Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 20, 2020 | A Thrill Of Hope - Wishin' And Hopin'

Transcript

December 20, 2020 | A Thrill Of Hope - Wishin' And Hopin' · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christmas Sunday.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, both auditoriums, and the majority of you who are watching online.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so every uh Christmas we sing uh Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's harder to sing that this year because very little in our world is calm, and not much seems bright.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we do now?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today on this Christmas Sunday, we're going to learn from someone who was there that first Christmas when, as now, the world was neither calm nor bright.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was an old guy, and his name was Simeon.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't be surprised if his friends in Jerusalem called him Old Sime, because he wasn't anything special.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a prophet, he wasn't a priest, he wasn't a wealthy man.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was just an ordinary guy.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in a world that wasn't calm or bright, but was angry and dark, ruled and run like the world is today by powerful people called Romans back then, who had no use for Sime's God.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sime was wishing and hoping and waiting and praying for things to change.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly they did.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: His story is found in one place in the Bible.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible or uh you want to go online for it, the story is found in the Gospel of Luke, that's the third gospel, and in chapter 2.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the story goes like this.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when the time came for their purification, according to the law of Moses, uh, the parents brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a combination of two things.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Purification was a command in Leviticus that after uh firstborn child, after the womb was opened, that is, by her firstborn child, uh the mother, and apparently her husband too, though Leviticus doesn't say that, needed to come to the temple and needed to uh to make an offering.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they needed to bring a sheep and a pigeon, or if they were really poor, two pigeons and uh and a handful of coins.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was the purification after firstborn child, this was their firstborn child, this was purification.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um if it was a boy baby after 40 days, if it was a girl baby after 80 days.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then the parents brought him up to present him to the Lord.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this combines his dedication, sort of like we have a dedication service, so there's a dedication of the baby at the same time as a purification.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Joseph and Mary come up, as written in the law of the Lord, every male child who opens the womb will be considered consecrated to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to the law, a pair of doves or pigeons.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's because they, uh, if you didn't have the money, if you were poor, you offered just a pair of pigeons.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, led by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple court.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: When the parents brought in Jesus to perform for him what was customary according to the law, Simeon took the child in his arms and he blessed God, saying, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, ye may now dismiss your servant in peace, since you have kept your word.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, the light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Notice this, Gentiles and Israel.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: The child's father and mother were astonished at what was said about him.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then Simeon, who had been blessing God, second blessing, now blesses them, and he said to Mary, his mother, This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your own soul too.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 2, 22 to 35.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in prayer.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Father, on Christmas Sunday, we thank you for this story about a guy that wasn't apparently anything special, just ordinary guy.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Look forward to seeing him and talking to him one day.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the profound message, the lesson that he gives us on a day like this when our world is not calm or bright, like his, in Jesus' name.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, it's no mystery why Luke includes this story in his gospel.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: People in Luke's day, after Jesus had gone away, after he was gone, would ask the disciples, the apostles, the question I mean, this Jesus that you're always telling us about, was he really the guy?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Was Yeshua really the one that was promised that our Hebrew, that the Hebrew people have longed for and waited for and hoped for for hundreds and even thousands of years, was he the one?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke's gospel, in fact, all the gospels, are constantly putting forth the testimony, the evidence that, yes, definitely, Jesus was the Messiah, he was the savior of the world, he's the one the whole world's been hoping for.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in his life, the miracles that he did, the message that he gave is evidence, leaves no doubt that he was the guy.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, two of the gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, pile on evidence that even around his birth, before his birth, during his birth, shortly after his birth, you have a lot of evidence pointing at the very beginning to the fact that Jesus was really the one.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have an angelic appearance to a virgin named Mary, followed by a virgin birth.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have an angelic appearance to her cousin Elizabeth, an old couple, famous and well-known old couple.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph and Mary are nobody's.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth and Zacharias are known by everybody, but they're barren, and they have a child.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's another evidence.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have angels, not just one first, but then a bunch of angels appearing to shepherds.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have shepherds at the bottom of the social rung, of course, but their evidence that Jesus is the one.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have some of the most famous people in the world, wise men from Babylon.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: They come and offer their news.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget about those two people at the temple.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: What people at the temple?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those two old people at the temple, Simeon and Anna.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who are they?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's I'm going to talk about one of them this morning, because they are evidence.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Luke includes them, as evidence that Jesus is really the one.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm picking, I want us to get to know just one of them today, and I want us to get to know uh the guy, and not the woman, because, frankly, for two reasons.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: First, because Simeon's an ordinary guy, and Anna wasn't.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anna was famous.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anna was a prophetess, and and and prophets were very rare in those days.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were as rare as black swans, and here she is, she's known by everybody.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anna was famous.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is just an aside, you may notice as you go through the Bible that constantly the Bible likes to pair two different testimonies.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the testimony of two or three.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So constantly, when it wants to say something important, it puts two different stories, two different people back to back, people who are the opposite.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, to show that Jesus is the Savior, you have Nicodemus in John chapter 3, one of the most famous rabbi, Nicodemus, who comes to the conclusion Jesus is the one.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: But in the next chapter, you have someone who's the very opposite.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have a woman, the Samaritan woman, woman at the well, with a number of husbands, and she's testimony.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you have two people.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have the wise men, famous, and the shepherds.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have Simeon, you have Anna.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Anna, famous, a prophetess.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna let her go.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about her another time.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk about a guy like you, a guy like me.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about Simeon.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about a guy who is just an ordinary guy, simple Simeon, you know.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the second reason I'm picking, and I think people might have just called him old Sime after a while, just an ordinary guy.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason I'm picking him is because of the one thing that he was known for in life, his one defining trait.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know how a lot of people have this one defining trait, one thing that stands out about them, so that when you think about them or speak about them or to other people or point them out or even introduce them, you oftentimes, you know, mention that.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we do it without thinking.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: We say, uh, that's uh Michael over there.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's a he's a he's a golfer.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: He he plays it, man, he follows it, he lives it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or that's Jessica, she's an amazing cook.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I hope you you gotta taste what she cooks.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: She's always whipping up something delicious.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or, hey, let me introduce you to James.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's an amazing guitar player.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You need to hear him sometime.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or can I introduce you to Mary when I want to know anything about politics?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I ask Mary.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: She keeps up on everything.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Simeon was like that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: He had that one defining trait that everyone knew.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when his friends talked about him, when visitors to the temple asked, Who is that old guy who's been sitting over there against the wall all day?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is he someone special?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: The answer would always come back.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh no, that's that's just Simeon.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's an ordinary guy, but he's waiting for the consolation of Israel.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't say it that way today, of course.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We'd say that's Simeon, he's just an ordinary guy.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's waiting for the Lord's coming.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or he's waiting for the promised Messiah.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's just, he's waiting for the for the promised king, because back then another name for the promised Messiah king was the consolation of Israel.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: The phrase came out of one of the most familiar and popular verses that all of the ancient Israelites knew, the first verse of Isaiah chapter 40.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: God was giving his prophet orders at the time.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: He was telling him to pass on a promise to his broken down, depressed, discouraged people in Babylon.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what God said to him at the beginning of that huge section of the book was comfort ye, comfort ye my people.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly the same word as the word console.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Console my people.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Console them with what?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Console them with the news that their king and savior, the anointed one, my anointed one, my messiah, is coming.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's the comfort they've been longing for.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's the consolation that's gonna make everything right.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Simeon was a Bible man.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: He loved the scripture, he clearly loved the promises of God, but as he got older, this one promise rose above all other promises to him as the best promise, the most exciting promise of all, the promise of the coming of the king.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that when he woke up in the morning, he said to his wife, the king may come today.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that when he went into the temple, which apparently he did nearly every day, I think he always kept an eye on the eastern door of the temple through which you could see the eastern gate of the city, which was the promised gate that the Messiah would come through.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture had said in Zechariah the king would come through that gate.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Simeon did not want to miss it when it happened.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And people began to talk, I think, uh, about Simeon.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think they began to notice him.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was ordinary, just an ordinary guy, they'd say, but on the other hand, you know, he is no one more devout than Simeon.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Always, always gives the offerings, always makes the sacrifices, he's always there in the temple, he's always there on the feast day and keeps Shabbat.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what's more, he's righteous.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's a man who's who, as the word has said, he's generous to the poor.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's a man of perfect integrity.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they said something more.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think they said, but you know, it seems the older he gets, the more the love of the Lord just makes him radiant.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the spirit of the Lord has just settled on him.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Simeon grows older and his wife grows older too.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're past working age.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that one sad morning Simeon rolled over and his wife was there, but she was no longer there.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as he put her into the ground that evening, because that's they always bury on the same day, he and he crouched over her grave and wet it with his tears.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think Simeon probably whispered, The king is coming, beloved.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know he is coming, and we will see him together.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he looked up to heaven and prayed his simple Simeon prayer, Jesus, please come.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine that he visited her grave every day because she was in all likelihood buried right on that eastern slope, right outside the temple.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And as he came to the temple each day, he would visit her grave.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine that each day old Sime would uh whisper over her grave the same thing through his tears.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The king is coming, beloved.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know he's coming, and we'll see him together.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he would look up to heaven and pray his simple Simeon prayer, Lord, please come.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was just an ordinary man, and that was just an ordinary prayer.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Luke tells us that uh one day, when that ordinary man prayed that ordinary prayer, an extraordinary thing happened.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: God replied.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he replied personally.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Though Simeon was an ordinary guy, he knew the scriptures in an extraordinary way, and I imagine that he did not know whether to believe that or not.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: After all, he knew that in all the years, 2,000 years of Israel's history, God never spoke personally to ordinary people.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in all of history, God had only spoken personally to a handful of the greatest of Israelites: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, to everyone else, God always sent messengers, prophets mainly, again and again, the Lord would send prophets to his people to pass on a message or pass on a promise.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And on very special occasions, God would send an angel, as we know Luke tells us that he did to Mary and to Elizabeth and to the shepherds.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But not this time.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not this time, to this ordinary man who was praying an ordinary prayer.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't send someone else to pass on the promise.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: God came himself.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine that Simeon didn't suspect that either his mind or his hearing was playing tricks on him.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I would.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not as old as Simeon was.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Melody's always saying something in the kitchen.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm always in the next room hearing something altogether different.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she'll say something, like call out something like, I don't know, Gertrude's attractive, isn't she?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll call back, did you say that Google's tracking me?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it happens often, and we laugh about it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I laugh about it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: She just shakes her head.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Happens all the time.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I imagine that Simeon found it hard to believe that he was hearing right.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been around the block enough times to know that people's minds and ears play tricks on them.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wondered if he was having an auditory hallucination, but somehow, somehow, I look forward to asking him one day how, somehow, God did make it clear to him.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Luke leaves that shrouded in mystery, just says that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit himself, spoke to Simeon and had said, Simeon, I promise you that you won't die until you see.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your eyes see my anointed king.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm struck by that.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just an ordinary man, old Simeon, prayed an ordinary prayer, Lord, please come, and received an extraordinary promise you won't die until you see it happen.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so from that moment on, it's clear that Simeon waited to paraphrase one of my favorite old Dusty Springfield songs.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was just wishing and hoping and waiting and praying.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I expected Simeon thought it would happen right away.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I expected the next morning he got up and on his spindly old legs, he sort of ran to the temple, to the eastern gate, stood all day looking out toward the east, waiting to see the king ride down over the hill.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he did the same thing the next day, and then the next day.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: After a while he realized that, well, there was the promise, but it might not happen right away.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd guess that if he's like us at all, and if he was ordinary, he was.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd guess it grew harder and harder for him to wait.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'd imagine that he must have doubted at times.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: He must have wondered, did I really, really hear from God, or did I just want something so badly that I imagined it?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's been so long.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting older.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is hard to wait.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hard to wait, isn't it?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was a great story in the international news this fall.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Staskow, I ask that woman in Ukraine how hard it is to wait.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: She and her husband decided to take their two kids this fall on a short vacation over to Turkey before school started.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a good time, and now the 737 Ukraine Airlines was landing back home in Ukraine.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The plane taxied to a stop at the gate, and then it just sat there.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: She and her family were sitting in the rear of the plane.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Seemed to take forever to get the door of the plane open.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as they all stood up to get the passengers off the plane, the plane got stuffy.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: They were making their way up the aisle.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mom grew more and more frustrated.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Her family was ahead of her, the children and the husband, and she said out loud, It's too hot in here.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then she did something that'll stick with her for life.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: She passed the emergency exit, she decided she couldn't wait any longer.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So she stepped over and pulled the handle and popped the door open and stepped out onto the wing to cool down.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Funny thing is that the children, as she's out there sitting on the wing and then walking around cooling down, the children didn't know anything about it, and they go down the ladder and everybody's turned and stopped and staring, and they see their mom up on the wing.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ukraine Airlines said that's not funny, and they've banned her for life.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I know how she felt.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've been desperate at times to get off a plane, especially when the engine's not running and it's getting stuffy.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to wait.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard even it's hard for it's hard even to wait in line at the store, a doctor's office.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it's even harder because you pray a prayer, a simple prayer, either for yourself or for your family, and you wait for years for the Lord to answer that prayer.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard after a while to keep that hope alive, isn't it?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder if Simeon didn't find it really hard to wait.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when doubts threatened to swamp his faith, I think that Simeon probably did what the evidence shows that he went back to Scripture, for he was a righteous man, and he reread his favorite verse in the verses that followed.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Console, console my people, for the king is coming.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it says, Prepare the way of the Lord, for the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: He'll be a light to the Gentiles, and his salvation will reach the ends of the earth.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And reading those words revived Simeon's faith in the promise of God, and his doubts would slink back into the darkness, and old Sime would resolve, I will wait.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I will hope.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be patient.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then came the day.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Old Simeon didn't know it was a day, uh, the day.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like a day, just like any other day, an ordinary day.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: When he woke up in the morning, uh our ordinary man looked up and prayed his ordinary prayer, Lord, please come.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then he went about his day, but on that day, Perhaps puttering around his home, turning oil over soil or removing stones, he was suddenly moved by the conviction that he needed to go to the temple.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not later in the day, not after lunch, not even after he finished cleaning up, but right now.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what he did.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: He washed his hands, put on his coat, headed up and into the eastern gate and into the temple.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can picture Simeon's next door neighbor, seeing him pass by, called out, Where are you going this morning, Simeon?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Simeon calling back, Well, I thought I'd go up to the temple this morning.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: What neither Simeon nor his neighbor knew was that, as verse 29 tells us, that ordinary man was being moved by the Spirit to go to the temple.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: When was the last time that you were moved by the Spirit?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm surely it's happened.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know it, but you know, it happens to ordinary people.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, imagine God Himself valuing you so highly that in order to move you to a place where you can help someone out or do something valuable or give a cup of cold water or an encouraging word, God moves you, moves you someplace.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or in this case, he moves a man to see something extraordinary.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So into the temple, old Sime goes.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if you or I were there and we'd stepped into the temple, we'd look around and wonder, and we'd go, wow, huge place.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do now?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which is basically what people do when I take them on a tour to the Temple Mount.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a gigantic place.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you look around and say, well, where do I go and what do I do?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But not Simeon, not Simeon, because for Simeon the temple was, well, it was his true home.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had a home or an apartment or something where he ate his meals and lay down to sleep.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's clear that for Sime the temple was his home home.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: For that was the place that the Lord himself called home.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The place to which he would come on that day, one day.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Would today be that day?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I suspect that for a moment, as Sime entered the temple, he turned around and looked out.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: That eastern door, there was the Mount of Olives.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: The sun had risen over the top of the Mount of Olives and was shining down upon them.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he turned around and he scanned the temple courts.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a new week, the new weekly shift of 50 prophets were here, replacing last week's shift.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Each week, a new shift of 50 priests who waited all year for their one week of the year when it was their turn to run the temple, to handle the sacrifices, to accept the offerings, to do the incense and the prayers.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Their excitement and their joy was evident, was infectious.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was morning, so proud young couples were coming to dedicate their children.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You could easily tell whether from afar whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Moment they came in, because the larger lumps were the baby girls, they were nearly three months old.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was 80 days for them.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the boys were small, a little over a month old.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was their 40th day.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Offering of dedication to be a sheep and a pigeon, unless you were paupers, unless you were poor, then you just find a second pigeon.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine that in that huge temple court yard, Simeon could look around and pick out two or three or even four huge celebrations like you see at the Western Wall today, the uh you know, bar mitzvahs.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he could see because people would bring multiple sheep and have huge parties and feasts and celebration with singing and dancing.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Simeon went around, I imagine, and greeted his friends, for he had been at the temple thousands of times over the years, and now he knew all the Levites who played the music and sang the psalms and washed the blood off of the altar and shoveled the animal poop and burned the incense that covered the smell and swept the place clean at sunset.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as Simeon was laughing with an old friend, something moved in him again.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he stopped and straightened up and he looked around.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Young couple had just come into the temple carrying their baby, small, a boy.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh girl was no more than 14 or 15, dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty, like all Jewish girls.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Her young man seemed protective of her and the baby.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, poor.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was holding a couple of pigeons, just a young peasant company, lost in the noise of all the big celebrations around them.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Before they could find a priest, old Sime, beaming, stood in front of them.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it wasn't at all what Sime had been expecting.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: He'd expected a tall, radiant king like David to come through the gate, as his prophet Isaiah had implied.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the same Spirit of God who had given him a promise and then moved him one day to come to the temple was telling him very clearly that this here, this was the Savior and Messiah and King that would make everything right again.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: May I hold him, he said, and held out his bent old arms.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine he was trembling like a leaf.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph and Mary put the baby in his arms.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think he probably stopped shaking.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Life from that baby flowed into his old frame.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Color came to his face, the wrinkles smoothed, his eyes grew wet as he held the baby up close to his face.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then his back straightened and he looked up and he blessed or praised God and said, Sovereign Lord, as you've promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've kept your promise, Lord.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: My eyes have seen your Savior, your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people, Israel.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Young couple was astonished.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: They knew those words from Isaiah.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody did.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Their baby would fulfill those words.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Their baby was the promised king, messiah, savior.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was as if then Simeon saw the young couple for the first time, and he looked at them and he blessed them too.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Spoke gently to them, saying, I need to warn you, this baby's gonna bring not just joy but pain, not just peace, but division, and tears of compassion welled from his eyes as he said to Mary, The sword of sorrow will pierce your heart too.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And gently and lovingly he released the precious child, the consolation of Israel, the hope of the world, back into Mary's arms.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as the couple went off to find a priest and make their poor offering, a priest who would who would pay a peasant couple like them very little attention and their baby no attention at all.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Old Sime watched them go.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: His life now complete.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sime would die soon after that, a happy man, just an ordinary man, who prayed an ordinary prayer.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: But God heard his ordinary prayer and answered it in an extraordinary way.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, honestly, um, we're very different from that old man in many ways.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: He lived long ago.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: He lived in Jerusalem, he wore a robe, he called the temple home.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: But many of us are like him in the most important way of all.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: In a world that is neither calm nor bright, like old Simeon, you too are wishing and hoping and waiting and praying for the king to come, for the Lord to return, for the consolation of Israel, for the hope of the world.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: For like Simeon, we are, as the apostle says, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just ordinary people, that's us.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Praying an ordinary prayer, waiting for God to answer it in an extraordinary way.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he will.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Father, um, we're so privileged that you have told us that the king is coming.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And as he came, after a long wait to his people so many years ago as a baby, that he will once again come and he will make everything right.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we live in a difficult time.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: The world is neither calm nor bright.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: We long to see you again in the person of your son, to turn the world the way it should be, the way you've designed it to be.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: A calm and bright world led by your son, our dear Savior, in whose name we pray.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Christmas Sunday.