June 28, 2000

• Luke 2:21-38 Testifying to Jesus

  

  By John MacArthur  

  Testifying to Jesus: Joseph & Mary

  Luke 2:21-24 

  As we consider the Christmas story, perhaps we are not familiar with two names with which we should be familiar, Simeon and Anna.  Their story doesn't get told very often and it rarely ever gets repeated around Christmas season.  It seems like the wise men, the shepherds and angels are more dramatic and certainly the story of Herod is dramatic and deadly.  But what we see here from verse 21 to verse 40 is drama at its highest level.  It is critical, essential testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ.

  There is a principle that is woven into the fabric of our lives.  And it starts out in the Bible back in Deuteronomy and it's this principle, any testimony should be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses.  Even today in the jurisprudence of western civilization, a story corroborated by two or three witnesses is considered to be credible and believable and true.  That goes back to that biblical affirmation, that testimony had to be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses.  And the testimony of Luke has been that Jesus has been born "Son of God, Son of Man, Son of Abraham, Son of David."  The testimony has been born that Jesus came into the world as a child of a virgin, having no human father, being fathered by God Himself through the power of the Holy Spirit, being planted in Mary's womb without a human father, thus the child born of a virgin. And Luke has given testimony to the fact that this child is God in human flesh, that this child is the eternal King who will reign on the throne forever and ever, that this child is the Savior of the world.  This is the child who will save people from their sins.  This is the singular and the greatest child ever to be born in the history of the universe.

  That testimony needs to be confirmed. And so Luke in this section brings in the testimony of witnesses.  First, there is the testimony of Joseph and Mary, the parents' testimony.  Secondly, there is the testimony of a man named Simeon.  And thirdly, there is the testimony of a woman named Anna. And finally, there is the testimony of God Himself.  Four testimonies are given...the testimony of His parents, the testimony of Simeon, the testimony of Anna, and the affirmation and testimony of God Himself as to the identity of this child.  And so the passage confirms the credibility of Luke's account that this child is indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, the anointed Christ and the Savior of the world.

  Now there's something you want to know about a witness called to testify.  You want to know that they're honest. And so you want some indication of their character.  Luke is careful in this passage to let us know that the witnesses that are called to give affirming testimony to Jesus Christ are righteous people.  They are credible witnesses because they are righteous.  Their testimony we can believe because of the character of their lives. And so we find here that Luke majors on letting us in on the character of all of these witnesses.

  The first thing we find out about has to do with the parents of Jesus.  Now we already know they are righteous because in Matthew 1:19 it says, "Joseph, being a righteous man." And that is to say he was right with God, that's what Scripture means.  He was right with God.  Joseph was one of a small remnant in Israel, he was just a boy thirteen, fourteen-years-old when he...when he came together to take Mary as his wife after she had given birth to the child and Mary was just a girl of thirteen or fourteen.  But Joseph was righteous.  It says it in Matthew 1:19 he was a righteous man.

  Now in Israel the righteous were a very small remnant, a very small remnant.  There were liberals, theologically, in the nation Israel having been influenced by the Sadducees who didn't believe in a real resurrection and didn't believe in angels.  They denied the supernatural and they were the theological liberals of the time and they had great influence on a lot of people. 

  And there were the legalists as well as the liberals.  They were the Pharisees and everybody they influenced who believed that they could work their way to heaven by their own righteousness and their own adherence to Jewish ceremony, that they could be good enough on their own. And those legalists commanded a large following. 

  And then there were those that we could say were the politicizers, the people who had reduced Judaism to a political thing.  They were nationalists.  They were zealous for the preservation of the nation Israel and its political autonomy and independence and their goal in life was to overthrow Rome and get back their autonomy as a people and they're often identified as Zealots, sometimes called the Sikarii because they carried little daggers and stabbed Romans, they were the terrorists. 

  There was another group of Jews that one could adhere to and those would be the Essenes who were ascetics, they were hermits.  They lived out in the wilderness and they were out there in a monkish kind of life, isolated from all society contemplating their theology.  And in the midst of this mix in a...in a nation that had fallen far away from God, there was a very, very small remnant, a very small remnant, in fact even after the three-year ministry of Jesus, after His death and resurrection when all the believers of Jerusalem gathered in the Upper Room there were only 120 of them. 

  But there were in Israel some. There was a remnant of righteous ones.  Zacharias and Elizabeth, the father and mother of John the Baptist, introduced to us in chapter 1 verse 6, are introduced as being righteous.  They were a part of that remnant.  God was working the coming of His Messiah and the forerunner to the Messiah, the prophet, John, He was working that all out through righteous people, people who belonged to Him, who believed in Him, who were right with God because they had come to grips with their sinfulness, knew they couldn't save themselves and repented of their sins and cast themselves on the mercy of God. And God had forgiven them and saved them from their sin.  They were the righteous remnant.

  And it's important to have testimony from righteous people.  First of all, we find that Joseph and Mary were righteous and the evidence of that comes because it is said of Joseph that he was righteous, Matthew 1:19.  And secondly, we know that Mary was righteous because of what came out of her mouth in chapter 1 verse 46, she said, "My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God, my Savior."  God was her Savior.  She too was a righteous girl.

  Their commitment to God, the devotion of their lives is indicated...let me show you how it's indicated.  It tells us in verse 21 here that they circumcised Jesus.  Now that according to the law...that according to the law of God. They followed the law.  It tells us in verse 22 that according to the law of Moses they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord...I should say, according to the law of Moses she had her purification, it says in the beginning of the verse, "When the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem."  Verse 23 says, "It is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord."  Verse 24 says, "To offer sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord."  Down in verse 27 it says, "When the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for Him the custom of the law," again the law of the Lord, verse 39 says, "When they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own city of Nazareth."  Five times it mentions that they were committed to the law of the Lord.

  You know, James, I guess, has a good insight into this.  James says, "Faith without works is dead."  And true saving faith shows up in obedience.  And these people were obedient.  They were compliant with the law of the Lord.  They delighted in the law of the Lord and they did the will of the Lord, as revealed in His law. 

  So here is a righteous young couple.  They're just kids by our definition, but they were righteous before God. They were saved. Their sins had been forgiven and they were devout and they were committed to the obedience of the law of God as an expression of their love and their worship toward God. And they are incredible witnesses.

  And then in introducing Simeon to us, we'll see him next week, but in introducing Simeon to us, Luke takes great pains to establish how righteous he is.  And then introducing Anna to us, the way Luke introduces Anna, we can't imagine that there was any woman in all of Israel who was as righteous as Anna was.  And, of course, the fourth testimony is given by God who is righteous in His nature.

  So what you have here is confirming testimony by parents, Simeon, and Anna.  And then a final word from God Himself is indicated here.  Incredible witnesses to Luke's account that this in fact Jesus, the Son of God, Savior of the world.

  Now the setting here is tied to two things.  It's tied to Mosaic law because you're in the temple.  And what's going to go on here is all connected to the Mosaic law and to temple sacrifices and temple offerings.  Also, this entire passage borrows richly from the writings of Isaiah. That shouldn't surprise us because from chapter 40 of Isaiah through 66, Isaiah unfolds the Messiah.  So you're going to see a very Jewish background, very Jewish setting for the scene that unfolds.  It is tied to the Old Testament law and prophets...Mosaic law and the prophecies of Isaiah.  Righteous people giving testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ.  This is critical so that His assertations concerning Christ are confirmed in the mouth of two, yes three witnesses who are righteous and trustworthy.

  For this morning, let's look at the testimony of Joseph and Mary.  This is the testimony of His parents.  Verse 21, "When eight days were completed before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.  And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord as it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." 

  Now you read that at first and maybe you can't quite catch the depth of it, so let me unpack it a little bit for you and show you the treasures that are inside.  Five times, as I mentioned earlier, the law of the Lord is mentioned in reference to the behavior of Joseph and Mary.  Their devotion to obey the will of God is clear. They wanted to do what God had revealed for them to do and they did it with joy and faithfulness.  The whole passage really features their dedication, it features their obedience. And as I said, in Luke's continuing effort to mold the readers' understanding of who Christ is, he shapes his narrative around the testimony of these uniquely righteous people. And, first of all, Jesus' earthly family lead out in giving testimony.

  Now they give testimony to the identity of the child as the Messiah and Savior of the world in two ways.  One, at the circumcision and naming.  Two, at the purification and presenting.  We're going to see the circumcision and naming in verse 21, the purification and presenting in verses 22 to 24.  These two ways become testimony from Joseph and Mary and validates the claim that this is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

  Let's look at verse 21, here is the first, circumcision and naming.  Now we all understand that the eight-day circumcision was what was prescribed by Mosaic law.  It is clearly recorded that this is to be done in Leviticus chapter 12 verse 3, which we'll look at in a moment, says on the eighth day the child is to be circumcised.  Every male child born into Israel was to be circumcised on the eighth day.  The circumcision was introduced by God to Abraham in Genesis 17:1 to 14, Abraham was circumcised, he, however, was circumcised as an adult when God identified him as the father of the race.  He was circumcised as an adult. And then every male that came from him and from those who came from him throughout all the Hebrew people, every male child was to be circumcised on the eighth day.  That was the sign and symbol of God's covenant.  Back in chapter 1 verse 59 regarding John, the prophet born to Zacharias and Elizabeth, "It came about on the eighth day they came to circumcise him," that was just standard operating procedure on the eighth day.

  Circumcision, just to give you a brief recap, circumcision was a sign of God's covenant.  It identified a Jew.  But God was saying something in circumcision.  In the cutting away of that skin, God, first of all, was doing something physical, He was protecting the Jewish man from passing on infections and bacteria to his wife. That's why in ancient times, not today because we have so much hygiene, but in ancient times Jewish women had the lowest rate of cervical cancer in the world and it was better when men and women came together circumcised in terms of cleanliness and protection than not.  And therefore God preserved His people that way.  He was definitely committed to preserving His people since they are the center of redemptive history clear to the end of the world.  And so God protected them and that was one way physically that God protected them from illness.  He also protected them, of course, by giving them monogamous laws and calling for their purity and sanctifying one man/one woman for life so that they were not subject to the devastating plagues of venereal disease which destroyed whole peoples.

  But circumcision was more than a physical protection.  It was a symbol of a need for spiritual cleansing.  And that's why the Bible talks about circumcise your hearts.  God was showing them through this symbol that they needed to be cleansed because they not only passed on sin potentially physically, they passed on sin heart to heart, soul to soul.  When they had a child they got a sinner because they were sinners. They needed a cleansing at a deep, deep level of their souls.  That's why God said circumcise your heart.  Every circumcised male child then, every time that operation took place, it was a symbol of how deeply sinful people were and how greatly they needed a heart cleansing.

  The message that God was sending to His people was about their sin.  You could take the Law of God and all the Law of God did was break them and crush them. The Law of God laid out before for the Jew rendered him a sinner.  And last Sunday night we talked about the Sabbath.  The Jew would look at the Sabbath which is the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," and when he looked at the Sabbath in the middle of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, he would focus on that Sabbath.  He would not work.  He would not leave his house.  He would not cook anything, not carry a load, not do anything. But he would sit, he would contemplate that day.  And as he looked at the Law of God and as he considered the worship of God, what he would become aware of was that everything above the fourth commandment, one, two and three, had to do with God.  Everything below had to do with man.  And he would look at that day and he would remember that day in the middle of the Decalogue, look up and see how he had violated all the laws against God.  Look down and see how he violated all the laws against man.  In other words, he had sinned against God, he had sinned against his fellow man.  So the Sabbath then became a contemplation point for violation of the Law of God.

  He would then look at the whole complexity of the Law that sort of came out of the Ten Commandments and would realize how he had violated that law as well. The Sabbath day then became a day for man to contemplate his sinfulness.

  On top of the Sabbath day, every seventh day, there were Sabbaths and Sabbaths and Sabbaths, all kinds of Sabbaths.  Every time there was a feast of Passover, every time Yom Kippur came, the Day of Atonement, Rosh Hashana, every time there was a Feast of Lights, every time there was a Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths, every time there was Pentecost, there were many other things.  All of those Sabbaths came and came and just cluttered the calendar, were times to contemplate God and in contemplating God and His commandments, you contemplated your own sinfulness and how you had broken the commands that related to Him, and broken the commands that related to men. And then life was just filled with that contemplation.

  On top of that, life was a bloody mess because all those violations called for sacrifice.  That's why we've said, the priests were nothing but butchers.  They were, you know, chin deep in blood slaughtering animals because sin just kept coming and coming and with it came sacrifice and sacrifice.  And the whole of Judaism, the whole of Judaism was one massive effort on God's part to call those people to a recognition of how sinful they were.  Every time a baby was born into the world, circumcision on the eighth day was a reminder of the depth of sin, that they were so deep in sin they needed a cleansing at the deepest level.

  Everything that happened in their life.  I mean, you just take Judaism, lay it out and what you've got is a system designed to make people feel the burden of their sinfulness.  By the time you get to the time of Jesus, you've got only a few honest righteous Jews who are willing to think like that.  And the rest have fired off into one or another direction.  You've got the liberal ones who don't even want to think about the letter of the Law.  You've got the Pharisees, the legalists, who have exchanged the heart for the head and it's all external and nothing is internal.  You've got the politicizing Zealots who have just abandoned all of that and gone for a political end. And you've got the Essenes who are out there contemplating their navel, trying to think themselves to a higher level and are not concerned with the obedience to the Law of God in Scripture.

  Same thing today.  You've got a very small little group of righteous Jews today, most Jews are either what you call liberal Jews or quote/unquote conservative Jews, or reformed Jews, very few orthodox who are careful and thoughtful about the Law of God.  And there are among them very few who really believe God and know God through their Messiah.  But the whole Jewish system...I know why there are liberal Jews, and I know why there are reformed Jews and conservative Jews today because they want to get rid, they want to keep the traditions of Judaism they're comfortable with, but you can't keep Judaism in its biblical form without constantly facing your sin.  That's why it's not popular.  It's fine to be a traditional sort of ethnic Jew, but let's not get carried away.  If you buy the whole system, you're literally swept away in your sinfulness.  That's its intent.  Now you can avoid it a lot of ways.  You can become a Pharisee and content yourself with your externals.  That doesn't please God.  Or you can just run from it, become liberal like the Sadducees did, bail out all together and question whether the Scripture is even the Scripture.

  There's a lot of popularity in hanging around to the ethnicity and some of the cultural aspects and traditions of Judaism.  But I can understand why they want to shed Judaism as a system because it's relentless in hammering home the sinfulness of sin.  And so babies were circumcised. That was just one among many signs of the need for cleansing of the heart.

  Now the question could be asked...but why circumcise Jesus because He didn't need His heart cleansed?  That's right, He was holy, harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners, it says in Hebrews.  He didn't need His heart cleansed from sin.  He was sinless.  He was numbered with the transgressors, it says in Isaiah 53:9, even though there was no deceit found in His mouth.

  In fact, when He died on the cross He was bruised for OUR iniquities, punished for OUR transgressions.  He is called in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "Him who knew no sin."  He is absolutely sinless.  So why was He being circumcised?

  There's one answer, very good answer.  Because that's what the Law of God required.  And Galatians 4:4 says, Paul writing, "Jesus was born of a woman, born under the Law."  Whatever the Law of God prescribed in the covenant at that time, He would do.

  I mean, I could understand if His parents said, "You know, this is God in human flesh."  And I wonder what it was like, I wonder if you...I mean, you certainly care for a baby just because he's a baby.  But if you knew your baby was God, you might have a discussion that said, "I don't know if we ought to do this circumcision.  What if something goes wrong here?  What if some bleeding, or what if some infection...this is the Son of God, this is the virgin born, this is...  And plus, if this is God in human flesh, is this necessary?" 

  I mean, I could understand that kind of thinking.  I mean, I've thought often about raising Jesus as a baby.  I mean, how you would have treated Him.  Talk about being protective...  But no, His parents came the eighth day and they had Him circumcised. And I'm sure God prompted their hearts to do that and the reason was because Jesus was born under the Law and Jesus was going to obey every aspect of God's Law whether He obeyed it as a baby passively or whether He obeyed as an adult actively when He went to the river Jordan and He said to John, "You need to baptize Me."  And John said, "I don't need to baptize You, You've got to be kidding me.  You need to baptize me."  And John was saying...You don't need cleansing so why the symbol?  And Jesus responded in Matthew 3:15 and said, "I must fulfill all righteousness." Whatever the law requires, I do that...I do that.  And I've told you why that's the case.

  I'll give you a little scenario just to help you remember.  It would have been conceivable that the Father could have said to the Son, "Now You have to go down and redeem humanity.  And I know that's a tough thing, but I really only need You for a weekend...You know, go down Friday morning, we'll crucify You Friday evening, actually You can come out of the grave Sunday morning, be back late Sunday afternoon, I really only need the weekend."

  This is true.  I mean, that is the issue, isn't it?  It's the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ that purchases our justification. The Father could have said that and you ask the question...Well why the 33 years?  I mean, if you only need a weekend, what's the 33 years of being mocked and resented and embattled with the Pharisees and hated by the Sadducees and all the fuss and hassle?  His own brothers don't believe Him and He has to deal with a bunch of blockheads called the disciples.  Why all that?  Why does He...why does He have to be there 33 years?  And besides, we don't know anything about Him.  All we know about His own childhood is in verse 40, that's all we know...one verse, "He grew."  That's all we know.   Became strong, increased in wisdom.  That's all we know.  That's His whole childhood.  And when He gets to be 12 and reaches, you know, 12 when He's a son of the law and He's entering adulthood, He's a 12-year-old now.  He's in the temple and He's asking questions of the doctors and then the story ends and we never hear anything again until He's 30 years old.  What happened to all the years in between?  What was going on by the time...between 12 and 30?  That's 18 years.  What was that all about?  And there's no record of that, that's pretty...that seems to me to be a pretty interesting story to tell.  I don't know what was going on, but I have a pretty fertile imagination.  What would it be like to be the brother of God?  Would you like to have a perfect brother?  That could get a little irritating.  How would you like to be the father of a perfect child?  That would be a little hard to cope with.  I mean, what went on?  I mean, when Joseph was making a table over here, was Jesus over here..."Table".(laughter)...did He ever have to remake anything?

  That's interesting to think about.  I can't give you any answer cause there's no record of it.  So you say, "Why all these 33 years?  What's it for, You don't even report on it, don't even tell us anything about it, why is it there?"

  Because He had to live an entire righteous life.  He had to come into this world and live as a child, as a young person and as an adult under the law so that He could live a perfect life, an entire perfect life into His adulthood, an entire perfect life. 

  Why did He have to do that?  So that perfect life could be credited to your account.  You see, in the doctrine of substitution, on the cross God treats Jesus as if He lived your life so He could treat you as if you lived His.  And there has to be a perfect life to put to your account, and His is it.  That's why He was circumcised and everything else. 

  He was born of a woman, born under the law.  And His parents took Him and they had Him circumcised.  Now at the point that they had Him circumcised it says, "His name was then called Jesus."  Apparently it was the circumcision that they did the official naming, they called Him Jesus.  That wasn't a hard choice to make.  That was the name given by the angel before He was ever conceived in the womb.  You remember that Joseph was approached by an angel and the angel says, "When the child is born...Matthew 1:21...call His name Jesus for He'll save His people from their sins."  Mary is approached by the same angel, Gabriel, and she is told the very same thing.  Chapter 1 of Luke verse 31, "You're going to bear a Son and You are to name Him Jesus."  You know what Jesus means?  It means Yahweh saves, God saves...God saves. 

  We saw that naming and circumcision went together when John was born back in chapter 1 verse 59 to 63, here we see it again.  That was the Jewish custom that that occurred at the same time. And so they gave Him the name "Yahweh saves."  The Old Testament equivalent is Joshua.  You can read Numbers 13 around verse 16 where it says Joshua's name was changed from Hoshea to Joshua and he was named "Jehovah saves."  And it's that same name.  Joshua was a deliverer, wasn't he?  He led the people of Israel into the conquering of the promised land.  But this is a greater deliverer than Joshua, this is the Savior, Jehovah saves, this is God in human flesh.

  I resent the fact that some people think that God is a reluctant Savior.  He is not at all.  He is by nature a Savior.  God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, God is not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance.  God who is a Savior of all men, especially those that believe.  It is not foreign to the nature of God to save.  And one of the great travesties that's perpetrated upon the world of Christianity today, has been perpetrated through the centuries by the Roman Catholic Church in saying this...they say that God is reluctant Savior, God is a tough guy, God is a hard guy, He's full of justice and wrath and vengeance and fury and anger, etc., etc., etc.  And you don't want to go to Him, you don't want to go to God, you don't want to ask God for salvation because He really might refuse you.  Jesus is not quite as tough as God, but He's still pretty tough.  You really don't want to go to Jesus because, you know, Jesus can be very firm and very, very strong and He too pronounced judgment.  But if you really want salvation, there's one soft person, one tender, gentle, meek, soft person you can go to...who's that?  Mary.  See, and the idea is you go to Mary and Mary just, you know, she just falls in line because she's gentle and sweet and she's easily entreated and you go to Mary.  And then you tell Mary this...you say, "Hail, Mary, full of grace...plead for us sinners now and at the hour of our need."  And so you get Mary on your side and she goes in and she's trying to soften up Jesus and the theology is that Jesus can't resist His own mother so He caves in and He pleads with the Father and God finally caves in and you can maybe get to heaven that way.

  But you won't know until you die, and then you might find yourself in Purgatory because not enough pleading has been done.  So while you're in Purgatory, some people up here can light candles and they can keep begging Mary who keeps begging Jesus who keeps begging God until finally after eons have gone by and maybe somebody else's treasury of merit, some good deeds from somebody else have been stuck in your account, you might get to heaven.  And the whole picture is predicated on the fact that God is not by nature a saving God and that's NOT true.

  Jeremiah 13, you see God, tears running down the eyes of Jeremiah and Jeremiah is weeping the tears of God over Israel's unbelief.  And you go in to the gospel of Matthew and you see Jesus sitting over the city of Jerusalem and He's weeping the tears of God as they run down His cheeks and He's saying, "I wanted to gather you but you wouldn't do it."  There is no religion in the world with a Savior except Christianity.  All the gods of the nations are either apathetic or hostile.  Our God is the kind of God depicted in the prodigal son story, when the sinner comes home, when the son comes back, the father doesn't say, "Hey, you're not getting in here that easy.  Are you kidding me?  Look what you've done, you've been out there messing around doing all that stuff, wasted your opportunity, don't expect to come back here and get what you might have had if you had been obedient."  That's not the way it goes at all. What happens is the son is coming, the father sees him afar off, runs out there as fast as he can, falls on his neck, starts kissing him, calls for the ring to put on his finger, the best robe to put on his body and the biggest party they ever had.  That's the attitude of God toward a repentant sinner because God is by nature a Savior. Jehovah saves and if you don't...if you have any question about that then remember Jesus' words, "I have come to seek and to save that which was lost."  That's the nature of God.

  So you name Him Jesus because that's His nature to save.  They knew who this child was.  They circumcised Him because that's what the law required and they named Him because that's what the angel required. And they therefore give testimony to the fact that this is Jehovah who saves, God in human flesh. They knew He was the Son of the Most High God.  Mary had been told that by Gabriel. They knew the child was God in human flesh and they knew He was the Savior and that's how they named Him.  And there is affirming testimony to who this child was by this righteous young couple.

  There's a second part of that testimony.  It starts in verse 22 and goes to verse 24.  This is really fascinating.  "And when the days for their purification, according to the law of Moses, were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord."  Two words there, "purification" and "present." 

  The first testimony came in circumcision and naming.  The second comes in purification and presenting.  This is a fascinating thing.  This too is according to the law of Moses or as it's called in verse 23 the Law of the Lord, verse 24, the Law of the Lord and verse 39, the Law of the Lord.  They were just functioning according to the law and beyond, as I'll point out.

  Now it says, "When the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord."  Two things had to happen in Jewish law.  First of all, a mother who had born a child had to go through a purification ceremony.  Secondly, any firstborn child had to be given to the Lord.  Didn't have to go to the temple to do it, that was over and above, and I'll explain that in a minute.  But those two things had to happen.  There had to be a purification and a presenting.  And there were some days that had to be completed before the purification could actually happen.

  Let's go back, this is so fascinating, to Leviticus chapter 12 and let me...let me read you the first five verses. They go by very quickly but they're very important.  This is the Lord speaking to Moses. 

  Now remember, you've had, you've had...you had the law of God summed up in two statements, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself."  That was the sum of it.  Then you had it expanded in the Ten Commandments.  And then you had it expanded even more into the full Mosaic Law.  That's the full Law, summed up in the Ten Commandments, summed up in two commandments.  As you get into the full expression of the Law you find yourself in Leviticus here and here is the Law of God as it applies to the woman who has a child.  So the Lord talks to Moses and He says, "Tell everybody in Israel when a woman gives birth and bears a male, then she shall be unclean for seven days."  This is a ceremonial kind of uncleanness, this is indicative of the fact that she is set apart from the temple.  She can't go to the temple, she can't touch anything that's sacred or holy.  Again, it's just another...you know, people were having babies all the time, this was another good way and a very joyous moment, a very wonderful moment to remind people that they were still sinful, the woman was sinful, she had produced a sinful child, that the child being circumcised was in the case of a boy sinful and would pass on his sin to the next generation.  Everything that happened in their life had these kinds of things attached to it to keep throwing in their face the sinfulness of sin to drive them to the place of penitence where they'd fall on their face before God and seek His forgiveness.  And so she had to go through this.

  She was set apart from worship for a seven-day period, as in the days of her impurity or her sickness.  Like the time of menstruation, there was also a time...God used menstruation as a symbol of uncleanness also and so this would be similar to that.  She had a seven-day period when she was ceremonial unclean.  On the eighth day, according to verse 3, that's when the circumcision took place, another symbol of the need to purify.  After the eighth day she should remain in the blood of her purification 33 days.  So there's a certain impurity that she bears for 33 days.  And she shouldn't touch any consecrated thing, enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification were completed.  So 40 days this woman, having had the greatest event in a woman's life, she had just given birth to a child, not just a child but a male child which means she can perpetuate the family...there's a son to pass the estate on to.  This is all wonderful.  There's a future.  There's a progeny there.  This great joy of a mother with all of its richness is immediately struck after seven-days of joy, you're immediately faced with the fact that the child is sinful, the mother for 40 days carries on a disassociation with the holy things of the temple sanctuary and so she's reminded again that even in the time of her greatest joy and the highest privilege of humanity which is to produce a life, she is still aware that she needs purification.  And she by all rights could be cut off from a holy God.  She has no access to God at all.

  And in verse 5 it says if she bears a female child, has a girl, she shall be unclean for two weeks, similar to her time of the month and remain in the blood of her purification 66 days.  Now if you have a girl, you're unclean for 80 days.  Now some people could really get carried away with that and make some kind of judgment on the quality of women.  But I don't want to do that, I don't think that's the intent of it.  You ask the question why does it get doubled if you have a girl?  There are two possible answers and maybe both are part of the answer, but the Scripture doesn't tell us.  So let me just share with you what the two possible answers are. 

  Answer number one, if a male child was born, there were two immediate dramatic indications of sin.  One was the 40 day purification of the mother, the other was the circumcision of the son.  But in the event of a birth of the woman, the birth of a girl, there was no circumcision.  It may well be that for the sake of emphasis, the Lord chose another forty days to sort of make up for the symbol of circumcision by adding another 40 days of impurity to the woman.  So if you had a girl you really were cut off from association with the holy things and with the temple for 80 days  Now that is a long time, that's nearly three months when you obviously would have fellowship with the people and all that, but you couldn't go to the court of the women, you couldn't go an engage yourself in the worship.  You were sort of stuck there, aware of the fact that...that you were ceremonial un...it doesn't mean you had to abstain from relationships with your husband, that has been taught by some people and that is ludicrous.  That is not the intent of the text.  It's simply intends to say you have to realize that sin has cut you off from God. And that was the situation. And so Mary has had a male child.

  So 40 days have passed, so back to Luke 2, and she's now ready for her purification.  She's done the circumcision, it's 33 days later.  She goes back to the temple for the time of purification.  By the way, the second reason that you might suggest as a footnote to the 80 days for the women, is because women did bear even under God a stigma because it was Eve who led the race into sin.  And the woman would be, according to the words of 1 Timothy 2:14 and 15, delivered from that stigma by childbearing.  The woman, Eve, led the race into sin.  A woman can have a child and raise that child in a godly way and be saved from that stigma by rearing a godly child according to 1 Timothy.  Perhaps because of that stigma of having led the race into sin, there's an extra 40 days.  You can take either of those choices.  I lean toward the fact that maybe the extra 40 days takes the place of the circumcision that the girl doesn't have to find another way to emphasize the sinfulness of sin.

  Now, Mary comes and comes for their purification, THEIR is used simply because the little family comes.  And they're a part of this, too, because it's changed their life.  Obviously Joseph is impacted by this 40 days of Mary's impurity and so they're all together coming to the temple for this wonderful occasion of her purification.  All three of them are there.

  At the time they come, they come according to the Law of Moses, I just read it to you in Leviticus 12, they also brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord.  Now they didn't have to do that.  Well, certainly they would bring Him. She is nursing Him at this time, this is just 40 days after He's born, He's a month and ten days old and they would have brought the little fella along.  But you didn't have to bring Him to the temple to present Him to God.  You did have to present Him to God, however.  Look at verse 23, "As it is written in the Law of the Lord," again you see the fastidious devotion they have to the Law of the Lord, they came and brought Him to present Him to the Lord, because it's written in the law of the Lord, 'Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.'"  That's Exodus 13.  In Exodus 13 God said, "I want every firstborn male devoted to me. I want you to take that firstborn male and I just want you to offer him to Me." 

  What does that mean?  Well it didn't mean the priesthood because you couldn't be a priest unless you were in what tribe?  Levi.  And this is the tribe of Judah, Joseph and Mary came out of the tribe of Judah, David's tribe.  And so, this is not presenting Him to be a priest, but rather to take this child and just devote his life to God, just give him to the Lord. That's what was done with the firstborn.  The classic Old Testament illustration of that was whom?  Hannah and she brought Samuel to give him to the Lord.  Well, every firstborn was to be devoted to the Lord, it was just that you said...This child, Lord, is Your child, whatever You want to do in this child's life I'm devoting this child to You...You do with this child whatever You will, whatever way You want this child to honor You and glorify You and serve You, I give You this child, the firstborn child.

  There's another interesting part of this law.  There was a price that had to be paid if the child was not a Levite, five shekels.  You can read about this in Numbers 18...Numbers 18 verses 15 & 16, you don't need to look it up, let me just tell you how it went.  All the...all the male children in Levi became priests and they basically ran the country.  It was a country ran by priests, it was a theocracy.  God was the King and the governmental senators and congressmen and representatives and everybody were priests.  They ran the theocracy.  They ministered.  They carried on all the work among the people.  And so every child, male child, born to Levi in the Levitical tribe became priests.  But all the rest of the tribes were freed from priestly duty. But in order to be freed from priestly duty, they had to be ransomed, or redeemed.  In other words, instead of giving your son into priestly duty, you gave five shekels to support the priesthood.   And it's actually called a ransom or a redeem...redeeming price. 

  Interesting then what Joseph and Mary would have done.  They would have come to the temple and according to the law they were to offer their firstborn to God.  They did not have to go to the temple to do that, that was not required that they go there to do that.  In fact, that is over and above, that is over and above like Hannah did over and above when she brought Samuel.  But, you see, they know who they've got in their arms there.  This is not just another child.  They could have said, "You know, this child is going to be devoted to the Lord.  Lord, we're giving Him to You."  They could have said that the night He was born in Bethlehem, they didn't need to go to the temple to say that.  They could have paid their five shekel redemption tax and taken care of that to a priest who would be an agent of the government.  They didn't have to go to the temple to do that. But they go beyond what would be the normal because they know they've got a child who in a very special way does not all belong to them and Joseph knows He doesn't belong to him, for sure.  This is God.  This is the Son of God.  This is the Son of the Most High God.  This is the God of the universe in a human body.

  The mystery of that must have been literally overwhelming to them 24 hours a day.  But they know what they have there and they bring this little baby with them.  And Mary's coming because she has to come because it's her forty-day purification and, of course, she's bringing the little child along, nursing the child.  And she comes in and she can only go as far in as the Court of the Women, and so she's coming in and Joseph is there with her.  And they go beyond what they need to do and they come with the little child, I think, ready to offer that child to the Lord in the temple because they know that this is not just like any other child.  There's going to be some kind of little ceremony they're going to do there.  Lord, if ever there was a child who belonged to You, it's this child.  If ever there was a unique child to be uniquely presented back to You, it's this child...accomplish Your will in the child's life.

  And so, verse 23, they did exactly what the law said.  Anytime the womb opens and a male comes out, he's to be called holy to the Lord, separate to the Lord, belongs to the Lord.  And this was the firstborn, chapter 2 verse 7 it says she gave birth to her firstborn. So this presentation was done and it involved a redemption, only Levi's family were required to give their sons for a priestly duty...all the rest were redeemed out of that priestly responsibility by five shekels of silver.  That's a lot.  That would have been equivalent to many days' wages.  Now you've got to remember these people aren't wealthy.  They're not destitute but they're not wealthy and several days wages when they probably exhausted a lot of the money they had when they first came down there to Bethlehem to register for taxation, and then they've been there and had a baby and now over a month has passed and they're still down there and they haven't gone back to have a livelihood and they had to come up with the five shekels.  Isn't it interesting to think about that even the Redeemer was redeemed?  Even He went through a picture of redemption.  Isn't that wonderful?  I mean, He fulfilled everything to the letter of the law.  He didn't need to have a symbol on His own body of the cleansing of sin as if He were a sinner.  He didn't need to be baptized by John as if He somehow needed to be cleansed.  And He certainly didn't need a Redeemer, He was one, but He went through all the pictures because He fulfilled the law to the letter.  And He fulfilled the law that He might having fulfilled it have a fully righteous life in perfect...perfect duty, fulfilling every feature of God's Law that might be credited to your account.  And that's what God does in the transaction of justification.

  Now how much did Mary and Joseph know?  This whole thing is unfolding and one of the wonderful things about this chapter as we march through to verse 52 is that the whole thing begins to dawn.  The Sun of righteousness is rising and at first they can see a little glimpse and as the Sun of righteousness gets higher and higher in the sky, the whole thing is just absolutely astonishing to them.

  So they did more than the law required.  The law didn't require that they bring the baby and offer the baby to God in a unique way, but they did that.  Devout, righteous, godly parents.

  Now back to the sacrifice that Mary had to offer for her purification in verse 24, verse 23 is an interlude, a little parenthetical statement, most Bibles have parenthesis there.  But she came not only to bring the child and offer Him to the Lord as a firstborn, and to redeem Him, and even more, do it at the temple, but she came necessarily because she had to offer the sacrifice for purification.  Verse 24 tells you what it was.  "At the end of the 40 days she's got to come and make a sacrifice."  Now stop right here.

  Did you see what this all did?  Here's this woman, she has a baby and immediately she is squarely faced with the fact that she has just produced a sinner. The circumcision of any Jewish mother's baby was an indication that sin was continuing to be passed on, except in the case of Jesus, of course.  And the next thing, she had 40 days when she couldn't go to the temple, she couldn't touch anything sacred or holy, she was ceremonially unclean and she's facing her sinfulness. And the only way she can end that is by offering a sacrifice.  And God was saying in another way, the only answer to your sin and your alienation from God, and what separates you from God is a sacrifice.  And all of this is picturing the final sacrifice.  And when the final sacrifice was offered on the cross, what happened to the veil in the temple that separated men from God?  It was ripped from top to bottom and the way to God was opened because the final sacrifice was made and never again was there any such thing as ceremonial uncleanness.  And so, now in the New Covenant God says, "Draw near to Me...draw near to Me."  In the Old Covenant God said, "Stay back, keep your distance until blood has been shed."  In the New Covenant He says blood has been shed, come on.

  So she's got to make a sacrifice.  You can see, if you understand the whole culture, that this stuff dominates their lives.  So here she comes and she's going to do this, sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.  Now you had an option there because turtledoves were migrating birds and they weren't always around.  Everybody knows pigeons are always around. (Laughter)  Turtledoves came from spring to fall.  There could be a time when you couldn't get a turtledove, never a time when you can't find a pigeon.  So you had to have a sacrifice.

  Now there were three levels of sacrifice.  I'll do this rapidly.  The first required sacrifice, let's go back to Leviticus 12, right where we left off in verse 6, still talking about this woman who had the baby, the male child or female.  "When the days of her purification are complete...Leviticus 12:6...for a son or a daughter, whether it's the 40 days or 80 days, she's going to bring to the priests at the doorway of the Tent of the Meeting."  She's going to come to the edge, she can't go in, she can only stay in the Court of the Women.  He's going to go inside where the altar is.  And she brings a lamb.  Usually they could buy the lamb at the temple.  We know that, Jesus cleansed the temple, you remember, because they were cheating people in the purchase of sacrificial animals.  They could also bring a lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering.  Two animals...burnt offering was a sin offering, sin offering was a sin again.  Here they are, realizing Mary's going to have to go in and say, "I'm a sinner...I'm a sinner...I'm a sinner.  I've been 40 days cut off from God."  This was the symbol of the sinner's alienation from God.  "Now a sacrifice is going to be offered in my behalf by which I'll have access to God again."  This pictures Christ in His wonderful final sacrifice.

  So she comes.  She she has some options.  She can bring a lamb and one bird, a pigeon or a turtledove, for a sin offering.  Now that was for people who had a lot of money, who had the resources.  It might be that she didn't have that much.  Verse 8 says, "If she can't afford a lamb, take two turtledoves or two pigeons."  You can just have two birds if she can't afford a lamb, one for the burnt and one for the sin offering.  And the priest takes them, makes atonement for her, from then she's clean.  Clean simply...doesn't mean her sins...it doesn't mean that her sins are washed away by the blood of the sacrifice, it simply means it's ceremonially if her heart is right and she's confessed those sins and asked God for forgiveness, it's depicted in that, which really was a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Christ which alone can actually take away sin.

  When her sins were forgiven, this sweet believing girl, when her sins were forgiven it was because Jesus would die for them on the cross.  And God already accounted that to her behalf.  So she comes and she does that.

  Now notice it says that she brings the birds.  Now you could, according to Numbers 5, I think verse 11 and following, if you were really poor, you could bring one-tenth of an ephah and an ephah was equal to about six gallons.  So one-tenth of six gallons, whatever that is, if you were really four...the poorest of the poor brought flour, sort of the middle class brought birds and the upper class brought a lamb and a bird.  We know from that two things...one, they weren't wealthy...they weren't totally poor, they weren't wealthy.  Now remember they've already spent several days' wages on the five shekel redemption tax, and they are going to have to purchase birds in the temple, probably at an inflated price.  But they're not so poor they bring flour.

  The second thing we know about them is they hadn't seen the wise men yet.  The question always comes up in the Luke account, "Where does the wise men story come in?" because Luke doesn't tell us.  We know one thing for sure, that if they had gold, frankincense and myrrh, they would have had enough to bring the lamb and they would have been required by the their own consciences devoted to God to use what they had to purchase the lamb.  You know they gave the best they could give.  This tells us then that the whole story of the wise men and Herod and all of that happens after this.  And I'll explain all of that as we go through the text.  But that's what we learn from what isn't there.  You didn't see that there, did you?  No, because it's not there. (Laughter)  But...but it's important to know when that story happened cause I know some of you are saying, "What about the wise men, when did that come, where was that?"  Well, now you know it hasn't happened yet or they would have had the money and been required by their conscience and their wealth would have been great at that point with gold, frankincense and myrrh to provide a lamb.  But they did what they were required to do.

  They offer a sin offering for Mary.  Now Mary is confessing here that she's a sinner.  Don't ever forget it, Mary was not immaculately conceived, nor did she lead a sinless life.  Mary needed a Savior.  She called God her Savior, and here she offers a sacrifice for sin.  She was in need of forgiveness and redemption and a substitute who would die in her place.

  So this is testimony to the person of Jesus Christ from this wonderful young couple, Joseph and Mary.  They were so obedient to the Law of God, they were so devout.  They named Jesus the name they he was...that they were told to name Him by Gabriel, they named Him Jesus because they knew He would save His people from their sins.  They come and they present Him to God.  They offer Him to God in the temple which they didn't have to do.  They had to give Him to God...devote Him to God, but not go to the temple and do it.  They did that because they knew in a special way He belonged to the Lord.  They knew that because He was the Son of the Most High.  They found out even more about that later when they found Him in the temple again at age twelve and they said, "What are You doing here?"  And He said, "I had to be doing My Father's business."  They knew who He belonged to.

  ---

  

  Testifying to Jesus: Simeon

  Luke 2:25-30

  And as I noted for you last time, if you're going to have a witness who is to be believed, then you must establish their credibility.  And Luke does precisely that.  It is critical that we understand the credibility of Joseph, Mary, Simeon and Anna, and they are by all tests as righteous as anyone could be living in the land of Israel at that time, if not more righteous than most and maybe as righteous as any.  The godly virtue of these witnesses is established and is critical so that their testimony cannot be impeached in any way by anything in their lives.  And so here comes confirming testimony to the fact that indeed the virgin Mary brought a child into the world who is the Messiah, the anointed Christ, the Lord, the Son of the Most High God Himself. 

  And, first of all, last week we looked at the testimony of Joseph and Mary, the parents.  And, of course, it's a fair question...did His parents believe in Him?  Well we know His brothers and sisters did not.  It tells us they didn't believe in Him until after His resurrection.  Did His parents believe in Him?  Did they believe that the child that they held in their arms was the Son of the Most High God, God in human flesh?  Did they believe that He was the Messiah, the anointed one, the Savior of the world?  And the answer is absolutely they believed that and Luke wants to give their firsthand and personal testimony.

  Now the next witness that is called to, as it were, into court to give testimony to the validity of the claim to messiahship, to give testimony to this child, is a man named Simeon and that starts in verse 25.  Let's meet him.

  "Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him and it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ and he came in to...in the Spirit into the temple and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for Him the custom of the law, then he took Him in his arms and blessed God and said, 'Now, Lord, Thou hast let Thy bondservant depart in peace according to Thy word for my eyes have seen Thy salvation.'"  You can stop at that point.

  I find Simeon a fascinating character.  Very little is known about Simeon because there's nothing more than what we have here.  But very little attention, it seems to me, is even given to what we have here and it fascinates me. 

  Notice very carefully the scenario that surrounds this scene.   It can be sort of identified in a couple of terms.  The nation Israel was apostate and hypocritical.  That sort of sums it up. For the most part, the whole nation of Israel was largely in a condition of being unsaved. They talked about God on the outside, they had a certain zeal for the legalistic approach to things, they had traditions that they were committed to, but their heart was far from God.  They were basically apostate and legalistic.  They were hypocritical.

  There were only a few righteous.  In fact, when the church is established on the day of Pentecost, at the close of the full ministry of Jesus after His death and after His resurrection and the three years of ministry, only 120 believers are gathered in the upper room in the city of Jerusalem.  It was always a very small group really looking for the Messiah, just a very small group.

  Well, here's one of them.  Of the situation in Jerusalem and in Israel at the time, William Hendrickson writes, "To be sure, conditions were bad, very bad, in Israel at the time of Israel's birth in Bethlehem.  Think of loss of political independence, cruel King Herod, externalization of religion, legalistic scribes and Pharisees and their many followers, worldly-minded Sadducees, the silence of the voice of the prophets. And in the midst of all this darkness, degradation and despair there were men who were hopefully looking forward to and earnestly expecting the consolation of Israel.  There were such men and women too, already mentioned were Mary and Elizabeth and in a moment Luke is going to add Anna to the list," end quote.  And is a short list, a very short list.  Most of the population of the nation Israel rejected Jesus Christ, as we know from the story that unfolds.  There was just a very small remnant of true believers in the land at the time the Messiah arrived and here is a man who is one of them.

  Verse 25 says, "Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon."  Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Malachi, whose prophecy ends our Old Testament, said that the Sun of righteousness would rise with healing in His wings. And the Old Testament then closes with a prophecy of the coming of Messiah which occurred 400 years later.  Many of the people in Israel paid very little attention to that promise, but there was a remnant of people in the nation that looked to the fulfillment of Malachi's promise and they were anxiously waiting for the arrival of the Sun of righteousness, this man was one of that small group.

  His name is a common name and we know nothing about him except what is written right here.  He just walks in to the scene and walks out.  We know nothing before really, and nothing after about him at all.  And the name, as I say, is common.  In fact, Simeon was the name of one of Jacob's sons and so there was a tribe of Simeon, a very, very common name, as indicated in Genesis 29:33.

  Now, Simeon has a wonderful meaning.  The word "Simeon" means "God has heard."  When Simeon was born, he's probably an old man when we meet him here, when he was born many years before this and his mother and father were trying to come up with a name for their little baby boy and it was probably the eighth day and it was time for his circumcision and naming, they chose by the providences of God, and the working of God, no doubt, moving them the name "God has heard."  And, of course, that was a wonderful, wonderful hope in the hearts of Israel that God would hear their cry, particularly their cry for a comforter, for a Messiah, for a deliverer, for a King, for a Savior, and that was certainly the cry of Simeon's heart.  So all his life he cried to God and in the later years of his life he was crying out to God to bring the Messiah.  Wonderfully in the end, God heard, the Messiah came.  Simeon means "God has heard."

  Most likely he was an old man and most likely he was near to death because, as you noted when I read the passage, he told the Lord that he was ready to die.  He was ready to go because he had seen the Messiah and the Lord could let His servant depart in peace, in verse 29.  So it must have been that he was long in years and he lived most of his life and the only thing left to wait for was the Messiah.  And when the Messiah was there, he was ready to leave and go to heaven.

  Simeon really is a representative, sort of personifies expectant Jews.  He personifies the true, believing, saved remnant in Israel who believed in God for their salvation, trusted in salvation by grace through faith and not by works.  Even though they didn't know of Christ because the Messiah hadn't come, they knew God could only save them by grace and faith because they couldn't keep His Law and they couldn't earn salvation.  They were penitent and they were believing and trusting.  And they believed the Old Testament scriptures.  They believed the prophets who said the Messiah would come and deliver them from their enemies and their oppressors and their sins.  And they lived expectantly waiting for the Messiah, living godly lives.

  Now Simeon is described in several categories.  First, as to his spiritual character verse 25 says, "This man was righteous and devout."  Now that seems like a very simple statement.  I'm telling you, folks, it's loaded with meaning.  He was righteous and devout.  Whenever the Bible says somebody is righteous, it means they are justified before God.  It doesn't mean they earned their righteousness, that's impossible.  When the Bible says somebody is righteous, it means that God has declared them righteous and God only declares sinners righteous when they trust in God for their forgiveness, not in their own works.  And God applied the sacrifice of Jesus Christ which hadn't even happened to Simeon because Simeon knew his sinfulness and he knew he couldn't earn his salvation.  He cast himself on the mercy of God.  God declared him righteous on the basis of what Christ would do in bearing his sins in the future.  He was a righteous man.  Whenever the Bible says a man is righteous, or a woman is righteous, it means before God they are considered just because their sins have been paid for and they have been forgiven.

  He was a true believer and right with God.  So he had been justified.  And then it says about him he was devout.  Now what do we mean by that?  Well, the first word "righteous" means he was justified, and this word means he was sanctified.  If you were justified in the Old Testament, you were sanctified too.  Justification, the work of God to declare you just, also carried, I believe, a changing component.  I believe something happened even in an Old Testament person's life that changed the inside and they began to become a lover of God's Law.  Witness Psalm 119, if you learn anything about that you learn that David loved the Law of God, and that's a heart of a just man, a man made just before God and a man being sanctified by God.

  The word "devout" simply talks about the fact that this is a man who was concerned for the things of God.  In fact, the classic translation of this, very often this word "devout" is, and mark this, "cautious."  That's a great word.  He had been justified by God through his faith and he was cautious, which is to say he was careful as to how he treated God and responded to God's Word.  He didn't live an irresponsible life.  He lived a very careful, cautious life...careful to obey God, careful to honor God, so as to bring glory to God and to be an example to others.  This defines his character.  He was a man who was justified, he was a man who was sanctified.  This is a true remnant man.  This is a true Jew.  Not all Israel is Israel, not every Jew is a true Jew, Paul said.  And he was right, here's a true one, here's one who truly knew God.  Here is a one who has been declared righteous by God and who lives a life that is cautious and careful, careful to honor God, careful to obey God.  That's his character.

  Let's look at his theology.  It tells us in verse 25 he was looking for the consolation of Israel. He was looking for the consolation of Israel.  He was a futuristic pre-millennialist.  He was not an amillennialist, he was a pre-millennialist.  He was looking for the consolation of Israel, the paraklesis, the help of Israel, the comfort of Israel.

  In other words, he had a hope for the coming of Messiah. He had a hope for the coming of the King who would bring the promised Kingdom, the Kingdom that had been promised to David in the Davidic Covenant, the blessings the flourishing that would come when the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant took place.  Everything promised to Abraham he thought would actually happen, everything promised to David he believed would actually happen.  And all of that that was promised to Abraham, promised to David was reiterated repeatedly through the prophets, most particularly Isaiah and he believed the Old Testament and he interpreted it literally and he took it at face value and he was looking for the consolation of Israel.  He was looking for a hope.  It wasn't just personal.  He wasn't just looking for personal salvation, he was looking for the national deliverance, he was looking for the promised Kingdom when the nation would be delivered from oppressors and enemies and most particularly delivered from sin and iniquity.

  What do you mean by that?  I mean this is a man who cared about his people.  You remember the Apostle Paul was so passionate about the salvation of Israel that he said in Romans he could almost wish himself accursed for the sake of his brethren and almost passionate for Israel's salvation to the point where he could say, "If I have to go to hell in exchange for them going to heaven, I'm almost at that point."  That's pretty great passion.

  Simeon was one of those kinds of men.  He was a true believer.  In fact, he was better than Paul.  Before Paul was converted he didn't have that passion.  Before Paul was converted he was a lost, legalistic, unconverted Jew.  Not like Simeon.  Paul wasn't a part of the true remnant.  Simeon was.  He was looking for the Messiah, not just for him but for the nation.  He cared about his people.  He cared that they were in sin.  He knew that legalism didn't save.  He knew the Pharisees were leading the population into legalism and the Sadducees were leading the population into liberalism, denying the resurrection, denying the supernatural, denying angels.  And he knew that the Zealots were leading the people into politicism where all they wanted to do was start an insurrection and a rebellion and a war against Rome.  And he knew that the Essenes were leading people into monasticism where somehow they go out in the desert and in some kind of acts of self-denial bring upon themselves the salvation of God.  He knew all that was wrong, he knew what the truth was.  He was a just and a righteous man, a man cautious and careful about the law of God and a man who took the Old Testament at face value, believed the actual consolation of the nation Israel would come.  And by consolation he means the comfort of Israel, the help of Israel, deliverance from enemies and pressures...oppressors, and most of all deliverance of sin.

  And by the way, in especially distressing times, such as the Roman occupation or the onslaught of the Greek Empire under Antiochus Epiphanes, those kinds of times intensified and heightened the hope of the Jewish remnant.  Things were so bad they long all the more, not to be just delivered from Rome, that was part of it because the Abrahamic Covenant promised them blessing and the whole land which was now not theirs, and the Davidic Covenant promised them sovereignty and the King and rule over the world and that wasn't theirs.  But most of all, the New Covenant which also had been promised by God promised them forgiveness and cleansing and a new heart and an implanting of the Holy Spirit. 

  I think all of that was in the hope of Simeon.  He wanted it all to come for the people Israel.  He wanted to see the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, Davidic Covenant, New Covenant, all of it come to fullness and the worse the times were the more they longed for it.  The worse his nation got the more his heart ached about it.  When would it come?

  Interesting little note here.  You see the word "consolation," that really refers to Messiah.  The only one who could bring the consolation is the consoler.  The only one who could bring the paraklesis to help or the comfort, is the comforter and the helper.  And it is Messiah.  In fact, the rabbis called Messiah Manacham.  Some of you heard the name Manacham Bagin, Manacham is the name of Messiah, it's the word for comforter.  They were looking for the manacham and that was born in the text of Isaiah because Isaiah had said that the Messiah would be a comforter.  In the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, this is such rich truth here, Isaiah 40 verse 1, listen to what Isaiah says, and this is promise from God to His afflicted nation, "Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God."  Wow, God is planning to bring comfort, same idea as consolation.  "Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God, speak kindly to Jerusalem, there's coming a helper, a comforter, consoler."  There's coming a time when Israel's warfare will end, her iniquity will be removed.  That's what they were looking for, the comforter, the consoler who would bring the comfort and bring the consolation.

  Down in verse 10, Isaiah 40, "Behold, the Lord God will come."  Who is the comforter?  None other than the Lord God Himself.  "He'll come with might, with His arm ruling for Him.  Behold, His reward is with Him, His recompense before Him."  I love this, verse 11, "Like a shepherd, He will tend His flock, in His arms He will gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom.  He will gently lead the nursing ewes."  That's comfort...tender scenes like a shepherd, picking up the little lambs and carrying them and gently feeding them.  The comforter will come.

  Then in chapter 49 of Isaiah, we are reminded of verse 8 and following.  "Thus says the Lord, In a favorable time I have answered you.  In a day of salvation I have helped you.  I will keep you, give you a covenant of the people to restore the land, to make them inherit the desolate heritages."  In other words, I'm going to give you back your land.  This reiterates Abrahamic Covenant promises.  And I'm going to do all kinds of wonderful promises.  Verse 10, "You're going to stop hungering, no more thirst, no more scorching heat.  The sun is not going to strike you down for He who has compassion on them will lead them."  God's going to show compassion, "Guide them to springs of water.  Make all of My mountains erode."  And I'm telling you, there are some mountain roads in Israel today that are frightening.  He's going to flatten them all out.  Highways are going to be raised up so that they'll be made equal.

  Down in verse 13, "Shout for joy, O heavens.  Rejoice, O earth.  Break forth into joyous shouting, O mountains.  For the Lord has comforted His people and will have compassion on His afflicted."  Chapter 51 of Isaiah, verse 3, "Indeed the Lord will comfort Zion.  He will comfort all her waste places.  Joy and gladness will be found in her."  She's going to be made like the Garden of Eden.  The desert is going to be like the garden of the Lord.  Chapter 57, again the prophet says the same thing in verse 18, "I have seen his ways but I'll heal him, I'll lead him, I'll restore comfort to him." And then over in chapter 66, the last chapter in Isaiah, we'll close with this one on this thought, verse 10, "Be joyful with Jerusalem.  Rejoice for her, all you who love her, be exceeding glad with her, all you who mourn over her that you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts that you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom, for thus says the Lord, Behold, I extend peace to her like a river and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream, and you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees as one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you, you shall be comforted in Jerusalem."

  You can understand where Simeon got his ideas, didn't you?  He knew the prophet Isaiah and he knew that Isaiah had prophesied comfort and there wasn't any comfort there.  The people were deep in sin, apostasy, unbelief, legalism, liberal theology.  The people were under oppression from their enemies.  It was a dark and despairing time.  And here is this faithful man, a part of this little small tiny group of truly justified and sanctified Jews, in the midst of that apostate and hypocritical nation and he is looking expectantly for the coming of the great Manacham who will bring the promised comfort that God had given to the prophet Isaiah.

  Now that is the man as to his character and his theology.  As to his unique anointing, go back to verse 25 again.  This is the third category.  It says of him, "And the Holy Spirit was upon him."  This is a remarkable man.  He's exemplary as to his character.  He is exemplary as to his accurate interpretation of the literal prophecies of the Old Testament.  He's exemplary as to his theology.  And finally, he is a marvelous example of a special anointing from God for special service.  It says at the end of verse 25, "And the Holy Spirit was upon him."

  Now what does it mean when it says the Holy Spirit was upon him?  Now let me give you some broad brush theology here so you'll understand the Old Testament.  Anybody living in the Old Testament before the cross, before the day of Pentecost, was saved the same way...by grace through faith.  They just knew God would provide a lamb, God would provide a sacrifice, that God was willing to forgive their sin, that God would have a way to do that.  They didn't know what that was, but they trusted God for their forgiveness and their salvation, and didn't trust in their own works. 

  Now no sinner dead in trespasses and sins as all sinners are through all of history could come to that conclusion on his own.  In order for anybody to come to the understanding of the truth, it had to be done by the Spirit of God.  Even Jeremiah said, "The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?"  And the prophet also said that a leopard cannot change his spots, and a man cannot change his skin.  It's outside of a man if he's ever going to change, therefore anybody ever who's brought to repentance and faith is brought there by the working of the Spirit of God.  That was true in the Old Testament, as it is any time.

  So, the Holy Spirit was there to convict them of sin, to show them their failures against the Law of God, to bring conviction to their heart, to produce repentance, to elicit faith, to draw them to God, to cry out for mercy, grace and forgiveness.  Even to understand that God would have to provide a substitute, a sacrifice which was pictured in all the Old Testament sacrificial system was the work of the Spirit to help them to understand the meaning of the Old Testament and to understand it accurately.  It was the work of the Spirit, therefore, to bring them to justification and it was the ongoing work of the Spirit to cause sanctification.  It was the Spirit who was moving them along in obedience.  It was the Spirit that was assisting, obviously, in the life of Simeon so that he was devout, that he was cautious and careful in obedience to the law.  I mean, they couldn't live without the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the one who justifies and sanctifies anybody in any age.

  Now there's a sense in which there's a new expression, new dimension of the work of the Spirit this side of the cross, but it doesn't mean at all that they were without the Spirit. That's why Jesus said to His disciples before He died, "He has been with you."  You wouldn't even be able to know God, you wouldn't be able to know salvation at all if He hadn't done the work in your hearts.  So that's not what this means.

  Whenever you see in the Old Testament the expression "the Holy Spirit came upon someone," it doesn't mean that before that He wasn't anywhere around.  It simply is a phrase that indicates an anointing for a special responsibility.  Most often it had to do with speaking for God.  The Holy Spirit came upon someone and he spoke for God.  It could have been deeds that were done, such as in the case of Samson when the Spirit came upon him, it was something that he did.  But predominantly it's an indication of a special anointing beyond the normal work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of true believers and familiar to any student of the Old Testament.

  If you've been listening carefully as we've been going through Luke, you should understand it.  Because if you go back to Luke 1 and verse 15 it tells us that the Holy Spirit filled John the Baptist when he was still in his mother's womb.  Now that is a special anointing going on.  Filling him in a special way for the amazing prophetic work that was ahead of him, even filling him in a special way so that while still in the womb he could make movements in the womb that affirmed that was being said outside.  God prompting him even as a little tiny unborn child to do that for the expression of divine purpose.  So when John was filled from the mother's womb, that had to do with his unique anointing which was going to be, verse 16, to turn back the many sons of Israel to the Lord their God, be a forerunner of the Messiah, turning the hearts of the fathers back to the children, the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, make ready a people ready for the Lord.  He was going to do prophetic work and speak for God.

  Later on in verse 41 it tells us that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and immediate she cried with a loud voice and said, "Blessed among women are you and blessed is the fruit of your womb."  She gives a word from God when she's filled with the Spirit. 

  Now interesting difference.  John was filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb for a life time of prophecy.  Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit at a moment for one verse of prophecy. 

  I think it's fair to say Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit, we know that because it says, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you," verse 35. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary not only coming upon Mary to plant the Son of God in her womb, but came upon Mary and as a result, verse 46, Mary then spoke divine revelation.  "My soul exalts the Lord," in her Magnificat.       Over in verse 67, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was filled with the Holy Spirit and he prophesied. 

  So we see a consistent pattern with Luke indicating to us that the Holy Spirit's coming on someone is indicative of a special anointing to speak for God.  And here it happened in a case of Simeon. "The Holy Spirit was upon him."  So we know something about his character.  We know something about his theology and something about his unique anointing.  This is one special man.

  Now we don't know anything about him beyond that.  He appears to just be...just a guy, a guy in the middle of a lot of folks, having no particular rank, or we would assume that might be identified.  He's not a priest.  He's not somebody known to the population.  He may not have been famous.  He's just a non-descript guy who was just one righteous, devout man with an accurate theology believing in the literal prophecies of the Old Testament being fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah who would be the Manacham, the Comforter, who would bring the Kingdom that had been promised to David with all the blessings promised to Abraham.  He had already received the benefit of the New Covenant applied to him, though it even hadn't ratified yet until Jesus died.  And he was a man uniquely anointed with the Spirit of God.

  Now the Holy Spirit's pretty picky.  He picks some classy folks in this whole story.  Zacharias and Elizabeth, righteous people.  Mary, the...certainly the purest of the pure girls.  And I'm telling you, Mary gets overplayed by the Roman Catholic Church but she doesn't deserve to be painted in mockery and smeared with elephant dung and hung up in a gallery anywhere.  That is a horrifying affront to the sweet, righteous character of this child of God, Mary.  It should be as distasteful to us, more distasteful to us than to anybody.  But these are righteous people and when the Spirit of God came upon them, these were precious folks God had chosen very carefully.  That would be true in the case of Simeon, as well.  He is one of the guys I want to meet when I go to heaven.  I just need more information.  Unfortunately I won't be able to send it back to you.  You'll have to wait till we all see him.

  So this is a man the Spirit of God comes upon.  Now when the Spirit of God came upon him, what did He tell him?  This is interesting, verse 26.  Some time in the past the Spirit of God was on him and to give him a message from God and here's the message.  It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn't see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.  Now that is amazing.  Boy, that is really rare.  That is rare.

  The Holy Spirit came upon him for the purpose of revealing to him from the divine God Himself that this man wouldn't die before he had seen the Lord's Christ.  You're going to live till the Messiah gets here, nobody gets that kind of information.  I mean, can you imagine the practical working out of that information?  His wife is saying, "You know, Simeon you're eating too much of that stuff, you could get sick." 

  "I won't die!  Messiah's not here." 

  "You know, I'm worried about you, Simeon, you're climbing up that cliff, you're taking a long journey, something could happen to you."

  "I won't die.  Messiah's not here."  Trying to convince people all the way along that you're not some kind of kook.  He knew he wouldn't die till the Messiah came.  On the one hand that's a wonderful milepost in your life...wow...to have a terminus point, to know exactly what has to happen before you can go. That's an amazing way to live your life.  And I imagine it sort of created some spiritual pressure on the guy, too, because at every moment he would be looking for the coming of Messiah and that would be a very...a very powerful influence to motivate him to true heart examination, wouldn't it?  It also would fill him with tremendous excitement because he knew he was living in messianic times, he knew it was going to happen in his life time. And that's why I kind of think he was already pretty old.  I don't know how soon...or how early this prophecy had come or how soon it had come prior to this text.  We don't know if it was weeks before, days before, years before that the Holy Spirit told him that but he...we know some time has elapsed because of the verbs here and he's just waiting for the coming of Messiah.  And what tremendous information to have.  I mean, he was already a true Jew, he already hung on the...on the words of Isaiah, was waiting and waiting and waiting for the salvation of his people, the deliverance, the promises to come to pass, waiting for it all, his heart filled with anticipation and he knew it was coming in his life time.

  People ask me all the time, "Do you think Jesus is coming in our life time?  Do you think the Rapture's coming in our life time?"  Come on, I know no body knows the day or the hour.  They'll say, "But, do you think you might have an idea?"  No I don't have an idea, I don't know.  I'm one of the nobodies.  Nobody knows and I'm one of those.  I don't know, I don't know.  But it would be interesting to know. 

  Simeon did.  He knew when the Messiah would come.  He must have lived in constant expectancy.  He didn't know the calendar, but he knew it would be in his life time.  This is a remarkable guy.  This isn't just any guy. This is a righteous man. This is a man with a sound understanding of the Old Testament who can rightly divide the Word and understands the prophecies as they were intended to be understood.  And this is a man who has been especially anointed with the Spirit of God. And Luke is pulling in a witness that really is the supreme credible witness.  What is his view of this child that was born?  That is very important.

  Well, verse 27, "And he came in the Spirit." Well, this means something's going to happen.  "In the Spirit" simply means the Spirit's leading him.  This thing is coming to its climax now and there's a certain day, 40 days after the birth of Jesus and he's prompted by the Holy Spirit.  That's what it means, he came in the Spirit to go down to the temple, not naos, that word for temple means the holy place in the Holy of Holies, but hieron, the big area, the huge area, the courtyard outside, that would be the place he would go because that's the only place that women could go, the Court of the Women, and Mary would be there with Joseph and the little baby, and that's where they would meet.  God providentially had named this man "God has heard," and God by His Spirit providentially prompts his heart and he decides that exactly the right moment he's going down there. 

  Now if you've ever been to the temple mount, it's a huge area, it is a massive area.  And today it has several different levels of terraced concrete stone, massive grounds there.  You can ascend up from the southern steps into that area, you can come in from the west, come in a smaller entrance from the north side.  And people go there and collect and there are thousands of people milling around there.  The temple isn't there so the orthodox Jews don't go there.  There are signs outside on the wall which surrounds the temple mount forbidding entrance for fear that they might inadvertently step on the Holy of Holies, or where it was.  And so they don't go there, but other Jews who are conservative or reformed or purely secular go there and they see it for its traditional value.  And then, of course, the Muslims have built a great mosque there, supposedly on the very stone where Isaac was to be offered and you can see that stone in the center of the mosque.  There's another mosque to the south, the great silver mosque and the great massive gold domed mosque that you've seen in pictures of the old city.  And on that ground are Muslims everywhere and some Jews and tourists and it's thousands of people typically milling around that area. 

  It would have been very much like that this day.  There would have been people everywhere.  And God in His wonderful providence has this meeting between Simeon and the Messiah and neither are looking for the other.  Joseph and Mary don't know anything about Simeon, he doesn't even exist in their world.  And Joseph and Mary don't exist in Simeon's world. But the Spirit of God leads Simeon into that place and Joseph and Mary are there with this little baby and that wouldn't have been uncommon because women were having babies and purifications were going on and there might have been other women doing the same thing, there would be other ceremonies, other sacrifices and all kinds of families there.  And Luke is so low key because, you know, those little details aren't really critical to us, all he says is he came into the temple and when the parents brought in the child, Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the law, then he took him into his arms and blessed God.

  Now we don't know how they met.  And we don't know how the conversation started that indicated to Simeon that this was the child.  We don't know whether it was the Spirit of God that prompted Simeon that that was the child and he may have walked up and said, "The Spirit of God has led me here and the Spirit of God has prompted me that the Messiah is here, can you give me some information?"  As to which they may have replied, "Yes, here He is."  We don't know how that happened but that's not a problem for God who created the universe, to make sure a meeting occurs on the temple ground was easy.

  So they were there, as it says in verse 27, when the parents brought in the child, Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the law.  What that simply means is they were there for the purification of Mary, the 40-day sacrifice, they were there for the paying of that ransom redemption price which went to the priests to sort of ransom Him from priestly service because He was born of the tribe of Judah and not Levi.  They were there to do that which was required by the Law.  He came in the Spirit.  By the way, that phrase "in the Spirit" is used four times in the book of Revelation and you can see that John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, means a special leading of the Spirit to bring a person to a  particular intercession for divine revelation.  So here he comes and somehow they met.  And there's so much in there that I would like to find out.  I wish it just had a paragraph about Simeon's attitude and what he was thinking.  All it says is they met and he took him into his arms. 

  He took Him into his arms, the little baby.  One can only try to imagine what he was feeling when he scooped that little soft warm baby out of Mary's arms and pressed him to his chest and then perhaps leaned down and as the Christmas song says, "Kissed the face of God."  One can only imagine what kind of joy flooded his heart, what kind of thrill came over him as he realized that the promises of God had come to pass and he was holding in his hands the Messiah, the Manacham, the Comforter, the Consoler of Israel, Savior of the world.  A very different gesture than when a few years later the Jews got Jesus in their hands and whipped Him and scourged Him and beat Him and crowned Him and nailed Him to a cross. 

  But for now, it's all joy and it says, "And Simeon blessed God."  Luke is the master of understatement, isn't he?  As I say, he's the Jack Webb of writers, "Just the facts, Ma'am, just the facts."  He would have made a great policeman, as well as a great historian.  He just tells you he blessed God.  I can imagine filling that word with so much. 

  I understand a little about Simeon.  Simeon had lived his life with anticipation.  I'm sure he started out reading the Old Testament.  I'm sure, like any Jewish child, he was schooled in the Old Testament and he knew well the prophecies of Isaiah.  But there was a point in his life when those prophecies became very personal and very powerful at that point of his justification when he truly believed and became a child of God, a true son of God.  And all of a sudden the prophecies took on new meaning and he longed for the coming of the Messiah and he longed for the great blessings promised to Abraham and he longed for the Kingdom promised to David and he longed for righteousness, peace and joy which were promised. And he longed for the forgiveness of the sins of Israel.  He longed for the King to come and he then received a special blessing because the Spirit of God came to him and told him that he would live until that moment.  And so his anticipation was heightened and heightened and heightened and here, all of a sudden, in one explosion of blessing he lets it all go because the fruition, the fulfillment has occurred and he holds the Manacham in his own hands, something every Jew should have hoped for as the ultimate blessing.  He was filled with joy.

  And you know what?  He was filled with joy because of what he believed would happen, because of what he believed.  He hadn't seen it.  For him the Messiah was nothing but a helpless baby.  He couldn't see beyond that.  The Holy Spirit didn't tell him a lot about what was coming.  He told him a few things, we'll see those next time.  He didn't know what was going to come but he knew the Manacham had come, he knew the Comforter was here.  He knew salvation had come and he says in verse 29, "Now, Lord, Thou doest let Thy bondservant depart in peace according to Thy word for my eyes have seen Thy salvation." 

  I can identify with Simeon.  Oh, I don't know what it would be like to have a word from the Holy Spirit, you're going to live to see the Messiah come from a Jewish perspective.  I don't know what it would be like to live your life in anticipation of the fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah relating to the first coming of Christ.  But I'll tell you something, I understand the thrill of Simeon, I get goose bumps like he must have when I read this because I know things that Simeon never knew.  I know what the Messiah did.  I know that He is the Savior because He has saved me.  I know that He saved His people from their sins because He has continued to save a remnant in Israel.  And I know as Simeon will later say that His righteousness and His salvation will extend to the Gentiles because I've seen the gospel go to the ends of the earth and I've seen people from every tongue and tribe and nation and people embracing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  I've seen the church.  I've seen everything Simeon only could have anticipated.  It's a joyous moment, it's a magnificent moment to bless God if you're looking up toward it, or if you're looking from it as we are.  It's a moment of all moments, a moment of all moments and he saw it right.  He didn't just say, "A baby has been born," he said, "My eyes have seen Thy salvation."  Salvation is synonymous with the Savior.  And so he says in verse 29, "Now, Lord, Thou doest let Thy bondservant depart in peace according to Thy word."

  What does that mean?  Well, he starts his song of praise, by the way, this is the next in a long line of songs of praise.  One came from Elizabeth, one came from Mary, one came from Zacharias and one came from the angels and now there's a fifth one from Simeon.  This song of Simeon which starts in verse 29 is called Nunc Dimittis, from the two first words in the Latin, "now Lord."  Just as the Magnificat was named from the opening words and the benedictus of Zacharias, the Latin words, the traditional title for this is Nunc Dimittis, now, Lord.  It's at this precise moment, now.  I love that.  Now, right now, Lord, I can go, I can die.  And that little statement "depart" simply means "dismiss me."  Let me die, let...depart in peace...is a Semitic expression for "let me die, I am now ready to die."  And notice the terminology, "Now, Lord," he doesn't use Kurios, a more common New Testament word for Lord, he uses despotes, sovereign master, "Now, Sovereign Master, You can let Your slave die according to Your Word."  It's done. 

  Now this is pretty strong testimony.  I have no doubt that Simeon believed this was the Messiah, do you?  How did he believe it?  Joseph and Mary told him.  Again I say, there was no halo around His head and He wasn't a 40-day old infant spouting profound theology.  He was cooing in His mother's arms.  Joseph and Mary, no doubt, reported to him the tremendous, amazing, miraculous account of how it all had come to pass and affirmed their testimony to him and he, under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, understanding the providences of God by the Spirit that led to the moment, knew this was the moment.  Now...he says...Lord, right now I can die, get me out of here, it's the moment I've lived for.  You told me I'd live until I saw the Christ, I've seen the Christ, I'm ready to go. 

  What tremendous testimony.  So firm is his testimony that he's willing to die.  This indicates to me, at least, that probably he was old, probably he was ready for heaven.  Probably his life is so much behind him that there's no much left and certainly you can't top this.  I've seen Him, Lord.  I've held Him.  And in that contentment and in that confidence, release Your slave, set me free from this world into Your glorious presence.  The waiting is over, the watching is over, the hoping is over.  Messiah is here.  His heart is settled and at peace and he can go to the presence of the God he loves to serve.  "For my eyes have seen Thy salvation."  I have seen and held and kissed, as it were, the Savior.

  This man is utterly unknown to anybody.  And yet he is a crucial witness to who this child is, with a remarkable place in redemptive history.  What a privilege.  Isn't it wonderful how God sometimes plucks the most obscure people for the most critical purposes?  And what is his testimony?  We'll find that out next time, along with that of an old lady named Anna.
  

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  Testifying to Jesus: Simeon, Part 2

  Luke 2:25-35

  Beyond the shepherds and beyond Zacharias and Elizabeth and beyond Joseph and Mary we meet Simeon and Anna, old people.  But Simeon was in the remnant because he was looking for the Menacham, he was looking for the consolation, the Messiah of Israel.  And Anna was part of the remnant. She was among those looking for the redemption, the salvation Messiah would bring.  God doesn't need the famous, He doesn't need the mainstream people and education or politics, the power brokers, doesn't need the religious leaders, He just chose the simplest and the common folks.

  Now we know, of course, the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth already, and Joseph and Mary and the shepherds.  But now we come to these rather obscure people, sad to say, Simeon and Anna.  Their stories are included by Luke because he wants some eyewitnesses to attest to who this child is.  There wasn't any halos surrounding Jesus, there wasn't anything visible to indicate that this was the Son of God.  So testimony needs to be corroborated.  And so, Luke selects three witnesses.  First the parents, then Simeon, then Anna to give really unimpeachable testimony to the identity of the child.

  First of all, in verses 21 to 24, the testimony of the parents, the testimony of Joseph and Mary.  We've already covered that, we won't go into that again.  They are the first witnesses that were called into the court to affirm the identity of the child. And the second is Simeon. And we started to look at him last week, and we'll finish it this morning.  Simeon is a remarkable man.  His part comes in verse 25 to 35.  And, first of all, as we saw last time, it is important to establish his credibility as a witness.  That was true with Joseph and Mary also.  There's no question about Joseph as to his credibility because the Bible tells us he was a righteous man.  There's no question about the righteous character of Mary either, that is evident from the Magnificat of Mary back in chapter 1 verse 46 and following.  They were righteous, they were right before God, they were godly young people.  Their testimony had integrity, it's unimpeachable.  That's important to establish.

  And the same would be true of the next witness, the next eyewitness to the Messiah, Simeon. And so no one is mistaken about his character, this man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon was righteous.  That is he was right with God, he was a converted man, he was a justified man.  He was devout.  I told you the word means cautious or careful in obedience to God's law which means he was not only a justified man but a sanctified man.  He was looking for the Manacham, the consolation, the consoler, the Messiah and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  You can't ask for more than that.  Here his credibility is established.

  In fact, verse 26 says, "Even divine revelation had come to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ."  Amazing, amazing revelation came to this man that he would be alive until Messiah arrived and he would see the Messiah. 

  Well, it all came to pass in verse 27.  The Holy Spirit draws him down to the temple where, no doubt, he spent a lot of time and there he met the parents, Joseph and Mary, who had brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law.  Remember we talked about the fact that after 40 days of the woman who had given birth to a male child had to come and offer sacrifice, and she had come to do that, and also to pay the five silver shekels to redeem the firstborn child, according to the Old Testament law.  And they had come to the temple for that.  And God providentially worked out a meeting.  As I said, it would be fascinating to know what happened.  It doesn't say.  But in verse 28 it says that Simeon took him into his arms.  Well at that point Simeon must have known who the child was. And how did that happen?  Well between verses 27 and 28 there must have been a rather long conversation. 

  Simeon didn't know he was looking for Joseph and Mary.  Simeon didn't come looking for the Messiah.  They weren't looking for Simeon, but God brought them together and somehow at the right moment the Spirit of God prompted a conversation in the melee of thousands of people milling around in the temple court.  And they began to talk and Joseph and Mary began to unfold the amazing story of how Gabriel had come to Mary and how an angel had come to Joseph in a dream and told them what was going on, that she would conceive and bear the Messiah, the Son of the Most High God, the Son of David who would have a Kingdom that would last forever and ever and He would be named Jesus because He would save His people from their sins.  The whole story about how the barren Zacharias and Elizabeth in their 70's or 80's were able to conceive a son who would be the prophecy...the prophet of the Messiah and a whole story unfolded. And the angels in the field telling the shepherds and the shepherds reporting to them and all of this and Simeon heard it, believed it. 

  Somebody would say, "Well why would he believe it?"  And the answer would be, because he was being led by the Spirit.  It tells us in verse 25 the Holy Spirit was upon him.  Verse 26, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit he wouldn't die until he saw the Lord, Messiah.  And verse 27, he came in the Spirit to the temple.  I mean, the imprint of the Holy Spirit is all over this man and certainly the confirmation of the Holy Spirit came when he heard the story, the miraculous conception without a male father, the planting of this Messiah in the womb of this young girl, all of this wondrous story was told to Simeon. And in verse 28 he took Him into his arms, picked up that little baby and blessed God.  And you can only imagine what all was in that blessing.  He launches into his blessing in verses 29 down to verse 32 and it's called the nunc dimittis, Latin for the first two words, "Now Lord."  They...the Latin terms are used to identify also the Benedictus of Zacharias, that's what that great praise at the end of chapter 1 is called, and the Magnificat of Mary earlier in the chapter.

  Nothing about the child was visibly different.  But he knew who the child was.  The Spirit of God confirming the testimony of these parents.  He was allowed by God to have this incredible moment, the great moment when the Manacham, the Savior, the King, the Messiah of the world was in his arms.   And as I said last time, he pressed his face and kissed the face of God.  Here was the one who was the fulfillment of all God's promises, here was the one who fulfilled all the Old Testament and here was a man, Simeon, who believed the promises, who believed what the Old Testament said, believed it literally, was faithful to those promises and waited for God to fulfill them.  And God did.

  Here was an old man.  We don't know how long he had know the Messiah would come in his life time and he would see Him.  We don't know how long he had hoped. But certainly this is what drove his life.  This was the passion of his whole life. And from the time he got the revelation that he would see the Messiah before he died, he must have gone into every single day wondering is this the day?  He believed the promises that God had given to Abraham and he believed the promises of blessing that God had given to Moses. And he believed the promises that god had given to David, and that God had reiterated through all the prophets.  He believed all of that.  He believed the promises that are captured in the majesty of the Psalms which he no doubt had recited and sung since a child.  He believed God would keep His word and make good on His promises.

  We don't know what he expected.  I mean, maybe he was looking for a king.  Maybe he was looking for a heavenly king.  Maybe he was looking to the skies some days when he looked at the open courtyard of the temple and saw a sort of a darkened sky and somewhere a crack in the cloud appeared and a sunbeam came through and maybe he thought that might be the sunbeam on which the King would ride.  Maybe he thought one day the clouds would part.  Or maybe he thought one night in the midst of the darkness a great light would shine and down would come the great King.  There were certainly people among his remnant who had that thought.  Or maybe he thought that the Messiah would come as a great soldier, a great conqueror, a great warrior and he wouldn't come out of the sky, he'd come through the Eastern Gate, as the prophet had said with great conquering power to shatter the Romans and establish the promise of Abraham.

  We don't know what he thought, but we do know what he got.  What he got was a little tiny baby that looked like any other baby, held in the arms of a little couple that was so poor they couldn't buy a lamb for the purification sacrifice, they had to use a bird, a little family that came from that lowly and despised place called Nazareth that was always being crisscrossed by Gentiles and was so far away from temple influence as to be on the borders of paganism.  Simeon took Him into his arms..if I can read Simeon's mind, he was thrilled to embrace the child but maybe more thrilled to know that the child would embrace him.  That was really all he needed.  He had seen the Messiah come and so he says, verse 29, "Now, Lord, Thou doest let Thy bondservant depart in peace according to Thy word."  You told me I'd live until I saw the Messiah, I've seen Him, let me die...I have nothing left to live for.  My hope is fulfilled.  My joy is complete.  My heart is at peace.  I'm ready to go.

  So this dear Simeon serves as a crucial divinely inspired faithful righteous witness to the identity of this little baby.  He was waiting for the Messiah.  When he heard the story, the Spirit of God confirmed in his heart and he gives testimony that he can die...that's how sure he was.  If this is what he had waited for all his life, the coming of Messiah as part of the remnant, if this is what he waited for, even more intensely when the Spirit of God revealed that he would actually see Him, then believe me, he wouldn't say "I can die" unless he was convinced this was the Messiah. 

  His task, though brief, just this little picture in Scripture, this task though brief was very much like John's, John the Baptist because both of them gave testimony to the Messiah and then died.  As far as we can tell, Simeon...the Lord just took him and John the Baptist had his head cut off.  But Simeon God used as a powerful, powerful witness to point to the reality that this was the Messiah.

  Why is he content to die?  He knows that.  Verse 30 he says it, "For my eyes have seen Thy salvation."  Don't ever think for a moment that God is not a saving God.  "God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth," 1 Timothy 4.  Three times in the book of Titus "God our Savior, God our Savior, God our Savior."  He is a saving God.  God who is the Savior of all men, 1 Timothy 4:10.    It is God who is the Savior.  It is God's salvation that he sees in the Messiah.  God has sent His salvation because God has sent, as Zacharias called Him, the horn of salvation who is the Messiah. 

  When the Messiah comes who is the Savior, salvation comes.  "And neither is there salvation in any other" says Acts 4:12.  So his praise flows because God's salvation has come because God's Savior has come. 

  Now he had a full understanding of salvation.  He understood that salvation was the word for deliverance and it could mean deliverance from your enemies and those who oppress you.  Zacharias in his Benedictus in chapter 1 affirmed that and discussed that, talked about that.  That's part of the Davidic Covenant, temporal, earthy deliverance from earthly enemies and invaders and oppressors. 

  But it didn't end at that.  It wasn't just deliverance from other nations in time and space.  It wasn't just the extension of the borders to fit the original covenant of God with Abraham.  Zacharias, the high priest, knew, Mary knew that this child would not just extend the borders of Israel, would not just bring sovereignty back to Israel over all its enemies, but would bring forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation with it.  That's all embodied in that word because when Jesus was named, Jesus, it was not because He would save His people from their enemies, it was because He would save His people from their sins.  Yes there will be a national deliverance through the Messiah, the Kingdom will be established in Israel, the Messiah will rule over Israel.  They will be a sovereign state ruled by the sovereign Lord. And they will not only have a sovereign Lord ruling them, but they will be the sovereign nation ruling the world as Messiah mediates His rule through Israel.  There will be sovereignty.  All their enemies and oppressors will be destroyed and broken.  And there will be an earthly extension of the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant, but even more than that, there will be eternal salvation in the forgiveness of sins.  Messiah will save His people from their sins.

  And so here is this man, one of the small, small remnant.  Even after Jesus' ministry is complete, there's only 130 in the upper room in Jerusalem who identify with Jesus Christ and are tarrying, waiting for the Holy Spirit.  Small little group, but he has seen all he needs to see, the salvation of God has arrived because the Savior has arrived.  And he knows in his heart that this means all messianic promise, all covenant promise, all the promises of the Old Testament are going to be fulfilled because, as Paul said, all the promises of the Old Testament are in Christ, yes and amen!  All Old Testament promises are ultimately fulfilled in Christ, all of them.  Simeon knew that and believed it.  He was a literalist.  He interpreted the Old Testament literally and accurately and believed in the promises of God.  And as I said earlier, that has always been the small minority view in Israel and it is today...even among Jews in our own country it is.  Very few take the Old Testament seriously and really believe its promises.  He was one.

  But you know what?  He said some shocking things.  If he had ended everything there, it wouldn't have advanced the amazing story of the Messiah any further than Joseph and Mary had already heard and the readers had already heard because Mary talked about God, our Savior.  And Zacharias talked about how God would save His people through the Messiah.  But there's something here added that is really shattering, the standard belief of the Israelites.  Look at it in verse 31.

  He says, "My eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou has prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel."  This is astonishing.  The Jews believed that the Messiah would come and be their Messiah and establish their Kingdom and with the establishment of that Kingdom they would rule over the infidel Gentile world.  But this says God has brought a Savior and prepared salvation in the presence of all peoples to be a light of revelation to the Gentiles as well as the glory of Israel.  This is shocking information.

  You know, even the remnant of Israel, even the serious students of the Old Testament, the believers, had animosity toward Gentiles.  I don't mean by that they had animosity toward and individual Gentile, but they hated what Gentile stood for...anti-God, anti-Scripture, desecration of the true and living God, violation of the first and great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, violators of the first commandment to have any other gods, violators of making images, making no images commandment.  They saw them as violators of God's commands.  They saw them as blasphemers.  They resented them for their idols and the purer the remnant was the more that resentment grew. 

  If you go back in the history of Israel, what do you see?  Gentile nations bringing idols in and corrupting Israel.  It was the invasion of Gentile idols, you remember, that ultimately ended in the deportation of the northern kingdom, Israel.  It was the importation of idols, it was the desecration of the worship of God that ultimately ended in the Babylonian captivity of the southern kingdom Judah.  All idolatry, all Gentile religion, Gentile viewpoint had ever done was corrupt and attack and assault and kill and destroy.  That's all they knew.  And so there was this understandable resentment because they were this very small little group of people who had been hammered and battered and attacked and killed and massacred and taken into captivity.  And behind all of that were idolatrous nations doing it all, perpetrating it all against them.  I mean, and that's even gone on through history today.  They can go back, they can, and they can identify a Gentile Germany, and a Gentile Russia and they can see horrible, horrible massacre of people and even those who are righteous remnant Jews in the midst have a reasonable antipathy toward what Gentile nations have done to their people by way of physical attack and by way of religious corruption.

  And so, Simeon and probably Joseph and Mary just had a sort of normal view that Gentiles were the enemy.  They were outside the pail of God's provision and Simeon says, "No, God has brought with the Messiah a salvation that has been prepared in the presence of all peoples and the Messiah is called a light of revelation to the Gentiles."  And that is an amazing statement.

  But you know something?  We shouldn't be shocked because that's what the Old Testament promised.  And I'm sure when Simeon said it, he realized it was right out of the Old Testament.  Salvation has been prepared by God but it's been prepared for the whole world because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  And that message rings throughout all the Scripture.  The Great Commission...Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.  God is not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance.

  The plan of redemption when it reaches its culmination in the book of Revelation has people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation.  Salvation is for the whole world and yet when it all started out they heard...the shepherds heard this from the angels, the angels even said, "There has been born for YOU this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord," and "for you" to them would mean for us who are a part of Israel.

  And when Mary heard and Joseph heard "name Him Jesus for He will save His people from their sins," His people to them would mean Israel.  And then Simeon says this, that God has prepared a salvation through the Messiah in the presence of all peoples?  Laos, all the peoples.  And the Messiah is a light of revelation to the Gentiles?  But that's what Isaiah said.  Back in Isaiah 9 verse 2...well, verse 1 talks about when the Messiah comes...He's going to go to the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.  Now this is such a direct prophecy and Jesus did do that, He went to the other side of the Jordan, other side of the Dead Sea...of the Galilee Sea to the Galilee of the Gentiles, He did that.  And he says, "He's going to go to the Galilee of the Gentiles," Isaiah 9:2, "the people who walk in darkness," that's the Gentiles, "will see a great light." And that's where...that's where Simeon is drawing that statement, "He's a light of revelation to the Gentiles," right out of Isaiah 9:2.  The Gentiles are going to...the Gentiles, the peoples, simply the Gentiles, who walk in darkness will see a great light.  Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.

  So Isaiah told them the Messiah is going to be for the nations as well.  You know, the Jews didn't like that.  I mean, look at Jonah, he's the class illustration, right?  God says, "Jonah, go to Ninevah and preach repentance."  And in Jonah's mind he's saying, "You know, if there's anything I can't stomach it's Gentile conversion...I can't stomach...I can't tolerate that.  They have done everything all along to blaspheme God, to assault Israel, to dishonor God.  They are oppressive, etc., etc.  I just can't deal with that.  I'm not going to do it, God."  And so he heads for Tarshish.  He gets on a boat and through a detour through the belly of a great fish and finally getting vomited out on the shore, he comes to his senses and says, "Okay, God, if You're going to deal with me like this, I'll do it.  I mean, what do You want me to do?"

  He goes to Ninevah.  He preaches and has the greatest revival in the Old Testament.  The whole city repents.  And what does he do?  He goes out of town, he gets real morose.  He's peeved to the core.  He's really mad at God.  And he says, "Kill me, God, I cannot stand this...Gentile repentance.  Take my life, it's more than I can bear."

  Now that was a pervasive attitude.  And yet Isaiah says in Isaiah 42, "I am the Lord...verse 6...I have called you in righteousness, I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you, I will appoint you as a covenant to the people and a light to the nations."  He's talking to the Messiah, that's a conversation between God the Father and God the Son. And God the Father says to the Son who is called the servant in this chapter, "I will appoint you as a light to the nations."  That too is where Simeon could have drawn this, "To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness from the prison."  Again, the Messiah is going to be a light to the nations, a light to the Gentiles.  Chapter 49 of Isaiah, it's not as if this is obscure, it's not.  Isaiah 49 verse 6, again He's talking to His servant, the Messiah, He says, "I'm going to raise up the tribes of Jacob...verse 6...and restore the preserved ones of Israel.  I will also make You a light of the nations." There's that same statement used by Simeon for the third time, "That My salvation may reach to the end of the earth."  To the end of the earth.

  Chapter 51 verse 4, "Pay attention to me, O My people, and give ear to Me, O My nation, for a law will go forth from Me and I will set My justice for a light of the peoples, for a light of the nations."  Same phrase again, a light of the nations, that's the fourth time we've heard it.

  Chapter 52 verse 10, "The Lord has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God."  There it is again.  And that, too, was behind the statement of Simeon. 

  And then wonderful passage in chapter 60, "Arise, shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you, for behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples, or nations, but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you and nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising."  He's talking to the Messiah.  "Arise, Messiah, shine, Messiah, and the nations will come to Your light."

  Well go back to Luke.  That's all behind that statement.  That's that rich part of Isaiah. So Simeon in his praise extending the saving work of Messiah to the ends of the earth.  Gentiles participate in salvation as equals.  They participate in the Millennial Kingdom as equals.  They participate in eternal glory as equals.  Not to the exclusion of Israel, look at the end of verse 32, "And the glory of Thy people, Israel."  And you've heard me read several times that Israel, of course, is going to be saved, but two passages, just note this, Isaiah...you don't have to turn to them, you can write them down if you care to...Isaiah 46:13, "I bring near My righteousness, it's not far off, and My salvation will not delay.  I will grant salvation in Zion and My glory for Israel," Isaiah 46:13, you could also include 45:25 it says essentially the same thing.

   Glory is another word for light.  In fact, in the Old Testament God reveals Himself as light and He calls it His Shekinah glory.  So light to the Gentiles means the Messiah who is the light of salvation to the Gentiles.  Glory to Israel means the glory of Messiah who is salvation to Israel.  What is going to happen then, Israel is going to be saved and Gentiles are going to be saved from the ends of the earth.  The word "glory" is a special word to the Jew, a special meaning.  In the Old Testament God appeared in the Garden in His glory, shone His glory which is called the Shekinah.  God showed His glory to Moses on the mount.  He showed it in the sky through the pillar of cloud and fire.  He showed His glory at the building of the tabernacle.  He showed it at the building of the temple.  The glory of God was synonymous with the radiating light of God's saving, leading, guiding, protecting power.  And the Gentiles are going to see the light of salvation and Israel is going to see the glory of salvation. 

  The promises of the Abrahamic Covenant, the promises of the Davidic Covenant, the promises of the New Covenant are for Israel but beyond they're going to touch the whole world.  And when all Abrahamic Covenant promises are fulfilled in the earthly Millennium, we'll be there enjoying them.  And when all Davidic promises are fulfilled in the earthly Millennium, we'll be there enjoying them.  And we are already enjoying the pledges and promises of the New Covenant which is in Christ Jesus.  Salvation is for Israel but not just Israel, it's for the whole world.

  This is new.  And look at verse 33, the reaction, "The father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him."  I mean, they're standing there in the temple ground, they're already so full of wonder, they've got this little baby that looks like any other little baby.  I'm sure this little baby functioned like any little baby, like a normal human baby.  They were dealing with it as parents would normally deal with a little baby.  Looking into the face of this little baby, they realized they've got the Son of the Most High God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world and this expands through the words of Simeon and it's beyond their comprehension.  Two teen-agers, non-descript, not prominent, not well-known, and God has put in their hands the redemption of the world. 

  The amazement must just have continued and continued to explode on their frail, human understanding.  They knew their child was the virgin-born Son of God. They knew He was the Son of David.  They knew He would reign on David's throne forever and ever.  They knew He was the Son of Abraham who would fulfill all of the promises to Abraham.  They knew He was Israel's Savior who would fulfill all the covenants and all testament promises.  They knew He would bring the Kingdom of God on earth with peace and joy and righteousness.  They knew He would be a child for the redemption of His people and a horn of salvation for them for the whole world.  This was way beyond their understanding.  The whole thing was just beyond their grasp.

  Their perceptions now are enlarged as they think of the influence of this silent, nursing, little, 40-day-old boy.  Yeah, they knew the Savior had been born for them, but for the world?  They're amazed, astounded.  And it's in the euphoria of that moment as Zacharias ends his hymn of praise that something shocking is said.  Verses 34 and 35, "And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, His mother, 'Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed and a sword will pierce even your own soul to the end the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.'"  And Simeon is gone.

  Now wait a minute.  Fall?  Opposed?  Sword?  We've never heard anything like that.  It's all been fulfillment of all the promises of God, it's all been covenantal fulfillment, it's all been hope and peace and joy and salvation and righteousness and glory and what is this? 

  This is the first negative note in Luke's gospel.  The marvelous, miraculous glorious birth of the Messiah, Savior, wonderful full of all the anticipated joy.  But that's not all.  There's going to be fall, opposition and piercing.  What does all this mean?

  Well, it was important that they hear this, particularly for Mary, that nothing would surprise her when the hostility began.  Look at verse 34, "And Simon (meant Simeon) blessed them," simply means that he...he affirmed that the favor of God was on them.  I mean, the favor of God was more on that young couple than it had ever been on anyone.  The goodness of God on them was unique.  And so he affirms that you have been blessed, you have been favored by God like no one ever. 

  But he doesn't stop there.  He turns to Mary and, "He said to Mary, His mother," now why?  The reason is because what he is describing there Joseph wouldn't experience.  You know why?  Very likely he wasn't alive.  After the age of 12 and Joseph and Mary had left Jesus in the temple, Joseph disappears.  And when Jesus starts His ministry, he never is around.  When Mary appears, she's without Joseph.  Sometimes it's Mary and her children, never Joseph. And when it comes to the cross and Jesus is dying, He didn't say much on the cross but what He did say was critical. And one of the things He said was He saw His mother and He saw the Apostle John and He said to His mother, "This is your son," and He said to John, "This is your mother." What He was doing was handing over the care of His mother to John which was necessary because He had done that up to then and it's obvious that there was no Joseph to care for her or that would have been unnecessary.  There's nothing to say to Joseph because Joseph died somewhere along the way, perhaps even before Jesus began His ministry, for Joseph would have been a life of watching this miracle grow in wisdom, stature and favor with God and man, it would all be positive and wonderful, encouraging, blessed, joyous, perfect.  Not Mary.  She would be there when the rejection started.

  And so, Simeon says to her, "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel."  The first word I want you to mark in your mind...separation.  Trouble is going to come, Mary, down the way, and suffering, and conflict and pain.  And the first thing to describe is separation.  Jesus is going to be a dividing line, He's going to be a point of demarcation.  Jesus is going to be a turning point.  And based upon how people respond to Him, some are going to rise and some are going to fall, but He's going to be the determiner of destiny.  In fact, the word "appointed" is the word "destined."  This child is destined to determine the fall and rise of many in Israel and many really can be extensive.  It can mean everyone.

  What is being introduced here is that they're going to be some people who are not going to rise to the glories of salvation, are not going to rise to the realities of Kingdom blessing, they're not going to rise to joy and peace and prosperity and righteousness.  They're going to fall.  And that's new.  This not only are Gentiles going to be saved, but Jews are going to be lost.  That adds a whole new perspective.  And he, meaning Simeon, knew Isaiah, this is right out of Isaiah chapter 8, the prophet had said so.  Listen to what he wrote, Isaiah 8:14, "He...Messiah...shall become a sanctuary but to both the houses of Israel a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over and a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and many will stumble over them, then they will fall be broken.  They will even be snared and caught."  Wow, the prophet Isaiah said...right there in Jerusalem, right among the people of Israel there's going to be...there's going to be a stumbling and a falling.  The Messiah will be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense and many shall stumble and fall and be broken or shattered.  The prophet said it would happen.  John put it this way, "He would come unto His own and His own will receive Him not."  This is new.  

  You mean, the Messiah is going to come and all the Old Testament hope is going to be brought to fulfillment and all the promises of the Old Testament are going to come together and He's going to be the Savior and He's here and I hold Him in my arms and the first shock is that He's going to be the Savior of Gentiles and the second shock is that Israel is going to be divided over Him?  And many are going to fall?  Few are going to rise?

  Irretrievable fall is intended here, a fall away from salvation into judgment and damnation.  The language of Scripture is so vivid here.  And that's exactly what happened.  If you follow the career of Jesus Christ and what happens?  The whole nation turns against Him and conspires with the Romans to have Him executed and only a small little group believed.  Only that little faithful remnant would arise and the rest would fall over the rock of offense and the stone of stumbling.

  Not only will there be separation but they'll be opposition.  It isn't just that people will be divided over Him.  It's not that they'll sort of just categorically line up on one side or another in a sort of moderately indifferent way, not at all.  There not only will be separation, there will be opposition.  In fact, look at the end of verse 34, "This child will be a sign to be opposed."  He will represent, He will signify what people hate.  Wow.  What do they hate?  They hate righteousness.  Men don't love the light, they love darkness.  To be opposed is the Greek verb antilegomenon(?) which means to contest.  It's not going to go smooth, Mary.  His life is going to be held up and they're going to contest it.  It's going to come from insults.  It will start out with indifference.  It will be insults, mockery, abuse, hatred, venomous vilification, plotting, physical torture and execution.

  This is hard enough for us to believe today that this could happen in Israel, but for Mary, all she knew was her heart was overwhelmed with the joy of the arrival of Messiah.  And now, all of a sudden, this.  They're going to reject Him.  They're going to oppose Him violently.  Amazing.  The long-awaited salvation of God, the long-awaited fulfillment of Abrahamic, Davidic promise, the long-awaited New Covenant ratified salvation, the long-awaited fulfillment of every Old Testament promise in the Messiah and you're telling me, first of all, the nation is going to be divided over the Messiah?  Yes, and if she only knew at that time, divided, the tiny little group would rise, the mass would cry for His blood and fall into perdition.  And opposition against the Messiah?  Not from the Gentiles but from His own people?  Unthinkable.

  I'm in the process of putting a book together called The Murder of Jesus.  It's a fairly provocative title, be out at the first of the year.  There's a lot of interesting courts and trials today, sentences, even executions.  The greatest travesty of justice in the history of the human race occurred in the city of Jerusalem against Jesus.  Never did a more perfect individual live.  It was the most trumped up trial ever.  It was the greatest miscarriage of justice to find Him guilty and to execute Him ever.  That's how He was opposed.

  Wonderfully behind it all was God with His sovereign, redemptive purpose which in no way lessons the culpability of those who rejected and cried for His blood.  Even a remnant Jew, even a true-believing Jew would have wondered about Isaiah 53, "He was bruised for our iniquities." They would have wondered about there being no comeliness that we should desire Him and wondered how the Messiah could be considered as not beautiful and not desirable and how He could actually die.  And here they're hearing it will be the opposition of His own people.  He will divide these people like with a sword that He Himself said.  And He will generate opposition to Himself against His Messiahship, His salvation and His Kingdom.  So much so that His Kingdom has been postponed and it still hasn't come.  But this is all very confirming testimony because this is exactly what Isaiah 53 says would happen.

  There's another word, affliction...separation, opposition, affliction.  He turns from talking to the nations to talking to Mary personally.  And I think the translators knew that, they set it apart with little dashes.  But this phrase in verse 35, "A sword will pierce even your own soul."  Mary, it's going to be real personal.  Mary has been called in the Latin through the years of the church Mater Deloroso, mother of sorrows.  We can't imagine a mother loving a child more than she loved Jesus.  Can't imagine how hard it was when Jesus began to push her away on the human level. At twelve years of age He had to be about His Father's business, and in a sense He pushed her aside.  Later when He was doing His first miracle in Cana He didn't call her "mother," He called her "woman."  When she came to visit Him with His half-brothers and sisters on occasion, He was told that His mother and His brothers and sisters were outside and He said, "Who is My mother, who is My brothers except those who believe in Me."  And He was moving Mary from being His mother to needing Him as a Savior.  That would be something for her to deal with as He distanced Himself and yet she would love Him for His perfections.

  I can't imagine any loving anyone more than she would love Him.  No child would be more lovable, obviously. And when it came time for Him to be hated and ridiculed and mocked and pierced and executed, according to John 19:25, there she is standing at the foot of the cross watching the whole scenario unfold in front of her and certainly that would have rammed a sword through her mother's heart.

  The distancing would have been hard to bear.  The suffering of her Son, unimaginable torture for this woman who by then was in her forties and had grown not only to love Jesus as a Son, but Savior.  But there was even more than that, I think.  Mary was, of all things, a believing Jew who loved the Messiah and the promises of God and would have been pierced through the heart to see her nation reject her Son, to see the people turn against Him, to see the people of Israel forfeit the salvation of God and the Kingdom that had been promised to them.  So much grief, so much affliction.  She was an ordinary woman of flesh and blood like all of us, bearing enormous strain just being the mother of the Son of God, certainly from time to time bewildered and certainly cut to the heart with pain.

  So, we're introduced to separation, opposition and affliction and then finally, revelation.  The end of verse 35, and we'll close with this, going past the parenthesis, "This is a sign to be opposed...skip the parenthesis...to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."  When Jesus stands up, He's going to be a sign and people are going to oppose Him.  And in opposing Him, there's going to be a revelation. 

  I remember reading years ago about a guy who took a friend on a tour through Paris, took him to the Louvre and showed him all the pictures.  Took him to a concert hall in Paris that night to hear a great symphony.  At the end of the day he said, "What do you think?"  And he said, "I wasn't that impressed."  To which his friend said, "If it's any consolation to you, the museum and its art were not on trial and neither was the symphony.  You were on trial.  History has already judged the greatness of those works of art and the greatness of that music.  All that is revealed by your attitude is the smallness of your own appreciation."

  Jesus isn't on trial but every soul is.  And what happens is, He's raised up as a sign and by opposing Him, the wickedness of the heart is surfaced.  Somebody might think, "You know, when the Messiah comes, they're going to throw lilies at His feet and when the Messiah comes there's going to be hearts and flowers, there's going to be peace and joy and happiness everywhere.  When the Messiah comes, you know, Jesus was really a good man, He would come into the world and there would be goodness trailing out of Him and everyone would feel happy and He'd be just a person who engendered happiness and joy and peace." 

  You know what happened when the Messiah came?  He engendered hostility.  And what came to the surface was bitterness and anger and hatred and venom and death because when the Messiah comes His holiness confronts wickedness and produces the revelation of apostasy.  It reveals...what Jesus did was reveal the apostate nature of the religion of Judaism, didn't He?  He literally revealed the hypocrisy of it all, the shallowness of it all, the legalism of it all, the self-righteousness of it all. And they hated Him for that exposure.

  To be saved by Jesus, to enter into Jesus' Kingdom, your sin has to be exposed.  If you acknowledge that and embrace that exposure and come to Him for forgiveness, you'll be saved and enter His Kingdom.  If you hate that exposure and resent Jesus for doing it, you'll go to hell in your sins.  So, His life was a revelation.  How people responded reveals the condition of their heart.

  Jesus isn't on trial but you are.  And I'm sure that Mary, and many of the remnant must have thought, you know, when the Messiah comes it's all going to be wonderful and everybody will fall in love with Him.  He'll be irresistible.  He'll be so wonderful and so gentle and so meek and so mild.

  And that's the Jesus people would like. But the fact of the matter is, He walked in to their apostasy, called it what it was, brought their sin to the fore, condemned them for their sin and they hated Him for it and it surfaced the wretched condition of their hearts.  For some of them, they fell on their faces and repented, believed and were saved.  For most of them, they cursed Jesus and put Him on a cross.

  It says the thoughts, the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. The word "thoughts" here is dialogismos, it's beliefs, it's used eight times in the New Testament, always negatively.  It always has a bad connotation.  You're going to bring up the filth. You cannot have a ministry like Jesus and make everybody feel good.  Even Jesus didn't do that.  He created such hostility they killed Him.  You see, when you come with the truth of holiness, you expose the evil of the heart.  And that's what Jesus did.

  Messiah came and found a people full of sin, who loved their sin. They loved darkness rather than light.  So, Simeon the righteous man is content that Jesus is born the Messiah. And with Him the hope of Israel and the world is fulfilled and salvation has come and He can die.  That doesn't mean it's all going to go the way you think.  Many will receive Him, but His life is going to unmask those who love their sin and hate God.  And so they'll be separation, opposition, affliction and the revelation of the wickedness of the human heart.  That is a tremendous unfolding of the picture of what we'll see when we go through Luke and watch separation, opposition, affliction and the revelation of the wickedness of the human heart unfold until the climax of the crucifixion.
  

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  Testifying to Jesus: Anna

  Luke 2:36-38

  David Gooding, who has many refreshing thoughts about the time of the birth of Christ, has written this, "Israel has never been a nation marked by unqualified obedience, anymore than other nations have.  When they came out of Egypt, singing their songs of redemption, no one had dreamed that hidden in the hearts of most of them lay as yet unformed thoughts of sheer rebellion against God, their Redeemer.  But the wilderness by God's deliberate intention exposed them."

  Isaiah knew this.  He knew that human nature is the same in all ages, and Jeremiah knew it and said, "The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  And even the prophet Isaiah...says Gooding...as he looked forward to the consolation of Israel knew that beneath the outward forms of religion they're lurked still in many hearts the same spirit of rebellion, and he knew that the first defect of the coming of Christ would be to provoke their hidden rebellion into open antagonism.  In a sense...writes Gooding...Christ had to do that for there could be no consolation of Israel until the latent rebellion against God had been brought out into the open and had been recognized for what it was, repented of and forgiven," end quote.

  You know, when you look at the history of Israel, David Gooding is right, it's so sad.  One book given to one people but only this tiny little group of people believed it, this little remnant.  And as I said this morning, there weren't many in the remnant because when the whole ministry of Jesus was over and all the believers in Jerusalem gathered in the upper room, there were only 120 of them.  But among that little remnant that took the Old Testament seriously and believed it was an old couple Zacharias and Elizabeth, he was a priest and she even came from the priestly line as well, was a young couple, Joseph and Mary, who were righteous teen-agers, were some shepherds sitting on their haunches, as it were, watching their sheep out on the hillside in Bethlehem whom the angels came. And we meet in Luke chapter 2 a couple of more people in the remnant, namely Simeon, and old man, and Anna, an old lady. 

  The last human witness is introduced to us in verse 36.  Let me read that to you.  "There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher.  She was advanced in years having lived with a husband seven years after her marriage and then as a widow to the age of eighty-four.  She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.  And at that very moment she came up and began giving thanks to God and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."

  Let's start in verse 36.  "And there was a prophetess, Anna."  By the way, same as the Hebrew Hannah, no difference, no difference.  In fact, if you go back to 1 Samuel 1 and look at Hannah, you'll see that she was characterized by prayer and fasting and so was Anna.  The Hebrew name is a lovely name.  In fact, you might want to think about that next time you have a little girl, the name means grace.  And this Anna had been graced by God.  She had been graced by God to be a prophetess.

  Now what is a prophetess?  It's not somebody who predicts the future, not a fortune teller, it's not somebody who works on the psychic hot line.  It's simply somebody who speaks.  She was a teacher.  She was a speaker.  She spoke God's truth.  She spoke God's Word.  She may have been a teacher of the Old Testament to other women.  She is not a source of divine revelation. There is no revelation that has ever come from her, none comes in this passage.  But she was known as one who taught, one who spoke.

  If you go in to the Old Testament, there are only three women who prophesied.  One is Miriam, Exodus 15, a sister of Moses.  The other is Deborah in Judges 4, one of the judges before the monarchy in Israel. And the other is a woman named Huldah.  You only have three and if you study Miriam and you study Deborah and you study Huldah, you don't find an ongoing prophetic ministry such as you do with the men who were prophets in the Old Testament who were largely life-long prophets.  You find that they prophesied at some event or some moment or some important time.

  To put that in to perspective, in Isaiah chapter 8 and verse 3 it refers to Isaiah's wife as a prophetess.  Anna is identified as a prophetess in the sense that her child is sort of a prophecy by name of what is coming.  Now such use of the term "prophetess" is a title for Isaiah's wife and she knows that it doesn't necessarily indicate an ongoing prophetic ministry or any divine revelation.  And again as you look at Miriam, Huldah and Deborah, they don't have any ongoing ministry described in Scripture, but God occasionally and at times did use women.  Even in the New Testament the daughters of Philip prophesied, it says.  And God does use women to teach.  Occasionally using them in remarkable moments of redemptive history for remarkable purposes.

  This dear lady is a prophetess and it could mean nothing more than that she was a teacher.  And I have suggested that.  Perhaps even a better option, it means at this moment in time she becomes a teacher. She becomes the prophetess in the sense that speaks of this child as the Messiah.  And maybe it's this very moment, verse 38, when she came up and found Joseph, Mary, the baby and Simeon and was informed that she begins to speak of Him to all those looking for the redemption of Jerusalem and fulfills that title.  We don't know.  It could be that she in the past had been a teacher.  It could be that it designates this great moment in her life.

  Now she is further identified for us, and just an interesting note, Anna the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher.  Phanuel is the name Penuel, also Peniel, another Old Testament name...of the tribe of Asher.  Now you say, "Is this important?"  Yes it's important, I want to tell you why it's important.  I can always find these kinds of things and they fascinate me.

  Asher was one of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom.  Remember the kingdom was split after Solomon's reign?  Ten tribes went north, two tribes stayed south and the south was Judah and Benjamin, all the other ten tribes went to the north.  In 722 B.C. the northern kingdom was taken into captivity by the Assyrians.  And that really was devastating. The ten tribes went north and in 722 B.C. Assyria came under Sargon II and destroyed them and carried them away captive.  Their capital city was Damascus, the northern kingdom was taken captive and never returned.

  Now have you ever heard anybody talk about the ten lost tribes of Israel?  It's a very popular sort of anti-semitic theory.  In fact, it goes so far as to say the ten tribes that were taken away captivity migrated across the north of Europe and came across the English Channel and ended up in England and it's us.  That's what the Worldwide Church of God taught for decades and decades and others have taught.  British Israelism it's often called.

  So the question has always been, you know, if the ten tribes were all taken away, critics would say, and they never came back, when you come to the book of Revelation in the end time, you've got 144 thousand witnesses and you've got 12,000 from every tribe.  So you can't take that literally if they're all gone.

   Let me help you with that a little bit.  This lady is long after 722 B.C.  This lady eight centuries later is of the tribe of Asher.  In 721, around 721, 722 when this event happened, the ten northern tribes did go into captivity but prior to that there had been a steady migration of those people down into the southern kingdom.  If you know your history of the northern kingdom called Israel, you know that there were how many good kings?  Zero.  They were deep into idolatry.  There wasn't one good king.  There was a remnant of believing Jews up there who weren't happy with that.  And there were those who wanted to be a part of the temple.  And so there was a steady migration downward because of the city of Jerusalem, because of the temple and because of the priesthood.  They came to the south so that by the time the northern kingdom was taken into captivity, there were people from every tribe, families from all ten tribes who had systematically migrated south.  In fact, in the thirtieth chapter of 2 Chronicles we read, verse 6, "Couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with the letters from the hand of the king and his princes and even according to the command of the king saying, 'O sons of Israel, return to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel that He may return to those who escaped and are left from the hand of the kings of Assyria.'"  There's a warning...turn back to God, turn back to God.

  Part of that turning back to God was going south.  In verse 11 it says, "Some of the men of Asher, and Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem."  And that's just one little glimpse of a rather steady migration so that eventually all twelve tribes, people from all twelve tribes had migrated.  Particularly that occurred also during the revival under the King Josiah, as well as throughout the years, as I noted.

  So that when 603 comes or 602 and you have the first deportation of Judah, the southern kingdom, the north is gone now, the southern kingdom is taken in 603 to 597 and finally in 586 three deportations to Babylon, all those taken to Babylon represented all twelve tribes.  At the end of 70 years of that captivity when they come back, there are people from every tribe that come back under Nehemiah to establish themselves in the land so that 700 or so years later this woman still knows she is of the tribe of Asher.  And they knew it up until then. When they stopped knowing it was in 70 A.D. when all of the massacre of the Jews, a million one hundred thousand Jews were killed in the slaughter of Titus Vespasian in 70 A.D., the destruction of Jerusalem, and over the next series of years, 985 Palestinian towns were literally massacred. And in the massacre and destruction of the temple and the slaughter that followed, they lost the records, they were all destroyed.  And today Jews don't know what tribe they're from.  This lady was from Asher, just a little reminder that the ten tribes weren't lost, they're still there, they're still around. They don't know what tribe they're in, God knows...and there's still enough from every tribe that in the future there will be 12,000 selected during the time of Tribulation to preach the gospel.

  By the way, Asher is a good name, it means happy.  And Asher was the second son of Leah's maid Zilpah and the eighth son of Jacob, according to Genesis 29 and 30.

  Let's meet this little old lady, daughter of a man named Phanuel out of Asher. She was advanced in years.  In fact, she lived with a husband seven years after her marriage.  Now they got married young, right?  We've already gone over that.  Mary typically, the virgin Mary would have been betrothed to her husband at the age of 12 or 13 and let's assume that this lady got married when she was 13 which was pretty traditional.  And she lived with her husband for seven years, till she was 20 and she was widowed.  Then it says in verse 37, "As a widow to the age of 84."  Now this is a little bit of a difficult translation here.

  Some versions say she lived as a widow for 84 years, do you have that?  Which would make her 104.  That is possible that she was 104, it's also possible that she was 84.  And you can sort of take your pick.  This is an older person, even at 84...at 104, pretty remarkable.  And what is especially remarkable about her is at the end of verse 36...verse 37, "She never left the temple."  That's an emphatic statement.

  Now, the only thing we can surmise from that, the reasonable thing to surmise from that is that she lived there.  Around the temple grounds there were some apartments. They were normally dwelling places for priests, around the outer court.  You know, when a priest came to do his two weeks of service at the temple, he needed a place to stay. They had quite a number of these, porticos around the temple.  It just may well have been that because she was a widow so many years and because she was continually at the temple, they just decided that she was so devout that they would just provide a place for that widow in the temple and she never left.  She wasn't there idly, she was serving night and day with fastings and prayers.

  Now I would say this is fairly singular lady, wouldn't you?  She didn't have a very complicated life.  Never went anywhere.  She was singularly and completely devoted to the service and worship of God.  Again it doesn't say anything about her teaching here, that's why I tend to think that the prophetess idea had to do with this one moment in her life at the age of 84 or, if you will, 104.  And she was in the temple all the time, serving through her prayers and fasting.

  Fasting associated with prayer is a matter of self-denying focus.  I would encourage you to think about the fact that fasting in and of itself doesn't have any particular virtue.  Just saying "I won't eat."  But when you are so consumed with a spiritual enterprise or prayer that you have no interest in eating, then fasting takes its appropriate place. 

  Here is a passionate woman.  Here is a woman who all these years, I mean, it's pretty amazing.  I mean, she's been doing this for 64 years?  She's been doing this for 84 years?  This is a fixture in the temple.  Since the time of her widowhood she's been there?  She's a part of this remnant.  She's one who takes the Old Testament seriously.

  What do you think she's praying about?  She's praying for the Manacham, the consoler of Israel, the Messiah.  She's praying for the fulfillment of Abrahamic promise, Davidic promise.  She took the Old Testament seriously.  She believed all the promises that filled the Old Testament.  She believed in the coming of Messiah.  And she's there and she's praying and fasting for it to come to pass.  You know, believe me, the remnant knew they were small and they knew there was apostasy in Judaism. They knew that the Pharisees were corrupt legalists. They knew that the Sadducees were corrupt liberals. They knew that it wasn't right to politicize the Old Testament like the Zealots did and think it all resolved in overthrowing the Roman yoke.  They knew that.  They knew what it was to know God.  She knew God.  She believed the Old Testament.  And all the years of her life since she was widowed she apparently had no interest in marrying...no interest in marrying anybody else.  I mean, you talk about spiritual devotion, this has got to be...this has got to be the most devout person on the pages of Scripture.  You know anybody else that prayed and fasted for 64 or 84 years?  Now if you're going to...if you're going to find a witness, this is a pretty incredible one.  If anybody knew the mind of God and the heart of God, she must have.

  And it says in verse 38, "At that very moment she came up." What very moment?  The very moment that Simeon was uttering this prophecy.  Herod's massive temple, this is a huge courtyard, thousands of people milling around and already Simeon who doesn't know Joseph and Mary, and Joseph and Mary don't know Simeon and God by His providence through the power of His Spirit brings them together and the whole story is told from Joseph and Mary to Simeon, the Holy Spirit confirms it and he launches in to this great testimony to the identity of the baby and at that very moment the Spirit of God providentially, powerfully moves this old lady who's there all the time into the presence of this little couple and the baby and Simeon.  And again, Luke's typical understated way it just says "she came up and began giving thanks to God."

  Well, there must have been something between "she came up" and "began giving thanks," like they told her who this was, right?  Luke assumes that you would know that, certainly.  Simeon surely knew her.  Simeon was a righteous devout man looking for the consolation of Israel.  Simeon was a temple goer.  And anybody who had been there that long would have been well known and who lived there known to everybody and had been there literally for decades.  And Simeon may have seen her and said, "Anna...Anna...Anna, come...come."  Then it all unfolded to her and all that she had been praying and fasting for burst upon her mind and she began giving thanks to God.  And all those many, many years of petition turn now to praise.  Her praise is added to the praise of Zacharias, the praise of Mary, praise of the angels, praise of Simeon andshe's filled with praise and thanks to God.  She began giving thanks to God.

  You can only imagine after all these many years of one focus in life, God and His glory, praying and fasting for the salvation of Israel.  It says it at the end of verse 38, she was a part of the people looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  There wasn't going to be any redemption in Jerusalem until the Redeemer came.  She had been praying and fasting all these years for the Messiah to come and bring the promised redemption and fulfill the Abrahamic and Davidic Covenants.

  And then she becomes the prophetess. "She continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."  From then on this little woman who had spent all her years talking to God started talking to everybody else.  God had answered prayer.  The Messiah had come and she knew who they were, believe me, she knew. She knew the remnant, they knew each other.  They knew who the justified and sanctified believers were.  She continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  Everybody anticipating salvation, everybody anticipating that the promises of the prophets would be fulfilled, that the promises to Abraham and Moses and David would be fulfilled, she knew Simeon, surely, one of the godly remnant, she may even have known Zacharias and Elizabeth, that's speculation but possible, and now she has seen the Messiah.

  God's timing is so amazing, so thrilling and so incredible.  Her testimony, crystal clear, no questions.  Not a moment experience that she began to doubt, but she continued to speak of Him to all those looking for the redemption of Jerusalem, the remnant. 

  And so Luke gives us three witnesses to indicate that this indeed is the Christ, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High, Son of David, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world...parents, old Simeon and Anna.  There is a transition in verse 39, "And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own city of Nazareth."

  One other little note.  In verse 40, here's a far greater testimony even than the testimony of Joseph and Mary or Simeon and Anna, just a note we'll get to.  "The child continued to grow and become strong, increased in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him."  The word "grace" here, loving favor, the favor of God was on Him.  The greatest testimony that will ever be given to the identity of Jesus Christ comes not from Joseph and Mary, comes not from Simeon and Anna, comes not from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the greatest testimony ever given to the identity of Jesus Christ in all His glorious perfection comes from the Father whose favor is on Him and who said of Him at His baptism, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."  That is the greatest testimony to who is this child.  And that testimony will unfold as the story goes.

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