4 Questions From Simeon Series

Waiting often also doesn’t make sense. I read of a missionary who did not receive her monthly support check. She was seriously ill and because she had no money she had to live on oatmeal and canned milk. She received her check thirty days later – Why God? Why did she had to wait? Waiting often doesn’t make sense to us, but then again, we don’t know the big picture. This missionary who was forced to wait, mentioned this incident to a doctor friend while on furlough. He asked the nature of her illness. She described the intestinal digestive trouble she had been having and the doctor said, "If your check had arrived on time and you had been eating your normal diet you would probably now be dead, because the best treatment for your illness was a thirty-day oatmeal diet."

If we change our perspective a bit, we can begin to see waiting as a gift from God instead of a burden. Jeremiah wrote, "It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord" (Lam. 3:26). Waiting is not only necessary; it’s good. Those who wait for God experience His salvation in times of trouble (Is. 33:2). Waiting on God renews our strength so that we can "soar on wings like eagles" (Is. 40:31). Obedient waiting is the pathway to inheriting God’s blessings (Ps. 37:34). Waiting is intimately linked with answered prayer (Ps. 38:15, Mic. 7:7).

It may be difficult to wait on the Lord, but it is worse to wish you had. I don’t know what you are waiting for today - it may be frustrating, painful, making no sense at all. But are you prepared to trust that the God who created this universe knows what He’s doing? Are you prepared to wait for the good things that God has for you? Simeon was

Question 2: Who controls your life?

A bit of a confronting question, but an incredibly important one. Really there is only 2 options here. You either take control of your own destiny or you let God take the reins. Lets see who controlled Simeon. We read a few things about Simeon …

O He was righteous and devout (vs25). A righteous man was one who behaved well towards other people. A devout man fulfilled all his religious duties. Simeon was both – he was a good man and deeply religious, but this does not help us figure out who controlled his life. You see, you can be very religious, and follow all the rituals of the church, yet still leave God out of the picture completely. Jesus was often incredibly critical of the Pharasees for doing just this. In Mt 23:27&28 he writes “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. We can pretend to be controlled by God, but be doing what we want on the inside.

o The answer to who controlled Simeon is found later in this verse. We read that the Holy Spirit was on him. And in vs 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. Simeon was indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he was communicating with the Holy Spirit and he was responding to the Holy Spirit’s instructions. Remember again that this is before Pentecost and so it was fairly rare for the Holy Spirit to dwell with people. Simeon was incredibly blessed because he had the Holy Spirit and this was who it seems controlled him.