40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2019 Christmas Podcast

Episode Date: December 22, 2019

Daniel Emery Price and Erick Sorensen talk with Chad Bird about his Christmas/Communion hymn, The Infant Priest Was Holy Born. It's a conversation filled with rich theology and laughter. Merry Christmas!

Hey, welcome to the Christmas special for 30 minutes in the New Testament and 40 minutes in the Old Testament, or 1517, or Christ Will Fast, or whatever you want to call it. This dropped in your feed as a subscriber to one of those two podcasts, and this is special episode you know that years past we have done christmas joint episodes where we had 30 minutes and 40 minutes together but this year we decided to do something entirely different and not disrupt uh what we were doing uh in the old and new testament and just do a standalone episode that will appear in both feeds where we're going to talk about something uh christmas related who we have with me is eric sorenson and chad bird of course and what we're going to talk about

on this episode is Chad's hymn, The Infant Priest, or The Infant Priest Was Wholly Born. Chad, is this Advent hymn as much as it is a communion hymn, or is it sort of a way of having both at the same time? Like, is it a communion hymn you sing typically during Advent? Yeah, it fits with Advent. It fits with Christmas, too. It's in the hymnal section. The hymnal is divided up into not only the various seasons of the church year, like Advent, Epiphany, Christmas, and so on and so forth. But it's also divided up into kind of thematic sections like baptism, the Lord's Supper, end times, things like that. So it's in the Lord's Supper section, but it lends itself toward being also either an Advent or a Christmas hymn.

Yeah. So when I usually hear this hymn is during the season of Advent or Christmas. So I hear it, you know, December and maybe into January as well. That's when I typically hear it. yeah it fits with those seasons it's uh but it's also one of those that a lot of congregations that have either you know bi-weekly or or weekly communion they usually have one two three four hymns so it finds its way into that section quite a bit so it it you know a lot of hymns might get sung a couple times a year uh it just so happens because it's in that section of the lord's supper it gets sung more frequently than some of the other hymns might be well that's because it's so good awesome yeah that's agreed good so good yeah so you wrote this hymn in 1997

so it's a this is a contemporary hymn guys we're going to talk about some contemporary worship here contemporary christian music yes sir uh now in 1997 chad was 20 years old wrote this when you were in seminary correct yeah i was i was 27 at the uh the the old age of 27 when i wrote this. It was in my last year of seminary. And it was just kind of a strange story. So the seminary students, every Advent and every Lent, they would put out a set of devotional meditations for that particular part of the church year, like Advent, four weeks, Lent, however many days or weeks that fell into. So anyway, I contributed one of those to a Lent devotional. And one of the professors read it, liked it, and he and I had a pretty good

relationship. And he's like, you know what, you ought to, you ought to try and turn this meditation into, into a hymn. Well, I had not, I'd never really tried to write a hymn before, you know, maybe taking a stab at a couple of verses here and there, but I thought, well, sure, I'll give a shot so i took the meditation and turned it into about a five four or five stanza hymn was the original and then slipped it under the door the professor who recommended that to me and just to kind of see what he thought well he he liked it a lot in fact he was on the committee that was in the final stages of preparing what was known as the hymnal supplement 98 so this was just a an extra group of hymns published in 1998 with a couple of liturgies thrown in there and it

was a very very limited number of new hymns that they were adding and they were like i said in the final stages of that but he was able to take it to the committee and to convince them to consider including that in that collection so it ended up being in hymnal supplement 98 and then uh later also was published in the Lutheran Service book, which it came out a few years after that. I was also writing music in 1997. It was a little bit different. I was a junior in high school. I was not writing songs called The Infant Priest is Holy Born. I was writing songs called One of Many Ways to Gracefully Lose My Trust and things of this nature. But yeah, I was also writing music. So this is interesting that this lets me know that I'm

exactly 10 years your junior so before you start feeling too young about how young you wrote this song just remember well then i too was writing music at the time although no that's not true i was in a band and i played drums so i'm not a musician i was just a drummer yeah drummers don't just a drummer yeah i was just a drummer in a band for a few years that's it that's all i got going for me man no hymns came out of this uh this man's brain just banging on the drums yeah we were all involved in one way or another in the musical world right that's that's right no matter what we were doing we all have that in common yeah well and and as we know chad we know as lutherans that there's little there's few things more unholy than drums and drum

so it's like the hymn that you'll never hear uh sung uh in the lutheran church uh during during advent or christmas uh the little drummer boy they're like that's anathema yeah yeah drums have even found their way into babylon b article titles i believe yeah poor drummers it is true it is true yes although i must say yeah where i played drums most of the time when i was man i started when i was a teen was actually in a lutheran church's praise band yes oh yeah yes that actually did that that exists so that was my only as a matter like it's such a strange thing i mean that was my only experience i wasn't raised in lutheranism and so that was the only really church i had known just happened to be a lutheran church with a

praise band i only found out later that like oh that's not the norm oh oh okay so you came into the lutheran church through drums is what you're telling i did well part of it part of it yeah as strange as that sounds amazing this is good it's great well let's uh let's dig into this hymn i'm gonna try to did you i'm assuming you never uh played drums to this particular hymn then uh eric i have not but i'm gonna go home today and try yeah absolutely why not so uh well i think what we'll do is uh i'm just gonna gonna read the first stanza and then uh we can we can talk with chad about it and and uh give some thoughts so and then we'll just do it that way i mean it is he chad went full on here he wrote seven stanzas like a good lutheran would do uh so this is one

of those hymns when they sing it it says like you know the the infant priest and then it says like one two five seven uh next to next to it because we don't want to be here all day but we're going to cover the whole thing so it starts like this the infant priest was wholly born for us unholy and forlorn from fleshly temple forth came he anointed from eternity now you can just end right there this is pretty good so this is this is obviously why this finds its way into a lot of a lot of christmas uh season uh hymnody right yeah yeah so it starts with the incarnation starts with uh of course the the infant uh infant christ and i wanted to be a lot of the we'll see this as we go through the stanzas uh the hymn the kind of the main theme of the hymn is really hebrews uh i mean

i was i was deeply deeply uh involved in the study of hebrews at the time but not hebrew that too but But the Hebrews, the book, when I wrote this, so the image of a priest and the temple and the altar, all of that is woven through here. So that's why it starts out, the infant priest. But I wanted to have that. I wanted right away to capture two things, the incarnation, the word becoming flesh, God coming to us as an infant. But I also wanted to capture the fact that he was the word. he uh he's the son of god god of god light of light very god of very god so i got that anointed from eternity in there as well so you kind of got that you got the incarnation him becoming one of us but also his eternal nature also reflected in that uh that opening stanza one of the things i

love about this hymn and it beginning this way with the words infant priest is it captures for us that every moment of the life of Christ is lived in some sense in an intercessory way on behalf of sinners. He is the mediator from the very beginning. Everything he's doing, in some sense, he's doing in substitution for us. So even his birth, even when he is feeding at his mother's whatever it is it's it's sort of redoing what we have not done as we should yeah what's the it's in a christmas hymn that talks about the silent word is pleading yes yeah yeah i mean it's kind of that same idea right he's the word who uh even though he can't talk yet as the word is silently pleading for us yeah so it's not like at a certain point in his life christ said to

himself well i guess i better start meeting for the world yeah yeah from the whole time uh he's that uh he's that priest between us and god yeah i like two things that happen in the in the just the first two lines here are one that you say it starts with the with the words the infant priest which by the way is an impossibility apart from christ so this is this is there's no such thing uh before christ you you don't get to be there are no infant priests a priest has to wait until he's 30 years old to become a priest in the Old Testament. So you start with this sort of contradiction

right off the front that maybe not everyone would catch, but when you say infant priest you're bringing up something that is that has never been before. Yeah, yeah. Something new under the sun. Yeah, and then you say

was holy born, this is to be obviously the incarnation and born of the Holy Spirit and this sort of thing, but then in contrast with for the unholy and the forlorn so you have the holiness of the incarnation contrasted with the purpose behind the incarnation which is the the redemption of not just not you could just say you know for the world or whatever but instead you go with unholy to show the contrast between the two yeah right out the gate it's the the gospel is presented to us in in the very first

line yeah yeah and i'm assuming chad that this from fleshly temple forth he came uh this is uh this is not a accident either uh pulling sort of from john's language of the word became flesh and dwelt among us but what is really going on there is that the word became flesh and tabernacled among us right and so yeah so this is a fleshly temple yeah so he well kind of two things going on there he is yeah he's the he's the word made flesh who tabernacled among us he his body is the new temple but i'm also it's not it's kind of implicit there you kind of have to know a bigger story to to know what i was getting at there but one thing that you see in luke's gospel is a certain parallel between the the old testament account of what happened with the the

ark of the covenant and luke's account of what happened with with mary there's a there's numerous parallels in language and theme between what happened when the ark of the covenant was taken here and there and what happened with mary as she received the visit from the angel and then as she now having conceived the the christ child goes on her journey to see her her relative elizabeth so there's this idea of mary because she has within her the word made flesh she is sort of this ark of the covenant carrying god just like the ark of the covenant was a place where god was enthroned oh now he's enthroned with it within hers so you kind of got that dual thing going on there where she is the one who bears this infant priest and then he also is the one who comes forth

as the new temple of god yeah and going forward just remember don't try to teach me and eric anything about luke uh we taught an academy class on this i meant to say we picked up on that ark of the covenant thing right dan we totally did it's basically the central theme i meant to say as dan and eric talked about yes thank you sorry i meant to really footnote you to a background background of me drumming yeah remember chad you're talking to the new testament guys here so yeah calm down i stand corrected indeed all right well we better move on this is going to be a two hour podcast uh second second stanza this great high priest in human flesh was icon of god's righteousness his hollow touch brought sanctity his hand removed impurity so here here you you

start out right away with again this tabernacling among us language this enfleshing of god yeah so uh he's the one who comes as he's the image of the icon of god's righteousness he's the one who tabernacles among us is high preached in human flesh but then i i shift a little bit in the in the first stanza i talk about how he comes for us who are unholy and forlorn and in the second sense, I pick up on how he starts to remove that. So his hallowed touch, his holy touch brings that sanctity and his hand removes impurity. So I chose not to focus, you know, in our circles, we talk a lot about sin, sin this, sin that, which is fine. But one of the other ways to talk about our condition as fallen people is unholiness and the lack of sanctity. So because that kind of

fits with the theme of the hymn, that's what I focused on here, is our impurity, our unholiness, and how Christ, by his touch, is removing that. So he takes the unholiness into himself, and he communicates his own holiness to us. And of course, you see this in narrative after narrative in the Gospels, which I'm sure you guys talked about in Luke, where Christ's touch in this amazing way, communicates healing and cleansing to lepers, to the hemorrhaging woman, to dead people. And this, I think, is part of his priestly work. He is the one who brings the holiness of God out into the midst of the unholy world and communicates that sanctity very tangibly through touch. One of the most powerful things to me about the New Testament narrative or the

gospel narratives of Jesus's ministry is that very thing that he, when he does come, I mean, we know that he can certainly just speak the word and someone would be healed of whatever the condition was. But so often he chooses to touch. So often he chooses to reach out and grab someone who oftentimes may have not been touched by anybody for quite some time. I mean, a leper may have gone months you know maybe even years without being touched by anyone and so for this messianic figure this great high priest to come to them and not just say the word from a distance but get right next to them and touch them is quite powerful yeah i mean we've talked about this before chad uh you know because it's all over the old testament but

uh when you're talking about holiness uh this is a proximity issue right so you are you are made holy by by your proximity to that which is holy and so we we see this in the in the temple and that and that sort of stuff and and this i think is why there's so much touch going on because this is this isn't just someone being close to you when you talk about this hollow touch brings sanctity it seems to me that you are suggesting first of all that that sanctification or sanctity this is another way of saying this right uh is is not your work but that this is the work of Christ, and that His touch to you, His union to you, is what in fact would sanctify you. Yeah, it's amazing that I would suggest that. Yeah, we have talked about that

a lot in 40 Minutes, especially when we were in Leviticus, that holiness, sanctification, or sanctity, or any of those kind of words, is never an achievement, it's always a gift. So, I mean, it's like impossible for me to holy something, because I'm not holy myself. So God communicates holiness. He gives holiness because it's intrinsically and eternally his. And any holiness that we have is on loan from God or a gift from God. It's never something that we ourselves have intrinsically because we've achieved some level of sanctity. So holiness is always gift, always God holing, sanctifying something.

And often he does that, as you say, through proximity, through actually touching something. all right let's let's move on uh it's funny we i feel like we could take the first two stanzas of this and just that'd be the end of it and we could just go on and on and on because i mean it's it's all gospel rich uh we but we will continue the holy lamb undaunted came to god's own altar lit with flame while weeping angels hid their eyes this priest became a sacrifice now again you have this sort of like weird reversal uh and in an impossibility where obviously a priest is the one who makes sacrifices on behalf of the of the people but here obviously we have another first time this has ever happened where the the priest sacrifices himself for indeed the people yeah this

is uh certainly echoing hebrews hebrews chapter 9 where you know hebrews chapter 9 is all about the sacrifice and the priests entering into the holy place and of course they have to one of the main points of Hebrews is that, yeah, these guys, they have to do it over and over and over. You know, they take blood into the holy place, and then they do it again, they do it again, because their sacrifices are never perfect. And not only do they have to sacrifice for others repeatedly, they have to bring sacrifices for themselves. And that's one of the main points of how the new covenant is superior, as argued by Hebrews, is because Christ does it once for all, and he doesn't offer an animal he himself is the sacrifice and so yeah this is the this is another

one of these new things under the sun that christ has come to do so he's the he's not in the priest he's the lamb and he comes to this altar and he makes himself the the sacrifice one of the things that you say here too this this the holy land undaunted came and you know someone might say i don't know kind of seemed daunted in the garden you know kind of seemed like he was like a little bit daunted there. But to go back to Luke, one of the things that we do talk about, in fact, in the academy class, as sort of even like a theme verse of the whole class, is that in the passage where it says that Jesus set his face like a flint towards Jerusalem, right? And I think this is kind of what you're getting at, or that Jesus early on sets his face towards Jerusalem as the

place where the sacrifice will be made. I mean, this is his sole objective, is to go and do this thing for the world and it's related too to going back to the book of hebrews you know where it says that he endured the the scorn of the cross for the joy that was set before him yeah yeah so that yeah the undaunted is is not i mean it's like it's acknowledging the fact for instance of him sweating drops of blood in the garden uh but at the same time moving forward so he was struggling with all of these very human emotions that we ourselves experience and yet he still came forward because in in the end it was it was the joy of our salvation that was pushing him and so undaunted he came to offer himself as the sacrifice yeah well i mean jesus language over and over and over again

talking to the disciples or whoever else is that that the son of man must die he must go and be delivered to the hands of sinful man he uses this word must over and over and over like this is this is what has to happen yeah so you have you kind of have both of those things going on simultaneously in the gospels where yeah you've got jesus you know he's praying father if it's possible let this cup pass from me and he's sweating drops of blood and he's undergoing just incredibly torturous emotional things while he sees what's going to happen and yet at the same time he knows it must happen and so in the he sets his face and he moves forward because it's the father's will to to do this yeah stanza four but death would not the victor be of him who hung upon the tree

he leads us to the holy place within the veil before god's face so now we have uh we move right to well not quite the resurrection yet but you're hinting at it yeah yeah it's it's kind of a it's temple resurrection language i guess you might say so death is not the victor yeah he's a sacrifice but death is not going to be the victor of him who hung upon the tree so but what is what so what does he do well he's brought back to life by the father he's resurrected he's resurrected by the father but in that very resurrection again kind of echoing the language of hebrews what does he do well he doesn't just kind of leave us alone instead he's resurrected so that we who are part of his body, who become part of him as our great high priest, will be led into the presence of the

Father. So he leads us to the holy place within the veil before God's face. So Hebrews talks over and over about how God has opened up the way for us to enter into the new and the greater holy of holies, and that's what Christ does. He offers himself at the altar of the cross as a sacrifice. you kind of got to picture the temple when all this is going on so he comes as a high priest and he offers himself as the sacrifice on the altar okay well if you're picturing the the the whole structure of the tabernacle where do you go from the altar will you move forward and where you move forward to will you go into the holy place and then you go into the holy of holy so it's kind of the whole day of atonement progression from outside past the altar into the holy place

into the Holy of Holies itself, behind that veil. Yeah, I mean, I get this kind of crazy image that would have never, again, this would never have happened before, of a high priest saying, hey, everyone come with me, back here to the Holy of Holies. This is a ridiculous notion to an Old Testament Jew, right?

The high priest says, you know what? Everybody come on in. Well, it really is just this incredible picture of a place that would have been instant certain death for humanity now becoming this place of life and salvation and peace and joy it's again this great reversal that happens through all that christ does yeah we got we're we're i mean one guy went right once a year and never without blood in the old testament now becomes the place where every day everyone in christ are welcome because of his blood. I think it's hard for us to understand just what a reversal this was

for first century Jews to hear this, to think that they themselves are not only given the opportunity, but brought into with boldness and confidence into the Holy of Holies because of Christ. It's just mind-blowing for a first century Jew even to contemplate this, and yet that's exactly what christ provides and and you know as as then you know as as the as the new testament would say that that we're all priests now we're all made priests now we have one high priest never to be replaced again the the high priest that lives forever uh and then it says there's the priesthood of all believers that were that were all priests and what do of course priests do uh well they eat the sacrifice this is part of what happens with them right and so

you're going to go into this uh it stands at five the veil is torn our priest we see as the rail on bended knee our hungry mouths from him receive the bread of immortality and so obviously here you're you're we're going then and receiving the very flesh and blood of the sacrifice that was made for us yeah it's a picture of us entering into the holy of holies with our great high priest and when we're in there what do we discover but a feast just like the old testament priest in the holy place would consume the bread of the presence every sabbath that there was 12 loaves of unleavened bread that were left out for uh for them so now we're brought even closer with not just the holy place but the holy of holies behind this behind this torn veil

in order that there we might receive this bread of immortality, this bread that doesn't just give us nourishment, but it actually gives us the life of God because it is indeed the very body of our great high priest himself. Is it Ambrose that calls the Lord's Supper the medicine of immortality? Yeah, yeah. I was just kind of echoing that same language. yeah it's a bread of immortality it's uh i mean really it's they ultimately get it from john 6

right right yeah it's all john 6 language you know he eats eats this bread and he who drinks my blood has life communion passage yeah yeah hebrews hebrews 4 16 of course says you know let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. I would imagine most people when they read that simply think of going to the Lord in prayer. But another way to read this, especially as we talk about this stanza of the hymn, one of the ways you go boldly to that throne of grace is by kneeling at the rail and receiving the bread of immortality. There's no greater throne of grace than that spot right there. Well, this is because we're not in that unmediated grace, right? I mean, so this grace is not just

it's, you know, floating out there in the ether, but that we get to approach God where He has promised to be and then receive grace attached to something outside of us that then we put inside of us? Yeah, this is one of those, we talk a lot about it in 40 Minutes, it's just one of those overlooked aspects of worship, the connection between Old Testament worship and New Testament worship. It's not as if once we get to the New Testament, God decides, you know what, i'm going to start joining my gifts to things of creation right i'm going to start giving my people well let them call them sacraments or something like no i mean that it's always been that way even before sin where did god say adam and eve could receive life or from a tree he didn't just

like give them life he said all right eat this fruit and by means of this fruit actually eating it, you're going to ingest life in you. So the pattern that's established in creation is a sacramental pattern, and that's what continues throughout the rest of the Old Testament. And that's what I'm trying to pick up on here and develop visually in that stanza. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly true that just as death came through eating, so life comes through eating. And this should not be strange to us. Try not eating for a long period of time. You eventually will die i mean it's this is not some shock that god who who invented everything uh including the fact that you have to eat uh and so and so just as you gotta eat to stay alive

how is he going to like give you eternal life well he's he's going to give it to you this kind of the same way that you that you live now and he's going to feed faith faith is not is also not something that God gives you, and then it just exists and sustains itself throughout your entire life. But this is a faith that is fed, and what this faith feeds on is the grace of God given to us in the body and blood of Christ, and the hearing of the gospel, and this sort of thing. So faith feeds on grace delivered through means. That was so good that you guys couldn't even say anything. Dan dropped the mic. You can't see it, listeners, but he actually dropped his mic. Yeah, and now Chad is doubling down on this whole thing. He talks about the bread. He's

going to get into the wine here in stanza six. The body of God's lamb, we eat a priestly food and priestly meat. On sin-parched lips, the chalice pours his quenching blood that life restores. This is more of the same, but you're bringing in this sort of priestly food and a priestly meat and and so this is uh i called it sort of jump the gun on the as priests coming to eat the priest and this kind of stuff is like i mean let's be honest chad this is some freaky language but it's altogether biblical right i mean when i was in a conversation uh just this weekend uh where i was trying to explain my view of of the lord's supper and just when you do this with somebody who is completely, you know, has a completely modern evangelical view of the Lord's

Supper, you start to realize how awkward, how strange it sounds. Yeah, as the words come out of your mouth, you're like, man, I sound like a freak. You're having another John 6 moment, right? You're like, everybody left. This is some strange teaching, Jesus. It's a hard saying. yeah and well the question came uh aren't they yeah yeah of course you receive christ but everything becomes like ultra spiritualized right he's like no no i would agree that yeah you you receive christ uh at the lord's supper but you're not saying that that you eat him and and i realized that it just can't it was just time to double and triple down uh on the whole thing and i said yes I believe that I have eternal life because I eat and drink God.

This is what I believe. That's it. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes, like you say, when we really think about it or we talk to someone that's not speaking our language, we realize just how strange that must sound. And yet, at the same time, that's the biblical language. I mean, Jesus could very well have said at the institution of his supper, you know, take, eat, I am present. in this meal or whatever i mean he could have kind of watered down the language a little bit

and he certainly could have watered it down in john 6 but he he doubles down this is my body eat it this is my blood drink it this is my he uses not only just the word but he uses the word flesh yeah he gets even more earthy and in john chapter 6 so you can just imagine the looks on the faces of his disciples when he starts saying this and to uh to echo what i say there at the end of that stanza i mean it's one thing it's one thing for god to say here's my body eat it but blood yeah well this you couldn't even couldn't even drink animal blood in the old testament yeah yeah but that's the blood of god well you know this to that to the point of of the of this flesh language too i mean there's this is very christmasy because we're talking about the

incarnation and i don't know if you know that that word incarnation might sound familiar if you've ever been to a mexican restaurant and ordered carne asada like that word that that word is in there man that this is the this this is flesh the in it's literally when we say the incarnation it's like the enfleshment the enfleshment exactly and so that carne asada is the flesh of the animal that you are eating and and this is what happens in the incarnation god is enfleshed and then says the bread that i will give for the life of the world is this flesh and I don't know if you know this, but you don't absorb bread spiritually. Bread does you no good if you don't eat it.

You can't just think about it real hard. You don't just pray to it or whatever. You've got to eat this stuff. One of the things I love about this hymn, Chad, and we've touched on it a number of times here so far, is how much God really connects himself with his creation and doesn't run away from it. I mean, it's almost as if God stubbornly refuses to give his creation over to the sin that's invaded it, and instead is constantly connecting himself to these means, saying, no, you're not going to find me apart from the material that I've created. In other words, this is the furthest thing from any sort of Gnostic iteration of God. This is a God who affirms the material world and does say, indeed, it's good and says of us even very good.

And that is still at the very heart of things, especially, you know, I've been preaching through the book of Revelation recently, sometimes regretting it. But I have to say, if there's one thing that becomes abundantly clear as we've gone through it, is, you know, we're not escaping earth to go to some sort of spiritual orb land. Heaven is coming down to earth. and there's a sense in which with this sacramental emphasis we get previews of that that god is not divorcing himself from the material world in his work yeah i think it was eugene peterson who said that one of the mistakes that believers are always making is trying to be more spiritual than god yeah spiritual in the sense of kind of ethereal uh yeah so that you can well not agnostic right this is where this ultimately leads you're right not just kind of a hyper spiritualization but to

an outright rejection of the stuff of this world as if it's bad in some way i mean there you can draw a straight line from creation to the incarnation to the sacrament of the altar or the sacrament of baptism whatever you want to talk about i mean the incarnation is the ultimate affirm god's ultimate affirmation of the goodness of creation because he takes it into himself he actually the creator becomes at the same time a creature so the the image maker becomes the image himself so this is god's way of of once more saying how his creation is very good is by actually taking on our human flesh and blood and then the the ongoing affirmation of the goodness of creation is when god gives us his created body and his created blood into ourselves so that they become

part of us so that it becomes kind of a down payment of our own resurrection if you will so there's this there's this i don't know what you want to call it there's this this grouping together of all these various themes of creation incarnation and the sacraments together because they're all god's way of demonstrating that when he when god wants to get spiritual he gets very physical he actually roots his spirituality in the stuff of water and bread and wine and flesh and flesh and blood so we we can't be more spiritual than when we are actually living our earthly creaturely lives as god would have us do that's how we are spiritual people is by by doing that yeah i remember one time uh my daughter took a communion wafer and fumbled it and dropped it

and uh scooped it up real quick and looked up at me and said i'm sorry i looked at her and said god's not afraid of a little dirt uh and this is this is how this works right yeah uh is it he's not he's he's familiar with this yeah yeah yeah i mean he's the god who when he creates us he gets his hands dirty right yeah yeah he makes adam from dust makes eve from adam's rib so he's always been intimately quite literally intimately tangibly involved in the stuff of creation and so the the ongoing temptation of christianity is ancient gnosticism or modern gnosticism where we basically say of the created order oh it's it's polluted it's no good it'll make you less spiritual and so you kind of got to separate yourself from that no the exact opposite because as as you said eric

if there's any message you get from revelation it's that what's god's plan for us as creatures well to remain creatures and to enjoy life in the new heavens and the new earth not to be some disembodied spirit spirits floating in some ethereal realm uh that's kind of the that's that's your gnostic hell but instead to actually be where god wants us to wants us to be a planet on the earth and enjoying life as his as his children yeah and now we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on this quickly you alluded to it uh chad about this sort of uh this drinking blood and what kind of reversal this is and and i love the way you say it on sin parched lips the chalice pores i mean you get this this image is pretty pretty vivid of i mean uh if you've ever been

out in the cold for too long and which i have i remember one time i was growing up chopping wood with my dad and to having my lips so chapped that they were starting to like crack and crack and bleed yeah uh and and and this so this is the image that comes to mind that that my that my my lips were like in desperate need of something right i mean like i thought i was i thought my mouth was gonna fall off right uh and and here you have the blood of christ coming to to soothe that To quench that And of course this is part of the great offense I mean if you talk about John 6

As if him saying you gotta eat my flesh Is not offensive enough Drink my blood is just straight I mean this is downright blasphemous Right Yeah If we could have been there When Christ was instituting the supper in the upper room

I would just love to have taken like a picture Of the disciples face When Jesus said take drink This is my blood Yeah, one of them grabbed him and said, it's a trap, right? Yeah, right. This is a test, man. But Jesus, Leviticus 17 says, you can't do this.

Yeah, so as much continuity as there is between the Old and the New Testament, there is this newness, a true newness. And that's one of the new things that Christ brings us, is that not only is that old prohibition about the consumption of blood no longer applicable to us, along with all the other dietary rules, but now actually God gives us his own blood to drink, and not just to have it, but actually in that to receive life and forgiveness and salvation. Well, this is the great thing, and I know we've talked about it, but I just think it's one of my favorite things, is how the prohibition and the reason given for it is, don't drink the blood, because the life is in the blood. And then Jesus comes along and says, you've got to drink the blood, the life's in the blood. Yeah, that's right. Right, right, right. All right, so you wrap up, stanza seven. With cherubim and seraphim, our voices join the endless hymn,

and holy, holy, holy sing to Christ God's Lamb, our priest and king. Now, this is, of course, very Hebrew language here at the end. Yeah, yeah. So I'm kind of, in some ways, pulling from the vision of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six, where, of course, he sees the seraphim, the literally the fiery ones or the the burning ones flying around and uh i i throw the cherubim in there as well and of course in isaiah's vision what are they what are they what are they singing kadosh kadosh kadosh in hebrew holy holy holy that is the kind of the antiphonal hymn they're

singing back and forth to each other they're at this temple vision that isaiah has and since this whole thing was really uh my appropriation of the temple image by way of hebrews i thought that'd be a great way a great way to end it where not only are we like isaiah listening in but we're actually joining in the angelic choir so with cherubim and seraphim our voices join in that endless hymn singing holy holy holy so we're actually becoming part of this because when we come into the presence of god we are we are joining an ongoing worship so as i like to say uh wrote article kind of with this title not very long ago that everybody shows a plate for church right so when you go to church not like you're starting worship you're entering into an ongoing

worship it's an endless worship you're you're you're you're as you gather as the body of christ you're joining with this ongoing worship that happens around the throne of god and that's the hymn that you sing holy holy holy to christ god's lamb our our priest and king so by the way this last stanza was not in the original ah yeah so when it it was in the the original hymn was was six hands long and uh then when uh when they were getting ready to publish it yeah wait let me just let me let me just guess it's because you were like you know what as a good old testament guy i'm gonna need seven yeah this this hymn seems incomplete i think yeah it's incomplete it needs one more yeah so they uh that is funny i actually never thought about that

i really like the hymn now it's seven stances seven yeah it's a perfect time they're like you know i think this needs like sort of a doxological verse uh to kind of wrap everything up i was like all right yeah yeah sounds good so i wrote that and they liked it so uh it now is complete that's seven stanzas seven stanzas you know and of course you have another thing that is sort of a first maybe not a first you would you have melchizedek uh but this sort of priest and king language uh this is obviously unique uh to christ and melchizedek which is why the you know the author of hebrews would say he is a priest in the order of that right because this is the only other time where we see this sort of priest and king uh but christ is the only one that you would be able to

say lamb priest and king as in sacrificed priest and king so he becomes everything yeah yeah he becomes everything which is really uh one more time back to hebrew which is really what the message of hebrews is all about it's like pulling together all these various facets of the old testament sacrificial worship and in demonstrating how they all are pointed to him he's the lamb he's the priest he's the king you know he's he's the sacrifice and you know to even expand more he's the tabernacle hebrews even calls his the veil his flesh right yeah it's just new and living way so it's like the author of hebrews is like let me just like milk this for all its worth i mean i'm gonna i'm gonna make sure that everybody who reads or hears this sermon is

gonna be like yeah pretty much everything about the whole old testament is pointing to jesus and so uh i was trying to capture some of that in that last day i i love i love how it ends to christ god's lamb our priest and king i can't help again but think of the the heavenly drama captured for us in revelation four and five when in revelation four god is on the throne and he is holy holy holy is being sung and he is declared worthy but then there's this this moment where the scroll cannot be opened because no one is worthy to open it and then john says that he suddenly it's declared to him that the lion of the tribe of judah the root of david speaking of the king has conquered and so he can open the scroll and seven seals but then when he looks he doesn't

see a lion he sees a lamb standing as though it had been slain and to that lamb who was worthy to open the scroll all of heaven bows down and says worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth of wisdom light and honor and glory and blessing yeah that's one of the most for me that's one of the most captivating images in all revelation lamb standing as if slain every time i read i'm like wow yeah now that is uh that is a beautiful expression that captures it right there yeah well chad uh it's a beautiful hymn and uh i i have no improvements so i i was hoping we were gonna really do some fine editing today dan but uh no it turns out i'm fine with it too it's pretty it's pretty they it's pretty rock solid man pretty rock solid so we'll look at it

we'll look at it in 10 more years and then maybe we'll find something yeah yeah well dear listener you know if you're uh if your church is looking for a song to sing uh whether it's this christmas season or uh around the lord's supper maybe maybe recommend uh the infant priest was wholly born by uh by chad bird it's a it's a good one chad thanks for uh walking through it man i mean you know you're not really a guest on this show i mean this is your show but you got to play guest uh this time it's fun and i'll actually end this uh this episode it might be it might seem long because i'll actually we'll play the song here as we head out so i hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas, hope you enjoyed this special episode

Thanks guys Merry Christmas guys Merry Christmas Thou art gaining, anointed from eternity. This great high priest in human flesh Was icon of God's righteousness His double touch, the sanctity His hand removed impurity

© transcript Emily Beynon © BF-WATCH TV 2021 In Buhar, upon the tree, he leads us to the holy place. Within the veil before God's face. God on earth entreateth so as he hath entranced the people of the world © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © BF-WATCH TV 2021

and restores.