I would invite you to turn in your Bibles this evening to the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke, there we will find our final sermon from this little mini-series as we look now at not just the birth of Christ, we did that this morning, but the narrative that soon follows when Jesus is taken on the eighth day to be circumcised, then later, later in his being presented to the temple and the beholding of the Messiah by Simeon and Anna, and then Christ's own growth as a human person to the point where he was one day called by the Father to begin his earthly ministry. Luke 2, beginning in verse 21. Listen as I read. And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of her, that is Mary, purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just 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, or Messiah. So he came by 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, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.' And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel. And for a sign which will be spoken against, yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. Now there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age and had lived with a husband 70 years from her virginity. And this woman was a widow of about 84 years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And coming in that instant, she gave thanks to the Lord and spoke of Him to all those who looked for the redemption, or for redemption in Jerusalem. So when they had performed all these things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee in their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong in spirit filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. As far as the reading of God's word, let me pray now for the blessing of the preaching of it. Lord, we come to you tonight, and we do ask that you might, by your grace, cause us to marvel what we find in your word, not just the text of it, the crafting of it, the construction of its sentences, the translation from that inspired text, But Lord, that you would, by your Spirit, speak to us in utterances and groanings that go beyond even what men might say, that you would use it for its intended effect upon those who are your children, that you would express your love and devotion to us as our Father, and that you would continue to sanctify us according to your word and make us more and more like you, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. So this morning we looked at the birth of Christ, the coming of the shepherds, to worship Him, the glory, and the contrast of this baby born in a stall, a manger, in contrast to the king, Caesar Augustus, the emperor of the mighty Rome. And while one king was taken in order or taking in order to consolidate his power, Christ had come into the world to give of himself so that he might bring to himself a people for himself. A taking king and a giving king. Tonight we continue in this narrative and we'll stop here. at least as far as this series is concerned, regarding the circumcision and the presentation of Jesus according to the law of God that we find in the book of Leviticus, namely Leviticus chapter 12, and also the joy of Simeon and Anna having been moved by the Holy Spirit to recognize Jesus as the Messiah sent to redeem his people from their sins. Two points that I want to make this evening as it relates to this particular text. The first, the consoler of Israel has come. The consoler of Israel has come. And then secondly, the hope of all the saints. The hope of all the saints. Let's look at the first point. The consoler of Israel has come. Now, there were those who recognized the significance of this baby. And as it was with the shepherds in Luke chapter 2, as it was with Mary and Joseph as they were visited by a messenger of God, recognition of God's plans do not come naturally. Rather, we must be told what God is doing. sometimes that revelation comes in the form of a speech, a visit by a heavenly messenger, even Christ himself, the second person of the Godhead in the Old Testament, visited the people of God in what is often referred to as a theophany. We see this with Joshua prior to their conquering of Jericho, Joshua goes near to the city, and there he meets the commander of the army of the Lord, and it is there that Joshua is told, take off your shoes, because the ground upon which you are standing is holy. Why? Well, it's not because this messenger is an angel, it is because this messenger is the Lord of hosts, the Eternal Lagos, the one whom Mary and Joseph here call Jesus. We see the second person of the Godhead also as he preserved the lives of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And there are a host of these occurrences where it is most likely to be the second person of the Godhead visiting his people in the Old Testament. It was always the one who would be called Jesus who would meet with, guide, shepherd, guard, lead, protect. This is the work of the second person of the Godhead. That is what he had been tasked to do in agreement with the Father, even before the foundations of the world were made and laid. But here, something unique. This Messiah has come in the form of human flesh. They name him what they are instructed to name him, verse 21, Jesus, because he will be the one who will deliver his people from their sins. He will be of the line of Jacob, of the line of David. He will be a king who sits upon the throne forever and ever. He has come to those who waited." Now, who are those who wait? Those who have been made to wait. Those who have been moved by the Spirit to hope and trust in the promises of God. And that is what we find here. Even with the presentation of Jesus at the temple, the Spirit moves this man, Simeon, to go and meet this child. Now we know that Simeon prophesies here, speaks of what God did for him so that he might, having awaited the Messiah, meet the Messiah in the flesh, and then pronounces a benediction or blessing over the child Jesus. But what is true always of the saints in every age, and I'll get to this more in a moment in my second point, is that the quality of those who are truly part of the people of God is that they are always anticipating the promises of God fulfilled in their own lives. In the Old Testament, it was the Israelites who awaited the coming of the Messiah in the flesh to establish the kingdom of God on earth. And they waited. And that quality of waiting was one of the fruits of the Spirit's work in their hearts. And sometimes that waiting experienced crisis, impatience, doubt, fear, dread, just like our waiting does. But if there is a quality that connects the Old Testament saints from the New Testament saints, is that we are both together a people who wait for God to do what He has said He will do. Now we wait differently. We wait as those who have seen the Messiah come in the flesh, crucified and then raised on the third day. But we do wait because there are promises of God yet to be fulfilled. We're not waiting because God hasn't fulfilled those promises. And I pity the Jews among all the people in the world who continue to wait for the Messiah and they missed him. The train has come and they didn't get on it. The ark is open. And the rains came down and they failed to board it. Now, obviously the gate of heaven remains open. We see this in the book of Revelation. And this gate that goes to the celestial city is a gate that remains open to any and all who enter through Christ who is the door. And what he is for those who wait is a consoler. Let's look at verse 25. And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout. He was a righteous man. He was a saint, a Christian, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. Remember? Those who wait are those in whom the Holy Spirit has testified that they should be waiting. They are given new hearts. He is a regenerate man. He has a new heart, and this is what the Spirit does. Now, we don't know the Spirit's name. We know it here, right? It's the beginning of the Gospels, but it isn't until the end of the Gospels that we are explicitly told who the Holy Spirit is. He is God, one like Christ, as he says, one like me, and I will send him among you to teach you and to train you in righteousness. He will be your helper. What is consolation? Now you hear of the consolation prize, that's a negative. Consolation prize is what you get when you don't win the actual prize. Here, consolation means comfort, to console. That's why it's called a consolation. Because you're so angry you didn't win, here's a little something you can have because you're a little mad that you didn't actually win the grand prize. This consolation is a title. It's a title. Now, what we find with regards to all of God's actions is that the actions of God are often related to a title that he gives to the people, his people, to call him by. And this happens in our own relationships. And not all children call all grown men father. Now they may be fathers in a sense in that they are to be respected and admired. They are superiors by right of their age so that you call them sir or yes sir or mister and honorarium. But only a handful of children call me father and only one woman calls me sweetheart or husband or babe. I mean, I guess if it's really informal, right? Ben, I know what you're thinking, okay. Inside joke. These names mean something. You can ask Ben later about that. These names mean something. Consoler is the title that Simeon considers. He's waiting for the one who will come to Israel to bring comfort, comfort, ye my people, as we sing. Why comfort? Because Israel is in a sorry state. Now the sorry state of Israel is in one part of their own making. God told them in the book of Deuteronomy, if you keep covenant with me, then the nations will come to you and you shall rule over them. But if you break covenant with me, then they shall come and rule over you and you shall be their subjects. What had Israel done? They had denied. They had denied. the covenant. They had rejected it. Not all of them. We have a Simeon, we have an Anna, we know that Mary and Joseph were faithful Israelites, and we see many faithful Israelites in the history of God's people. But here, Here we see the context that demanded that Christ come, and it wasn't just Rome, and it isn't just Rome, and it isn't just a nation of human kings. It is, as Paul would say, our fight is against principalities and powers of the air. Ours is a cosmic, spiritual, total, and it's not just spiritual, it's all of life, is a struggle against good and evil, against light and darkness. And it spills over oftentimes into the physical, into the political, into the ecclesiastical, into the familial. We see this all the time. Every time you add another member into your family, guess what you add? Another friction point, a blessed friction point, right? This is just the way it is. And so Simeon, as a devout man, a righteous man, a regenerate man upon whom the Holy Spirit had brought life and had given him insight, was waiting for the comfort of Israel. And that is whom he sees. He comes by the Spirit to the temple. In fact, this is what happens every time we come to the house of God. We come being moved by the Spirit to enjoy the comfort that God brings through His Word. Every Sunday, it's the same thing. Now, we don't always approach it in the same way. Maybe it's a little bit of a hurried Sunday morning, right? Maybe the oven didn't turn on when it was supposed to, or maybe your best socks didn't get washed, or the shirt you needed. All of those things can contribute to the distraction. These are silly, simple distractions, right? But what must be understood as it relates to the habit of worship and longing and expectation as it comes to receiving Christ is that this is something that the Spirit does in us. This is actually a wonderful text on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, as Sinclair Ferguson says, who is the holy homemaker who provides in us a place for the Godhead to reside. That's what the Spirit does. And Simeon is one in whom the Holy Spirit had cleared away the rebellious cobwebs and put a new heart in, and all Simeon wanted to do before he died was see the Messiah in the flesh. Why? Because what it meant was that God was true to his word, and that God was doing a thing even in his day that no one yet had seen. Now, I think we need to apply this, in part, and connected to our sanctification. As Christians, the degree to which we long to see God face-to-face is connected to the degree to which we are mortifying sin in the flesh. Children, one of the ways you may understand this is you're very excited about seeing your parents most of the time, unless they catch you doing something you know you should not be doing. And then their presence represents what? Uh-oh. punishment, terror, fear. They saw me, I should be cleaning my room and instead I found something to just distract myself with. Anything but cleaning, anything but doing what I've been told. This is oftentimes the state in which we find ourselves in relationship to this looming reality of death. We are afraid of death because death is the thing that keeps all men accountable. It's coming. And what you find as people get older and they think about death more and more is that they get their affairs in order. Why? Well, sometimes out of fear. Sometimes it's out of responsibility and duty to their family. But what God wants is a life that is conducted, as Jonathan Edwards say, I am always resolved that I will not do a thing that I should be ashamed that I had done it if the trumpet sounds upon the immediate occasion that I've just done the thing. That's my paraphrase. Edwards said it far more eloquently than I did. In other words, is there a thing that I know if I did it and all of a sudden Christ comes back, I'm going, uh-oh, I shouldn't have done that thing. Simeon was one who waited, and the state of his heart was one that when he saw the Messiah, this is what he says. He picks up the baby, eight days old. Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all the peoples. A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. What will you say when you see Christ face to face? Now, much of our guilt and shame will melt away in the presence of Almighty God. We'll see him and we'll go, finally, at last. And here Simeon worships and he proclaims that which is true of Jesus in light of and in relationship to his ministry as Messiah. First, a little personal epithet. Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. What word? The word that the Spirit gave to him that he would not die before he saw Jesus. For I have seen your salvation. Because to behold Jesus is to behold the Savior, which you have prepared before the face of all the peoples. a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel." He is speaking not only of the individual personal significance, he is speaking of what I would call the historical, redemptive, and even eschatological significance. Eschatological just means the effect of God's plan and purposes of salvation upon the whole scope of redemption, even into the future. And so when we speak of eschatology and eschatological, we are speaking of and we are thinking of what God is doing to the left and right bookends of human history. The whole thing, the whole scope, all of it, past, present, future. And so he's saying, this is what will happen. You have prepared, what is he speaking about? All of this part of the Bible, this part. the big chunky part that most people don't read. And if you don't understand this, you can't really understand what Simeon is really going on about. That for millennia, God has prepared his people for the coming and the receiving of the Messiah. Now, many remained in darkness, some believed and found the light. But even as he prepared them, what did he prepare them for? Verse 32. that the light of the Messiah's coming would go beyond the borders of Israel as a people distinctly represented as the Jewish people in the Old Testament. This light that the Messiah is and will bring, the world cannot contain. It will just spill over into everything, everywhere. And the glory of your people is revealed. What he sees is that Jesus will unite Jew and Gentile, the haves and the have-nots, historically. This is what Paul says. When Christ comes, he will tear down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile. And it won't be a Jewish faith and a Gentile faith versions of the truth. It will be Christ and him crucified. There will be but one Messiah, and there is one way to the Father, and that will be through Christ Jesus. And that is what he rejoices in. And Joseph and Mary marvel at this. Because even as God, through his spirit and by the angel, testified to Joseph and Mary, this thing is coming, he also gives them, through Simeon, more information about the mission of their own child. What? And part of it is marvelous. But look at what he says in terms of prophecy. Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel. There will be some who believe and some who do not. It's the haves and have-nots. It's the sheep and the goats. It's the elect and the reprobate. And God knows all of this, and the way in which it will happen will result in their sorrow. A sword will pierce through your own soul. He's speaking, of course, the moment of Christ's crucifixion. That's the sign. I spoke of it to some degree this morning. Can you imagine Mary standing before her son on the cross as she sees him screaming in pain and then dying? And then the test of that is they stick a spear in his side and blood and water flows. That's the sore that will pierce her side, or her soul, rather. It will be hard. Why? Because the first Adam brought death into the world. Man made it really hard. And man made it necessary because of their rebellion for Christ to come and to suffer. And the only way that we can know that this is the case is if the Spirit tells us. You can read it. And there are many biblical scholars in many schools across this country, and they open the Bible, and they read these things, and they remain completely unmoved by it. Or they doubt the veracity of it, or they hate the very content of it. Why? Because the Spirit has not yet given them understanding and wisdom. He's not given them new hearts. But this is what Christ has come to do, is give us new hearts. And it's not just Simeon, but it is also Anna. Anna bears witness. She's a prophetess. She'd been married for a long, long time before her husband died. She was married at the age of 14. She had been married for 70 years. And she's 84. And she was waiting for the very same thing. There are so many who waited. And for those who wait, which is the quality of the redeemed, the gift of the Redeemer is the satisfaction that our faith becomes sight. I want you to remember this and realize this. In the same way that Simeon and Anna, and yes, even others, awaited the very center of their heart's desire, They were satisfied and not let down by God. And this will be true of every saint. One day you and I shall see God face to face. And we shall see him through the person, Jesus Christ, in whom the triune God dwells bodily. In fact, do you ever wonder how we fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit together in the new heavens and the new earth when they are finally consummated here on earth? It will be through the person, Jesus Christ, the human person whom we shall see, and we shall see his eyes, and we shall see his hands as Thomas saw his hands. And we shall know the end of our waiting is this. It is a blessed reception of the Messiah whom we shall see face to face. And that is the hope of all the saints. that even as we await redemption, redemption has come, it has begun, what we call the inauguration of it shall one day become the consummation of it. We still wait. And that consummated kingdom will be associated with and will be attended also by a world that is filled only with those who are also waiting with us together. One day, the only citizenry on earth are those who are like Simeon and Anna, the people whose greatest heart's desire is to be with their Redeemer and Lord. And until that day comes, what is our mission? to get as many people excited about that day as possible. Not just the stirring of false affections, but through the proclamation of the word, through the prayers of the saints, the administration of the sacraments, to see people really and truly becoming those who anticipate seeing their Redeemer. And so waiting is not all we do. There is a lot of waiting. But waiting is not the only thing we do. And what I mean by that is we wait, but we don't wait like you wait in an airport, in a seat, scrolling through your social media. Right? You could wait that way. Guess what you miss? All the people you could talk to. The mission that is out there for you. The work that can be done. The proclamations that Christ has come And that even now the Spirit is moving into all of these new neighborhoods, all these new territories. And while many men remain in darkness, they have no idea what God is doing on the earth, God is doing it. And what we hope is that they will one day see what God is doing and say, God is doing that. But they can't see that until God does something in them. And they cannot see that unless what does Paul say in the book of Romans? How will they believe if they are not told? And how will they be told if someone is not sent? And who is to be sent? those who have beheld the goodness of God. The Annas, the Simeons, the Apostles, and all of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, even as we wait, we do not do so on our hands, or with our mouths shut, or killing time, but proclaiming that the light has come, that the one who was born of a woman is now ascended to the highest seat of heaven and earth, that Christ himself has come to set us free from our sins. It's a simple takeaway from times of year like this, right? It's very easy to be distracted. It's very easy to be caught up with, I didn't get the thing I really wanted, and yet here's Christ, the greatest gift the world has ever been given, because Christ is God giving himself to a world that is in need of redemption. And even though you may be ridiculed, even though you may experience hardship as you wait and you testify, what is coming? You and I, one day, now we will not hold Jesus like a baby, like Simeon, but we shall embrace him as a man and we shall see him face to face. And the longing of our hearts will be satisfied. This we can be sure of.