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City Church Dublin
Luke 2:22-52
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The birth of Jesus Christ. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Corinius was the governor of Syria, and all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his bethroned, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for him in the inn. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was an there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And when the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning the child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. And at the end of the eight days, when he 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 and 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 turtle doves or two young pigeons. 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 his death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And when 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, saying, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your words, for my eyes have seen your salvation, and 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 marvelled 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 your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanil, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, and having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin. And then as a widow until she was eighty-four, she did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee and to their own town of Nazareth, and the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast had ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it. But supposing him to be in the group, they went on a day's journey, and then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances. And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress. And he said to them, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02And if you have a Bible with you, you can open up Luke 2, or you can have it on your phone. Let me give you a gift as we begin and say, I am not preaching all 52 verses. I'm only going to preach 30 of them. We're going to focus in on uh on Anna and Simeon and the boy Jesus. In doing so, it just felt weird to skip over the birth of Jesus. Um I know that we did it at Christmas, but as Colin and I were talking about it, we thought, let's read the whole uh the whole chapter. But we're going to be uh thinking about really the latter section because the um the birth narrative is actually something that we just preached recently at our at our carol service. Uh when you have in your mind's eye um Dublin Airport or an airport, uh, because airports are uh strange places uh to be in, aren't they? Uh you might enjoy traveling. Certainly I enjoy traveling, I enjoy uh going away, but I don't enjoy the the process of traveling. Maybe you're strange and and you do. I imagine that lots of us, the thing that we like about traveling is uh the new destination rather than going through security and looking 14 times in your bag to make sure that your passport is still there and looking up on the board to see have I been delayed or not. You think in your mind, what was the longest delay you've ever had to do? Uh, probably some very significant sleeping on the floor of an airport sort of delays. Because airports are almost designed, I think, to be uncomfortable. The chairs uh are not really conducive to you spreading out in if you've got to stay there for a while. The coffee is is overpriced and generally terrible. And time manages to both crawl uh uh if you're delayed or uh just fly if you are under a bit of pressure. Airports are places of transition, uh, they're places of longing rather than belonging. You don't set up home in an airport. Imagine you got to gate 105 and you started to decorate it like your living room. If you did that, you'd have forgotten where you were. That's not what an airport does. What Luke 2 shows us is a moment in all of human history where humanity is at the airport. It's at the point of transition from uh from one era to the next. That the all of uh humanity, all of history is moving to a new destination. And it is full of people who are waiting, full of people who are longing for something more, waiting for an old age to pass and a new age to come, for the arrival of this destination that God had promised for centuries beforehand, this destination of redemption, of salvation finally being realized, no longer just being looked to. How good are you at waiting? I'll tell you right now, and some of you will know this already. I am terrible at waiting. Uh, impatience is one of, if not my chief vice and one of the things that I need to constantly grow in. And I know that for some of us here, you are in a season, God has placed you right now in a season of waiting, of longing, of unfulfilled hopes and dreams and desires, and you're wondering, what is God doing? When will his promises be realized? And here in Luke chapter 2, in these latter verses, Luke offers us these examples of these older saints of Simeon and Anna, who have lived life, in a sense, in the airport, in a place of longing. And he includes them ultimately to encourage us. Particularly, I think, as a as a younger demographically uh church. I mean, we're we're all uh getting older. Uh I'm I turned 40 this year, and that is a source of great grief uh to me. But uh I am glad for these older saints who step onto the stage, who have who have lived trusting in God's promises, even while their longings, their hopes, their dreams have not been fully realized. And so let's begin where Luke begins with that longing. That longing in itself, unmet desire, is not a failure of faith. You can think that. You think, well, if only I had more faith, then God would give me the thing that I long for. That's not true. It wasn't true for Simeon and Anna. It's not that they lacked faith. So longing, hoping, waiting for desires to be fulfilled, for promises to be fulfilled, is often the tension that God's people are called to live in while we look to Him to act and to meet our needs. So we're going to think about this longing in our first point. Longing, it's the tension that we all feel. Luke sets the scene for us in verse 22 and onwards. So Jesus has been born, as Colin read for us. His parents are following the laws and customs of Old Testament Judaism laid out in the Old Testament. And one of the things that we know from what Luke is recounting there is that they are dirt poor. They're not just a little bit poorer, they are dirt poor. They are student poor, right? That's that's probably the way they're kind of equivalent here in Dublin. They are student poor. And their sacrifice indicates that poverty, that what they they offer is not the not the kind of the middle class fancy sacrifice, it's the it's the poor person sacrifice, it's small turtle doves. It indicates their their lack. And into that scene of family devotion in the temple, we're introduced to two people. Firstly, it's Simeon. What do we know about Simeon? Well, we know that he is elderly, he's coming towards the end of his life, that he is extraordinarily devout in his old age, he is full of faith. And not only is he full of faith, but look wonderfully tells us and emphasizes and re-emphasizes that he's full of the Holy Spirit. And that's unusual, given that in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was uh was a person who really rested upon the king or the priest or a prophet. But sometimes he was he was with them temporarily, like with Saul, and then withdrawn. Whereas what Luke is telling us is that Simeon is an old man who doesn't just have the spirit resting upon him, but he is full of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we encounter those elderly saints, don't we? You just see Jesus radiating from them because they are full of the Holy Spirit. Gentlemen, with all of your ambitions and things that you hope for for your life, is this one of them? You want to get to your old age and be someone who is devout and full of Jesus, that other people can can see him through you. That you are and have over the decades of your life depended more and more upon the Spirit of God. That's who Simeon is. He's set before us by Luke as an example of faith. And we read that that he's waiting for something, he's waiting for Luke's words, the consolation of Israel. What does that mean? Consolation means comfort. So if you know your Old Testament, um, in Isaiah chapter 40, basically the first 39 chapters of Isaiah is Isaiah saying, judgment's coming, you're all going to be carried away, things are not gonna look well, right? It's it's pretty, pretty downbeat. First 39 chapters, and finally in chapter 39, judgment does come, and uh the people are carried off into exile. And Isaiah pivots, it swings around chapter 40, and the words at the beginning of chapter 40, comfort, comfort, my people Israel, say to Jerusalem, your warfare has ended. And Simeon is looking for the full realization of that deliverance, of that consolation, of that comfort that God would bring. He's looking for God to rescue his people, and the Holy Spirit has promised him that he wouldn't die until he saw the person who was going to bring that about. That is the Lord's Christ. Christ is the uh is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word Messiah, and both Christ and Messiah mean God's anointed king, right? And so he's been promised by God that you won't die until you see my anointed king who will bring salvation fully and finally to my people. The second person that we meet is Anna. She is extremely advanced in years, and her life has not played out the way that any of us would have hoped for. See this about Anna's life? She was so picking up on verse 36. She lived with her husband for seven years from when she was a virgin and then was widowed until she was 84. What do you think about it? She was married probably in those days, say 16, 17. She got to be with her husband until she was in her early 20s, and then he died. And she was a widow since then until she was 84. And yeah, what does Luke tell us about her? That in those intervening years, God has so met her and raised her up. Luke calls her a prophetess, somebody who spoke the words of God calling people back to faithfulness. She's spent those decades not in bitterness and resentment, but in prayerful worship, in fasting and waiting again for the redemption of Jerusalem. Again, so for our sisters here, ladies, as you consider all of your hopes and dreams for the decades ahead of you, maybe things don't pan out the way that you might have hoped for, like Anna. Will our aspiration together to be a church that grows up where men look more and more like Simeon and where women look more and more like Anna in their devotion, even in the midst of unrealized hopes and expectations, even in that longing and waiting and praying and fasting and worship. Look emphasizes their age for us deliberately, I think. For two reasons. One, because they kind of they Simeon and Anna represent the best of Old Testament Israel. They are uh almost the um, yeah, the the the king and queen, in a sense, all spiritually speaking, of old testament Israel. They are that devout remnant that the prophets looked for at the closing of the old testament. But also, he emphasizes their age, I think, because they represent the end of an era, something that's passing away. We feel we feel this uh only when if you've had the misfortune as as I have had to uh to bury grandparents. When you bury grandparents, there is a sense of an era ending. The rhythms around Christmas and family meetups, they won't quite be the same. You'll build new ones, but there's a definite transition, and an era has ended. Maybe you feel like that way when um when kind of an an elderly celeb dies, you're like, oh gosh, we won't see their like again. You're like, that era has ended. I'm sure lots of people from the UK felt like that when Queen Elizabeth II died. That that was the the end of an era, and transitioning into the the new monarchy was very different. Well, that's what Luke is is kind of helping us to feel that something new, something old is passing away, and something new is is coming. Simeon and Anna in their waiting, they are not cynical, they are not resentful, they are faithful. Longing in Luke is not a sign of weak faith, but of deep trust in the in the tension of waiting for God in this broken world. We are we are not good at waiting. We've just been through the season of of Advent. Advent is uh is a season of of waiting. We kind of call it Christmas now. We think that Christmas starts usually around about the 15th of September. Um, but Advent is a four-week long period of waiting in the church calendar. And then you do the four weeks, you do the four Sundays of Advent, and then it's Christmas, and then it's gifts and feasting, and the waiting is over. Just imagine for a second for Simeon and Anna. If Advent just stretched on and on and on, if you're constantly looking on the BBC News app or the RTE news for your updates, will Christmas come this year? And the headline comes up, Christmas delayed for another year. More Advent to come. Third year with still no Christmas, tenth year, still no Christmas, 50th year, still no Christmas. Isn't that what C.S. Lewis says of Narnia? Always winter, but never Christmas and waiting that whole time Simeon and Anna have lived there. The promises that God has made are real, the fulfillment is coming, but the waiting has been long. Our maturing as believers come as we learn the lessons of longing. That longing isn't a sign of weak faith, but it's the place often where faith deepens. So ask yourself, how are you tempted to numb the pain of waiting or short circuit your longing rather than using it as a season to deepen devotion? Where is God asking you to wait rather than to fix? Luke doesn't show us longing by itself, he shows us longing that is held ultimately with devotion, and that is our second point that while we feel this tension of longing, Luke in showing us Simeon and Anna and the boy Jesus shows us that devotion is the posture that we're all called to. In that season, that when life feels unresolved, most of us instinctively look for movement to try and fix something. We change something, we start something new, we distract ourselves, the waiting will feel less unbearable if we're doing something. But look shows us something quieter. Something, in some senses, quite unexciting, but extraordinary and far more demanding. In the midst of deep longing, the people in this story do not rush to react or reinvent themselves or to fix things, they remain faithful. Look, draws our attention again and again to Mary and Joseph, saying that what they were doing was according to the law of the Lord, four times. Verse 22, 23, 24, 27, and 39. And my mass is wrong, that's five times. According to the law of the Lord, they are expressing their devotion through the ordinary rhythms of life. They do not know where the story is heading, and yet they keep ordering their lives according to what God has said. Simeon and Anna live in the same way. Anna does not depart from the temple. What do we read about her? Day and night. Day and night, year after year. She prays, she fasts, she worships. Her devotion does not shorten her waiting. Imagine if we imagine if we had our own building. I could just imagine kind of opening up this old church building on a Sunday morning. And Anna is the she's the first one through the door, and she's she's stooped over now, and her voice is frail, but she's going to be the first one there. And she's the prayer warrior for the for the young people at City Church. People love to talk to her because she's so full of spiritual vitality and life and wants to be an encouragement. I'd love more Annas and Simeon at City Church, wouldn't you? Then Luke gives us the most striking example of all towards the end of the chapter with Jesus himself. This is the only time in any of the Gospels where we get a glimpse of Jesus before his public ministry. He's 12 years old. And he's found in the temple, not performing miracles, not gathering followers. But what is he doing? He's listening. He's asking questions. He's discussing, he's expressing his own devotion. He's deepening his faith. Isn't that so striking? That he would deepen his faith. That Jesus here loves God's word from a young age. Yeah, at around about kind of 10 past 10, quarter past 10, we pray upstairs in the lounge. Any of you are welcome to come and pray with us before the service if you're here. Pray upstairs for the service. And we pray for what's happening in here, but we also pray for what's happening in screen six. We also pray for what's happening up in the lounge with the toddlers. Why? Because what's happening there and upstairs is just as, if not more important than what's happening here. One of the things that we pray is that those young hearts, our sons and daughters, would be established in the faith from a young age. Any of us who are who are parents or soon to be parents, one of the things that we want for our children is we actually want them to be more spiritually vital than we are. We want their prayer life to be richer. We want them to be more full of Jesus than we are. Parents, can I get an amen for that? Isn't that right? Amen. We want them to exceed us in faith. We want them to outshine us in their devotion to Jesus. And Jesus here is 12 years old. He loves God's word. He loves God's people from a young age. There's a wonder here to Jesus' humanity. And in that there is an example to us all. That though he is the all-knowing, all-powerful God, yet somehow in his humanity he is learning, growing, deepening devotion and faith. And Luke tells us, right at the very last verse, that he is growing in wisdom and favor with God and others. Even the Son of God grows through devotion to God and his word. Devotion is the posture that keeps us from becoming resentful in the waiting rooms of life. It is so often overlooked and yet desperately needed. Mary treasures up the things that she is seeing and hearing and does not fully understand. I suspect that one of the reasons why Luke mentions this twice is because Mary is one of the people that Luke is talking to. And we are getting, in a sense, her account. She's treasuring up these things and reflects upon them years later. Jesus submits to his parents' authority before he ever leads. For any of any of you who would aspire to lead, sit here and think, I'd love to lead a community group or I'd love to lead a ministry team, I'd love to lead this sort of thing. Submission and following always precedes leading. When somebody just kind of rocks up and says, and this has happened, right? I want to lead. Yeah, put me in, coach. Okay, well, what's your experience of serving on a team? And how is it that you've followed the guidance and tutelage of others that are older than you, further along the track than you? I don't really need that. I haven't really done that. The boy Jesus is learning, leading. Sorry, learning, submitting before leading. God works through our ordinary devotion and obedience more than those extraordinary mountaintop moments. And so can I encourage you really, while we're at the start of this year, to think about those ordinary rhythms of your devotion? Whether it's through scripture reading, prayer, worship, how's that going to be implemented in your life? One of the things that I really love is the um uh the ESV Bible through the year app. I'm on my third year uh now of listening to Ray Ortland read me the Bible. Uh, and I get to have it open in front of me, or I stick it on in the in the car. You can go to your Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, and you've got ESV in a year, and you'll get this old Simeon-like grandfather uh reading you the Bible for about 15 minutes every day. You can do it on your on your commute or uh in those quiet moments that you have uh in in bed or on your couch. What is going to keep you attentive to God? Devotion doesn't end the waiting, it prepares us for the moment when God finally does answer our longings. And that is our third and final point. But God does respond with the answer that our hearts need through his fulfillment. Simeon. In this wonderful moment. You just imagine him. Imagine the scene that over in one, perhaps one corner of the temple courts, there's this young family. They're pretty exhausted because Jesus is a firstborn, right? Mary and Joseph are parents for the first time, and so it's probably, you know, he's probably a month old. He's probably, yeah, he's about four weeks old. You know what it's like to have a four-week-old newborn for the first time? And you're looking at it going, okay, who owns this child and when are they coming to pick it up, right? It's Mary and Joseph are over there. And this elderly man, maybe he hears a cry. And suddenly he realizes and he looks over, and the spirit begins, his feet begin to move over, and he sees this little one mewing in his mother's arms, and perhaps even wordlessly, just takes him up and looks at him and realizes that this little one is the fulfillment of everything that he had been waiting for, of the whole reason why God had kept him alive. And he looks down into the infant face of Jesus and says, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace. I can die now. I can go to my rest. Why? 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. Simeon in those moments realizes that God has fulfilled his promise to him. And not only that, but is fulfilling all of his promises to his people and to all of humanity. And that God does it not in a system of belief, not in a philosophical idea, but in a person. Jesus is God's prepared salvation. Designed, as Simeon says, in the presence of a vast multitude of people. Here I think Simeon is looking back over centuries of Israel's history, that all of the promises, all of the waiting for a king to come, one who would bless the nations as was promised to Abraham, one who would sit on David's throne forever, a prophet after the like of Moses. He's saying that all of that waiting, all of those threads, they all converge here now, in this one infant, all of it. I see now, Simeon says, what you were preparing. This is what the waiting was for. And he realizes in that moment that that salvation that God has been preparing is not just for one localized group of people. It's not just for Israel, it's not just for the Jews. It is a light for revelation to the Gentiles, that he really is the fulfillment of that promise to Abraham, that through him all of the nations of the world will be blessed, as are represented here this morning. We are an example of the fulfillment of who Jesus is and who Simeon saw him to be that day in the temple. And Simeon also recognizes that that salvation will not be without pain, that it will not be without division, that it will be opposed by many. That the coming of Jesus will reveal a person's heart. We see that still, don't we? That the message of Jesus reveals what's really going on in someone, the things that they actually value, whether or not they are prepared to set aside their own lordship over their own life, their own autonomy, and say, no, actually, I want to follow another. To follow King Jesus. It drives away darkness for some, and it is it is something that is wonderful and glorious. And yet for others, we find the light of Christ exposing. It's something that makes us uncomfortable, and it will bring suffering. Some will fall in judgment, others will rise in vindication. And he turns to Mary. Mary, who is treasuring and pondering that even she will have to endure the pain of seeing her firstborn executed upon a cross. And yet, isn't this the way of faith? That often, even in the meeting of our deepest longings, they're not without cost. That following God is a is we experience the blessings of knowing God as our Father, and yet we feel the pain of following Him. Simeon doesn't say, nah, everything will be easy. No. He says, now I can rest, knowing that I have seen that God has acted, he has remembered, he has seen. Simeon shows us that Jesus is the fulfillment for all of the longings that we have. Longings for renewal and redemption. And then Anna in turn shows us the right response to that fulfillment. What's Anna's response? It's much shorter. Verse 38, and coming up that very hour, she began to do what? To give thanks and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. What does Anna do? She rejoices. She rejoices and she bears witness. She's full of joy and she tells others. She delights in this long-awaited answered prayer, even if it is different to what she expects. She testifies to God's goodness and points others to that fulfillment. Christ is not merely part of God's answer, he is the answer that our hearts are looking for. The call today is to trust Him, to find Him as a source of our joy and delight, and to have Him reshape our desires, to steady our faith, and to lead you to speak of His goodness to others. Luke 2 shows us what faithful humanity looks like at this airport waiting room point of history, at this turning point where the old is passing away and the new has just been born. Faithful devotion in the midst of longing, receiving God's answer with joy when it finally comes. Because God always keeps his word. As we sing in our kids' songs, he always keeps his promises. And the same Christ that they held in their arms meets us here this morning. Meets us here in his word. And so if you're in a season of waiting right now, if you're in a season of longing, of hoping, unmet desire, do not despise the tension of the season that God has placed you in. Use it as a time for deepening devotion. If you feel like your devotional life is ordinary, do not abandon it. If you are longing for resolution, for rescue, for renewal at this turning of the year, you must look again to Jesus. Look to Christ. The fulfillment of every promise that God has ever made you. Stir and deepen faith. Ignite fuller devotion that we might be filled with joy at your salvation and point others to your goodness and faithfulness. For it is in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.
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