Christmas Playlist by Alistair Begg

CHRISTMAS PLAYLIST BY ALISTAIR BEGG

I have heard Alistair Begg speak at New Horizon and have another of his books so when this one came up I jumped at the chance to read another "Christmas" book!  If you have never heard him speak - he does loads of talks on Instagram and he has the most wonderful voice - brought up in Scotland but now pastoring in America it is music to your soul!

This book is based around 4 songs sung at Christmas - now you are probably thinking which carols will be take but it is the songs in the bible - Mary's song, Zechariah's song, Simeon's song and finally the angels' song.

Interesting note - I was reading this book yesterday and today our pastor focused on the angels' song - how ironic is that!  Surely God is whispering in my ear today!

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ANGELS' SONG

Imagine the scene - shepherds (the lowest of the low in society) sitting out on the hillside one night watching their sheep.  It was night time and all of a sudden one angel comes into view.  Max Lucado kindly pointed out in his book that the shepherds could understand what was being said so the angel spoke their language - not our English for sure but it has been translated into what we have today!  This angel gave a revelation that was to change everything.

The angel described the baby's job - Saviour or Redeemer.  He announced the baby's title - Jesus: God's king promised for centuries to his people, promises recorded in the Old Testament.  And he revealed the baby's identity - the Lord.  Just imagine the significance of each of those names - think about when a baby is born and everyone wonders what his name is going to be - something after his parents or family names, something with deep personal meaning to the father or mother or something that refers back to someone else of significance who has no family relationship.  All of these were given to the baby born in the manger.

Imagine God took on flesh!  That little baby in the trough grabbed hold of Mary's fingers, the same one who placed every star in its place in the night sky.  That baby who cried when he was hungry - fully human and fully God - divinity met humanity.  But we are told in John's gospel that he actually existed before this birth - he was God the Son - the "Word".  He is older than his conception/incarnation.  This is unparalleled.  It is unique -  it is mysterious.  And it is historical!

You see we all know that Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem because of the census Caesar Augustus ordered.  Augustus was regarded as a "Saviour" to his people.  He encouraged the worship of Julius Caesar as a god and allowed himself to be styled as "the son of God".  Now go back to the scene on the hillside - shepherds hearing the news that a Saviour had been born in a nearby town called Bethlehem.  What were their thoughts?  Probably that it was unbelievable for a Saviour to be born and lying in a feeding trough in a backwater town.  Jesus knew what real life was all about.  He came as Luke's gospel continually tells us - for the least, the last and the left out.

Do you say "there is no God" then the incarnation question is irrelevant  If there is no God, he could not have been born as a baby in Bethlehem.  But if your starting point is that there is (or even that there might be) a God who created the entire universe then surely he is capable of entering his universe.  Why would we be surprised that he can do what he wants to do?  In the last century or so humanity has worked out how to bring about conception without sexual intercourse.  100 years ago that idea would have seemed impossible and not worthy of being believed.  Now it seems plausible and obvious.  If doctors can do it in their way, do we really want to say that God cannot do it in his?  God the Son taking flesh is a mystery that we will never understand.  But not being able to understand how God became one of us is not proof that he did not become one of us.

God bridged the gap by coming from heaven to earth.  This is how much the mighty God cares about us.  Love was when God became a man.  Love was when God surprised those he had created by being born as one of them - as a baby.

Another important fact is the "peace" the angels declared in their song.  Augustus had established what was known as "Pax Romana", an empire at peace and guaranteeing safety (except for slaves and rebels).  The peace of Rome was about to be dwarfed by the peace of God.  Caesar Augustus could not transform any of his subjects hearts or change any of their eternal futures but this baby could.  The peace of God that invades a life is based on the discovery of peace with God.  Peace is not found at the bottom of a bottle, through owning stuff or in our own strength and will or obeying certain religious rules.  It is a peace that is found in someone and it pursues us, seeks us, comes knocking on the door of our lives.  But it's a peace that so many miss out on because they fail to make room for the one who brings it.  Why was he born and laid in a feeding trough - because there was no room anywhere else.

Our Pastor reminded us of Psalm 8 today where it talks about the Psalmist considering the works of God's fingers making the universe - he made the entire universe and he came into his universe and there wasn't a place for him.  He has come as one of us, to bring peace to us by redeeming us from our sins - will you still say "no room?"

MY THOUGHTS ON SIMEON'S SONG

Reading Simeon's song this morning - yes it is horrible!  First of all he asks to be allowed to die and then he tells Mary how it will feel when what happens to Jesus happens!  Imagine Mary standing there listening to this old man saying something that causes real hurt to her innermost soul.  Yet we read Mary pondered all these things.  It was not until the end of Jesus' life - Easter - when she fully understood what those words meant.

In Simeon's song we also get another hint at a change in perspective as to who would be accepted into God's kingdom.  Right through the Old Testament with the story of Abraham and the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt, through all the kings and rulers in David's day and beyond, to the exile into Babylon and return again we believe Jesus primarily was to come for the Jewish Saviour but now Simeon makes it clear "a light for revelation to the Gentiles."  Imagine we are included in that prophecy and here we have the reality of it today!

Yet again in Jesus' life we would have thought Jesus would speak to the religious people but he doesn't.  Now does that not fly in the face of even us "churchy" people today.  it is not a matter of following all our rules and regulations associated with church that makes us right in God's eyes but rather God wants to speak to the down and outs and those on the fringes of society as well as us!

Why?  because he has come to bring to light and then deal with their greatest problem, whether they are religious or irreligious, good or bad - their sin!  Suffering and salvation in Simeon's words - wow!

NOTES FROM THE BOOK

Mary's Song - What is God Like?

All of us have some view of God.  Some people expend great mental energy westling with the question of the reality and nature of God.  Others of us give it no more than a passing thought.  Everyone thinks about God - and lots of us think different things about him.

How do we know that we've got it right?

Mary's song - she doesn't sing about herself, but about God.  It's a song that pours out from a heart bursting with emotion.

The background is a combination of the natural and the supernatural, the interweaving of the very ordinary and the clearly extraordinary.  A lady is going to have a baby.  That is ordinary news.  The baby is going to be conceived by God himself.  That is extraordinary news.  The announcement is made by an angel sent from heaven.  That is supernatural.  But then Mary responds in a very natural way: I need to go and talk to someone about this.  And so Mary "got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea" where she goes to the home of Zechariah and her relative, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is decade older and she is pregnant too.  And so now we have a kind of girl's night in.  And it is while Mary is with Elizabeth that she breaks out in a song, the first Christmas song in history - Luke 1 verses 46 - 55.

Mary speaks initially in terms which are personal: "For he (God) has been mindful of the humble state of his servant" (verse 48).  In other words, God has been mindful of me, Mary says.  God could have found a rich, noble, powerful queen who lives in a palace.  But he has chosen not to do so.  He's come instead to a lowly girl who has no apparent significance whatsoever.  He's come to me.

"mindful" means taking thought or taking care or keeping remembrance of something.  And Mary says, this is why my soul glorifies - focuses on the greatness of - the Lord, and why my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour - because he has taken thought of me.  He has taken care of me.  I am in his remembrance. I may be very little in the eyes of the world, but I am valuable in the eyes of the One who made the world.

Mary doesn't sing simply in personal terms.  At the end of her song, she also sings in "people" terms: "He has helped his servant, Israel (a whole nation), remembering (that's the same word as for mindful) to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors."

God is mindful of Mary as an individual because he is mindful of his people as a whole.  Her significance lies in the fact that she is part of God's plan for his people.

Genesis 12 - Abraham called out from his people and from his country and his household, telling him to go to a place that he would show him.  All the way through the Old Testament, God says again and again to Abraham's descendants (who came to be called "Israel" and known as Jews): I am mindful of you, I am remembering you and I will fulfill the promise that I have made.  See Isaiah 9 verses 6 and 7

Then this young woman Mary says that God has indeed been mindful of her and that by being mindful of her, he has been mindful of his people as a whole.  The son has been given.  The promises are about to be fulfilled.

God is mindful.  He is personally involved with humanity.  He has promised to make blessing - fulfillment and security - available to "all peoples on earth."  The greatness of God is not revealed in his isolation from us; the greatness of God is revealed in his intimacy with us.

God's greatness is revealed in his intimacy with us.  He does know my name, and he does know yours.  He knows about and he cares about, the responsibilities that weigh heavy on you, the quiet disappointments that gnaw at you, and the concerns that keep you awake at night.  He knows about your hopes and aspirations and the moments that make your heart sing.  The Creator is mindful of you and that gives you value, whatever the world sees when it looks at you, and however you are treated by those around you.  He is mindful.

God knows you, he cares about you and he makes promises to you and he acts to help you.  He is the mindful God.

Secondly Mary sings, God is mighty: "The Mighty One has done great things for me ... he has performed mighty deeds with his arm" (verses 49 and 51).  The picture of God here is of a warrior, extending his sword-arm in strength to achieve his purposes.  And what does this mighty warrior do?  He turns human attitudes upside down.  Notice what has he done in his might.  He has taken what society, culture and individual men and women tend to lay greatest store by - and he has demolished it.

So first, he "has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts" (vs 51).  God does not often allow us to remain on our perch for long, if we think it is our abilities or hard work alone that put us or keeps us there.  Some of the struggles that we have lived through in our lives which we tried to explain socially or economically or politically, or put down to "bad luck" should actually be explained in terms of God's mighty deeds.

Second, God has "brought down the rulers from their thrones" (vs 52).  

Third, God sends the rich away empty even as he fills up the hungry with good things.  Who are the people who shouldn't be empty?  Rich people.  It is still possible to be rich and empty, not in your stomach but in our soul, because the more the rich have of the wealth that the rest of us so often prize, the emptier and more hollow things will be seen to be.

At first glance, scattering the self-reliant and sending the rich away empty seems at odds with the idea of a mindful God who cares about people.  In fact, it is because God cares that he uses his might in this way.  He doesn't do it vindictively.  He does it purposefully.  He sets people down - he removes good gifts from people - so that they might be delivered from their self-sufficient schemes and from their proud assumptions.  

When life is good, and successful, and comfortable, it is easy to think that we no longer need God - that we can in fact buy all we need.  It is tragically easy to forget that our bodies cannot last forever and that beyond our death we will meet with the One who is eternal.  When life is good, it is easy to kid ourselves that we are mightier than we truly are, and to forget the God who is truly mightier than we are.

That's why the mighty God "has scattered those who are proud" now - to help them deal with him now, in this life.  

God wants you to see that he is not a God who fits in with all our preferences and priorities - and that's great news!  He is much bigger, more mighty and more real than that.  He scatters the proud so that they can become humble.  And then he lifts them up.  He helps those who are humble enough to say, I don't actually have it all together.  I don't have all my questions answered.  I have struggles I need help with.  God fills "the hungry with good things" - once you've realised that you're hungry for something that this world cannot give you, you're ready to find the fullness God offers.

So what do you think about when you think about God?  Mary might well have answered that question, God is mindful of us and more mighty than us.  And the truth that God is both all-caring and all-powerful made her heart "rejoice" - and it's a truth that causes hearts to rejoice still today.

Zechariah's Song - Why do You Need God?

Mary was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described in Luke's Gospel.  That belonged to her relative Elizabeth.  She and her husband Zechariah had been "childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive and they were both very old." (Luke 1 verse 7)  But before the angel Gabriel visited Mary he had visited Zechariah to announce that his wife would fall pregnant, and that their son, John would grow up "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (verse 17).  John would be the warm-up act for the main event.  Zechariah's son contains 2 words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message: "come" and "redeemed".

God has come to visit.  He is moving into the neighbourhood.  But why?  To redeem.  "Redemption" is the act of providing a payment to free someone.  And Zechariah is explaining God's work in the present situation by referencing God's work in the past - in the time of the exodus, a millenium and a half before.  It was the time when God's people Israel were stuck in Egypt, enslaved by Pharaoh.  Despite haraoh's resistance, God freed them through a series of plagues sent against the inhabitants of Egypt.  The last plague was the worst - death.  The oldest son in each family would die, God warned.  But God also provided a way out - through the death of a lamb.  The lamb died, the people who trusted God lived and Pharaoh, devastated by what his decision to resist God had done to his nation, let them go.  God had "redeemed" his people.

Now Zechariah is saying, God is redeeming people all over again.  Not from enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their own sin - to our own sin.  We need, he says "forgiveness of our sins."  Zechariah is referring to a moral plight.  "Sin" explains what we see within us and what we see around us.  Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be - in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course.  It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don't want you, I won't obey your commands, I will not listen to your word.  I will call the shots.  To "sin" means to miss the mark.  "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3 verse 23).  Everyone throws and misses when it comes to glorifying - to recognizing, pleasing, loving and following - the God who made us, who sustains us and who gives us everything we have.

Sin is not merely a bad habit.  Sin is our greatest problem.  Sin causes alienation from others. My sin has crippled my ability to know God and to live with God.  One day all sin will be judged and all sin will be punished by separation.  Sin is our greatest problem because it separates us from the God whom we were made to know and designed to enjoy.  But in another sense, the truth about sin is also our greatest insight, because it explains life as we experience it.  There is a mighty, loving God who made us - and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness.  But we reject that God's authority - and so we are capable of selfishness and evil.  We were made to enjoy life with God eternally, but we all choose to live in defiance of him.  We are asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen - from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot replay.

Someone will have to bear the cost for our sin.  The mighty God who is really there does not just wink at sin.  He cares about how our sin spoils the world he made, and spoils the lives of those he made.  He cares about how we reject his authority and seek to sit in his place.  It makes him justifiably angry.  He does not just let people off.  He is a God who loves justice and brings justice and so there is a punishment to be faced - there is a price to be paid.

We are unable to rectify the situation.  We must pay the price - unless someone comes from the outside who does not share our predicament and who can pay the price to free us from the consequences of our actions.  When it comes to our sin, that someone can only be God himself.  We need God to come and we need God to help.

Zechariah is singing about the truth that God has done just that.  He has turned up. And he has turned up to redeem us - to pay the price, bear the cost of freeing us and restoring us so that we can know him and live with him again, forever.

At the heart of understanding the first Christmas and why it is such good news, is an understanding of the nature of your predicament.  And that involves accepting the nature of sinfulness - your sinfulness and the seriousness of sin - your sin.

Zechariah knows that his son, John will "go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation" - of rescue "through the forgiveness of their sins".  He knows that John will spend his life saying, Hold on, God is coming.  And God will rescue you.

God was moving into the neighbourhood to free people from their sins and to fill up the space between himself and sinful people - sinful you and me.

The Angels' Song - How did God Come?

The angel told the shepherds who it was who had been growing in Mary's womb and who was now "wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger".  The angel described the baby's job - "Saviour": Redeemer.  The angel announced the baby's title - "Christ": God's King promised for centuries to his people, promises recorded for us in the OT.  The angel revealed the baby's identity - "the Lord".  The word "Lord" is making a staggering claim, because it is the word that was used by Greek-speaking Jews to translate the Hebrew word "Yahweh" - the personal name of God, by which he had introduced himself to his people for centuries.  In other words, here's the deal: good news, great joy for all the people, has come because a Redeemer, the ultimate Ruler, has been born.  And he is God Almighty.

On the first Christmas night - God took on flesh.  The voice that made the cosmos could be heard crying in the cradle.  The hands that placed each star in its place grabbed hold of Mary's fingers.  Her son was fully human and fully God.  In this man, divinity met humanity.  

This was not the beginning!  God the Son had always existed, equal with and eternal with the Father and the Spirit - one God in 3 persons, the Trinity.  God the Son - the "Word" - predates his birth; he is older than his conception or his incarnation - John 1 verses 1 and 2.  This is unparalleled.  It is unique.  It is mysterious.  And Luke is claiming that it is historical.

God bridged the gap by coming from heaven to earth. This is how much the mighty God cares about us.  Love was when God spanned the gulf.  Love was when God became a man.  Love was when God surprised those he had created by being born as one of them - as a baby.

The place where God's Son was born is also a surprise and the people to whom God sent the angels is a third surprise.  

It was not unusual to have a baby in swaddling cloths.  It was unusual to lay a baby in a food trough.  The Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus had ordered a census be taken, obliging Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and there was no room for them to stay anywhere else.  Augustus meant "worthy of adoration".  According to an inscription on a stone carved in around 9 BC and found in a marketplae in what is now turkey, Augustus' birth "gave the whole world a new aspect".  He was regarded as a "Saviour".  He encouraged the worship of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, as a god, and allowed himself to be styled as "the son of God".  So great was his power and his impact that the inscription continued that "from his birth a new reckoning of time must begin."  The shepherds must have been struck by how vastly different this child in a manger was from Caear Augustus - from the person who established the glory of his name and the might of his empire at the head of his armies and who could move his subject peoples around at the stroke of a pen.  And yet here in this food trough lay the one who really is worthy of adoration, whose birth changes everything, who came as Savour and who really is the Son of God - and whose birth-date is the way we still reckon our time 2000 years later.

The Son of God came to be just like us, among us, rather than to lord it over us.  His was not a gilded, protected existence.  He knows what life is like.  Jesus said he "did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10 verse 45)

Where the announcement was made - not to Augustus but group of poor shepherds.  In Luke's Gospel we discover that again and again Jesus goes for the least and last and the left out.  He works in a way that we might no anticipate him working.  And we have to allow him to surprise us: to be different than a god we would make up and to work differently than how we would if we were God.  This is the real God, and you and I are not him.

Then the reinforcements appear - the choir declares what this baby will achieve: "on earth peace".  Augustus had established what was known as the "Pax Romana" - an empire at peace and guaranteeing safety.  But the peace of Rome was about to be dwarfed by the peace of God.

The angels say this baby could give peace that goes deep within and lasts beyond the grave - the peace "for which man yearns."  The peace of God that invades a life is based on the discovery of peace with God.  And since we are separated from God - since we have declared independence and rebelled against our rightful Ruler - this is a peace that can only be brought about by the intervention of God himself.  This is a peace that is found in someone.

Why was the God of heaven in a feeding trough?  Because there was no room anywhere else.  No one had made room for him.  He made the entire universe.  He came into his universe.  And there wasn't a place for him.

Simeon's Song - How did God do it?

Simeon was a devout believer in God.  He was patiently waiting for the promises God had made to be fulfilled.  And not only that, but God's Holy Spirit had told him that he wouldn't die until he saw these promises begin to unfold on the pages of history.

Simeon announces the truth that he is looking at God's salvation, lying in his arms.  And Simeon understands that this Saviour has come to save not only "your people Israel" - the ancient people of God, the descendants of Abraham - but he has also come "to the Gentiles" - everyone else.  People think Jesus is going to go for the religious folks and he doesn't - he hangs out with the irreligious folks.  People think he's going to go for the people who are doing their best, but he doesn't - he welcomes the people who have done worst.  That's because he has come to bring to light and then deal with their greatest problem, whether they are religious or irreligious, good or bad - their sin.  As the angels promised, this child would be good news of great joy for all people  there is no one who does not need Jesus to offer them salvation, and no one to whom he does not offer that salvation.

Simeon did not only speak of salvation.  He spoke of suffering too.  He was explaining what was to come - not just announcing that this child would bring salvation but hinting at what it would cost him to bring it.  He would reveal the deep secrets, and the true attitude towards God, that lies in every human heart.  He would be opposed verbally; and one day, his mother's soul would be torn apart emotionally.  He does not tell Mary what will happen; but he does tell Mary how it will feel.

Unless you understand the events of Easter you'll never grasp the heart of Christmas.  Simeon understood that - which is why he pointed forwards to Good Friday even as he welcomed the baby at the center of Christmas.  Simeon is pointing us to how God redeemed his people. 

There are virtually no details here of Jesus' physical suffering.  Luke wants you to look at this scene, but he does not want you to focus on the outward aspects, the physical horror of it and so overlook the deeper emotional and spiritual aspects of what is going on (the aspects that Simeon had not overlooked in his words to Jesus' mother).   Luke doesn't want you to feel only sympathy for Jesus as a sufferer - because he wants you to put your faith in Jesus as your Saviour.  He wants you and me to grasp not only what Jesus suffered but how he saves.  3 things that stand out:

First the dispute over the clothes.  As Jesus died, the soldiers divided up Jesus' clothes by casting lots.  Jewish men tended to wear 5 garments and soldiers at an execution were allowed to keep the condemned man's clothes.  Jesus is left with nothing - he is reduced to nothing.  This man's birth had been announced by angels.  In between his birth and death, he had commanded storms, multiplied meals for one into banquets for thousands, restarted a dead girl's life, stood up to those who used religion as a veneer for their own desires for power or wealth, and offered compassion to those broken in their bodies or by their mistakes.  Now Jesus is nothing and has nothing.  Even a criminal condemned to death and hanging alongside him speaks against him (just as Simeon had foretold).  Jesus is plumbing the depths.  Naked, vulnerable and mocked by a dying criminal.

The second detail that stands out: darkness during the day is a signal of God's displeasure and God's judgment.  Remember that it was Israel's rescue from Egypt - the exodus - that helped explain what "redemption" is.  It is that rescue that also explains what the darkness means.  The last plague was the judgment of God and it came to everyone in Egypt - whether Egyptian or a member of Israel - because everyone had sinned.  So in each house, the firstborn son died, unless a lamb had died in that home.  But the second-last plague was the plague of darkness.  "Total darkness covered all Egypt for 3 days." (Exodus 10 verse 22).  That darkness was an indication of impending judgment.  That darkness said to everyone in Egypt that God's punishment was falling - that the punishment of death and separation from him, the punishment deserved by sinners who have lived in rejection of him, was coming.

But as darkness fell over Israel on the afternoon that Jesus was nailed to the cross, only one man "breathed his last" - Jesus.  God's judgment had come - and it was God, in the person of his Son, who was experiencing it.  On the cross, Jesus entered into a realm he'd never experienced.  Here we have God, abandoned by God.  Here we see God's Son, punished as a sinner by his Father, even though he had never, ever sinned - never failed to love his Father and his neighbour.  Jesus was experiencing the real abandonment of his Father.  He was experiencing hell.

Why?  Because Jesus was bearing the burden of the world's sin.  Jesus was not dying as the firstborn, since he had never sinned.  He was dying as the lamb.  He was paying the price to redeem people.  He was going through hell so that he could save people from hell - in those agonising hours, he was losing friendship with his Father so others could gain it.

It is what some people call the great exchange.  God the Son took on the penalty due to sinful people and so God the Father declares guilty sinners who trust Jesus as forgiven, guilt-free.  I deserve to be on the cross; Jesus hung on it.  My sin deserved punishment; Jesus took it.

As Jesus died on the cross, an act of divine vandalism took place only yards from where he had once lain in Simeon's arms "The curtain of the temple was torn in two."  There were 2 massive curtains in the temple, about 80 feet high and both were huge visual reminders of the truth that there is a separation between sinful man and the perfect God.  God tore it.  The cross shows me that my sin is very real and is absolutely horrendous - it took the death of God's only Son to deal with it and free me from it.  But the cross also shows me that God is very real and awesomely loving - God the Son came to die so that my sin could be dealt with.

3 days after the events that must have pierced Mary's soul, God stamped PAID unmistakably against all the sins I have committed, all the debt I owe to him.  God the Father left no one in any doubt that he had accepted Jesus' payment for sinners' debts - that the price to free sinners had been paid.  Luke 24 verses 1 - 7

Luke's Gospel finishes in a very similar place to where it began.  We began with angels appearing and we finish the same way.  We began with an angel announcing the presence of life where it is, humanly-speaking, impossible - in the wombs of a woman who was infertile and a woman who was a virgin.  We finish with angels announcing the presence of life in a tomb - the resurrection of a crucified criminal to eternal glory. 

Between the events of the first Christmas Eve and the first Easter Sunday, Simeon's words had come true.  Jesus had reached out to those who were outsiders, excluded.  He had been opposed.  He had revealed what people really believed.  Physical nails had pierced his hands as an emotional sword pierced the soul of his watching mother.  And, as he hung on the cross, he had redeemed his people - he died the death that tore the curtain and he paid the price that bought the salvation that Simeon had spoken of all those years before.

He died on that cross because Simeon, Mary, Zechariah, the shepherds, you and I are sinners - and because he loves them and us anyway.