so.
[laughter]
DZ: Let’s just add some rock and roll to the already chaotic scene. Picture Mary going, “Hey, stop. [laughter] I know that this is the one gift you have to bring, you need to stop playing.”
BK: Mary nodded, “If you so much as touch that drum, I’m gonna wring your neck.” Jesus just went to sleep.”
DZ: Any moms know, any husbands, any dads know, too. Yeah.
BK: What I wanna point out about that song is, it really kind of has at least something that undermines the gospel in it.
[laughter]
DZ: At its best.
BK: At its best. “The ox and lamb kept time, I played my drum for him, I played my best for him, then he smiled at me.” The sentiment is, of course…
DZ: “I have nothing to bring, this is all I got.”
BK: Yes. And so I want… I give this to you. But the Gospel says, “Even our best offerings required the death of the son of God to be presentable to God, because all our works are stained with sin.” And so it kind of… It plays into that, “Yeah, if I’m just sincere and give my best, then God will be pleased with that.”
DZ: Yeah. I bring my best on Sundays when I play.
BK: Yeah, it’s not enough.
DZ: You don’t say… You say it’s not enough to me.
BK: I never say it’s enough.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: “David, more, more, more.” [laughter] Okay. So it’s not wrong to sing those songs and actually full disclosure, we recorded…
DZ: Except maybe “Drummer Boy”.
BK: We recorded… That’s true. We recorded this podcast previously and we listened to it and thought about “Yeah. It’s too negative, and we don’t want it to… ” So this is a second podcast we’re doing on this.
DZ: We wanna be clear. Yeah, that we’re just trying to be clear, yeah, yeah.
BK: We love all Christmas carols. But here’s the deal. You have a limited amount of time on Sunday morning.
DZ: Bingo.
BK: And there’s just… I mean, it’s amazing. You have four or five weeks, four or five Sundays to pick the songs. That’s if you do five Sundays during that time, five songs each Sunday, that’s like 20-25 songs.
DZ: Yeah. That’s…
BK: That’s not very many songs.
DZ: And there’s so many songs.
BK: Yeah. That actually tell the story better.
DZ: Yes, yes, yes.
BK: So we’re gonna give you some ideas.
DZ: Yeah. We’re not just gonna leave you hanging.
BK: No, we would not do that. [laughter] So “Come All Ye Faithful”, we’ve talked about, “O Come, All You Unfaithful,” but “Come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,” which is a great song to do. “Come let us adore him, sing choirs of angels,” those kinds of things. I’m looking for the words that are really good. Yeah. “True God from True God, light from light eternal, born of a virgin to earth he comes, the only begotten son of the Father.” We did a version of this where we… “Humbly he enters the virgin’s womb.” And then some other words to that. [laughter] So “Come All Ye Faithful”, is a great song. What are some other ones, David?
DZ: Well, “Joy to the World”.
BK: Great. “No more let sin or sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Now you have to identify that curse. It’s the curse that we inherited through Adam and through our own sinful deeds. But yeah, you can make a lot out of that.
DZ: Totally.
BK: “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”. Just a really clear… Well, it just talks about the new birth, God and peace… It’s just right out the gate. “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconcile,” like that had to happen. It talks about the angels proclaiming Christ is born, “Hail the son of righteousness. Mild, he lays his glory by,” there’s the incarnation.
DZ: I love that.
BK: “Born that man no more may die, born to give them second birth.” I mean, you’re talking about the second birth, you need to be born again.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: It’s all there.
DZ: That song does do work. It’s very good.
BK: Well, it’s Charles Wesley and he was wanting to teach through the songs he wrote. “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”. “What Child Is This?” is a great song, actually.
DZ: Well, yeah. I think of the second verse, “So bring him incense, gold and myrrh, come peasant, king to own him. The King of kings salvation brings,” sorry.
BK: Yes, Yes.
DZ: “Let loving hearts enthrone him.” This is Christ the King.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And in one version, it’s not in all the versions, “Nails, spears shall pierce him through, the cross be born for me, for you.”
DZ: For you. Yeah.
BK: I’m not sure. I don’t see that in the hymnals, so that may be a verse that was added, but that’s what we wanna be singing about. Now, sometimes the carols have great tunes, familiar tunes, good words, not great words necessarily.
DZ: Yeah. Well, we did a whole podcast about this probably last year with Lacy talking about “The First Noel”.
BK: Okay. Okay.
DZ: And how it’s a great song and we wanted a little bit more clarity and adding a chorus to that as well. And so we did an arrangement of “The First Noel”.
BK: Which enables the word of Christ to dwell in people richly. It starts off “The First Noel, earth and heaven embraced, as a virgin behold a newborn babe, from realms on high to a manger on earth, salvation that dawned in lowly birth.” Second verse, “Our sins he bore yet his name we despised.”
DZ: Yes love this.
BK: “And the hands that brought healing were pierced as he died.”
[chuckle]
BK: And then it moves us on to the resurrection. “The Author of Life, there lifeless he lay, as the grave cast its shadow and darkness reigned.” One of my favorites that has been redone is, “O Holy Night”, which was redone by a friend Kevin Hart who’s actually a NASA scientist. He did some research… “O Holy Night”, it’s a beautiful song. There’s so many great versions of it. The translation we sing, typically sung, is not a great translation of the original. So Kevin did some research on it. And the original French words were this, a literal translation, “Midnight Christians, it is the solemn hour when God as man descended unto us to erase the stain of original sin and to end the wrath of his father.”
DZ: Wow.
BK: It’s a little bit different. [laughter] “The entire world thrills with hope on this night that gives it a Savior. People kneel down, wait for deliverance.”
DZ: Wow.
BK: So he thought… “The Redeemer’s broken every bond.” And here it’s where we get that line about the slave is your brother. “The earth is free and Heaven is open. He sees a brother where there was only a slave. Love unites those that iron had chained,” beautiful.
DZ: Wow.
BK: “Who will tell him of our gratitude, for all of us he is born, he suffers and dies. People stand up! Sing of your deliverance.” So he felt that the melody and the poetic longing content of the verse, the original verse, deserved companion verses that were better, that better explain the thrill of hope. So he did a version… You take the original verse, first verse, and then he just filled it out in the second and third verses.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Which when we’ve led this on Sunday mornings or in different events, it’s so thrilling. Because you are singing the gospel to this melody that just soars. “Humbly he lay, creator come as creature. Born on the floor of a hay-scattered stall. True Son of God, yet bearing human feature. He entered earth to reverse Adam’s fall. In towering grace,” I love this, “He laid aside his glory, and in our place, was sacrificed for sin.”
DZ: Amen.
BK: “Fall on your knees! O hear the gospel story! O night divine when Christ was born.”
DZ: Wow. So… Yeah, go ahead.
BK: I was gonna say, the advantage of those is that everybody knows the tune.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And you’re just giving them different words that enable the word of Christ to dwell in them richly.
DZ: Yes. And that was on “Prepare Him Room”?
BK: That what… Yes.
DZ: Did you record… You recorded that on “Prepare Him Room”?
BK: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the version recorded there was a little bit of kind of a folksy acoustic version. You can sing it with the original feel, but use those lyrics.
DZ: Yeah. ‘Cause I was gonna say, when we do it at a Prepare Him Room Christmas event that we do, it’s very majestic.
BK: Yes.
DZ: And it’s not really folksy and it really puts the perspective on those verses that you just quoted. So good.
BK: “Away in a Manger”, we rewrote that as well on “Heaven Has Come”, changed the melody for that. Again, beautiful tune, but we thought, “Well, let’s try this a little different.” So those are some songs you can consider. But also we wanna talk about all year round Christmas songs.
DZ: Yes. This is my favorite category.
BK: Okay, well why don’t you talk about it?
DZ: Well, like I said before with a song like, “O Come, All You Unfaithful”, you’d think, “Well, I don’t know if I could do that.”
BK: Yeah. “Christ is born. Christ is born. ”
DZ: But yes, you can.
BK: Yeah. You can.
DZ: Because of the verses.
BK: The incarnation is true all year round.
DZ: Yes. I mean, you could repeat that. The incarnation is true all year round. What an amazing mystery? It’s not just four weeks.
BK: Yes.
DZ: We can bring… And so there are songs that have served us so well that do that. One of them that I think is “Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery”.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Matt Papa and Matt Boswell.
BK: Which I don’t know if they wrote that as a Christmas song.
DZ: I don’t think they set out to.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: But I wouldn’t just call this a Christmas song but the verses “Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery”, “In the dawning of the King, he the theme of heaven’s praises, robed in frail humanity.”
BK: That’s Christmas right there.
DZ: “In our longing, in our darkness, now the light of life… ”
BK: That’s advent right there.
DZ: “Has come. Look to Christ who condescended, took on flesh to ransom us.” Yeah. But you can… But then you go on and the true and better Adam.
BK: Yes. Yes.
DZ: You’re continuing that thought. And then…
BK: Tell the story.
DZ: Telling the story. Yeah. Verse three, “See the price of our redemption, the Father’s plan unfold, bringing many sons to glory, grace unmeasured, love untold! And then verse four is, we have a hope now.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Because he came, because he died, because he rose, we have hope.
BK: This is what this birth means.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So there are also… That’s a song I don’t think was written for Christmas. Some are written for Christmas and you can still do all year round. So when we did, “He Who Is Mighty” for the “Prepare him Room” album, we thought, “Well, this is a great Christmas album. It’s kind of drawn from the Magnificat and… ” But we started doing it all year around. It has one part of it that’s kind of Isaiah 9. It is from Isaiah 9, “Unto us a son is given, unto us a child is born,” the bridge, “now my soul magnifies the Lord. I rejoice in the God who saves.” That’s obviously the Magnificat, but the verses…
DZ: No.
BK: They’re just anytime.
DZ: Yes.
BK: “Oh the mercy our God has shown to those who sit in death’s shadow, the son on high pierced the night, born was the Cornerstone, unto us a son is given, unto us a child is born. He who is mighty has done a great thing.” And here’s I think a brilliant example of just saying a whole lot in a little bit of space, “Taken on flesh, conquered death’s sting, shattered the darkness and lifted our shame. Holy is his name.”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So certainly it works both for those who are visiting your church and those who are part of the church. We just need to get what this story means more into our lives, more into our hearts, more into our thoughts. And so that’s why we sing songs like that. “Who Is This?”, a song you wrote with Nate Stiff.
DZ: Yep. I mean, basically setting to write that is, the verses, “He was born, he lived a perfect life.” Verse 2, verse 3, “He died in our place.” Verse 4, “He rose from the grave and now he’s… He is Jesus God triumphant, risen to the Father’s side. We will bow in reverence at the name of Jesus Christ.” We wanted to tell the whole picture.
BK: Yeah, it’s so good.
DZ: And we put it on “Heaven Has Come” but we want it to be a song that can be sung all year round. And then if you wanna do the tag, you don’t have to. But the tag of the song is, “O come let us adore him.” That’s our response. We’re bowing before him for what he’s done.
BK: Yes. Good. “In Christ Alone” is a Christmas song. [chuckle] You may not have known this.
DZ: Right.
BK: Verse 2, “In Christ alone, who took on flesh, fullness of God in helpless babe, this gift of love and righteousness, scorned by the ones he came to save.
DZ: Helpless babe, wait a second. We can only sing that in December.
BK: Helpless babe. Helpless babe. I dunno. Yeah. So we would encourage you to look for songs that you maybe sing throughout the year that talk about this, the glory of the incarnation and how this is meant to fill us with wonder and awe and amazement, not only at Christmas, but all the time. And Christmas is just the ideal time to highlight that, and the reason we wanna do this podcast is so often we pull away from it. We actually sing songs that don’t really talk about it much.
DZ: Right.
BK: And so I wanna read this quote from “The Valley of Vision” before we close. This is the mystery of the incarnation. “The Valley of Vision” is a Puritan prayers collection put together by Arthur Bennett. “Here in his wisdom when I was undone with no will to return to him and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as a man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf to work out a perfect righteousness for me.” Or as Paul said it, Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
DZ: Amen.
BK: What a glorious truth? What a glorious reality? So whatever you sing at Christmas in your Sunday services, we want to encourage you to be thoughtful, be biblical, be Christ exalting, and help people understand that the greatest thing about Christmas is not the feelings, the sentimental feelings that we always feel, but the truth, the reality of the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh to save us from our sins.
DZ: Amen.
BK: May that truth fill your Sunday gatherings this Christmas.
DZ: Yes. Amen.
BK: Thanks for joining us.
Bob Kauflin: This is meant to fill us with wonder and awe and amazement, not only at Christmas, but all the time.
David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church and encourage those who plan, lead, and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week.
DZ: Hello, welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
BK: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: It is great to be back together again.
BK: It is.
DZ: On a very special episode.
BK: It is a special episode. I wore my green and red shirt because of the specialness of the episode.
DZ: Why is it so special? Why did you wear green and red?
BK: We are talking about what songs should we sing at Christmas.
DZ: Love that topic.
BK: Thank you.
DZ: We really love that topic.
BK: We kind of decided it together…
DZ: Because we have multiple Christmas albums, the most recent being, “Heaven Has Come”.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Which if you’re listening to this podcast, you might be aware of that album. You might not be aware of that and you should listen to it, but we love Christmas music.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: The carols.
BK: Don’t forget “Prepare Him Room”. We have that album too.
DZ: We do. And then what else do we have?
BK: “Savior”, was another album we did many years ago.
DZ: Yep, that’s right.
BK: So basically just sing songs from those albums.
[laughter]
DZ: That’s it, that’s all you need to do.
BK: Just kidding. There’s always this dilemma every year for those who lead the songs, pick the songs, choose the songs, how to figure this out. Like what should we do? So you’ve got the traditional carols. This is why we’re doing this topic. I mean, for some people the answer would be, “What songs should we sing at Christmas?” Well, Christmas Carols, duh. Yes, this is true. You’ve got those, but then you’ve got new songs being written every year. Like we’ve been… We write new songs every five years in tribute to that repertoire. You have new versions of songs coming out.
DZ: Tons.
BK: So I was just looking at a website the other day of songs to sing at Christmas and they would list a song and they’d have like five versions of it. So you could do any of those versions.
DZ: Oh, totally. And then choruses that are added too, yeah.
BK: Choruses added, and sometimes they change the melodies slightly and so do we do those or not? And then what about worship songs? Do you like just cut your worship songs out from just… No. Only… I mean, I have people always, always who email me around Thanksgiving and like if I… The Sunday after Thanksgiving, if I don’t do a Christmas song.
[laughter]
BK: Or Advent song, it’s like, “When are we gonna start doing Christmas songs?”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And I’m just aware. So I start thinking about it like mid-November, like now.
[laughter]
BK: When do you start? So when do you start singing ’em? And then, yeah. So those are the kinds of questions that I think we have to deal with.
DZ: Yeah. And I think when we were talking about this before we got to the podcast, we were just saying, I think there’s a temptation to just, we should pick these songs because they’re nostalgic or because they’ve been around forever and we’re just used to singing them. So really a heart for song leaders and are we picking the best songs?
BK: Yes. Which…
DZ: How do we think through it?
BK: Which to be clear, what we have to offer people every year. And there are a lot of guests at Christmas.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Typically, especially a Christmas Eve service or some service near Christmas, and we’re talking about Sunday services. We’re not talking about big pageants.
DZ: Your Christmas pageants.
BK: Yeah. Cantatas or yeah, that kinda things. Just on Sunday mornings, what are we singing? So you’ll have guests who come and what do we want to move them with? What do we… They’re coming because, well, it’s just something you do. You have Christmas and Easter Christians, they just… That’s the day they come. And we have to ask the question, what do we wanna move them with? Well, there’s nothing greater to move them with than the story of the gospel. The fact that… And we never tire of talking about this on the podcast, and certainly we never want to tire of talking about this or singing about it in our church gatherings.
DZ: Yep.
BK: Jesus, the son of God who has been worshiped by angels from before any of us existed, who has existed from eternity with the Father and the Spirit has come to take on our flesh, come into time, enter the world he created through the birth canal of a woman he created to be born as a baby incarnate. It’s just, it defies the imagination that God would do this. And we have this season when we can celebrate this. The whole world seems to be celebrating it. “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one of being with the Father.” That’s the Nicene Creed.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Athanasius, “The incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial word of God entered our world. In one sense indeed, he was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without him who, while ever abiding in union with a father, yet fills all things that are, But now he entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us.”
DZ: Mercy.
BK: It’s just… Here’s John Calvin, “The son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven, was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the virgin’s womb to live on the earth and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning.” So, it’s an incredible story.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And Colossians 3:16, another scripture we often quote says, “We’re to let the word of Christ dwell on us richly as we sing. So as we think about songs, we’re gonna be centering in on the songs that help us do that.
DZ: Yeah, right.
BK: And I’m not sure we’re always thinking that way.
DZ: Yeah. Well, and to take that one step further, I don’t think we’re thinking always clearly about the Advent event, but I also think beyond that, I mean, it’s not just, especially at Christmas time, you can communicate the fact that it’s not that he just came as a baby.
BK: Yes.
DZ: It’s that he grew up, lived a perfect life and died for our sins.
BK: Yes. Yes. The whole story.
DZ: And for your guests, for people who don’t know the full story, what a wonderful opportunity to take on a Sunday morning?
BK: Yes.
DZ: During this Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s season to say, “This is the Savior of the world.”
BK: Yes. Yes. And to make that as clear as possible.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So you mentioned Advent. This is something that I think I’ve grown an appreciation and others have had an awareness of this for years. I grew up as Catholic, and so the Advent season was very much of a part of my growing up. We lit the Advent candles and did all the stuff, but it didn’t really mean a lot to me. But I think as the church, whether you have a formal liturgy, follow the church calendar, you know, whatever, as the church, we have the opportunity, because Christmas is this universally celebrated holiday, whether it’s tied to a religious tradition or not, we have the opportunity to talk about what happened before Jesus came. So it’s not… It is what happened after he came, but it’s also what happened before he came. God created Adam and Eve in this perfect environment. We rebelled against him. We said we can do this on our own. So God had to do something to reconcile us to himself, to forgive our rebellion. And so Christmas is the story of that. But for thousands of years, they were waiting. They’re just waiting.
DZ: Waiting for the promise.
BK: And God sent prophets to say, “I’m going to send a Messiah.” I’m going to send a deliverer. I’m going to fix this. Well, even now we’re waiting. So they were waiting for the Messiah to come. We’re waiting for the Messiah to come back. Because even though Jesus has come, we live in this age or the already, not yet. The Spirit has broken in to this world. The kingdom has broken in, the new heavens the new earth, in some sense have broken in to this era. Jesus reigns and yet Satan still has some authority, some activity in the world, which God is ruler over. But there’s brokenness, there’s rebellion, there’s lostness, there’s confusion, there’s chaos. Things aren’t right. There’s sickness, there’s disease, there’s war. And so we can identify with this feeling of, Oh Lord, we long for you to come again. So, I think the first place to think about songs for Christmas is to think about songs of preparation.
BK: Songs that talk about, “Lord, we long for you to come.” So one of the most obvious is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” which we took a few years ago and reworded. It was an old tune which refers to the different names for Christ, Emmanuel, Rod of Jesse, Dayspring, Key of David, Desire of Nations, Wisdom, Lord of might. I mean, I sang this growing up. I’m not sure everybody identifies with all those terms. We can teach on it and it’s a wonderful teaching tool. But a few years ago, we reworked it, at least the lyrics and talked about what Jesus did as our prophet, priest and king. And so we sing that. You can sing the old version, but it’s saying, “Lord, we want you to come. And we want you to do these things.” “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”, Charles Wesley, great song to sing. We have another song, “Shine into Our Night” which is…
DZ: Yeah. People wouldn’t consider that Advent off the bat.
BK: No. But it is. It’s, “We are not what we should be, our hearts are bent, our eyes are dim. We’ve seen your glory Lord, and looked away.” Yeah, I can’t remember the words at this moment, but yeah, it talks about our brokenness and our lostness and how we need Jesus to shine into our night. Our hearts are bent, our eyes are dim, our finest works are stained with sin, emptiness has shadowed all our ways. Jesus Christ, shine into our night. Drive our dark away till your glory fills our eyes. Jesus Christ, shine into our night. Bind us to your cross where we find life.” That’s a great song to sing in preparation for celebrating the birth of Christ and it’s a great song to sing for anticipating his return. And then another song I think of is “O Come, All You Unfaithful”, which was on the “Heaven Has Come” album. And in that one we’re just making it clear why we need a savior.
DZ: Yeah, that song should be sung all year round.
BK: Well, it can be sung all year round. “O, come all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable, come know you are not alone.” This would be a great song to sing early in the season because frequently as people are approaching the season, you make the turn at Thanksgiving, at least in America we do, and for a lot of people it’s, “Oh boy, I’m not looking forward to this.”
DZ: It’s a hard season for a lot of people.
BK: Well, if, if someone you love has died recently or that year or your life is just a mess at the moment and you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to be a part of this.”
DZ: Yeah. Christ is born for them.
BK: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Exactly right.
DZ: No, he is born for you. He came to save you.
BK: That’s why he came. So even in the midst of our darkness and confusion and sin, we can rejoice that a Savior has come. And so we anticipate this day we celebrate his birth, but we can anticipate the fact that we live on the other side of that birth, and he really was born for us. So I think that could be a helpful song as well. “Come all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable, know you’re not alone, come barren and waiting ones, weary of praying, come see what your God has done.” It’s like, don’t just look to what you want him to do, look at what he’s already done. Christ was born for you. And then the bridge focuses in on the heart of the gospel. “He’s the lamb who was given, slain for our pardon in our place. His promise is peace for those who believe.” And then so come though you have nothing, come, he is the offering.” So that’s a great song to sing, [chuckle] when people are wondering, “How am I gonna enter in this season with joy?”
DZ: Excellent.
BK: So, alright, let’s talk about Christmas carols.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: One thing that has been odd to discover over the years, I remember when I first realized that, “Okay, the songs are I’m leading at Christmas, they really should tell the gospel story.” And I was struck by how many songs we sang that didn’t really do a great job of that. Not that they’re wrong to sing, but they don’t fully tell the story. And if we have all these guests coming, why wouldn’t we want songs to tell the story? So songs like “Silent Night”, which is a beautiful song, but doesn’t really go into a lot of detail about what’s happening. In fact, a lot of the songs seem to tell a story, but not the story of why Jesus came.
DZ: Yeah. And even a song like “Silent Night”, I think it’s… Sometimes it feels like, “Well, that’s just a given, we sing that song.”
BK: Yeah, yes, right. That’s right.
DZ: “That’s what’re supposed to sing.”
BK: And you hold the candles and all that.
[laughter]
DZ: Yeah. And you totally, absolutely can. I think…
BK: And it’s a beautiful moment.
DZ: Yeah. I do think it is. But I think you nailed it on the head of, it is telling a piece of the story.
BK: Yes.
DZ: But I do think that… I think there’s songs that give a wider sort of 10,000 feet out perspective of what happened that night.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Not only what happened in that night, but its implications.
BK: What it means.
DZ: What it means beyond just that silent night, which is so… I don’t know if it’s irony, but it wasn’t silent.
BK: It probably wasn’t silent.
[laughter]
DZ: It’s probably very chaotic and smelly, a lot of yelling.
BK: “Oh, Jesus, don’t say anything, silent night.” I mean, another one I love to sing, “Angels We Have Heard on High”. When I started doing that on Sunday mornings as a leader, I realized this really doesn’t say a ton. “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” which my daughter, Chelsea always thought was singing about her. “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” She thought, “This is my song.”
DZ: “This is my song.”
BK: But, no, it’s not.
DZ: Well, if you have a daughter named Chelsea, go for it.
BK: If you do. But it just tells… Again, it just tells the story kind of from an external perspective. “Angels, we’ve heard on high, sweetly singing and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains. Shepherds, why are you so happy, why the joyous strains prolong, what inspired your heavenly song. Come to Bethlehem and see, him whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ the Lord, the newborn King.” Again, this song can really be great to sing, but we’ve got to be aware that’s not enabling the word of Christ to dwell in people richly. That’s just saying, “Hey, look at how all these people have responded to this birth, maybe we should tell them why the birth is so important.”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, that’s got some great lines, but again, not really clear. You said you heard “Drummer Boy” sung on Sunday.
DZ: Yeah, Drummer… What? Yeah.
BK: That’s a really interesting one.
DZ: “Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum.”
BK: And did the congregation sing “pa rum pum pum pum”?
DZ: I don’t know if the… I think the congregation was watching us…
BK: Oh, okay. Okay.
DZ: Play. And yeah, again that’s one of those songs where if you take a step back, you just think, “I can’t imagine a drum in a stable.”
BK: Well, it wasn’t a quiet night so.
[laughter]
DZ: Let’s just add some rock and roll to the already chaotic scene. Picture Mary going, “Hey, stop. [laughter] I know that this is the one gift you have to bring, you need to stop playing.”
BK: Mary nodded, “If you so much as touch that drum, I’m gonna wring your neck.” Jesus just went to sleep.”
DZ: Any moms know, any husbands, any dads know, too. Yeah.
BK: What I wanna point out about that song is, it really kind of has at least something that undermines the gospel in it.
[laughter]
DZ: At its best.
BK: At its best. “The ox and lamb kept time, I played my drum for him, I played my best for him, then he smiled at me.” The sentiment is, of course…
DZ: “I have nothing to bring, this is all I got.”
BK: Yes. And so I want… I give this to you. But the Gospel says, “Even our best offerings required the death of the son of God to be presentable to God, because all our works are stained with sin.” And so it kind of… It plays into that, “Yeah, if I’m just sincere and give my best, then God will be pleased with that.”
DZ: Yeah. I bring my best on Sundays when I play.
BK: Yeah, it’s not enough.
DZ: You don’t say… You say it’s not enough to me.
BK: I never say it’s enough.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: “David, more, more, more.” [laughter] Okay. So it’s not wrong to sing those songs and actually full disclosure, we recorded…
DZ: Except maybe “Drummer Boy”.
BK: We recorded… That’s true. We recorded this podcast previously and we listened to it and thought about “Yeah. It’s too negative, and we don’t want it to… ” So this is a second podcast we’re doing on this.
DZ: We wanna be clear. Yeah, that we’re just trying to be clear, yeah, yeah.
BK: We love all Christmas carols. But here’s the deal. You have a limited amount of time on Sunday morning.
DZ: Bingo.
BK: And there’s just… I mean, it’s amazing. You have four or five weeks, four or five Sundays to pick the songs. That’s if you do five Sundays during that time, five songs each Sunday, that’s like 20-25 songs.
DZ: Yeah. That’s…
BK: That’s not very many songs.
DZ: And there’s so many songs.
BK: Yeah. That actually tell the story better.
DZ: Yes, yes, yes.
BK: So we’re gonna give you some ideas.
DZ: Yeah. We’re not just gonna leave you hanging.
BK: No, we would not do that. [laughter] So “Come All Ye Faithful”, we’ve talked about, “O Come, All You Unfaithful,” but “Come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,” which is a great song to do. “Come let us adore him, sing choirs of angels,” those kinds of things. I’m looking for the words that are really good. Yeah. “True God from True God, light from light eternal, born of a virgin to earth he comes, the only begotten son of the Father.” We did a version of this where we… “Humbly he enters the virgin’s womb.” And then some other words to that. [laughter] So “Come All Ye Faithful”, is a great song. What are some other ones, David?
DZ: Well, “Joy to the World”.
BK: Great. “No more let sin or sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Now you have to identify that curse. It’s the curse that we inherited through Adam and through our own sinful deeds. But yeah, you can make a lot out of that.
DZ: Totally.
BK: “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”. Just a really clear… Well, it just talks about the new birth, God and peace… It’s just right out the gate. “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconcile,” like that had to happen. It talks about the angels proclaiming Christ is born, “Hail the son of righteousness. Mild, he lays his glory by,” there’s the incarnation.
DZ: I love that.
BK: “Born that man no more may die, born to give them second birth.” I mean, you’re talking about the second birth, you need to be born again.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: It’s all there.
DZ: That song does do work. It’s very good.
BK: Well, it’s Charles Wesley and he was wanting to teach through the songs he wrote. “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”. “What Child Is This?” is a great song, actually.
DZ: Well, yeah. I think of the second verse, “So bring him incense, gold and myrrh, come peasant, king to own him. The King of kings salvation brings,” sorry.
BK: Yes, Yes.
DZ: “Let loving hearts enthrone him.” This is Christ the King.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And in one version, it’s not in all the versions, “Nails, spears shall pierce him through, the cross be born for me, for you.”
DZ: For you. Yeah.
BK: I’m not sure. I don’t see that in the hymnals, so that may be a verse that was added, but that’s what we wanna be singing about. Now, sometimes the carols have great tunes, familiar tunes, good words, not great words necessarily.
DZ: Yeah. Well, we did a whole podcast about this probably last year with Lacy talking about “The First Noel”.
BK: Okay. Okay.
DZ: And how it’s a great song and we wanted a little bit more clarity and adding a chorus to that as well. And so we did an arrangement of “The First Noel”.
BK: Which enables the word of Christ to dwell in people richly. It starts off “The First Noel, earth and heaven embraced, as a virgin behold a newborn babe, from realms on high to a manger on earth, salvation that dawned in lowly birth.” Second verse, “Our sins he bore yet his name we despised.”
DZ: Yes love this.
BK: “And the hands that brought healing were pierced as he died.”
[chuckle]
BK: And then it moves us on to the resurrection. “The Author of Life, there lifeless he lay, as the grave cast its shadow and darkness reigned.” One of my favorites that has been redone is, “O Holy Night”, which was redone by a friend Kevin Hart who’s actually a NASA scientist. He did some research… “O Holy Night”, it’s a beautiful song. There’s so many great versions of it. The translation we sing, typically sung, is not a great translation of the original. So Kevin did some research on it. And the original French words were this, a literal translation, “Midnight Christians, it is the solemn hour when God as man descended unto us to erase the stain of original sin and to end the wrath of his father.”
DZ: Wow.
BK: It’s a little bit different. [laughter] “The entire world thrills with hope on this night that gives it a Savior. People kneel down, wait for deliverance.”
DZ: Wow.
BK: So he thought… “The Redeemer’s broken every bond.” And here it’s where we get that line about the slave is your brother. “The earth is free and Heaven is open. He sees a brother where there was only a slave. Love unites those that iron had chained,” beautiful.
DZ: Wow.
BK: “Who will tell him of our gratitude, for all of us he is born, he suffers and dies. People stand up! Sing of your deliverance.” So he felt that the melody and the poetic longing content of the verse, the original verse, deserved companion verses that were better, that better explain the thrill of hope. So he did a version… You take the original verse, first verse, and then he just filled it out in the second and third verses.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Which when we’ve led this on Sunday mornings or in different events, it’s so thrilling. Because you are singing the gospel to this melody that just soars. “Humbly he lay, creator come as creature. Born on the floor of a hay-scattered stall. True Son of God, yet bearing human feature. He entered earth to reverse Adam’s fall. In towering grace,” I love this, “He laid aside his glory, and in our place, was sacrificed for sin.”
DZ: Amen.
BK: “Fall on your knees! O hear the gospel story! O night divine when Christ was born.”
DZ: Wow. So… Yeah, go ahead.
BK: I was gonna say, the advantage of those is that everybody knows the tune.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And you’re just giving them different words that enable the word of Christ to dwell in them richly.
DZ: Yes. And that was on “Prepare Him Room”?
BK: That what… Yes.
DZ: Did you record… You recorded that on “Prepare Him Room”?
BK: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the version recorded there was a little bit of kind of a folksy acoustic version. You can sing it with the original feel, but use those lyrics.
DZ: Yeah. ‘Cause I was gonna say, when we do it at a Prepare Him Room Christmas event that we do, it’s very majestic.
BK: Yes.
DZ: And it’s not really folksy and it really puts the perspective on those verses that you just quoted. So good.
BK: “Away in a Manger”, we rewrote that as well on “Heaven Has Come”, changed the melody for that. Again, beautiful tune, but we thought, “Well, let’s try this a little different.” So those are some songs you can consider. But also we wanna talk about all year round Christmas songs.
DZ: Yes. This is my favorite category.
BK: Okay, well why don’t you talk about it?
DZ: Well, like I said before with a song like, “O Come, All You Unfaithful”, you’d think, “Well, I don’t know if I could do that.”
BK: Yeah. “Christ is born. Christ is born. ”
DZ: But yes, you can.
BK: Yeah. You can.
DZ: Because of the verses.
BK: The incarnation is true all year round.
DZ: Yes. I mean, you could repeat that. The incarnation is true all year round. What an amazing mystery? It’s not just four weeks.
BK: Yes.
DZ: We can bring… And so there are songs that have served us so well that do that. One of them that I think is “Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery”.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Matt Papa and Matt Boswell.
BK: Which I don’t know if they wrote that as a Christmas song.
DZ: I don’t think they set out to.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: But I wouldn’t just call this a Christmas song but the verses “Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery”, “In the dawning of the King, he the theme of heaven’s praises, robed in frail humanity.”
BK: That’s Christmas right there.
DZ: “In our longing, in our darkness, now the light of life… ”
BK: That’s advent right there.
DZ: “Has come. Look to Christ who condescended, took on flesh to ransom us.” Yeah. But you can… But then you go on and the true and better Adam.
BK: Yes. Yes.
DZ: You’re continuing that thought. And then…
BK: Tell the story.
DZ: Telling the story. Yeah. Verse three, “See the price of our redemption, the Father’s plan unfold, bringing many sons to glory, grace unmeasured, love untold! And then verse four is, we have a hope now.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Because he came, because he died, because he rose, we have hope.
BK: This is what this birth means.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So there are also… That’s a song I don’t think was written for Christmas. Some are written for Christmas and you can still do all year round. So when we did, “He Who Is Mighty” for the “Prepare him Room” album, we thought, “Well, this is a great Christmas album. It’s kind of drawn from the Magnificat and… ” But we started doing it all year around. It has one part of it that’s kind of Isaiah 9. It is from Isaiah 9, “Unto us a son is given, unto us a child is born,” the bridge, “now my soul magnifies the Lord. I rejoice in the God who saves.” That’s obviously the Magnificat, but the verses…
DZ: No.
BK: They’re just anytime.
DZ: Yes.
BK: “Oh the mercy our God has shown to those who sit in death’s shadow, the son on high pierced the night, born was the Cornerstone, unto us a son is given, unto us a child is born. He who is mighty has done a great thing.” And here’s I think a brilliant example of just saying a whole lot in a little bit of space, “Taken on flesh, conquered death’s sting, shattered the darkness and lifted our shame. Holy is his name.”
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So certainly it works both for those who are visiting your church and those who are part of the church. We just need to get what this story means more into our lives, more into our hearts, more into our thoughts. And so that’s why we sing songs like that. “Who Is This?”, a song you wrote with Nate Stiff.
DZ: Yep. I mean, basically setting to write that is, the verses, “He was born, he lived a perfect life.” Verse 2, verse 3, “He died in our place.” Verse 4, “He rose from the grave and now he’s… He is Jesus God triumphant, risen to the Father’s side. We will bow in reverence at the name of Jesus Christ.” We wanted to tell the whole picture.
BK: Yeah, it’s so good.
DZ: And we put it on “Heaven Has Come” but we want it to be a song that can be sung all year round. And then if you wanna do the tag, you don’t have to. But the tag of the song is, “O come let us adore him.” That’s our response. We’re bowing before him for what he’s done.
BK: Yes. Good. “In Christ Alone” is a Christmas song. [chuckle] You may not have known this.
DZ: Right.
BK: Verse 2, “In Christ alone, who took on flesh, fullness of God in helpless babe, this gift of love and righteousness, scorned by the ones he came to save.
DZ: Helpless babe, wait a second. We can only sing that in December.
BK: Helpless babe. Helpless babe. I dunno. Yeah. So we would encourage you to look for songs that you maybe sing throughout the year that talk about this, the glory of the incarnation and how this is meant to fill us with wonder and awe and amazement, not only at Christmas, but all the time. And Christmas is just the ideal time to highlight that, and the reason we wanna do this podcast is so often we pull away from it. We actually sing songs that don’t really talk about it much.
DZ: Right.
BK: And so I wanna read this quote from “The Valley of Vision” before we close. This is the mystery of the incarnation. “The Valley of Vision” is a Puritan prayers collection put together by Arthur Bennett. “Here in his wisdom when I was undone with no will to return to him and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as a man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf to work out a perfect righteousness for me.” Or as Paul said it, Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
DZ: Amen.
BK: What a glorious truth? What a glorious reality? So whatever you sing at Christmas in your Sunday services, we want to encourage you to be thoughtful, be biblical, be Christ exalting, and help people understand that the greatest thing about Christmas is not the feelings, the sentimental feelings that we always feel, but the truth, the reality of the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh to save us from our sins.
DZ: Amen.
BK: May that truth fill your Sunday gatherings this Christmas.
DZ: Yes. Amen.
BK: Thanks for joining us.
