A predicament, picture, preacher and a promise; Luke 2:21-38

Well, in spite of the fact that today is Easter and some of you may have come expecting a more topical message, we are going to continue in our ongoing verse by verse study of the book of Luke as is our custom.  We practice expositional preaching here, which means that we preach the full gospel of Jesus Christ, the easy parts and the hard parts.  Today we find ourselves at what might be one of the harder parts, but I believe God has a particular message for us today.  Besides, we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday morning.  It is called the Lord’s day because after Christ’s resurrection early on Sunday morning the day of worship was changed from Saturday to Sunday to commemorate Christ’s resurrection.

However, as we celebrate his resurrection today it is important to consider why Jesus Christ came to earth and died on the cross and suffered the way He did.  It’s important to understand why God raised him from the dead.  And going back to the beginning of Jesus’ life helps us to better understand the end of His life.  So as we look at this passage of Scripture today Jesus is just eight days old.  And I believe there are going to be some things that Luke has put in his record that will better enable us to understand the gospel as we go forward.

Today, I want to show you four things in this passage which should help us develop the right perspective.  Number one, we are going to look at the predicament, secondly the picture, thirdly the preacher and fourthly the promise.

First, the predicament.  One of the most incongruous things about the birth of Jesus was that Mary and Joseph are two young Jewish people that were little more than teenagers from a town called Nazareth, about which it was said that nothing good would ever come.  And yet God has selected them out of all the people on the face of the earth to be responsible for the birth and well being  of the Son of God.  That the most precious baby in the universe was entrusted to these teenagers is an amazing thing.

But it must have been quite a confusing and yet exhilarating time for these two young people.  They probably already faced public ridicule from relatives and friends who believed the worst about them.  But they trusted the word of the Lord and so far there had been several confirmations from God concerning his word to them which must have given them hope.  As mentioned earlier in the passage, they had each seen and talked to the angel Gabriel.  There was the confirmation of Elizabeth and John the Baptist and Zacharias.  There had been the confirmation from the shepherds who had seen a heavenly host of angels pronouncing the birth of Jesus.  And yet I’m sure that there must have been a sense of something almost like disbelief that this was happening to them.  So there was the immediate predicament of Mary and Joseph as they tried to live up to the trust that was thrust upon them by God, and at the same time deal with all the difficulties that this birth had caused them socially.

But in addition to their personal dilemma, there was an even greater predicament that they were a part of, and it had to do with the nation of Israel.  The Jews were supposed to be God’s chosen people.  People that God selected out of the entire world’s population to be the receptors of His plan for redemption.   God chose Abraham, a nobody from a place called Haran and told him that from his loins would come a seed which would be a source of blessing to all the families of the world.  Abraham had Isaac in his old age, and Isaac begat Jacob and God changed Jacob’s name to Israel.  Israel had 12 sons which became 12 tribes.  Eventually, God raised up Moses to take this people out of Egypt to the land which he had promised them, and by great miracles He brought them into a wilderness where God began to reveal His will to this people.

 God came down from heaven onto the mountaintop of Mt. Sinai and delivered His law which detailed the standard of righteousness God required.  The original ten commandments were extrapolated to become 613 laws that the Jews were required to observe and keep.  And the real predicament was that Israel had been unable and unwilling to keep those laws.  They had turned to false idols and God was displeased with them and disbursed 10 of the 12 tribes.  They were gone. Then there were only 2 tribes left, and they too had turned away from worshipping God with all their heart,  all their soul and all their might as the law required.  They had a form of religion, but they had made it into an external sort of façade in which outwardly they seemed to worship God, but their hearts were far from it.  In short, the predicament was that the chosen people of God had become apostate.  For the most part, they cared little for God’s will and went through the motions of religious rituals which had lost all  meaning and significance for them.

So much so that God said through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 1:11"What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle; and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts?  Bring your worthless offerings no longer, incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.”

So that is the predicament. God’s chosen people are apostate. The rest of the world is in darkness.  They have no idea what the truth is.  God gave his laws to Israel which was supposed to result in them being a light to the world and to whom the world was supposed to come to find the truth, and yet the people that God had entrusted his oracles to had become worthless, self absorbed religious hypocrites whose lives caused the rest of the world to curse them rather than bless them as the promise to Abraham had specified. Furthermore, the Jews were now under Roman rule and so they were looking for a political figure that would deliver them from Roman oppression and recreate the old monarchy of David. Rather than seeing their predicament for what it was, in their self righteousness they thought they were better than anyone else and therefore deserving of a physical and political blessing that would enable them to enjoy their lives.

I cannot help but draw a comparison to the predicament of  1st century Judaism  to 21st century American Christianity.  We have our rituals, our public religious ceremonies that seem to never get past the external, while leaving our hearts completely devoted to our own idols of materialism.  We aren’t looking for a coming Messiah, we are looking for a political and physical fix to our predicaments so that we might enjoy life’s passions unhindered.  We are seeking a better life here and now, a life without anxiety, without fear, without financial hardship, without sickness.  And the television evangelists promise us that this is all that God wants for us, to be happy and successful and prosperous.  And yet the world who is supposed to be drawn to our light, and looking to us for truth, as we have been entrusted with the oracles of God, see nothing more than empty, self serving rituals and hypocritical lifestyles that are in opposition to the very things Christ exemplified.

Secondly, let’s look at the pictures.  In verse 21 Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus at 8 days old and have Him circumcised.  The Jews believed that circumcision was the means of identifying God’s people.  This was an external mark on the foreskin whereby Abraham, who the rabbis taught was the doorkeeper of Hades,  was able to make sure that none of his children entered into the pit in the afterworld.

But circumcision was intended to be a picture of sacrifice.  And Jesus at just eight days old goes through this procedure to personify that picture.  So circumcision was symbolic rather than a means of salvation.  In contrast to the Jew’s belief that it was a sign of who was accepted by God or not, circumcision was a symbol of the sin nature that was passed on to every generation, from son to son.  When Adam sinned, he became inherently sinful, and he passed on that sin nature to every man on earth through childbirth as it says in Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”  So circumcision was a reminder given through Abraham that for his people to be the children of God, there would need to be a separation from the sinful nature, a supernatural operation, whereby God would cut away the flesh and give new life.  Paul gives the proper application of circumcision in Romans 2:29 “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”

So Mary and Joseph had Jesus circumcised on the eight day according to the law as a sign of what Christ would one day do for us, circumcising our hearts.  So that those who would be born of the Spirit would be obedient from their new hearts.  And there is another picture of sacrifice that is found in vs. 22-24.  The law stated that a woman was to come to the temple after the time of her purification and present the first born son to the Lord and offer a sacrifice.

And there is so much here that I don’t really have the time to get into today.  But what I would like to impress upon you this morning, especially in these seasonal religious ceremonies we love to act out in our society, is to contrast our bloodless rituals of Easter eggs and Christmas trees and draping purple cloths on crosses with the sacrifices required by the Mosaic law as an offering for sin.  Mary and Joseph have to purchase 2 turtledoves and have them slaughtered as atonement for her purification.  One for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering.  They were too poor to be able to buy a lamb, so the law allowed them to buy two doves instead.

And you find this sort of sacrificing going on all the time in Jewish society.  In some respects, the priests were little more than butchers, slaughtering animal after animal in a never ending supply of offerings to God for atonement for the continual sins of the people.  It was a never ending flow of blood. On the Passover, for instance, which was just celebrated this last week, there was the requirement for a lamb to be slain and his blood spread upon the door post in remembrance of God’s deliverance of Israel from the plague in Egypt.  On the night before Jesus was crucified, there were upwards of a half a million lambs that were slaughtered that night and tradition tells us that the Kidron brook which flowed behind the temple mound was overflowing with blood as Jesus and his disciples walked through towards the Mount Olives.  And the picture must have been becoming clear then to the disciples as they walked through that bloody creek with Jesus.

So all of these bloody sacrifices were a picture of the sacrifice that Jesus would make on our behalf on the cross.  John the Baptist upon seeing Jesus at the start of His ministry would say, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Every sacrifice was a picture of Jesus offering up his body as our sacrifice to atone for our sins.  And every sacrifice had a cost.  For Mary and Joseph, young, just married and very poor, even the price of two turtledoves was costly. For God, the sacrifice of His only Son was of immeasurable cost.  And every sacrifice for sin required the shedding of blood. Hebrews 9:22 says, “according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

So then these pictures were symbolic of the sacrifice that Jesus would make on behalf of the world, to reconcile a people back to God by the remission of their sins.  And one day Mary would personally know the heartache and the cost of that salvation as she saw her Son offer himself on the cross in our place that we might be made righteous before God.  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “[God] made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

Now let’s look at the preacher and his message.  While Mary and Joseph are in the temple God has providentially brought this old man there at the same time who was looking for the promised Messiah.  Vs. 25 says he was righteous and devout.  That means not only was he saved, he was active in his faith.  He was living out his faith in the temple, looking for the Messiah.  And the amazing thing was that God had revealed to this man that he would not die until he saw the Messiah.  Now Luke doesn’t tell us how Simeon and Mary and Joseph met up, but it does tell us the proclamation that he speaks concerning Jesus.

Note first of all in verse 25 it says Simeon is looking for the consolation of Israel.  That is, he is looking for the Comforter of Israel.  All of Israel was hoping for someone to rescue them from oppression.  But this man knows that it will be the Messiah, and from his message we can see that he understands what the Messiah is going to do.  He isn’t looking for a political savior, he is looking for a spiritual Savior who will fulfill what Malachi prophesied 400 years earlier.  Mal. 4: 2 “But for you that fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in it’s wings.”  It’s obvious from Simeon’s message that he understands that Israel needs spiritual healing.  He says in vs. 30, “I’m ready to go now Lord, because my eyes have seen your salvation.”  And this is so critical because everything that has been presented through the oracles of God up to this have been pointing to salvation.  The blood of bulls and goats was never enough.  Day after day lamb after lamb, animal after animal was slain.  But now Simeon has realized that God has brought salvation to the earth in the form of this little baby,  the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

So Simeon declares that he has seen the salvation of God.  And he has four points to his message that speak of Jesus Christ as salvation.  The first point is Jesus is the light, vs. 32.  “A light of revelation to the Gentiles.”  And what a fantastic prophecy that this is concerning Jesus.  Here is the realization of the promise given to Abraham that one would come from his seed who would bless all the families of the world, not just the Jews, but the Gentiles as well.  The Jews as a nation had failed to be the light set on a hill to point men to God that God had designed them to be.  But Jesus would be the light to bring revelation about God to everyone in every nation.  Jesus would say in John 8:12 “"I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life."  He was the fulfillment of Isaiah 9:2 “The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.”

But the Bible says in John 3:19 that "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”  And so that which was to be a light of revelation becomes a stone to stumble over.  That’s the second point of his message of who Jesus is; a stone.  He says in vs. 34 "Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel.“  He is talking about the stone that the builders, that is the Jewish leaders, would reject. 1Peter 2:4 “And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God,”  “THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE VERY CORNER stone. " "A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE"; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed.”

And the third characteristic of this salvation would be that it was a sign.  Vs. 32, this child is appointed “for a sign to be opposed.”  In Isaiah 8, Jesus is described as a stumbling stone, a rock of offense, and then in vs. 18 it says, “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.”  The miracles that Jesus did were not just so He would be known as a miracle worker, but they were a sign from God, attesting to the fact that He was from God and He was God.  Yet the religious leaders said He was a devil, and cast out devils by the power of the devil. They rejected the sign.  They opposed the gospel.

Know this for certain, ladies and gentlemen.  The gospel of salvation is an offensive message for most people.  Most people don’t want to be told that they are sinful, that their good works are worthless in gaining acceptance with God.  Most people are offended to hear that their sins have condemned them to hell.  And so consequently they will not accept a Savior, because they don’t believe that they need to be saved.
But Titus 3:5 says we are saved “not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

And in keeping with the context of being offensive, Simeon presents salvation in Christ as a sword.  Vs. 35, “and a sword will pierce even your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."  The gospel is offensive because it reveals the thoughts of our hearts.  It goes deeper than external ritualistic religion to pierce our souls.  To understand this verse I think you need to remember the passage from the first chapter of John which described Jesus as the Word.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father.”  So from the beginning of eternity, Jesus was the Word of God, and this very Word of God became flesh in the form of a man.  This Word became the light to the Gentiles. This Word became the sign which the world opposes.  And the Bible tells us in Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Folks, you cannot separate Jesus from His Word.  Jesus said in John 14:10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”  And again in John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”  The Word of God is that which convicts.  We can celebrate a Jesus who was a humble pacifist, or a good teacher, or a humanitarian who did good works and not have a lot of opposition.  But when we worship the Lord Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, who laid down His life as an atonement for the sins of the world who must believe in Him by faith, then we find that suddenly Jesus is offensive.  When we preach the word of God which says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” then suddenly the Word is offensive. When the Word says, “No man comes to the Father but through Jesus, then suddenly the Word is offensive.  But we cannot separate Jesus from the Word, they are one and the same, and some are going to stumble over this rock of offense and some will be saved.  Our job is just to preach the Word, and be  the light of revelation to the world about who Jesus is and what He has done for us that we could never do ourselves.

Jesus Christ is revealed through the Word and the Word of God will hold us accountable.  The rock of Jesus Christ either crushes our pride or we will stumble over the stone and be held accountable before God.  But the Word is not something we decide. Jesus is not someone we can define.  He existed before eternity, He is God, and He became our Savior and God’s Word reveals our salvation.  I heard of a man living in France who had an acquaintance visit him.   And so he took his friend one day to visit the Louvre and other important museums and buildings.  That night he took him to attend a world class symphony from a well known composer.  And afterwards he asked his friend what he thought of it all.  And his friend said, “Well, it was ok, but actually I wasn’t all that impressed.” So the man responded, “"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."  Listen, God has already judged Jesus Christ and found Him faithful and true.  And one day, we will all stand before God and  be judged for what we have done in response to that testimony in God’s Word.

There is one last character in this story today.  Starting in vs. 36 we read about Anna, an 85 year old widow who was righteous and faithfully serving God in the temple night and day and God used her to declare the promise of redemption for Jerusalem.  She continued to speak of Him for those who were looking for the redemption of Israel, those that were looking for the fulfillment of the promised Messiah.  And I think this lady is significant for our culture today when we are so youth oriented that we have little patience for the older generations.  But I think that God would tell us here that there is a place in service of the gospel  for the old and the young.  Mary and Joseph were just teenagers and yet God entrusted them to care for the very child of God, the infant of God.  And repeatedly in this chapter we see God using the old.  Zacharias and Elizabeth were too old to have children but were serving God faithfully in the temple and God used them in a mighty way.  Simeon was old and ready to die, waiting to die, and God used him in a mighty way to preach a message that has lasted 2000 years.  And now Anna, an old woman, a widow, faithfully serving God right up to the end, and God uses her to share the promise of redemption to everyone in the temple for the rest of her days.

Folks, I see too many elderly people today retiring from serving the Lord.  Maybe you’re just tired, or maybe you think that you haven’t got anything to offer anymore.  Or maybe you are selfishly wanting to do shuck any responsibilities now that you have stopped work and just play golf for the rest of your life.  I would suggest that is a waste of the resources and experience that God has entrusted to you.  I urge you to use what time you have left to serve the Lord.  God will use you if you make yourself available to Him.  There are more elderly people today than ever before due to the benefits of medicine and healthier living.  And what an army of people that could be serving the Lord.  Let’s not become self absorbed in trying to live out our lives in pleasure.  Let’s get serious about looking for the coming of the Lord as Simeon and Anna were and God will use you as He used them to proclaim his salvation.

Easter is about salvation ladies and gentlemen.  God raised Jesus from the dead to validate that Jesus was righteous, He was sinless, and His atonement was sufficient to pay for the sins of the world.  He died that we might have life.  And He lives so that we might one day live with Him and right now live for Him.  I would be happy to talk to you afterwards and help you understand how that can be a reality for you today.  Let’s pray.