Anticipation

Anticipation

Luke 2: 25-35

. My name is Simeon, and I have lived my life in anticipation. I would like to share my story with you this morning.

. I am Jewish, a descendant of Israel. A citizen of the nation of Israel.

. What that means is that my forefathers were called out by God to be a chosen nation for God to reveal himself to all mankind.

. You see, God choose my forefathers to birth a nation that would bring glory to him and reveal him to the rest of the world.

. Sadly we have not done a very good job of this; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

. We are called the nation of Israel because we are all descendants of twelve sons from a man called Israel. You may know him as Jacob.

. The scriptures tell us that Jacob wrestled with God and when God blessed him, He changed Jacobs name to Israel.

. Since the time of Israel though, all our people have lived with anticipation.

. You see, as he was dying, Israel called his twelve sons together and he blessed them because that is our custom.

When he blesses his son Judah, he tells him of a king that is coming. One that all nations will honor and bow down to.

. Our Messiah. We have been waiting for him ever since.

. As I said, our entire nation has lived in anticipation for centuries.

. If you look back at the history of my people, you will see times when we lived the way God wanted us to live and times when we were not very faithful to God.

. Through all of that though, God would still remind us that He had promised a Messiah.

. He used various prophets to remind us of this coming King.

. God sent us prophecies through the great prophet Isaiah that our Messiah would be born of a virgin.

. Can you imagine that, a virgin having a baby? I know, I know it sounds impossible; but that’s what God promised.

. Isaiah told us many wonderful things about this Messiah.

. He told us that He would be a blood relative of our greatest King, David.

. He even gave us a name for him. Emanuel, which means God, is with us. Can you imagine, God being both from a virgin and then living with us.

. Oh how our people looked forward to this.

. We lived in anticipation of the coming of our Messiah.

. Isaiah wrote that He was coming to heal the brokenhearted in this world

. The prophet Mica told us where He would be born. Bethlehem.

. The prophet Hosea told us where He would live part of his life. Egypt.

. The Psalms told us more than I can tell you about this morning.

. Isaiah also told us some things we didn’t understand or really want to hear because they seemed to contradict the good things we had been told.

. Isaiah told us that He would be spat upon, that he would be silent before his accusers who would falsely accuse him.

. Can you imagine that? Being accused of doing something you didn’t do and not defending yourself. That does not make sense does it?

. Isaiah told us that He would be beaten and whipped and then he said something strange.

. He said that we would be healed by our Messiah’s, by our Kings wounds.

. How can you be healed by someone else being beaten?

. Isaiah said that our King, the one that we have been anticipating would be crucified. Doesn’t make sense does it?

. The hardest thing to understand was that Isaiah told us that our Messiah would also be the sacrifice for our sins.

. You see, we knew that God required the shedding of blood to forgive us of our sins but these were animals we were sacrificing.

. Isaiah told us that our king would become that sacrifice.

. Like I said, there was confusion about this Messiah that we were anticipating.

. My people heard about Him through the prophets and then, there was silence.

. For more than four hundred years, there was silence from God.

. No prophets to speak to us and tell us about our long awaited King.

. You know, some of my fellow Jews began to wonder if this was actually true.

. We had heard about him for generations and then nothing.

. Not me though, I always believed that God would keep his promise to us and send us the Messiah.

. My whole life I have done my best to follow God’s laws and do what God wanted me to do.