According to the Billboard music charts, the top five Christmas songs for this week, based on airplay, are:
1. “Little Drummer Boy” by Pentatonix
2. “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey
3. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee
4. “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms
5. “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole
The majority of the songs in the Billboard top 100 Christmas songs are what I would call “feel good songs” that purport to celebrate “the spirit of Christmas” without any kind of focus at all on the real meaning of the incarnation of Jesus. I guess the good news is that at least there is some reference to the birth of Jesus in “The Little Drummer Boy”. But then you have to go all the way to the 56th most popular song – 16 spots behind that Christmas classic “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” until you get to “Silent Night” by the Temptations which is the next song I could find on the chart that even mentions the birth of the Savior, Jesus.
I’m saddened, but certainly not surprised, that our culture is willing to celebrate peace on earth and goodwill toward men without much thought at all about what that really means or how we obtain it. But what really concerns me is that even those who profess to be Christians have fallen into that trap as well. Over the last week, I’ve heard a national Christian radio station play songs like “Christmas Kiss”, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Let it Snow”. And their Christmas TV special began with the songs “Jingle Bell Rock” the theme song for a made for TV movie titled “The Heart of Christmas” that never mentions the name of Jesus, and “Jingle Bells”.
This morning, as we wrap up our series on the “Songs of Christmas”, we’ll conclude with the song of Simeon – a song that reminds us that while we like to think of Christmas as a time of year that makes people feel good and brings people together, from God’s perspective, the birth of Jesus is actually an historical event which divides and separates.
So turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 2 and let’s let Luke set the stage for this song. You can follow along as I begin reading in verse 22:
And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous 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. And he came in 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,
(Luke 2:22-28, ESV)
We don’t know anything about Simeon other than what is revealed in this passage. He is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. His name, Simeon, was quite common in Israel. It means “God has heard”, which is certainly an appropriate name, given what we learn about him here.
Apparently he is an old man who has been waiting in the Temple day after day to get a glimpse of the promised Messiah. Imagine what that must have been like for Simeon. Every day he watched as couple after couple would bring their young children into the Temple, wondering if today would be the day that God would reveal to him that one of those baby boys was the promised Messiah.
Finally one day he entered the temple and saw a poor couple who really didn’t look any different than any of the other families Simeon had seen there day after day. Mary had come to the Temple to fulfill the Biblical instructions from Leviticus 12 that required her to bring an offering at the end of her 40 day period of purification. The fact that she and Joseph offered a pair of turtledoves was an indication that they were too poor to have possessed a lamb for that sacrifice. The couple who was too poor to sacrifice a lamb came to offer the Lamb of God in service to God.
And this time, the Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that the child that was being dedicated by his parents was the one he had been waiting for – the Messiah. Before we get to the song that he sings in response to finding Jesus, the Messiah, let’s take just a couple of moments to see what it was that enabled Simeon to find Jesus and what that means for us.
Simeon found Jesus because he had:
• A grounded hope
Although many in Israel had lost hope that they would ever see the Messiah, there was a remnant who still held out hope in His coming, But unfortunately for many of those people, their hope was unrealistic because it was based on their own ideas about the Messiah rather than what God had already revealed about Him.
But here we see that Simeon’s hope was grounded in two critical ways.
First, his hope was grounded in God’s Word. We’re going to see this again in the actual song, but for now I want you to notice that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” That phrase – the consolation of Israel – was another term for the Messiah, which came primarily from this prophecy of the Messiah:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.
(Isaiah 40:1-2, ESV)
The Hebrew word for “comfort” used by Isaiah is the equivalent of the Greek word translated “consolation” in Luke 2. The idea here is that God would comfort to His people by sending a Messiah who would end their warfare with God by providing a way for their sin to be pardoned.
Simeon could continue to hope first of all because He believed and trusted in God’s Word.
But you’ll also note that his hope was grounded in the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life. There are three mentions of the work of the Holy Spirit in his life in just these few short verses. Simeon could continue to hope because he listened to and believed the Holy Spirit as He ministered in Simeon’s life.
There were a lot of other contemporaries of Simeon, including a lot of well educated Biblical scholars who missed the coming of the Messiah because their hope was based on their own ideas about the nature of the Messiah and His ministry.
So this Christmas season, if you want to have hope that you can count on, it must be grounded in the Jesus of the Scriptures as He is revealed by God’s Holy Spirit and not the Jesus of your own choosing. Much of the world is willing to accept a Messiah who is nothing more than a cute little baby in a manger that they can dote over. But they miss out on what He can do for them right now because they aren’t willing to deal with the other aspects of His ministry. We’ll come back to that idea near the end of the message.
In addition to a grounded hope, Simeon had…
• A gracious humility
Simeon is described as “righteous and devout.” Let’s deal first with what it means when he is described as righteous. Whenever the Bible describes someone as “righteous, they are only righteous because God has declared them to be so. And God only does that for those who trust in Him for their forgiveness, not for those who try to earn their righteousness based on their own works.
Simeon was righteous in God’s eyes because he was humble enough to recognize his own sin and to cast himself on the mercy of God as the only way his sin could be forgiven and his relationship with God could be restored. Even though the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah on the cross had not yet occurred, because Simeon was willing to humble himself and accept God’s grace, God declared him righteous based on what Jesus would do in the future.
I find that this is usually the biggest stumbling block that keeps people from finding Jesus. First of all most people don’t want to admit that they are sinners. And even if they can overcome that obstacle, they rarely are willing to admit that they are helpless to do anything about that sin on their own and to humble themselves and trust in God’s mercy and grace.
Simeon found Jesus because he had a grounded hope and a gracious humility and finally because he had…
• A growing holiness
Here’s where the term “devout” comes into play. The Hebrew word used there literally means “cautious”.
The idea here is that Simeon was concerned for the things of God. Because he recognized that he had been justified by God as a result of his faith, he lived cautiously, not wanting to do anything that would take away from God’s glory. So he lived a life in which he was cautious and careful to obey and honor God in all that he did.
Simeon demonstrates what we learned in our study of James – that the genuineness of our faith is going to be demonstrated by the way we live our lives. If we really value the righteousness that has been provided for us through Jesus, then the conduct of our lives will reflect that – not because we think we can somehow earn favor with God, but out of gratitude for what He has done for us.
I have to imagine that Joseph and Mary were a bit surprised when this old man approached them there in the temple, introduced himself and then took their baby into his arms. But after all they had been through in the last year, perhaps they were getting rather accustomed to these kinds of surprises. As Simeon took the baby Jesus into his arms he proclaimed the song that is the subject of the message this morning, Will you read that song out loud with me?
“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
(Luke 2:29-32 ESV)
Simeon’s song is not very long. But in just a few words He eloquently communicates a theme that we have seen in each of the four songs of Christmas that we have looked at over the last month. We can summarize that message like this:
God makes His salvation
available to all people
through His people
Simeon demonstrates an understanding of God’s plans and purposes that was not common in Israel. Although, as we’ll see, it was never God’s intention that His salvation would only be made available to Israel, most Israelites believed that when the Messiah came, He would establish their kingdom and that they would rule over the despised Gentiles. So most Israelites hated the Gentiles and all that they stood for and considered them to be unworthy of God’s salvation.
But apparently Simeon’s grasp on God’s Word enabled him to understand that God’s salvation was to be for all mankind. Perhaps he thought back to God’s promise to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants or to numerous other Old Testament passages like this that showed that God chose Israel for the purpose of proclaiming His salvation to all the nations:
“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
(Isaiah 42:6-7, ESV)
That passage also confirms…
Three truths about God’s salvation from Simeon’s song
• God’s salvation is all His doing
Let’s go back and look at verses 30 and 31 again:
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
Simeon clearly understands that salvation is completely God’s doing – it is His salvation that He has prepared for all people. Even though Simeon was righteous and devout, he understood that the fact that God allowed him to see the source of mankind’s salvation, Jesus, before he died was purely an act of God’s grace. It was not based on anything that he had done to deserve that.
This truth that God’s salvation is not based on anything we do to earn it, but is instead all God’s work on our behalf, is also seen in each of the previous three songs we’ve looked at:
o Mary acknowledged that she was merely a humble servant through whom God had chosen to work in order to bring His salvation to the world.
o Zechariah’s song was completely focused on what God had done in order to bring His salvation to the world through Jesus.
o The song of the angels was a reminder that true peace on earth comes only through responding to God’s gracious gift of His Son and that the gift of salvation is available for all who chose to accept that gift.
This truth has important implications for each one of us in at least two ways.
First, regardless of what I might claim, if I am attempting in any way to earn God’s favor and God’s salvation based on what I can do, then those efforts are futile because salvation is all God’s work. If my relationship with God is based on anything other than what God has done for me through His Son, Jesus, then I am not really saved and I need to take care of that right now.
Second, as we tell other people about Jesus, it’s important that we guard against our tendency toward legalism when we talk to others about faith in Jesus. Far too often, in my opinion, the church has been guilty of expecting unbelievers to act like believers and in the process we have pushed away the very people who need to experience God’s grace in their lives.
• God’s salvation is available to all people
As we saw in verse 31, God’s salvation has been prepared in the presence of all peoples. And in verse 32, we also see that this salvation is a light for revelation to the Gentiles. Simeon clearly understood that it had always been God’s plan to provide salvation for all people – not just the Israelites.
I think sometimes we tend to be a lot like most of the Israelites and assume that there are some people who are just not worthy of God’s salvation. We usually base that conclusion on outward factors like race, religion or social status. And once we have developed that kind of mindset, we usually miss the opportunities that God might present for us to talk to them about Jesus.
But the fact is that none of us are worthy of God’s salvation. And as Simeon’s song and countless other passages reveal, Jesus came here to earth to provide for the salvation of all people.
• God’s salvation is to be proclaimed by God’s people
This truth about God’s salvation is seen at the end of verse 32 when Simeon proclaims that God’s salvation is “for glory to your people Israel”. Given the rest of the song, we know that Simeon isn’t in any way claiming that God’s salvation is only for Israel. So how is it that Israel is to receive glory through the salvation that is made available to all people by Jesus?
God could have chosen to make His salvation known through any means He wanted. But God, in His sovereign wisdom has chosen to do that through His chosen people. God began with individuals like Noah who Peter called a “herald of righteousness” and then when He formed the nation of Israel, He passed that task on to them as a people. So when the incarnation of Jesus brought Israel’s role in the proclamation of salvation to all people to its completion, Israel received glory. But it’s important to note that whatever glory they received was completely as a result of God being a covenant-keeping God who did what He promised thousands of years earlier.
Today, the task of proclaiming God’s salvation has been passed on by Jesus to His followers in what we usually refer to as the Great Commission:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:18-20, ESV)
But as we all know through personal experience, the task of proclaiming the salvation of God and making disciples is rarely easy. I think that is why Simeon, as he was guided by the Holy Spirit, followed his song with both a blessing and some words of warning. Let’s continue reading in Luke 2 beginning in verse 33:
And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
(Luke 2:33-35, ESV)
I think these words must have come as quite a shock to Mary and Joseph. For probably the first time they understood the tremendous suffering that this little baby boy was going to experience later in His life and, particularly for Mary, the heartbreak she would experience as well as she watched Him suffer.
But these words are really instructive for us as well because they prepare us for the heartbreak that we are bound to face because of Christmas. In spite of the fact that the world views Christmas as a time of unity and togetherness, the truth revealed by Simeon’s words here is that Christmas is actually an event that leads to separation and division.
On the surface, a holiday which celebrates the birth of a cute little baby in a manger over 2,000 years ago and which promotes peace on earth and goodwill to men seems like it ought to bring people together. But when we get to the heart of what that event means for mankind, it becomes obvious why it separates rather than unites.
At its core, the incarnation of Jesus is God’s sign - His revelation - that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that salvation is possible only for those who will humble themselves and accept the gift of salvation through faith in Him. It is impossible to take a neutral position with regard to that sign. Some, according to Simeon, will accept that sign and humble themselves and accept God’s grace and will “rise.”
But unfortunately many others will oppose that sign. Simeon points out that many in Israel are going to do exactly that and that as a result of their opposition to Jesus, Mary is going to personally experience great sorrow. This is obviously a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus that would be carried out largely in response to the opposition of the Jewish religious leaders. And for those who choose to oppose Jesus, their fate is that they will “fall”.
Although God already knows what is in each man’s heart, the response to the incarnation of Jesus will reveal to all the condition of each heart. Those who embrace the salvation that He offers will reveal hearts that are humble and which desire to serve God. And those who reject God’s grace will reveal hearts that are proud and which really don’t value God.
This song, like the three others we have looked at challenges us to do two things:
1. First, we need to make an honest evaluation of how we have personally responded to God’s revelation that is embodied in the incarnation of His Son. For those of you who can honestly say that you have accepted the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus alone, then this ought to be a time to thank and praise God for doing everything that needs to be done for you to have that great gift.
As we’ve seen, there is no option to remain neutral when it comes to the salvation that God has provided through His Son, Jesus. So if you have never made the decision to place you faith in Jesus, then you are still opposing God and you will fall. But the good news is that it’s not too late to make that decision and we encourage you to do that before you leave today.
2. Second, once we have received the gift of salvation, it is not a gift that we are to hoard for ourselves. We are to share it with others. In a few moments, we’ll be watching a video that will remind us to take advantage of opportunities to love others with the love of Jesus this Christmas season.
We’re here to help you in any way that we can as you work through these decisions. We’d love to talk and pray with you some more if you still have some questions about what it means to place your faith in Jesus. There are several ways you can let us know you would like us to do that:
• You can see me or one of the other elders after the worship gathering.
• You can fill out the information on the flap of your bulletin, tear that off and give it to me or one of our greeters and we’ll contact you this week.
• Or you can go to the contact page on our website and use one of the methods made available there to contact us.
God makes His salvation
available to all people
through His people
Have you personally received that salvation and if so, are you being used by God to make it available to others?
