Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Welcome to a new week of the Daily Blade. So for the last couple of installments that I've done, I was carrying on Joby's theme of Worship is War by exposing you to worship songs that fall outside of the contemporary Christian music genre. So I did that to help you guys out. And from the comments we've received, it has. I mean, I did those weeks because I know that many of you guys don't like the sound of contemporary Christian music, but worshiping God through song is not optional. So I wanted to expose you to music from genres that you might like that also have strong biblical and theological themes with them. Now, I promise you guys that this isn't going to become, you know, the spiritual musical lyric connection podcast, but I'm actually going to keep this theme going because it's Christmas this week, guys. And if you're anything like me, you grew up listening to Christmas carols, and many of you, again, like me, sang them without any regard for the theological or biblical significance being communicated in the lyrics. So this week, we're going to look at five different Christmas carols that point us to the truth of scripture and the incarnation of the savior of the world. And we're kicking off this week with one of the most famous Christmas carols of all time, O Holy Night. So for the record, my favorite version of this song is from Josh Groben from his Christmas album Noel from 2007, so you should check that out. This song was written in 1847 in France by a poet named Placide Capot, and it was set to music by a composer named Adolph Adam. Now, as a matter of history, it doesn't seem like Capot was a very devout or committed Christian, but God certainly used him to write one of the most theologically rich carols of all time, and as I already said, one of the most popular. And as with the rest of the Christmas carols that we'll look at this week, O holy night is a meditation on the incarnation. So incarnation simply means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. So Jesus' incarnation is him taking on the flesh of a human being, thus God Nabod. So he is fully God and somehow, that most of us can't explain, also fully man. So let's take a look at the lyrics of O holy night and dig in. O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth. So guys, let's go to Luke 2, starting in verse 1. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Corinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, and who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. So in that very moment everything about everything changed. We see the beginning of the rescue mission that God put in place to save the souls of those that would give their lives over to God by putting their faith in Jesus. Now back to O holy night. Long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. So this lyric is dealing with the weight of our sin, and it's not just the sin that we feel, it's a sin that all of creation feels. Let's look at Romans 8, starting in verse 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. And in addition to this carol looking at the weight of our sin, it actually looks at the revolutionary nature of the arrival of the Christ on the earth. So back to O holy night, let's dig into the third verse here. Chains shall we break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease. Now, as has been elucidated at nauseum up to this point, slavery has been a part of human history for as long as there has been human history, and that includes today. So the ideas and feelings around slavery are ubiquitous to us all. Every people group knows it. But this isn't talking about the slavery created by humans against other humans. This is the slavery of sin. And we as humans are not just slaves to the commission of sins, we are slaves to our very nature, which is to sin. But we have hope because the chainbreaker was sent to this earth to shatter our innate connection to our nature to sin, and that is why the gospel is such good news. God sent his son Jesus to the earth to be born of a virgin. Yes, the virgin birth is important, and he was predestined to live a normal existence for thirty years before starting his three-year earthly ministry, which culminated with his crucifixion, murder, burial, and resurrection. And his death on that Roman cross paid for the sins of all humanity for all time, past, present, and future. All we have to do is put our faith in that reality for our lives. And when we do, we can look back on the arrival of Jesus on this planet and say, A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees, O hear the angels' voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night, O holy night, O night divine.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. Stay sharp.