Christmas According To Simeon Series

Christmas According to Simeon

(Luke 2:25-32)

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

12-10-2023

I’m currently reading Geddy Lee, the lead singer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Rush, autobiography. The first part is about the history of his family.

His mother and father, both Jewish living in Poland, met and fell in love in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp! They both survived and married, having three children.

Talk about light amid darkness, love overcoming hate, and hope in hopeless situations.

Hope Floats

As a counselor, I know that this season is one of contradictions. While it’s billed as the “most wonderful time of the year,” many are experiencing a first Christmas without a loved one. Or maybe you have lost a job this year and Christmas is going to be tight. Or the diagnosis came back and you are living with cancer or another disease. Maybe your family is dysfunctional, or your kids won’t be home.

Over these next six weeks, calls to the suicide hotline will skyrocket and more people will attempt suicide than any other time of the year.

People are looking for hope. They are desperate for hope. And many have lost hope altogether.

I remember talking to a guy about my age and telling him that there was light at the end of the tunnel. He looked at me with sad eyes and said, “Jeff, the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.” About three weeks later, he ended his life.

Let me tell you this morning that we love you, we need you. Please don’t think that the world is better without it because that’s a lie from the pit of hell.

There is hope. Hear me. There is hope. It’s not in a program or a plan. It’s in a Person - Jesus Christ.

The word “hope” is used 52 times in the New Testament - enough hope for each week of the year.

In Scripture, hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is a future certainty grounded in a present reality. Or another way of saying it - hope is waiting for God to do what has already promised us.

Paul told the Christians at Corinth:

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18)

To Paul, it’s about where your eyes are focused. This morning we are going to meet a man whose eyes and heart were laser-focused on the hope of the coming Messiah who would bring comfort to his people’s hurting hearts.

We are going to look at his heart, his hope, his faith, and his song.

Turn to Luke 2 and we will pick up the story at verse 21.

Prayer

Joseph and Mary’s Obedience

“On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:21-24)

It’s so easy to read the Bible, especially these texts at Christmas, and miss massive theological truths right in front of us.

On the eighth day, he was circumcised. Wait? Why would Jesus be circumcised?!

Circumcision was a sign of being set apart from others and the “cutting off” of sin. But Jesus had no sin to “cut off.” Why would Mary and Joseph have him circumcised?

New Testament commentator Alexander Whyte wrote:

“For He who knew no sin, and who never was to know sin, was already in His circumcision made sin for us. He was not so much as eight days in this world till he began to be numbered with the transgressors. Mary’s firstborn son was a lamb without blemish and spot, but before He was a week old, He began to bear the sins of many…

And as He began in the temple that day, so He continued every day to lead a life of pain, shame, and blood-shedding, for us for our children, till He finished on the cross the sin-atoning work His Father had given Him to do. And even after that first day of His wounding of our transgressions, that Holy Thing bore in His body the marks of our redemption.”