Dennis Tuuri

Please stand as we read Luke 2:29-32. Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel. Let’s pray. Father, help us to see today the wonderful work that was accomplished at the incarnation and the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

May we learn to sing this song in our lives and so transform the world. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

As an American growing up in the 20th century, I was taught early on through song that it’s the most wonderful time of the year—the dulcet tones of Andy Williams bringing us that message every year. I’ve heard it for many years and while at least when he sang it, and probably still is, a Mormon, yet it is a wonderful time of the year when throughout our nation many people, believers and unbelievers alike, really sing forth the glory of God and the glory of what he accomplished in the coming of Jesus Christ.

Even the Christian church becomes postmillennial, at least for a season, through the songs that we sing. It is the most wonderful time of the year. I’ve commented before on how we have a lot more Christmas songs than we do Easter songs. And somehow that doesn’t seem quite right. The ascension, the resurrection of Jesus, his death for our sins and ascension is certainly significant and of central significance to the Christian faith.

And yet if you actually look at the gospel accounts, there is sort of a rightness to that. At the beginning of Luke’s gospel there are these four songs. Now it doesn’t say they sang them, but frequently in scripture it says they “sung a song saying.” So this word “sang” can include singing, and the poetic structure of these four sections of verse from Luke certainly identify them as psalms which were written specifically to be sung.

So I think we can safely call them songs. And of course, we have freedom to put them into our songs. Our Christmas songs are filled with echoes of these particular songs, some more than others. And we’ve already heard them in some of the songs we sang—echoes from them.

So you have this kind of pattern set by God in the Gospel of Luke where the anniversary, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, will be accompanied by incredible amounts of songs that tell a tremendous story.

I’m reminded nearly every Christmas now of a wonderful review I read of a movie called Moulin Rouge. The review is written by Douglas Jones. Then I think he was editor of Canon Press, and this review actually is still online at the Christianity Today website. It’s a wonderful review. Mr. Jones has a flare for vocabulary and words and art, and it shows in his review. I think of it at this time.

Well, first of all, he mentions that many Christians haven’t seen Moulin Rouge because, as he points out, the previews and trailers showed it as some kind of skanky perversion movie. And I was amazed when I actually watched it. There’s certainly objectionable things in it. I mean, it’s telling the story of basically a brothel, and a story that happens is a young man named Christian goes there and woos this girl. So there’s certainly bad things that happen. But it was nowhere near as weird as the trailers and previews seem to suggest. And actually, it has this really kind of very Christian context to it.

And specifically, what Doug Jones talks about in his review is that, you know, by the end of the movie, the Moulin Rouge will crumble and be destroyed. So the love song, the love story between Christian and Satine, really at the end of it destroys the underworld, destroys the sinful place of habitation of people that are given to want and pleasures. And there’s a progression in the movie that Doug Jones correctly points out—you know, from kind of a perverse love that’s pure, you know, lustful body, etc., to then an attainment of a Christian love that while still sensual, is now eternal and has eternal commitments made, and then ultimately ends up in the sort of self-sacrificial love that is distinctively Christian. And there’s this progression of songs.

The story is told by songs, and the songs begin with sort of one-night-stand songs by Kiss and other people. But then as the movie progresses and as the love changes in dimension, it becomes more songs of eternal commitment to one another—Christian marriage, we would say covenantal vows and love that will endure no matter what, “come what may” as a big refrain in the movie. And so it is this picture of the salvation of love, we could say the salvation of the world, the destruction of the enemies of God, and a destruction that’s accomplished through singing.

And by the end of the movie, you know, all the characters are starting to hear the words, and this Christian who has written these words—these words of love songs, silly love songs—has ended up by the end of the movie presented as destroying the underworld, although also losing his love who dies self-sacrificially. An important Christian theme.

Now, so we have these songs, these Christmas songs, and the Christmas songs given to us in the Gospel of Luke have indeed changed the world and they have indeed, and will continue to, destroy the underworld. And this is this wonderful song, these songs we sing of what has happened.

And so what we do at Christmas time is not just some sort of little romantic traditional thing that we’re involved with here in America. It really is of the essence of the gospel to sing forth that gospel and what God has accomplished in the incarnation.

Right? The focal point is the incarnation of Christ. The songs begin before his birth. Mary’s great song begins and speaks in the past tense that God has already accomplished everything in salvation and he’s fulfilled his singular plan through the true Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ, for the life not just of mankind, but of the world. And so those songs begin to flow out and to be sung and to fill the air and to dispel the darkness of sin in his incarnation, not even his birth.

So what we do is important. And these Christmas celebrations that we have and these songs we love to sing, there’s a reason we love to sing them, and it’s not sentimentality. That’s because that’s the essence of what we’re supposed to do at Christmas time—to sing like the angels sang announcing the birth of Christ and transform the world through our song. Wooing the world through love songs.

So I want to talk about these four songs and I want to talk about them in context. Context quite important.

Last week I failed to provide a proper context for our discussion of our agape, and you could have easily assumed from what I said last week that things were mostly bad with our agape. And of course they never have been. We have had nearly 30 years of wondrous times of community fellowship together at our weekly agape that’s just a delight. And this has happened not just because the elders thought it was a cool idea but because many people, particularly women, have gone out of their way to self-sacrificially labor and to bring this meal to pass.

So I didn’t want to make sure that nothing I said last week was heard as criticizing the women who have labored so hard to make this agape wonderful for us and to fulfill the direction of the officers of the church. The failing of the last few weeks—to extent it was a failure—is, again, in context. This is, you know, in context there is far more to praise God for in terms of our agape than the small things we’re trying to correct.

But the failure that we were correcting and will continue to work on over the years—that’s the way it works with any endeavor—was the failure of the officers, not of the women that very graciously and with servant-like attitude, the Marys of our congregation, the handmaids of the Lord who say, “Here am I, and I’ll do the will of God,” did that. So we praise God for that.

Context is important. And please forgive me for not providing the proper context for my remarks last week.

Well, context is very important in the Bible. And the stuff we’ve already recited, the first two songs, obviously show that what’s happening is fulfillment of something that God has promised is being fulfilled. And of course, we could trace that back to the fall of man itself in Genesis and God’s promise to send the seed of the woman that would crush the seed of the serpent.

I was at a Nutcracker yesterday, and I don’t know if I’ve ever really gone to one before. Charlotte, one of my granddaughters, was in it so that’s why I was there. And you know, man, I sort of went grudgingly, you know, the way that works—okay, Nutcracker. But it was a delightful thing. And even there, and mostly, you know, it’s mostly Candyland and all that stuff and sugar plum fairies, whatever those are. I won’t say anything about that. No, I won’t do that. Okay.

So in any event, but even there, apparently—I don’t know the story, so maybe this is completely wrong—but clearly the girl who is dreaming and attacked by the giant rat king and his rats, then be saved by the wooden soldiers. She either is supposed to crush the head of the mouse herself with her foot or direct the nutcracker or somebody. In the version we saw, she was directing him with her movement of her hand. But I think traditionally the story is she crushes the head.

And so this is also very Christian imagery, and it’s all set in the context of Christmas time and the Christmas tree and all that stuff. So even there, on a kind of a secularized holiday fantasy that Americans love to listen to and watch, we have these strong Christian elements to it. And the element of crushing the head of the serpent begins in Genesis and it’s fulfilled here finally with the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I want to take just a few minutes to look at most of the references to singing that I could find in the Old Testament. So if we’re going to look at New Testament songs, they kind of fulfill something, and they absolutely point us back to things in the Old Testament. So I just want to do a kind of a quick survey of some Old Testament prefigurements of song. It’s prefiguring what will happen. And the interesting thing here is that it works both ways.

It will inform our understanding of what happened with the incarnation, but it will also inform the way that victory is accomplished, right? It runs both ways. We can get the gospel wrong. We can get the good news of the incarnation and birth of Jesus wrong unless we see its Old Testament prefigurements. But we can also get the way those prefigurements are fulfilled wrong if we don’t look at the Christmas story itself and say God’s ways are not our ways.

So that’s what I want to do.

The first real—well, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a—it doesn’t, there’s no song in Genesis 31:27 when Jacob leaves Laban in the middle of the night and Laban says, “Oh, I would have sent you off with singing and musical instruments and all this stuff.” That really doesn’t count as a song in the scriptures because it didn’t happen and Laban was probably lying. But blessing upon a job well done is maybe part of what we get to look at.

But the first real song I want to talk about is Exodus 15. This is the great song of deliverance. This is the song that maybe one day we’ll sing in our worship service. Kings Academy has been singing a version of it for several years—a sort of a chant style, but a fun one written by James B. Jordan. Maybe we’ll have him teach it to us at camp in June. That would probably be a fun thing to do—to really work on it hard so that we can sing what’s called the Song of Moses.

And of course, what’s happened is God has delivered Israel. But the deliverance isn’t the occasion for the song. Them getting out of Egypt alive is not the occasion for the song. The occasion for the song is when God then crushes the head of the serpent. He brings them out. Pharaoh changes his mind, sends soldiers after them, and God destroys them in the sea. That’s the occasion for the song—the deliverance of God by the destruction, the death of enemies.

Again, like Grand Torino, right? The gospel on the cross, Jesus is prosecuting victory against enemies. He’s destroying some people even while he’s bringing the world into transformation and new creation. And so in Exodus 15, Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord and spoke saying, “I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea. Yahweh is a warrior. Yahweh is his name.” That’s kind of how the chant form goes. And we could go on. I won’t read the whole story, but this whole song—I won’t sing it—but it’s a song about victory. And not just victory by getting away from bad people, but a victory that includes the destruction of the bad people. The horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. Yahweh is a warrior God.

And so really, the first song we find in the scriptures—well, we could say that Adam, the first song is a silly little love song that Adam sings about the beauty of his wife, poetic form. But the first piece of poetry called a song—the song is the song where “Yahweh is a warrior”—he will destroy. He will crush the head of the serpent and those who are doing the serpent’s will.

In Numbers 21, the finding of water is occasion for song. So water in a dry land—this is occasion for the song. Numbers 21, it says: “Gather the people. Moses told the Lord to gather the people together. I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, oh well, all you sing to it, the well that the leaders sank, dug by the nation’s nobles, by the lawgiver with their slaves.”

So the provision of water—Jesus is, you know, the water of life. And we sing a song because of the advent of that well. So that’s a song too that prefigures these songs.

Deuteronomy 31 is the next song I could find. Deuteronomy 31, verse 19. And this is a song actually of judgment against us. This is the song that God told Moses to instruct the people of Israel so that if they become committed covenant breakers—if they become Pharaoh and his men—they’ll be destroyed. So we read in verse 19: “Now therefore write down this song for yourselves and teach it to your children to the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. That is when they sing him.”

So again, song is the destruction of people who may have been born in the context of the faith but turned their backs against God—not just for a season, but who stiffen themselves until they’re committed covenant breakers. And a song that children had to learn was about God’s judgment, the way he’ll destroy such people.

In Judges chapter 5, we have another song. This is Deborah’s song—the song of Moses, the song of Deborah. And of course, you know what the song of Deborah is about? It’s about crushing the head of the enemy. Now here we actually have a woman, Jael, who’s crushed the head of the enemy, and God’s people have been victorious in battle. And verse one of chapter 5: “Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day.”

So that’s interesting too—that a man and a woman are singing together. By the way, Moses singing is accompanied by Miriam and the women on tambourines. As covenant history develops, it seems like women are an important part of these songs, and I think that’s because women are being delivered ultimately from the one that deceived them as well, Satan, and those that would pervert them and deceive them. So anyway, Deborah and Barak sing when leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves. Their hair hung is what the verse says. They were Nazirite warriors. They were great committed warriors of God.

So let’s not imagine the men were a bunch of wimps during the time of Deborah. There’s other explanations for what happened. But the men here are being praised for their willingness to be Nazirite warriors for God.

“Bless the Lord here, O king. Give ear, O prince, as I, even I will sing to the Lord. I will sing praises to the Lord, God of Israel. Lord, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the field of Edom, the earth trembled and her heavens poured and the clouds also poured water.”

And again, we won’t read the whole song. We won’t sing it. But the song is one of victory in battle. So it’s not just the deliverance of God’s people. It’s about the destruction of the underworld—again, to use Moulin Rouge metaphors. And so the song is involved in what God has accomplished to destroy enemies.

Again, in 1 Samuel 18, the king and victory over enemies. This happened as they were coming home when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistines. So now the occasion is not the slaughter of the Egyptians or the slaughter of the ones that would oppress Deborah and Barak. Now it’s the slaughter of the Philistines. But the women ran, and they came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines, with joy and with musical instruments.

So the women sang, verse 7, as they danced and said, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.” This will be a cause for envy on the part of Saul later. But the important thing I’m pointing out is that song—the songs that are prefigurements of the great Christmas songs—are stories of deliverance. But they’re also stories of destruction, slaughter, the crumbling of the underworld, and those who would follow in that.

So David is this great warrior and they sing about that. Again in 1 Samuel 21:11, there’s a similar song by the way. It’s not on your outline, but in 1 Samuel 21:11, David is delivered, and because of his deliverance from the Philistines, he sings. Again, this song is sung about him, but it’s a reminder of the slaughter of the Philistines.

1 Samuel 19:9 is another reference to singing. And the singing and music of David was healing to the king. Jesus is the water of life. He is the one that brings healing to our demonia, our demon—our demonic oppression, our goofiness, our stuff. The song is significant for the healing of people. And, you know, this should inform our processes of healing, I think, today.

But in any event, that’s another reference to song.

The next major reference is found in 2 Samuel 22. And in verse actually up in 19—it says well, let’s forget that. But in 22, there’s praise for God’s deliverance again. Then God—then David spoke the words of the song on the day when the Lord had delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. So he gives thanks to the Lord and he sings praises to the name of God by giving him deliverance, and also by destroying, because God has destroyed his and David’s enemies.

In 1 Chronicles 15, we have the great opening of songs in a massive way with Israel. The coming of the Psalms is kind of pointed at here. The advent of the king in Jerusalem is what’s happening in 1 Chronicles 15:16. You know the story: David brings the ark up to Jerusalem and he dances before the Lord. Songs are sung. So the great enthronement of the god who will defeat all their enemies and give them peace—the well-orderedness of a godly culture. The advent of the king in the midst of the ark—that’s his throne room. That’s his throne—that’s accompanied by song. And the whole psalter is basically produced for this time when a tabernacle of David worship occurs, and it all begins with the enthronement of the king in Jerusalem.

And again, by way of prefigurement, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and becomes incarnate—now Jesus Christ is coming as king at his birth—as we sing, this enthronement of King Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of these things in song. Breaking forth in song is the natural result of a Spirit-filled people. When the Spirit comes upon us, he comes upon us to bring us into those songs in response to the coming of the king.

So the Psalms also is about this, of course. Psalm 98. I’ve given you an outline of it on your handout today. And it’s all about, you know, the coming together of Jew and Gentile, the nations and Israel. It’s all about the advent of the king. It’s all about heaven and earth itself rejoicing, the mountains and hills. And those are metaphorical devices, right? In the Old Testament, the earth is Israel. The water is a picture of the Gentiles across the seas. And so this bipolarity of earth and water really is symbolically representing Jews and Gentiles, the division of mankind that began with the fall.

And this will be done away with. And Psalm 98 shows the stitching together of Jew and Gentile, water and land, that will happen when the king finally does fully come in his incarnation. And so Psalm 98 is the substance of course of Isaac Watts’ great song “Joy to the World,” which is based on it, etc. And so Christmas songs are based in Psalm 98 because that’s what it’s about.

And while they’re symbolically representing that, we shouldn’t probably miss the fact from Psalm 98 that the created order itself bursts into song. God’s plan—singular plan through the true Israel, Jesus Christ, the covenant of God—was to save not just individuals and fit them for heaven. It was to save the whole world. And so in Romans, we’ve talked about this. The created order groans. It sings when he comes, but it’s still waiting for the further advent of Christ through his people, the revelation of the sons of God. You and I bring joy to the created order, to the actual physical creation.

And so this is again by way of prefigurement in Psalm 98. That’s what’s rejoiced at with the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ in his birth.

There’s been some interesting studies done, by the way, in this movement of the ark to Jerusalem and what happens in the birth narrative of Jesus. The story is that David wants to bring the ark up. And this story is recorded where is it recorded? It’s recorded for us in 2 Samuel 6. So you know it’s a prefigurement of the coming of Christ—Almighty makes that clear. All kinds of other things do. And he goes there. But you know, we have this incident that happens that makes them fearful of bringing it up. And so for three months it resides at the house of Obed-Edom.

Now the narrative about that is interesting, and scholars commentators have noticed similarities between that and Mary’s movement with the coming of Jesus. Mary goes to Elizabeth when she knows that she’s become pregnant, right? And the language of that movement—”she arose and went”—is the same language that’s used at the beginning of the story of finally bringing the ark up to Jerusalem. So “they arose and they and it goes.” So there’s a connection there.

The blessing of the house of Obed-Edom by the presence of the ark is kind of a prefigurement of the blessing on the house of Elizabeth and Mary, that the presence of the one carrying the king himself—Mary is where she goes. Additionally, the ark resided at Obed-Edom’s house for three months—specifically says that. And then in the story of Mary, after her exchange with Elizabeth, she stays there about three months. This is the same geographical region—identifies the hill country of Judea in both stories. So it seems like there’s some kind of connection.

And if you think about it, of course, it’s not outrageous to think of Mary as the ark because that’s just what it is. She’s carrying the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the universe in her womb. And by the way, when David finally brings that ark up to Jerusalem, what does he do? He dances with the presence of the ark coming. And when Mary goes to Elizabeth and announces what’s happening, what happens? John the Baptist dances in the womb. He leaps for joy. He’s filled with the Holy Spirit. David is filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is all over these narratives, and when the Holy Spirit quickens men, they rejoice in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this story—this bursting forth, and that’s what it was—of psalms and musical expressions, going from the silence of the tabernacle to the great bursting forth of song, is pictured in 1 Chronicles when the ark makes its advent. And of course, it’s a prefigurement when Jesus makes his advent, his incarnation through Mary, the carrier, the bearer of the son.

In the same way, music breaks out because the spirit—the coming of Jesus, the advent of the spirit, the advent of Jesus rather—is also the advent of the spirit. And so the spirit brings forth music to the hearts of people, makes them sing for joy and begin to sing forth this praise of God for what’s happened.

And so musical expression with the advent of Christ is what those Old Testament prefigurements are about. That advent is seen with the king sitting in the midst of his people, and that advent is seen with him giving them blessing, but also by destroying the underworld, by destroying those who would be enemies or opponents to God and to his people.

And that’s what the Old Testament songs are all about—that kind of victory, that kind of deliverance that isn’t just getting away, but it’s also a deliverance that takes over this world for the king by destroying progressively the underworld and the opponents of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, there’s the great Song of Songs in the wisdom literature. And this is, you know, that’s all it is—a big long song. The Song of Solomon, the Song of Canticles, the Song of Songs. And it’s of course about a wedding, it’s about a marriage. But remember in the context of that marriage as well, his mighty men are pictured. They’ll destroy all the enemies of his people. And so the wedding of a woman to the king who represents the coming king, the Lord Jesus Christ—this is the occasion of her song.

So it isn’t just marriage that’s cool. It’s that marriage typifies the advent of the king to be with his bride. Deity and humanity join together in the person of the king and the God through that killing off fallen humanity by either transforming them and forgiving them or by destroying them, as in many of these songs we saw. This is what the wedding songs are all about. That’s why weddings are such great rejoicing ceremonies is because they’re based on this.

So that’s kind of the Old Testament background that we’re supposed to bring to the New Testament songs.

So in the Magnificat, the first of the four of this movement of four songs, we see Mary. And it’s basically the same thing. “My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God my savior for he has regarded the lowly state of his handmaiden. Behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. He whose mighty deeds have done great things for me. Holy is his name.”

Personal joy over the coming of the savior—ultimately over the coming of the bridegroom for the bride, Mary representing the church. But personal release, right? She’s been lifted up; she who is bowed down. But it doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say that his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.

And then it talks about these songs of victory. “He has shown strength with his arm. He scatters the proud. So he destroys evildoers in the imaginations of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their seats. Right? He exalts those who are lowly. He’s filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent empty away. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy. What he spoke to our fathers, the singular covenant, the plan through the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world, involving the destruction of his enemies, involving the scattering of the proud, the removal of the rich—people that won’t use their intellect, their position—the rulers he brings down.”

This is what Mary sings about as an accomplished fact before the birth of Jesus. The great accomplishment is the incarnation itself. That’s what has fulfilled all those promises. And it can be spoken of now in the past tense because the incarnation itself is the definitive act of deliverance and judgment. Psalm 98 pictures that judgment at the center. He’s coming. He’s coming to judge the world. Jesus Christ is coming as judge—not just to save Mary, but to judge the world and create what’s been referred to as the great reversal.

This coming—this is really at the incarnation when the second person of the Godhead takes upon himself human flesh and joins together heaven and earth, joins together Jew and Gentile, joins together men and women in song and in praise to him. And that song is one of deliverance, but it’s also one of victory over enemies.

You know, Mary’s song is really based on Hannah’s song found in the Old Testament. And Hannah’s song is found in 1 Samuel 2. And it’s kind of a strange song. I mean, it says the same thing all the other songs say, so it’s not strange in that regard. But remember her setting. Nobody was beating her or stealing from her or anything. But she had another wife. Her husband was a polygamist. I don’t know how that happened, but he’s seen as a good guy, though.

But the other wife was oppressive to Hannah. So I guess we could say that symbolically we’ve got this oppression of the true church by the false church. But in any event, it doesn’t seem to warrant the strong language that Hannah uses. And yet it does. And her heart rejoices in the Lord as well.

She says in chapter 2, “My horn is exalted in the Lord.” Horn is a thing of strength. “I smile at my enemies.” First words out of her mouth. And when she says that she rejoices in the Lord, it’s because she can smile at her enemies. She’s a godly gal. If the rejoicing of Christmas time is not also a smiling at our enemies, something’s wrong. We haven’t quite caught the story. We don’t know the tune. We haven’t learned the song well yet.

If all we think about is Little Baby Jesus and the forgiveness of sins, it’s much broader, much deeper than that. He has caused Hannah to smile at her enemies. She goes on to say verse four: “The bows of the mighty man are broken. Those who stumbled are girded with strength. So the ones that were weak are strong. The ones that are strong are now weak. Those who were full have need themselves and they hire themselves out rather for bread. And the hungry have ceased to hunger.”

See, this is what Mary’s song is all based upon—this great reversal. “Even the barren is born seven, and she who has many children has become feeble. The Lord kills and makes alive.” So it’s this Lord, you know, who brings judgment as well as the Lord who brings salvation—that this song is about, from Hannah, that’s fulfilled with Mary.

“In verse 9, The wicked shall be silent in darkness for by strength no man shall prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces from heaven. He will thunder against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth,” just like Psalm 98, which is similar to this. “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

So the king again is seen not just in delivering people but in destroying—the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea.

So when we read Mary’s Magnificat, we have to pick up these strong themes that judgment has arrived and God is destroying people as well as saving other people.

Luke 1:68-79, the so-called Benedictus. This is John the Baptist’s father who prophesies of John’s mission. But he also talks about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, he’s “raised up a horn of salvation from us”—or for us rather. Same thing that Hannah’s song talked about—that we should be saved from our enemies. So yeah, salvation from enemies is part of what’s going on, “and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant.”

So all of these covenant signs that the covenant songs of the Old Testament talked about are being fulfilled. He says, “In this one who is coming, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives.”

So we’re delivered. The enemies are destroyed so that we might serve God, not in heaven. That we might serve him all the days of our life, meaning our days here on earth. Jesus has reclaimed the earth. He’s destroying his enemies and he’s exalting his people. That’s what Christmas songs really have at the core of their message.

And of course, this is by the remission of sins. Ultimately, redemption has been accomplished through the coming of Christ. And Zechariah sings of that as well.

So we’ve got Mary talking about what happens with her personally. Her song sings forth that he’ll destroy enemies and bring up his people and he’s blessed her. And then we have Zechariah who brings this into the direct context. Mary had alluded to it, but Zechariah speaks the direct context of the fulfillment of the covenant. And Zechariah is a wonderful picture in his song because we remember what he was like before this.

He had been struck mute. So Zechariah is this picture of redeemed humanity who goes from really having no speech to speak of—who’s being deaf and dumb, although a servant of God. He’s like that silent tabernacle worship. And then with the advent of Christ revealed to him, he bursts forth into song. And so he’s this wonderful picture of what humanity does at Christmas time—goes from its muteness to a bursting forth of song because of the fulfilled covenant.

Now this chorus then of a man and a woman singing—if we think of it as a four-act play here—the third act is the Gloria in Excelsis when the angel appears to the shepherds, announces the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then we have this great heavenly choir burst forth into song. The simplest of these songs but yet probably the most profound.

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth. Peace towards men with whom he is well pleased.”

Maybe a better translation is “towards men of goodwill.” Peace to certain men is the idea. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the presence of blessing from God. And what the angels sing forth in this third act is that heaven and earth have been joined. So now the man and the woman who have sung the first couple of acts are now joined by this angelic host, and this great crescendo happens.

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace in the context of men.”

Beautiful. By the way, that song is matched toward the end of Luke in the triumphal procession. His disciples sing forth “peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” So the disciples kind of sing forth an answering refrain on the part of the disciples to the angels’ song at his birth. That song is answered with the refrain by the disciples in his advent to the city.

Again, the advent of the ark coming up. Jesus goes to Jerusalem, and he’s going to from there rule. He’s going to conquer all of his enemies. The horse and the rider he’ll throw into the sea. He’ll bring about eternal salvation for his people and the destruction of their enemies. And our response to that should be just like the angel’s response—is “glory to God in the highest.” We praise you, Lord God, for bringing peace—the destruction of enemies, the exaltation of your people, the humble. They’re bringing that peace in the form of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then the fourth act is, you know, in a way it’s kind of a—it’s, you know, how good plays work. There’s this crescendo, but you don’t want to just leave it after the crescendo. There’s kind of a meditational aspect of a four-act play, and the fourth act can frequently ponder, meditate upon, and discuss what’s happened. And that’s kind of what happens here with the Nunc Dimittis.

Here is Simeon’s song. He’s been led by the Holy Spirit. All these men are being affected by the Holy Spirit to sing. It’s explicitly tells us in the text he’s been led by the Holy Spirit to the temple to wait and to see Jesus. And it’s very interesting that Jesus comes to the temple to fulfill the purification ritual. But the way it’s actually described in Luke’s gospel is almost as if you have these overtones that all purification has now been accomplished.

Now, at the end of purification, or something to that effect, is how this advent of Jesus to Jerusalem is described. And so, you know, there’s purification rituals for women when they have a boy child. It’s 40 days. And so that’s over now. And so Mary—it’s not for his circumcision. That’s mentioned, but it happens on the eighth day. This is the 40th day. And it’s interesting because it’s almost as if the incarnation again, the bloodletting of circumcision, you know, the shedding of blood—God prefiguring the cross.

And now the purification, the purification ritual has been completed, is announced at the temple. And so it’s as if the whole world has been purified and cleansed through the advent of this child, Jesus, this baby Jesus. And that’s the context for the singing forth of a great song of satisfaction. You know, that fourth act has that satisfaction of mankind who has seen what has been accomplished in singing forth this great statement:

“Lord, now you’re letting your servant depart in peace. Waited, waited, waited, waited. The world has now, the world can depart in peace. It can rest in peace. It’s satisfied in a way that has never been satisfied for 4,000 years because of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. For mine eyes have seen your salvation. Salvation isn’t just from sin. It’s the deliverance of the world from the effects of sin. It’s the destruction of evildoers whom you have prepared before the face of all peoples.”

And then finally, the last little measure of this leads to another great song in the book of Acts: “A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.”

This will not just affect Israel. This wonderful song and opera ends with a mode of satisfaction. And the satisfaction is that the whole world will now come together. Humanity will be healed because of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay. Now, I said that it helps us to understand Christmas if we know the prefigurement songs. So Christmas is about the destruction of Jesus’s enemies. He’s coming to judge. He’s come to judge the world. But it also works the other way around. It shows us that when Jesus was first of all, he was born a helpless child. He was put in a cave, the center of the earth.

The world is turned inside out—as I don’t know who it was, Chesterton or Elliott, “the man in the cave”—and it’s as if the whole world has been turned inside out now at the coming of Jesus Christ. God’s ways are not our ways. He doesn’t send a mighty, you know, thing back from the future to destroy all evil people and kill them with the sword and wreak havoc in that way. That’s what they were sort of expecting, the Jews.

And we can expect that if we come to a conclusion that these songs are informed by the Old Testament. Well and good. It reminds us of the necessity of the destruction of his enemies. But then the beautiful picture of this song—the reason why Christmas resonates so incredibly with us, the reason why it’s the most wonderful time of the year, a year of struck wondering at God—is he destroys the underworld with a song, with a silly love song.

He’s going to bring the bridegroom for his bride. He does something that doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever. A little baby born in a manger, at that, right? Humble beginnings. And even at the conclusion of the 33 years, what does he do? He dies. God’s ways are not our ways.

So it helps us to remember we’re singing about victory. We’re not singing about escapist realities here. We’re talking about the transformation, the destruction of the underworld and the establishment of the godly in the entire face of the world. But we’re not going to see that accomplished through the force of arms or really through politics. We’ll see that accomplished in the ineffable way that a mother with a small child, you know, is moved to tears and wonder at the beauty of that scene.

And when we look at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, we must never forget he is the Lord God of all history. He’s the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But he rules by coming as a small child. His ways are not our ways.

Mary, all these songs happen in the context of Roman oppression. They happen in the context of economic collapse—30, 40, 50% unemployment. People starving to death in the streets. Roman soldiers killing good people. That’s the times they live in. And Mary can say in the past tense, “It’s over. The incarnation has happened.”

And Jesus will start to now reign in the context of this world in the small millions of decisions made by the people that he’s redeemed and freed. And he’ll accompany their witness with providential acts, and he will transform the world. He’ll destroy the underworld. But he doesn’t do it with Christmas songs—Christmas songs. It’s a, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Now in the providence of God, at the wonderful time of this year, we’re going to get a Christmas present. On Christmas, we’re going to get the Congress, which is now become the most—I think probably—openly corrupted Senate in United States history, being bought off. Two billion here. Louisiana purchased. Three million, 300 million here. Votes bought to give us this Christmas present—either Christmas Eve the vote will be held or Christmas day itself. Healthcare. Government control of healthcare. What it’s going to mean is taxes for the next three or four years. There’ll be no services rendered, mind you. No positives happen. It’s total revenue generation for your United States federal government that handles that money so well.

No, we’re going to have more oppressive taxation. Small businessmen who are trying to eke out a living are trying to figure out, “How am I going to do this?” And what if they pass that stupid climate bill? We are faced with not Roman oppression and 30 or 40% unemployment, but something of a nature of that oppression—corrupt politicians, socialists who will do whatever they want, use Chicago style politics to accomplish this.

And Christmas, you’re going to have the present of knowing that your taxes are going to go up, your medical care will go down, things will get worse. You know, it’s going to be more oppressive. And these guys have all accomplished this by being bribed. That’s what you’re going to know Christmas morning when you wake up.

But so what? So what? What we’ve learned is that we can sing the song of the ages because Jesus Christ was incarnate. He was born. He reigns from the right hand of the Father. Yeah, his reign doesn’t look like our reign. We’d vote him out today if we could or worse. But that’s not the way it works.

The way it works is we as Christians love in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We sing love songs, and we warn people of the destruction that awaits them if they shake the fist of God. But we don’t carry that out. We don’t pick up arms. We believe in the Christmas story. We believe that Christmas morning, what we’re going to think about is the wonderful present—the incarnation of the Lord who brings defeat to his enemies in ineffable sublime ways, who woos the world with love songs.

But the coming of the wonderful advent of the birth of a small little child who can’t accomplish anything and has to be carried away by others to avoid the murdering Herod. But we serve the God who has completely changed history. He’s turned everything right side up again when the fall turned it upside down. We serve that God confidently, joyously, with song because we know the truth—that singular covenant through Jesus, the true Israel, has now been accomplished—and the world will never be the same again.