SPEAKER_01: It's a privilege to get to open the Word of God as we worship our Savior this evening.
SPEAKER_01: We have read Luke 2 up into this present story that we're going to read together, so we're well positioned to pick up the story as we will.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus has been born, has been circumcised, and in this story, Mary and Joseph are bringing him to the temple for his consecration.
SPEAKER_01: So would you read with me the passage in Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 22?
SPEAKER_01: Follow us along as I read from the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Luke 2, verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him, that's Jesus, up to the Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written, in the law of the Lord, every male who first opens a womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves, or of young pigeons.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: 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, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light, for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him, 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, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's the basic reality that we are celebrating this evening and tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus and why did he come?
SPEAKER_01: Why is there a Christmas celebration?
SPEAKER_01: Because there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who did something that has restructured and reshaped the entire course of human history, from human societies down to the individual experiences of human hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ has changed everything.
SPEAKER_01: That's, I think, something worth meditating on this evening.
SPEAKER_01: So I would like to use those two questions.
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus and why did he come to frame our meditation on this text this evening?
SPEAKER_01: And we will do that by acquainting ourselves with the characters in the story that we just read.
SPEAKER_01: There are four of them, the first two of which are Jesus, excuse me, Joseph and Mary, who we meet in verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at your Bibles, verse 22 tells us that they came for their purification according to the law of Moses, bringing him up to Jerusalem as it's written in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And then you see in verse 24 that they're offering a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a number of things that we could observe in this text, but I just want to draw your attention to two things about Joseph and Mary this evening.
SPEAKER_01: One is that they are obedient to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: They believe and they obey the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: You see it repet repeated four times in this text.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 22, they did according to the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23, as it's written in the law of the Lord, verse 24, of what is said in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And then again in verse 27, that they brought him according to the custom of the law.
SPEAKER_01: This is a couple who have devoted themselves to believing and doing what the word of God has told them.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we find out about them is that these two are of somewhat modest means.
SPEAKER_01: We see that in the sacrifice that they are offering in verse 24.
SPEAKER_01: You'll notice in verse 22, they come for a purification.
SPEAKER_01: What purification is that?
SPEAKER_01: The law of the Lord had commanded that whenever a woman gives birth, that after a set number of days she's to go into the temple and to offer a sacrifice for purification.
SPEAKER_01: After a male child forty days, so we know that this takes place forty days after Jesus' birth.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph and Mary, obeying the law of the Lord, go into the temple and they offer the sacrifices for purification after the birth of the child.
SPEAKER_01: Now the law stipulates that you are to offer a lamb and then a bird.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're too poor to afford a lamb, then you can offer two birds.
SPEAKER_01: And what do they offer?
SPEAKER_01: Well, verse 24 tells us they offer two birds, which tells us these two are of very frugal means.
SPEAKER_01: So the picture that we have of these two individuals is that there's really nothing especially, externally special about them.
SPEAKER_01: They are two probably teenagers, wearing probably their only pair of clothing, going on a journey that would have cost them very much of the little that they could live on, and they are offering all that they can afford, which is two little pigeons like you might find in the park.
SPEAKER_01: But these are the two individuals that the Lord is going to use to bring his salvation into the world.
SPEAKER_01: Two humble individuals who believe the word of the Lord and obey the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's one other thing that I just want to draw to your attention about Mary and Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: When it says in verse 22 that they're coming to offer a sacrifice for purification, I think it's worth asking the question, what exactly is going on here?
SPEAKER_01: I I've talked to many people who ask this very question, and I think it is very much worth asking.
SPEAKER_01: If Mary is giving a sacrifice for her birth to be purified from her birth, does that imply that she sinned by giving birth?
SPEAKER_01: Because isn't that what the sacrificial system is all about?
SPEAKER_01: Offering sin offerings in order to make atonement for our sins, to remove our guilt so that we can have fellowship with the holy God who cannot dwell in the presence of sin?
SPEAKER_01: Certainly that is at the heart of the sacrificial system is to remove guilt, to remove sin so that sinful people can dwell with the holy God, but it's not a complete understanding of the sacrificial system.
SPEAKER_01: A better way to understand what's going on in Mary's offering for her purification is that she is making purification for her mortality.
SPEAKER_01: If you study through the law of Moses, you will find that there are many offerings that are made to purify an individual from something that's just pertaining to life as a mortal human being.
SPEAKER_01: For example, if your father dies and you bury your father, you then have to go offer a sacrifice to be purified because you came into contact with the corpse.
SPEAKER_01: Now, did you do something wrong?
SPEAKER_01: Have you sinned by burying your father?
SPEAKER_01: Far from it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you would have sinned if you had refused to pay your father the honor of giving him a burial.
SPEAKER_01: But by giving him a burial, you're engaging in something that's just part of being a mortal human being.
SPEAKER_01: An immortal human being cannot come into the presence of an immortal God.
SPEAKER_01: What you are doing when you're offering the sacrifice is you are acknowledging, I am mortal, you are immortal.
SPEAKER_01: I need my mortality to be taken away, to be cleansed, to be purified so that I can come into the presence of the immortal one.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that I draw your attention to this this evening is because what's happening here is a run-of-the-mill, average sacrifice where mortal humans are acknowledging the mortality before the immortal God and asking his grace to come into their presence, and Jesus, the immortal one, is there participating in it.
SPEAKER_01: For the first time ever, the mortal God, the immortal God, has become mortal to participate in the whole system.
SPEAKER_01: The little baby that Mary is offering a sacrifice for after giving birth to him is the one who is going to grow up, to die, taking on the fullness of mortality by dying, and then resurrect, and in his resurrection, swallow up mortality, take upon immortality, take upon a resurrected body, and invite you to share in the same.
SPEAKER_01: The immortal God in this little verse is taking on mortality so that he can overcome it for you.
SPEAKER_01: This is who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Christmas is about the immortal one becoming mortal, so that he can enable you to shed your mortality, as Paul says, so your perishable can take on the imperishable, so the mortal flesh can be swallowed up by the immortal flesh.
SPEAKER_01: That's Mary and Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: But the other character that we meet in the story is Simeon, and we encounter him in verse 25.
SPEAKER_01: If you look down at your Bibles and notice Simeon, it says that in the text, in verse 25, he was a man in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: His name was Simeon, and he was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the consolation of Israel is a technical term for the Messiah, in particular because a series of prophecies had been given promising that God was going to send an individual who would console, who would comfort the people of Israel by redeeming them from their sins and bringing in an everlasting kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just show you one text.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah chapter 40, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: The prophet cries out, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
SPEAKER_01: Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.
SPEAKER_01: And through the rest of the prophecy of Isaiah, we find that it's going to be an individual, an individual servant, who's going to come into the world and bring this consolation, this comfort, a restoration, a resumption of everything that was lost because of sin, an everlasting kingdom, of the peace of that kingdom there will be no end.
SPEAKER_01: And that individual is who Simeon is waiting for.
SPEAKER_01: He's waiting for the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason he's doing it in the temple, we find in verse 26, is because it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So we do not know anything else about Simeon.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how long he had been waiting.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how old he was, what his position was.
SPEAKER_01: We just know that he had been revealed by some prophecy of the Spirit that he was going to see the Messiah within his lifetime.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's, again and again, it seems to be characteristic of his life that he goes into the temple, he worships God, and he waits for the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And then one day, amidst all of the who knows how many hundreds of other couples who have come to offer purification for the birth of their own child, a couple of teenagers come in in tattered clothes, tired from a long journey, and the Spirit indicates to him there is.
SPEAKER_01: That's the one.
SPEAKER_01: And you can see the relief and the joy in Simeon's voice when he says in verse 29, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, which is another way of saying, Now I can die satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: My hope has been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: You have sent your deliverer, I've seen him with my own eyes, and I know that all the promises that you gave about what this one is going to do are going to be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: I know that when I die, I will die in peace, knowing that my death will only be temporary until I'm resurrected to join the consoler, the Messiah of Israel in the world to come.
SPEAKER_01: You know, of all the characters in this story, I think around Christmas time I want most to be like Simeon.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christmas is that time in which I always fall into the trap of looking to things in this world and thinking that they're going to satisfy me.
SPEAKER_01: All the expectations of things that I'm going to experience with family and hopes for what I'm going to do with my family or what I'm going to achieve, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_01: etc.
SPEAKER_01: But if you've lived in the world long enough, then you have discovered that the experiences that are offered to us in the world are much like a child chasing bubbles on a sunny day.
SPEAKER_01: When you catch the bubble, it's lovely, and then it's gone, and you have to chase another one and another one and another one and another one.
SPEAKER_01: But what Simeon is offering is the bubble that won't pop, the satisfaction that will last, the peace that will endure everlastingly.
SPEAKER_01: It's found in the consoler, the Messiah of Israel, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If you put your hopes in him, they will always be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: So we've seen Mary and Joseph, we've seen Simeon, but in verses 30 and following, we're really confronted face to face with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And we begin by asking that first question of the two I said at the beginning: who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: We see this both in his prophecy, but really even in verse 26 of what the Spirit had said to Simeon.
SPEAKER_01: If you notice in verse 26, it is said that Simeon had been told that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he is the Lord's Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He's the Messiah, the Christ, sent by the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But if you'll recall another title that had been used of Jesus, even in the scripture reading that we, uh that Jimmy read for us, the second scripture reading in Luke 2, you'll know that there is another title that uses the same words but in a different way.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll just jog your eyes back up in Luke 2, verse 11, you'll see that when the angels were announcing the birth of Jesus, they say to the shepherds, Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That is, the Messiah who is the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So you have these two titles, the Lord's Christ and Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: He's the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: So on the one hand, the Messiah is the one, he's the God of Israel's Messiah, the one the God of Israel ascending into the world.
SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, the Christ, the Messiah, sent into the world, is the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: The scriptures say that Jesus is the immortal God, the God of Israel, the uncreated one, the self-existent one, who has come into the world and taken on mortality.
SPEAKER_01: This is who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: And why did he come?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Simeon tells us in his pro prophecy of him.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 30.
SPEAKER_01: He says, For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: This Jesus, the immortal God, has come into the world for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 32, to be a light.
SPEAKER_01: And if I were you and you have a pencil in your hand, I would put a little comma right after the word light, because I think the best way to read this verse is like this.
SPEAKER_01: He is a light, pause, first for revelation to the Gentiles, and second, for glory to your people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He's a light to be glory for the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: That is because the people of Israel have been promised the glory that God would dwell among them and would rule over an everlasting kingdom from through them.
SPEAKER_01: And he is light to be revelation to the Gentiles because Jesus is going to reveal to all the peoples of the earth that by repenting and believing in him, they are incorporated into that everlasting kingdom where they will dwell with God forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: That's what light is.
SPEAKER_01: As we saw on Sunday morning in our study of Isaiah chapter 9, light is a metaphor in the scripture for all that it is in God.
SPEAKER_01: God is light.
SPEAKER_01: In him there is no darkness at all.
SPEAKER_01: Light is the life of God, the joy of God, the peace of God, and the light of God is going to dwell with his people forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: For example, Isaiah chapter 60, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Arise, arise, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord will rise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Israel had been promised, and all the Gentiles are promised.
SPEAKER_01: They will participate in it everlastingly, where God will be our God, we will be his people, and he will dwell among us, and we will see his face.
SPEAKER_01: And now Simeon recognizes Jesus is the one who is going to make that happen.
SPEAKER_01: Well, naturally, verse 33, Joseph and Mary are marveling at what is being said of the little baby they are holding in their arms.
SPEAKER_01: And then Simeon pulls Mary aside, and in verse 34, he blesses the couple and says specifically to Mary, his mother, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and then dropping down to the end, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: To say that Jesus is a sign appointed for the rise and fall of many in Israel is hearkening back to a number of prophecies in chapter 8 of Isaiah and chapter 28 of Isaiah, which is to say that the Messiah is going to divide the nation.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he's going to divide humanity.
SPEAKER_01: The way that people respond to the Messiah and his message is going to determine their destiny.
SPEAKER_01: And not everyone will receive him favorably.
SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what we see in Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_01: As he grows up, he divides the nation.
SPEAKER_01: He divides his hometown Nazareth.
SPEAKER_01: He even divides individual families.
SPEAKER_01: He says that your outcome, your destiny, your life hinges upon your response to me.
SPEAKER_01: If you reject me and my message, you will fall.
SPEAKER_01: But if you believe the word that I tell you of who the scriptures say that he is, you will rise.
SPEAKER_01: Or another way of saying this is what Simeon says at the end of his little word to Mary at the end of verse 35: the thoughts of from many hearts will be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: That is, in individual peoples, including us, in our response to Jesus, when we interact with the message of Jesus, the way we respond reveals our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say it like this.
SPEAKER_01: When I was, I grew up in St.
SPEAKER_01: Louis, and when I was growing up in St.
SPEAKER_01: Louis, my mother was a wise mother.
SPEAKER_01: And she would take me and my three siblings on occasion to the Fox Theater in downtown St.
SPEAKER_01: Louis to hear the St.
SPEAKER_01: Louis Symphony Orchestra.
SPEAKER_01: And we would hear every number of classical musical pieces.
SPEAKER_01: I honestly don't even remember a single one.
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't tell you what we heard.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what pieces were played because my response was always the same.
SPEAKER_01: A kind of snotty-nosed teenage or preteen, this is boring.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like this.
SPEAKER_01: And my mother would respond variously, depending, you know, whatever fit the occasion.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes she'd smack me real good upside the head.
SPEAKER_01: Other times she'd look me in the eye and explain things to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember the exact words that she used, but as I have grown and now have my own four children, and now I'm trying to do the same things to them that my mother did to me.
SPEAKER_01: I think I finally, decades later, am starting to understand what she was getting at.
SPEAKER_01: I think it went something like this.
SPEAKER_01: The pieces of music that you just heard have lasted through the ages.
SPEAKER_01: They have stood the test of time.
SPEAKER_01: They have transcended culture and language and time.
SPEAKER_01: People ages and the world over have appreciated their beauty.
SPEAKER_01: As you sit there scoffing, Ryan, and all of your snot-nosed teenage smuggery, those pieces of music are not on trial.
SPEAKER_01: But you are.
SPEAKER_01: What you're doing trying to sit in judgment of those pieces of music is you're not actually demonstrating any lack in them, you're just revealing the shallowness, the emptiness, and the confusion of your own mind.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Simeon is saying to us.
SPEAKER_01: When we come in contact with the message of Jesus, the immortal one would become mortal.
SPEAKER_01: God become human in order to die for our sins, rise from the dead, and offer us a share of immortality in the world to come.
SPEAKER_01: But we are.
SPEAKER_01: And our response to Him doesn't reveal any lack or any flaw or any hole in Jesus, but it may well reveal a shallowness in our own hearts and our own minds.
SPEAKER_01: If we desire this world more than the world he offers.
SPEAKER_01: If we desire sin more than the holiness that he offers.
SPEAKER_01: If we desire the lies of this world more than the truths of the world to come, what's really on trial is our own hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And what's being offered is something better than we've ever dreamt of.
SPEAKER_01: But there's one final character in this story.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same character we started with, and it's Mary.
SPEAKER_01: And her response to Jesus becomes the model for ours.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll notice in verse 34, Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, This child is appointed for the fall and rising.
SPEAKER_01: But in verse 35, he says to Mary, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: A sword is going to pierce Mary's soul.
SPEAKER_01: Not a physical sword, obviously, but he's speaking of the experience that Mary is going to have in raising this little baby.
SPEAKER_01: No mother has ever loved a child like Mary who loved Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And she's going to see this son grow up and be rejected in his life and die in shame.
SPEAKER_01: That sword will pierce her soul.
SPEAKER_01: This is a word of preparation for what she's going to experience in the grief of day after day experiencing Jesus' rejection and then his final crucifixion.
SPEAKER_01: Her son is going to be the consolation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He is the light of God.
SPEAKER_01: He is the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: He is the salvation of God.
SPEAKER_01: But he is going to bring that into the world through the suffering of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: That's the path of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Mary is being offered a chance to respond to it.
SPEAKER_01: And as we read the story of Mary, we discover that she is willing to walk that path because of what is said the very first time we meet Mary in Luke chapter 1, verse 45, that says she believed the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: If we're on trial and our appointment with Jesus, that's the way to respond.
SPEAKER_01: To believe the word of the Lord, the immortal one, to become mortal, to enable you to share immortality.
SPEAKER_01: That's who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: It's why he has come and it's what he offers to us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Father in heaven, we do thank you that you have sent your son Jesus and that we have a reason to celebrate on Christmas because Jesus is the immortal one.
SPEAKER_01: He has come to die in the place of mortal sinners, so that you could swallow up mortality and we could share with you an everlasting life in the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: Or we pray that you would make us like Mary, that we would respond with humble faith to the words that you speak to us through your scriptures, that we would, like Simeon, rejoice and be able to say that all our hopes are found in you.
SPEAKER_01: You are the one that gives us peace.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you that at Christmas we have a stable hope, we have a lasting peace, and we have a reason to say that we have life.
SPEAKER_01: Life because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I pray this in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.