As we approach a new year, it's a good time to consider what your greatest hope is. Often we settle for hope in lesser things or the wrong things. But in Luke 2, we get a picture of the joy and satisfaction we receive when Jesus is our greatest hope.
As we approach a new year, it's a good time to consider what your greatest hope is. Often we settle for hope in lesser things or the wrong things. But in Luke 2, we get a picture of the joy and satisfaction we receive when Jesus is our greatest hope.
But God provides. I wanted to let you know that we are going to be starting a new sermon series next week on First Corinthians, and, if you remember Dr Stephen Clark, he's going to be preaching some. He'll be preaching next week, I'll be preaching a bit more, and our very own CJ Dawes will preach some as well, and that'll take us through Easter at least, and who knows what will happen after that. We do hope, of course, that we will have a new senior pastor sometime in 2024, hopefully sooner rather than later and we hope for other things too. We hope we'll have a bridge built sometime in 2024. I can almost assure you that's going to happen in 2024. You're right, I shouldn't have said I just jinxed it. I just jinxed it, man Well, what else are you hoping for in 2024? Maybe, like all of us, we're hoping for a quiet and drama free election cycle. That's shouldn't have said that. I guess it doesn't really matter. Maybe you're hoping for a little less inflation in 2024. Maybe, individually, maybe you're hoping for a new job or a new baby, or to get accepted into a college or to graduate from high school or college. Maybe you're hoping for some good health news after some bad health news. Or maybe you're hoping for a healed relationship, maybe you're hoping to find a spouse, who knows?
Speaker 1:We all have hopes. We have all kinds of hopes, big and small, and a question I want to pose this morning is are your hopes strong enough? Do they provide lasting, real joy and satisfaction, or will they ultimately fail you or disappoint you whether you have them or not? In Simeon's song, in Luke, chapter two, we're going to see that our greatest hope in life must be salvation in Jesus Christ. If you're here today and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, I hope that you will be encouraged today by this message, that you'll be encouraged that if your hope is already in Jesus, then you have every reason to rejoice, both now and for the future that awaits us, for eternity with Him. If you're not a follower of Jesus and you've been placing your hopes in all sorts of other things besides Him, I would and pray, I hope that you will see Jesus today, that you will be drawn to Him and place your faith in Him and find the salvation that only he can offer.
Speaker 1:Let's start off by reading Luke two, just verses 21 through 24. And at the end of eight days, when he, jesus, was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb, and when the time came for their purification, according to the law of Moses, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who first opens the 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 turtledoves or two young pigeons. So, as we set the stage for Simeon's song, we haven't met Simeon yet, but we will soon. The first thing we're going to see here is our greatest hope is not in ourselves, but is in our Savior. It's a hope not in ourselves, but in our Savior. We see this fact in that Jesus had to come and be under the law and, in fact, keep the law perfectly on our behalf. And he started under the law even from His very first days. On the eighth day after His birth, he was circumcised. This is according to the Jewish law, going all the way back to Genesis, chapter 17, when God commanded Abraham to circumcise every male in your household, including all baby boys born after their eighth day.
Speaker 1:Next, we see that there is a law of purification. This really pertains more to Mary. You see, after birth, women were considered ceremonially unclean for 40 days. 40 days after birth, and that's for a male child. It was actually double that for birth of a female child. And so for those 40 days when they were ceremonially unclean, they could not participate in any of the temple activities. Essentially, they couldn't go to church, which may sound strange to our modern Western years, but I would encourage you to go and do some reading in Leviticus and Numbers to understand that better and why that was.
Speaker 1:But this again, what Mary is doing here is what's called the law or the ritual of purification. She is coming now to the temple to offer a sacrifice which is going to allow her to rejoin temple life. She is now going to be considered ceremonially clean after this, basically six weeks of being unclean, and then the final thing that happens here is it says that they brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. This is keying us into the fact that this is a fulfillment of what's called the law of redemption. You see, in the Old Testament, in Exodus, chapter 13,. This is, you know, right after the Passover happens. The angel of death had come and and passed over all of the houses of the Israelites that had put the blood of the Lamb on their door frame and spared the lives of all the firstborn children but of course all the firstborn Egyptians had been had been killed in that, in that Passover. And so, because their lives were spared, in Exodus 13 God declares now every firstborn male is Is holy unto me, in other words, set apart for me or consecrated to me. He's going to belong to me in a unique and special way that the other people don't necessarily belong to the Lord. And so Jewish families really had two choices for how to fulfill this. If you read first Samuel, you'll see that Samuel, it fulfills this by going and spending all of his time at the temple. He's, he is now a servant in the temple of the Lord. The other option is they could pay a fee. It's a five silver shekel redemption fee, and that appears to be what Mary and Joseph did for Jesus.
Speaker 1:So this may all seem like contextual background details that maybe aren't that important, but really it's vitally important because it shows us the truth that Jesus was born under the law for his. From his very first days as a human being. He was under the law, he was subject to the law. He and he had to be in, or to be our savior. This is what Galatians 4, 4 and 5 tells us.
Speaker 1:But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son, born of a woman born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. You see, he had to be subject to the law's demands and requirements. He had to be a human being, and then he had to be capable of Perfectly fulfilling the law on our behalf. Why? Because we can't. We can't perfectly fulfill the law, we can't keep it. You can't go five minutes Without breaking the law. Not just you, but me too, like we. None of us can can perfectly keep the law. So we need Jesus to Succeed in every way where we fail. We need him to be our perfect law keeper on our behalf, as our representative. We need his record of law keeping to count as ours, otherwise we have no hope of salvation. And so that's what Jesus came to do.
Speaker 1:You see, salvation, salvation so many people think of it as as a Transaction between me and God. Like I do some things for God and he rewards me with salvation. But that is not at all what the Bible teaches. And yet it's strange, because I guarantee you there's there's one or two or three people in here who are going to leave today still thinking that that's what the whole message Of the Bible is that if I'm a good person, then God will give me eternal life. And that is not true. It's impossible for you to be a good enough person for God to give you eternal life. Do not leave here today still thinking that, please, because the message of the Bible is that we cannot Enter into a transactional relationship with God and expect to have it go well for us, because what will ultimately be required is our death, if you're who keeps the law for us, unless we have a savior who, as we'll see in a little bit, dies for us. So Jesus had to come and be subject to the law. He had to come and keep the law perfectly so that he could save us from our sin and from ourselves and from the wrath of God. And as we meet Simeon in this next section, we're gonna see that this is his greatest hope and this is our greatest hope. This is the good news of the gospel that we have a savior.
Speaker 1:Let's look at verses 25 through 33. He says 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 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 had came into 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 and his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. So here we see that Jesus' salvation is our greatest hope, both for now in this life and for eternity, for the next life.
Speaker 1:The text says that Simeon is a righteous and devout human being. This is about all that we know about him. We don't really know anything other than we don't know what he did in the temple. We don't know why he was there, we don't know how old he was. We just know he was righteous and devout and that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. And now, by the way, that's not something that very many people in the Bible can say. The Bible doesn't say this about most people in the Bible, in fact, it says this about Jesus, and it says this about some of the apostles and maybe some of the prophets, but essentially, very few people are as filled with the Spirit as Simeon seems to be here.
Speaker 1:This is, he's in rare company, and it says that he is on the lookout for the consolation of Israel, and what that means is the salvation of Israel. In other words, he's looking for not necessarily a thing, but a person. He's looking for the Messiah, because that's how salvation comes it's through a person. God's people have been hoping for this Messiah ever since Genesis, chapter three, after Adam and Eve were tempted to sin by Satan. Almost the next verse, god pronounces this message of hope, this prophecy that he was going to send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. In other words, he's going to send a savior to take care of our greatest enemy of Satan and, ultimately, to take care of sin and of death, and so, for thousands of years, the people of God looked and waited and hoped for this Messiah, and Simeon is no different, but in Simeon's time, in first century Judea, many people had lost this hope.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know all that was going on in this time, but it was a very dark time. In place, they had been occupied by Rome for hundreds of years. They had been overtaxed by Rome. The people were, generally speaking, pretty poor. They lived under a tyrant of a king, herod. You saw that, you know, if you read the story of Jesus's birth, it's not long after that Herod goes and kills all the young boys under age two. I mean, what kind of a king does that? Well, that's the kind of king that they lived under. This was a dark place also for even for the Jews themselves, because their religious leaders, who were supposed to be looking out for the needs of the people and serving the people, were exploiting the people instead, and so the people really that, like the common people, the normal people, like Mary and Joseph, they had really very little hope in life. It was a dark time, and the worst thing, though, is they'd heard nothing from God for over 400 years. When you flip from Malachi to Matthew in the Bible, that's a 400 plus year flip. In terms of redemption history, it's a big gap, and so these people have heard nothing from God and were tempted to lose hope, and what that would be like.
Speaker 1:You know, there was a time in my life when I hoped, against hope, that I'd see something happen in my lifetime. It seemed very unlikely, but I hoped anyway. When I was seven years old, I had the misfortune of becoming a Chicago Cubs fan. I don't. I have no connection to Chicago other than WGN, so I watched a lot of Cubs games, and I quickly learned that they were called the lovable losers for a reason. I hadn't won a World Series since 1908, and hadn't even been to one since 1945. Many thought they were cursed the Billy Goat curse, the curse of the black cat, the curse of Harry Carey, on and on and on it goes. So I learned that to be a Cubs fan required what the Bible calls long-suffering, but finally, in 2016, they won the World Series. It was amazing, it was a miracle.
Speaker 1:The game seven was such a great game and it went really late because there was a rain delay, it was extra innings and so by the time the last inning rolled around, everybody in my house was asleep. Isaac was a baby, didn't want to wake him up. Jennifer was a nursing mother. I definitely didn't want to wake her up. I tried to wake Elijah up but he was so out cold that he wouldn't even stir. So it was like me and Nathaniel and we're as they won, we're just jumping for joy silently, like I'm holding. Imagine me holding Nathaniel now, like it's crazy. But I'm jumping up and down with him in my arms, just like with this silent yell. And I was so overjoyed and I mean I bought like every Cubs World Series t-shirt I could find. I bought like the DVD. I mean come over and watch it. I still have it, you can watch it together, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:But you know what that hope fulfilled is a minuscule blip on the radar of hopes compared to the coming of the Messiah Hope, the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ, is greater than the hope of curing all diseases, of achieving world peace, of ending world hunger and the hope of gas prices going under a dollar Again. All combined it's just. It's a greater hope than we can possibly imagine, because the snake crusher has come. He is. He's come as a human being, he's the God man, he's the realization of our ultimate eternal hope, revealed in this person, jesus Christ. And so Simeon says now I can die a happy man, I've seen the Lord's salvation. Now, he knew he wasn't going to experience the full blessing of salvation until he died.
Speaker 1:But look at how he is. Even in his current state, no matter what's going on in his life, he is joyful. He is, he experiences satisfaction in this present life. He's so full of supernatural joy that he actually burst into song right here, versus 29 through 32. He's singing, he's combined everything he remembers from, like Isaiah and the Psalms, and he just sort of blends them into a song about, about how he's seen the Messiah. So I just want to ask do you have a hope that makes you sing? Do you have a hope that's strong enough to satisfy you and bring you joy right now and to know that this hope will continue to satisfy you for eternity? Do you have a hope that can do that? I would just say if you don't have Jesus, then you do not.
Speaker 1:Some have hope of salvation in Jesus, but they only think of it as a hope for the next life. They don't think it has any real bearing on what's going on right now. But again, look at Simeon. He is overjoyed right now. He has experienced real joy and satisfaction in this life Because Jesus is a hope for now and for eternity. And that's despite, again, the dark circumstances of his day and age. We know that we don't know again what personal trials he may have faced, but we know, like all Jews, he was in a rough time and place and that shows us that whether life is good or whether life is hard, whether maybe you're going through the most intense trial of your life right now, jesus offers hope. Now he's going to deliver us from our circumstances. That's a possibility but it's not a guarantee. But we do know that he cares deeply, especially for those who are downcast and those who are downtrodden and those who are down under luck.
Speaker 1:Psalm 68, 5-6 says Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity. When Jesus came, and in his earthly ministry, what did he do? He healed the sick, he gave sight to the blind, he gave hearing to the deaf. He cast out demons. He provided real hope for real people. Right now and again.
Speaker 1:If we go to Jesus and we pray and we ask for him to heal us, if we ask for him to heal us, if we ask for him to deliver us from our circumstances, will he? Maybe he can, but he may not. It's not a guarantee that he will. He may want us for some reason or another, which only he understands. He may want us to walk through those trials for an extended period of time, but what he always promises us, what he guarantees us, is to give us supernatural joy, peace and comfort in the midst of our trials.
Speaker 1:Isaiah 57, 15, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him, who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. If you are feeling contrite, if you are feeling low, this is a guarantee that Jesus will be with you and revive your soul, even if you go through the darkest of times. It's an unshakable hope for right now and it's a guarantee of life, of eternal life in the future. And even more amazing is this is a hope that's available to everyone. The text says here that Jesus, his salvation, is for the glory of Israel, meaning that it came originally from the Israelites. It was a hope, a message that was given to them, but not for them to keep it to themselves. It was given to them that they might be a blessing to the nations. And then it says this is a light to the Gentiles. So this is a message of hope that is for every nation, for every race, for every people group on the planet.
Speaker 1:You know, when the Cubs won the World Series, five million people showed up for a parade in Chicago. That is insane. I cannot think of really anything else where that many people showed up in one place for something. But you know what's crazy about that? That means that there were over seven billion people on earth who weren't there and probably who didn't care or didn't even know, and they're like what is baseball? I don't know what. That is Right.
Speaker 1:So my point is this was only a hope fulfilled for a very small sliver of people, but the hope of Jesus Christ is for everyone. It is for everyone, all over the earth, it's for all men and women, it's for black, whites, for rich, poor, it's for Republicans and Democrats, it's for Russians and Ukrainians, it's for Jews and Palestinians, for everyone. Jesus is our salvation. He is the way, the truth and the life. And notice, it's the way, the truth and the life, meaning he's the only way to salvation. So he is the ultimate hope for our world and yet, strangely, he's also a divisive hope.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the last portion of this text. Verses 34 and 35 say 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. Last thing we see here is again is that hope in Jesus is a divisive hope, and that seems like an out of place thing to say at the very end of this very joyful song that Simeon has. But he tells Mary, he gives Mary two very difficult predictions. One thing he says to her is that a sword will pierce her own soul. This refers to Jesus being crucified and the fact that she was going to watch him be crucified. She was there when it happened. She was one of the few who stuck around.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine the agony of seeing your son slowly die on a cross? It'd be enough to cause the death of a parent to see that happen. But that's what Jesus had to do to secure our salvation. He had to come and die. He wasn't just a good teacher who gives us good moral lessons to follow. No, he is a Savior who had to die in our place.
Speaker 1:Again, I said earlier we can't make a transaction with God. But I want you to understand that Jesus did make a transaction with God the Father. He offered up his perfect life. He laid his life down and in doing so he took the penalty of death that we owe for our sin on himself and satisfied that entire penalty. In exchange, he gives us his perfect record of law-keeping. We don't want our righteousness to be on display at the day of judgment before God the Father. What we want is Jesus' righteousness to be on full display in us, not because we did anything about it or did anything to earn it, but because he gave it to us as a gift. That's what our hope is. That's how we are justified, not by our own righteousness, but by his. We are given salvation. We are given new life as a gift, a free gift. It is the greatest gift you can ever possibly imagine, but not everybody thinks so.
Speaker 1:The second prediction that Simeon gives Mary here is that he will be appointed for the rising and fall of many in Israel and for a sign that is opposed. Essentially, what that's saying is that he's going to bring division. Jesus is going to divide people. Jesus himself knew this is going to happen. Matthew 10, 34, and 36,. He says do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword, for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her own mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those of his own household. He's not saying that that's what his ultimate mission was was to come and divide people. What he's saying is that his truth, his life, his death, his resurrection were going to be such that it would ultimately divide people. Why? Why is he so divisive? Because you can't take a neutral position towards Jesus. Again, the end of the text here says that, so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. What you believe about Jesus really reveals who you are. William Hendrickson, a commentator, says this. He says by means of their attitude to Jesus, men constantly reveal the thoughts or deliberations of their hearts. They show whether they are for or against him. Neutrality is forever impossible.
Speaker 1:Go study the book of Mark. We just got done studying the book of Mark in adult Sunday school, which, by the way, you could come to from 1030 to 1130, not today, but starting next week. So we studied the book of Mark and one of the main questions of the whole book of Mark is who is Jesus? Who is he? And for the first eight chapters nobody knows, except the demons, oddly enough. They're all trying to figure out who he is and eventually the disciples kind of figure it out.
Speaker 1:But as the Jewish leaders are asking this question, they're saying no, he's a blasphemer, he's a fake, he's a liar, he's crazy. That's what they think of Jesus and they grow to hate him and become opposed to him, to the point where they are responsible for his crucifixion. He claimed to be God, he claimed to be able to fulfill the law, he claimed that he was going to die and rise again, and they hated him for it. They were threatened by it. They didn't want a Savior, and Jesus still divides people in similar ways.
Speaker 1:A lot of times people don't want to hear that they need a Savior. People don't like the idea of grace or they can't accept the idea that salvation is a gift. People want to do it themselves. I want to be able to say that I earned it. Maybe people are just simply uncomfortable with the idea of salvation being a gift of grace. Or maybe people find Jesus and his gospel just too darn extreme. It's just too much.
Speaker 1:Tim Keller said that if Jesus is God, he can't just come into your life to round it out. He can't just supplement. He's not a vitamin supplement. He can't just be your buddy. He can't just make you a little better. There is nothing in the middle, it's all or nothing. You see, jesus wants our whole lives. Jesus says die to yourself. He doesn't say to actualize yourself or to be a better self. He says no, die to yourself. He says take up your cross and follow me. When the rich young ruler heard that, he walked away sad he couldn't do it. There was too much invested in a different hope. In return he promises a new heart. He promises that will be new creations and he says eternal life awaits you. But it's too much for some people, it's too extreme.
Speaker 1:Many reject Jesus and they want a tame Jesus. They want some kind of balanced Jesus who only asked for a little bit from you. They want Jesus to be their co-pilot. I'm sorry, my friends, but Jesus didn't come to be your co-pilot. He came to be your pilot and for you to get in the back.
Speaker 1:And if you don't think that that's true, if you want to tame Jesus, who just demands a little bit from you, who just is happy with you, just kind of like remembering he exists every once in a while, then you haven't met the real Jesus. Salvation in him is a totally free gift that we cannot earn, and those who receive this gift gladly hand over the reigns of their lives to him. Maybe not right away, maybe it takes some time. Maybe you know you need to be sanctified to the point where you're willing to do that. But you begin to understand no life with Jesus, as my pilot is, is far more blessed and far more hopeful than me trying to hold on to this life on my own. You see, there's no in between with him, there's no halfway, there's no being on the fence with Jesus.
Speaker 1:And you know what, maybe sharing that with other people, if you believe that, if you follow Jesus that way, maybe sharing that is going to bring division into your life with friends, with coworkers, with family, maybe it already has. Maybe you're divided from your family because of this message, because of Jesus. That's never something that we should rejoice about, but I the weird thing here is that there is an encouragement because if following Jesus fractures some of our relationships, he says that's okay. He says that's okay. He says it's actually better for you to keep on following him and and have those relationships still be fractured. If that's what they want to do, then for you to just kind of brush Jesus aside and say no, the relationships are more important. You see what he's saying. He's saying no, I'm more important. And if they can't come around to the truth, I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but that's their problem. You keep following Jesus.
Speaker 1:You see, very few things in this life are actually worth dividing friends and family over. That's why we don't talk about religion and politics at dinner, right? Not at Thanksgiving or Christmas, in fact. There may be only one thing in life that is worth dividing friends and family over, and it's Jesus, the real Jesus, because Jesus and his salvation are such a great and ultimate hope that it is worth declaring that hope, even in the face of potential division, even with your own family, is worth it. Even if it costs us our lives, it is worth us declaring the ultimate hope we have in Jesus, our Savior. Let's pray together.