Merry Christmas! This will be a two-part sermon, the second half of which will be delivered on Christmas Eve. Please turn to Luke 2 and we’ll read the account of Joseph and Mary bringing the 40-day year old Jesus into the Temple for the first time.
22 And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, [Joesph and Mary] brought him up to Jerusalem to present [Jesus] to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 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. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
33 And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
Why is this episode recorded? What does the Spirit through Luke mean to teach about the story of God and man?
- The Story of God and man goes on through the God-ordained institutions.
Notice in these couple paragraphs the Torah is mentioned four times. Think about that.
V. 23 spells out one of the laws in the Torah – the firstborn son was to be dedicated to the Lord. When his birth became clear that the family name will go on, he who officially begins the next generation, the baby boy who secures the future of the line – that’s the very one offered to the Lord as a substance and sign. God, he is yours. Our future is dedicated to you, in your hands. You are the God over every generation.
VV. 22, 24 refers to another law from the Torah, from Leviticus 12. After a male child is born, because of her exposure to postpartum blood, the mother is unclean for seven days (which is not to say that she’s done something wrong!). On the eighth day after the birth – even if it was the Sabbath – the boy was to be circumcised. Then for another 32 days the women was to stay home, touch nothing holy. The 40th day after the birth she was to present herself in the Temple to be ritually cleansed. For this to happen she should bring to the priest a lamb to be offered as a burnt offering and a turtledove as a purification offering. If money was scarce another turtledove could replace the lamb. Mary chose the latter option, which indicates that Joseph and Mary weren’t swimming in money.
In all this, Luke takes the time to spell out that Joseph and Mary were adhering to the covenant as spelled out in the Law. And this, even while Israel was waiting to be consoled (v. 25). That is, for hundreds of years Israel had been living under the judgment of God as spelled out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 – she was under the control of foreigners. And why? Because they hadn’t kept the covenant, they broke the Torah. Israel had long ago turned away from God their covenant partner… and had never sufficiently repented. In response, God had in significant ways left her, He had vacated the Temple. That’s what the vision in Ezekiel had made clear.
And even as the exiles returned from Babylon and eventually under Zerubbabel and Haggai’s leadership built the Temple, it was clear that Israel was still under God’s judgment. They were waiting to be restored. Ezra 9:7 – Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt, and because of our wrongful deeds we, our kings, and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the lands, to the swords, to captivity, to plunder, and to open shame as it is this day.
So, when Jesus was born, Israel was still awaiting the consolation of being delivered from the wrath of God against covenant breakers. And yet, the covenant was still in effect even though Israel had broken covenant and were suffering penalties. God still expected his people to gather at the Temple. Offer sacrifices. The Torah should still be looked to…even in times of judgment. The story that God is telling will still be set in the framework of Torah and institutions of Temple and priesthood – – even if in some ways those were in ruins.
We also live in a day of collapsing or collapsed institutions… and the Church in partnership with God under a New Covenant isn’t an exception. There’s a lot that’s wrong in the Church. The Church desperately needs revival – to return to obedience, self-control, reverence, looking to the Blessed Hope, possessing a public theology, enchantment.
There are self-professed Christians who have gone away from being united to the Church to look for something more authentic, purer, more robust, more beautiful. A particular tendency of evangelical Christians is to cut out institutions and traditions…and boil down the God-ward life simply to God and me. The Church is stuffy, it’s full of hypocrites, it slows down my walk with God, I feel inauthentic or empty among the Church. I’ll be a rover, dip into services here and there, but my religion is fundamentally private.
But no. What God is doing in salvation, He will run through the old institution of the Church, that corporation (or Body) with whom He’s partnered in a New covenant. To remain outside the Church is to miss God’s salvation.
Even if the Church does slow you down, is filled with hypocrites, doesn’t give you the weekly mojo you think you need. Even if the Church is a wreck. “We need to draw ever nearer to the reality of Christian faith and witness in our time, however burdensome, however heavy with failure, limitation, and disappointment. The reason is simple. Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us in the flesh. We can draw near to him only in his body, the church. Loyalty to him requires us to dwell within the ruins of the church. – RR Reno
I hope you don’t hear me saying that one must be part of this one particular Church that has the fullness of truth – the Catholics or Baptists or Presbyterians or whatever. This is the RCC error – – that outside the Roman Catholic Church there is no salvation.
And no, this necessity of the God-ward life being grounded in the Church is not a Roman Catholic teaching. No salvation outside the Church was the original Protestant understanding:
We believe, since this holy congregation is an assembly of those who are saved, and outside of it there is no salvation, that no person of whatsoever state or condition he may be, ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself; but that all men are in duty bound to join and unite themselves with it; maintaining the unity of the Church; submitting themselves to the doctrine and discipline thereof; bowing their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ; and as mutual members of the same body, serving to the edification of the brethren, according to the talents God has given them. – Belgic Confession (mid 1500s)
The visible church, which is also universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion;[2] and of their children:[3] and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ,[4] the house and family of God,[5] out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.[6] – Westminster Confession
When God redeems an individual life, he/she is given a place among those who are sanctified by faith in Jesus. (Acts 26:18)
- The Story of God and man is understood best by spiritual people remaining at their post.
We know almost nothing about Simeon, this man in Jerusalem. Even that phrase, the man in Jerusalem, has an air of mystery hanging about it. Some Christian tradition and a lot of Christian art has rendered him as a religious worker, but there’s no indication of that in the text. Was he – in modern terms – blue collar or white collar? Don’t know. Was he married? Don’t know. We’re not even sure about his age – his remark on being ready to die now that he’s seen Jesus would suggest he’s an old man…but not necessarily. Likely though.
We’re told a few things about Simeon. First, that he’s righteous – which means that as an individual he was keeping covenant with God in the terms set down by the Torah. What God through Moses had told Israel to observe, that’s what Simeon was doing.
Luke also calls him “devout” – which means that his observing the covenant wasn’t merely going through the motions but that he was invested, engaged in soul and spirit. Simeon was straining to see the bigger picture behind the acts. For Simeon, the Torah was a window through which he saw Heaven and worshiped God.
Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Waiting for God to bring Israel out from under judgment – the Temple would be restored, the land would be given to Israel, the exiles would return. So, Simeon didn’t think of himself merely (or perhaps even first) as an individual, but as a member of Israel. He carried his people in his mind. He wanted their good real bad.
He was waiting for God to turn again to Israel. But there’s waiting and there’s waiting. There’s waiting as an adult for your birthday in that if you ever have a flickering thought about it ok sure it’s coming but who really cares. And then there’s waiting for Christmas as a child: you’re fully absorbed in it. Simeon was waiting that way – fixed, intent, focused.
In v. 29 when Simeon says you are letting your servant depart, the Greek word he uses is the word for ‘released from duty.’ It’s the end of a shift and I can go home. So, Simeon’s ‘waiting’ wasn’t passive, but rigorous. He would pray and fast for restoration; he would work for national repentance so that God would turn. In Israel’s name he’d draw near to God so that God would in turn draw near to them. To use a New Testament phrase, he loved the appearing of Israel’s restoration.
Think about it: God had told Simeon that he’d see the Christ before he’d die… and so waiting became the central feature of his life. Before I see Christ I can’t die. Afterward I could die. Simeon’s life hinged on this one event.
Jesus said: Blessed are the pure in heart. Some smart guy once said that purity of heart is to will one thing. Simeon’s life had come down to almost one thing.
Three times in a row – vv 25, 26, 27 – God’s holy, ancient Spirit is referred to in connection with Simeon. Just like the Spirit had come upon Bezalel and Oholiab to grant them gifts or amplify their gifts for constructing the temple, came upon the judges to make war, came upon Saul to rule God’s people, came upon the prophets to prophesy… so the Spirit came upon Simeon – – to wait and watch for the Christ. There is a task of noticing, attending to God, not being distracted by other things. That task might seem like it’s something that could be done without. But no. Simeon was equipped with the Spirit for watching, listening to, waiting for God.
I perceive that Simeon was a little eccentric. Unconventional. Unusual things happened to him, happened around him. I say that for a few reasons: it’s uncommon for the Holy Spirit to tell people something so specific – go to the Temple now. Even more uncommon is that once you’ve arrived at the holy place, you make free to pick up a baby less than two months old. I haven’t held a baby for years. And who holds the baby of someone they’ve never met before? Who is the old man to whom a mom would entrust her first baby to be held? And then what kind of guy leaves off prose and begins uttering poetry as Simeon does in v. 29?
But then, you listen to what this eccentric guy is saying – it’s all gold. Spot on. We’ll talk about that on Christmas Eve!
Simeon’s kind of truth-saying doesn’t usually come from the guy with 30 opened browsers. From someone who knows all the players on a football team. From someone starting a business. Or even someone who is always showing up to take down the chairs and make a meal for the injured or meet with the discouraged person.
No, you’re hearing from someone who for some time has willed one thing: waiting for the Christ.
Before God acts in new and uncommon ways, he tells the prophets. Amos 3:7 – “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.” Those prophets are often those who have come to dwell among the untrodden ways (to quote a poet). Like Amos, a sheepherder whom God drove from his livelihood, these watchers and waiters and willers of one thing aren’t looking to be cool or mystical – Jedi masters. No, God calls them into the strangeness of intense listening and they’re often dragged reluctantly. He lays a burning bush in their path and argues them away from the ‘same old.’
When we pray for a reviving work of God, we might not realize that in those prayers we’re praying implicitly for the arrival of unconventional men. Did you notice that the story of Jesus’s arrival is surrounded by such? John the Baptist. Three sky-watchers. Anna who did not leave the temple serving God day and night with fasting and prayers.
We’ll have to be careful that even as evangelical Baptists we keep a space open for those who serve the church not through friendliness, upbeatness, volunteerism, answering texts right away, or getting married and having a great family… but through an uncommon waiting on and watching for God.
We don’t need to all or most of us or hardly any of us become… but we do need a category for mystics in the Jonathan Edwards vein – people loyal to the Word and to the institution of the Church and who have uniquely powerful hungering for revival and experiences with God that are well beyond the norm. We should have a space for strangeness in the name of God. We should be on the lookout for young people who have a gift of hungering for God. As we pray for the consolation of the Church we should pray for God to raise up unconventional Simeon’s!
Also, and now turning away from the bizarre, but still looking at this man from Jerusalem, we should monitor our expectations for ministers of the gospel. What should you want from your pastor? Someone who gets you? Someone with an easy laugh? Someone who’s just one of the guys? Or from our pastor should we – whatever other traits he might have – require spiritual depth and seriousness, unusual focus, even a little strangeness?
Years ago, I came across this advice to congregations concerning what they should expect from their pastor, and it’s stuck with me since…and has often disturbed me. It obviously was written in a different era, but we can bridge into ours.
Fling him into his office, then tear the “Office” sign from the door, and replace it with a sign that says, “Study.”
Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.
Force him to be the one man in the community who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through and let him come out only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.
Shut his mouth from forever spouting remarks and stop his tongue from forever tripping lightly over every non-essential. Require him to have something to say before he breaks the silence. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for the things of God. Make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God.
Rip out his telephone. Burn up his success sheets. Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. Test him, quiz him, examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finance, batting averages and political party issues. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir, raise a chant and haunt him night and day with, “Sir, we would know God.”
When at long last he does assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he doesn’t, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the paper. You can digest the television commentary. You can think through the day’s superficial problems and manage the weary drives of the community and bless the assorted baked potatoes and green beans better than he can.
And when he does speak God’s Word, listen. And when he’s burned out finally by the flaming Word, consumed by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the truth of God to man and finally is himself transferred from earth to heaven, bear him away gently. Blow a muted trumpet. Lay him down softly and place a two-edged sword on his coffin and raise the tune triumphant, for ere he died he had become a Man of God.
A final application for all in Christ. From Simeon (and Anna, and John the Baptist and the three sky watchers) we should learn again the significance of the prayer: Unite my heart to fear your name. Every Christian believer who is living in this world designed to rob our attention should be concerned for focus. Concentration is a problem to be constantly attempting to solve.
And if for the sake of listening to God, watching and waiting for Him you decide to do something strange:
-I’m going to take my copy of Psalms on a walk and just think through verse after verse
-I’m going into the forest for a night by myself with a copy of Scriptures without my phone and am going to listen to God
Doing strange things that make sense in the service of watching and waiting for and listening to God – have at it.
And why? Because of Jesus Christ. He’ll be the focus on Christmas Eve; I’ll finish with just a couple words about him. Why He’s worth staying in very imperfect institutions for as long as God is working in them. And why it makes sense that some people have left the well-trodden ways in order to wait for him, wait on him, unite their heart to hunger for him, take great sacrifices to serve him.
Some men – like Brad Pitt – are so good looking that even I have to admit, that guy is good looking. But then, perhaps, you spend time around them and what starts to get your attention is their shallowness, their vanity, their weakness, their fundamental cowardice, their aversion to suffering, their whininess. And three months into knowing them you can’t even get yourself to see that that person is good looking – who they are has taken over your perception.
And of course there’s the opposite case: someone can be physically unattractive yet after prolonged exposure to him you’re like: whoa. He celebrates when it’s time to celebrate. He works with intensity. He is angered by that which should anger someone… yet his anger is always in hand. It never smolders. His words clarify, are shot through with truth, are often hopeful… yet are sometimes realistically gloomy. He is convinced and principled yet is capable of being argued down. He’s serious without being oppressively heavy. And perhaps above all, he’s in this running conversation with God, and it’s common for him to say something earthly then in the same breath invoke Heaven. He’s like a ladder planted in the good earth reaching up to the Presence of God. And so being around this guy for a while, you could never view him as anything close to ugly.
And after that setup here’s what to say about Jesus, though we’ve no idea of his physical appearance: He is the most handsome of men.
-Just by himself being human Jesus raised the status of human beings through the roof.
-Because Jesus is human, God says that all humanity should continue.
-The man Jesus is the #1 reason why humans should be proud of being human.
-Many people – men and women – from all over the world have made the calculation that to get around Jesus, to know him, is worth losing everything else. Now after years of being able to evaluate their radical calculation, it is not at all clear that they were mistaken.
-He is, as the carols tell us, “Son of God, love’s pure light.” “The darling of the world.” “Godhead incarnate.” “Hope of salvation.” “The Babe so rare.” “Fair flower.” “Spotless rose.” “King of supernatural choirs.” “King of angels.”
Be sure this Christmas season to adore Him.
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