#255 - Kyle Thompson // What Child is This?

The Daily Blade: Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson

Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson

Devotional, Christianity, Mens Devo, Daily Mens Devotional, Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Devo, Joby Martin

5.0 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We trace the rich theology inside What Child Is This, moving from a manger’s question to a cross-shaped answer. William Dix’s illness, the Magi’s search, and Isaiah’s prophecy converge to show Jesus as fully human, fully divine, and the substitute who saves. • background of William Chatterton Dix and his recovery • the carol’s central question of Jesus’ identity • Christ’s full humanity and full deity named in the refrain • Isaiah 53 and the substitutionary atonement ...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Daily Blade.
0:03.4	The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the
0:08.5	Christian's armor against the forces of evil.
0:11.3	Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight.
0:17.6	Let's sharpen up.
0:20.2	Welcome back to the Daily Blade. This week we're looking at five
0:23.3	Christmas carols in the rich theology and biblical truce they're in. Yesterday we looked at
0:27.7	Oh Holy Night and today we're looking at what child is this. So for the record, my favorite
0:32.3	version of this song is from the country music goat, at least my country music goat, and
0:36.4	Oki Vince Gill from his
0:37.9	Christmas album, Let There Be Peace on Earth from 1993. This carol was written in 1865 by William
0:44.3	Chatterton Dix. So Dix would not have been one of your first choices for a man that would
0:49.1	write one of the most popular Christmas carols of all time. In the 1860s, Dick's was he was a manager for an insurance company,
0:55.4	just working a regular job, but he was struck by a very serious and unexpected illness that left him
1:00.6	bedridden. And apparently there was fear that he would never recover from this illness,
1:04.7	and it ultimately would take his life. This caused him to sink into a rather severe depression.
1:12.5	However, during this dark night of the soul, he read the Bible voraciously, and this led him to a spiritual renewal in his life while he was
1:17.6	recovering from his illness. And he wrote the words to what child is this after meditating on the
1:22.4	story of the biblical magi that we see in Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12. In Matthew's recounting, we see that King
1:29.0	Herod is trying to ascertain the whereabouts of the newborn Christ, not so that he can worship
1:33.4	him as he claims, but so that he can eliminate him. And the magi found him, worshipped him, brought
1:38.3	gifts, and never returned to Herod because they were warned in a dream against doing so.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.