We are looking at Luke chapter two this morning, beginning in verse 21, and we're gonna read down to verse 38. And if you are using a copy of the church Bible, you can find that on page 857. And before we do look at this, let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we pray that you would pour out your spirit on us, that you would quiet our minds and hearts, that you would remove distractions from us, that you would cause us to sit at the feet of Jesus and to hear his word. We pray that you would bless especially the preaching of your word this morning to our souls. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke chapter 2 beginning in verse 21 Luke now says at the end of eight days When he was circumcised he was called Jesus the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb And when the time came for the 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 turtle doves 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, 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. And his father and 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 in 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. There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was well advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin. And then as a widow, again, I believe it should be 484 years beyond that. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem, or waiting for redemption in Jerusalem. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God endures forever. Well, this week I noticed it became increasingly popular to see people online telling you what Jesus wants of you and how you're supposed to respond to social issues. The internet was inundated with people telling people what Jesus is like, what Jesus wants for us, how we're just supposed to love and tolerate everything and never call sin sin and never speak out on anything because The Jesus of Scripture said, love your neighbor as yourself. And obviously, that means let anybody do anything they want without any sense that they're accountable to God. And that is the Jesus so many around us profess to believe in, a Jesus who just tolerates everything and doesn't. And by the way, Jesus didn't get crucified for tolerating everything. Jesus said, for this reason, the world hates me because I declare that its works are evil. That's what the Jesus of the Bible said. The same Jesus that said love your neighbor as yourself. The same Christ who tells us to be merciful and patient and gentle and yielding is the same Jesus who is for so many a rock of offense and a stone of stumbling. Well I mention that to you because no doubt as you have conversations with people and you hear what people say to you about believing in the Jesus of the Scriptures and what they think about him, we come to what is the most appropriate passage in the Bible to tell us what the Jesus of the Scriptures is like and what he came to accomplish and ultimately about the greatness of the hope that those who put their trust in him have in this world. You know, this is so fitting as Jesus has now been born and He, as we'll see here, is eight days old, being carried by Mary and Joseph into the temple to do for him everything that the Lord prescribed in the law. And what happens in that moment, in that place, what happens so wonderfully is that as God brings the Redeemer into his temple as the Lord comes to the temple and and there's this great convergence of of Mary and Joseph and and the child the infant Jesus and there is there these aged mature wise godly preeminent as it were if I can say that Saints coming in that moment and the Holy Spirit filling the temple with God's glory and bringing them in there, that convergence is happening so that we'll know who Jesus is and what he came to do and what he'll be and how he'll accomplish what he came to accomplish and what is the end result of everything about Jesus. It's marvelous. You don't have to wait. till the end of the gospels to find out who Jesus is and what he's going to be. You don't have to wait to read the epistles to find out who Jesus is and what he's going to be. It's right there at the beginning. And notice that Luke tells us there in verse 21 first about the presentation of the Lord Jesus. Notice what he says, at the end of eight days when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus. the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. 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. Now, on one hand, Nothing special is happening. If you were an Israelite, this is standard fare God had required in his law that if you had a male child and offspring you were to bring him to receive the covenant sign and You were to offer a sacrifice to set him apart as being set apart to the Lord here the firstborn son was in the law of God said to Be set apart in a special way. God was doing something with that and any Israelite living at this time would not have ever listened to a religious leader if he were not a Jew. That's important. Jesus was born a Jew. There's a lot of discussion about ethnic issues right now, and it's very clear that Jesus was neither white nor black. Very clear. I know it's not clear in the pictures people have in their houses, I'm painfully aware of that. Jesus was not white or black. Jesus was Jewish. He was the Jewish Redeemer. And he came to Israel, and he went through everything that an ordinary Israelite would go through. He was very ordinary. Isn't that wonderful, by the way? The outset of the life of Jesus in coming to the temple is very ordinary. He's not doing any miracles. He's not, as we'll see in the weeks to come, turning clay into pigeons and then making them fly. That's all fake. Jesus is very ordinary, and his parents are very poor, but they are godly, and they are bringing their son to the Lord And that's the beginning of the story of redemption. Now, on the other hand, Jesus is doing something very unique as he's coming to be presented to the Lord. Notice Luke's fixation with the language of the law of the Lord. The law of the Lord, the law of the Lord. Why is Luke focusing so much on the law of Moses? Why is he highlighting that? Well, very simply, Jesus came to be born under the law, Paul says, that he might redeem us who were under the law. There he's talking about the old covenant Jews, but us who are under the curse of the moral law. Jesus came to be the law keeper. And that means he had to keep God's law perfectly. You know, we do the reading of the law, and this morning Mark exposited the second commandment. A lot of people would not like hearing what was exposited this morning. Let me put it this way as simply as I can. The Second Commandment is so much deeper and so much more unkeepable than we had presented to us. God's law is so deep and so perfect. It demands such perfect perfection, because God is perfect. God is holy. God is infinitely pure. God has no unrighteousness in him. And that means the law he gives us as creatures, and he says, here is my law. And you are to keep my law and yet fallen in Adam who couldn't even keep the first commandment God gave. How in the world do people think that they're going to be good enough to stand before God based on their own obedience? Wow, how foolish our hearts are. And yet God gave us a Redeemer, a last Adam. And here's the last Adam, and he's being brought by the woman, Mary. He's the seed of the woman, Genesis 3.15. He's coming to keep the law. He's coming to do that first step in the work of redemption. It was absolutely necessary. If you, and if I am going to go to heaven to have a Redeemer who represented us, who kept God's law perfectly, even from infancy. That's what's happening. He's not just going through the process as an ordinary Israelite. He is going through it as the Redeemer, as God manifest in the flesh. Now, the covenant sign, one of those things that's always struck me, that the sign of circumcision showed that God would have to cleanse Filthy hearts by a bloody judgment. So every child in Israel that received the sign of circumcision Their parents were supposed to be saying the Covenant God has promised redemption and that redemption is for the corruption that passes generation to generation to generation from Adam that's why It is reproductive in its placement. And it's saying that the evil heart that I have, I got from my dad and my mom, and you got from your dad and mom, and we've passed on to our children, and that can only be cleansed by a bloody judgment. That's what the sign of circumcision was saying. There must be a bloody judgment. Now think about this. Jesus, who was sinless, the Bible is crystal clear about that, the sinless one, had to have on him his whole life a sign that said he needed his heart cleansed. That doesn't make any sense unless Jesus was representing his people. He was stepping in their place, just like when he goes to his baptism. Jesus is receiving a sign of bloody judgment that's going to point to the bloody cross. The bloody circumcision pointed to the bloody cross. If we don't get that, we don't get anything. Years ago, I had someone say to me, is it weird talking about circumcision? as a pastor to lots of people, some of whom you don't know. No, you know why? Because the whole Bible talks about it. God's word talks about the covenant sign everywhere and says it is pointing to the cross. It is a gospel sign saying here's what happens at the cross. The blood of Jesus at the cross cleanses our filthy hearts. And he took that sign, and here's the really wonderful thing. Both John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, two of the great theologians in church history, both said that the same blood Jesus shed at the cross was the blood he shed at his circumcision. It was a foretaste of what he was going to do. He is both keeping the law and he's going to have to be the one upon whom the punishment, the curse of the law falls. Even at his infancy, in a sense, Jesus sheds atoning blood. That's amazing. I'll read you what Edward says. In his circumcision, what Jesus suffered in that it had the nature of satisfaction. The blood that was shed in his circumcision was propitiatory blood. As it was a conformity to the law of Moses, it was part of his meritorious righteousness. So Jesus keeps the law, and then he takes the curse. He obeys the commands of God, and he sheds his blood for our disobedience. And that's the whole of the gospel. That's it. Now, I want to read to you something Ligon Duncan said that I found very appropriate right now. He said, you may admire Jesus as a miracle worker. You may view Jesus as the greatest philosopher that ever lived. You may view him as a radical moral reformer or as the greatest advocate for the poor who ever walked the planet. And if you believe all those things about him, but you don't believe that he came to save us from our sins, then you are not believing in the Jesus of the scriptures, you are not believing in the Jesus of the gospels. So you can believe, great miracle worker, great teacher, great social justice warrior, great lover of the poor, but if you don't believe that he preeminently came to save his people from their sins, you do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible. Even his name, very interesting. Notice at the beginning here, at the end of eight days, he was circumcised. So for eight days, he didn't have a name. He was nameless. In that profound, God was nameless. The incarnate God for seven days was nameless. That's profound, the humiliation, the anonymity, as it were. And then he gets the name Jesus, which means Jehovah saves. And then everything he does in the temple is a picture, even Mary not able to afford the proper sacrifice. To dedicate Jesus to God the Father, she has that provision where she can bring in the place of the lamb, she can bring the turtledoves or the pigeons. I wonder if in part she was too poor to bring the lamb because she was bringing the lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb. That's why there was a provision for those that couldn't afford, perhaps. He is the firstborn of God. He is the everlasting firstborn son. He's not just Mary's firstborn, he is the firstborn of the father. From everlasting, we said in the Nicene Creed today, we said we believe that he's begotten of his father before all worlds. That means he doesn't have a beginning. eternally begotten, eternally the son of the father. He is the only one. He is the firstborn. He is the heir. He does everything. What he's doing in the temple, he did so that we could have eternal life, so that we could inherit the promises, so that we could be heirs of the world, because he is the heir. He is the firstborn son. He is the law keeper. He is the one who satisfies divine justice. by shedding his blood on the cross. I just want to also point out that one of the questions maybe you've asked before, or maybe not, is why couldn't he just be born a grown adult There are some theologians that God created Adam as a mature adult. I think they're on to something. But here, Jesus has to be born as a baby. Why? One of the early church fathers, Irenaeus, said quite well, he said, Jesus came to save all by means of himself, all who through him are born again, infants, children, boys, youths, and adults. Isn't that awesome? He's the savior of every age and stage of the lives of sinners who trust him. He came to redo the life that we couldn't live. He came, everything that we read about in here is him saying, I did this for you in your place. I was born so that you can be born again. That's awesome. I became an infant because when you were an infant like David, you came out of the womb speaking lies. We were born in sin, we were conceived in iniquity. You know, there's a lot of debate about equality happening right now, and some of it very helpful, some of it not. But I was thinking the other day, you know, we are all born equal, equally dead in sins. We're all born equally dead in sins, the Bible says. And here comes the Redeemer into the world to be born and to live and to go through everything so that we might be born again, united to him, redeemed, and have everlasting life. Next, notice there is a prophecy about Christ as he's brought to the temple. We're not going to look at it in detail, but this is the great Nunc Diminis. This is the Now Lord, the Song of Simeon. There's been all these songs in Luke's Gospel, right? We had the Song of Elizabeth, and then the Song of Mary, and then the Song of Zacharias, and here's the Song of Simeon. And he's singing praises to God. He's filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has told him he was not going to die until he saw with his own eyes the Christ. Now, it's possible that Simeon, like all other Israelites who were trusting in God and hoping in redemption, had spent the better part of his life praying that he might be able to live to see the Redeemer. That was the hope of all believing Israelites. They wanted to see the Redeemer. Is this the generation? We love to think our generation is the generation. The end times are coming. Everybody thinks their generation is the generation. That's the point. Everybody thinks that. Simeon didn't know whether. His generation was the generation when God would fulfill his promise. But we're told that he had prayed. Notice, we're told in verse 25, he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. And verse 26, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Now, I think the assumption is he had prayed for that. Now, maybe he had heard about the shepherds. Most recently, he were out in the field. Maybe he had heard about the angelic appearance to those shepherds. Maybe he thought this is the time. And yet God, in a special way, visits this godly man. He's not self-righteous. He's not legalistic. When it says he's just and devout, he doesn't walk around thinking, I'm better than other people. In fact, just and devout people say, I'm the chief of sinners, like the Apostle Paul. And so Simeon, though, was seeking to please God. He was seeking to live a life pleasing to the Lord. He was seeking to obey the Lord and walk by faith and obedience. And the Holy Spirit had in some sort of vision or prophetic announcement had said that he would indeed live long enough to see the Lord. And there's this beautiful picture, isn't there? Here in the temple, Mary is presenting Jesus to the Lord. The Lord is being presented to the Lord. And the Lord is giving the Redeemer into the hands of his people. Isn't that amazing? He takes the baby Jesus up in his arms. There's this beautiful picture. We talked last week about the manger, right? And Martin Luther said, you know, the manger's filthy and you're filthy, so jump in that filthy manger and take the Savior. He's there for you to take. He's in a filthy manger. You're filthy. Take him as your Savior. In a very real sense in this passage notice that We're told in verse 28 Simeon took The baby Jesus up in his arms and he blessed God. He is now in a sense Symbolically in possession of the Redeemer. He is saying I have risen and I have gone to Jesus I will rise and go to Jesus. I will take him up in my arms and And the next thing that Simeon does is the most amazing He gives one of the greatest prophecies about Jesus in this prayer of blessing that he announces over Jesus and to the Lord. And he tells us in this great prophecy everything that's going to happen. And he sees the whole world and all of human history centering on the infant that he's holding in his arms. Martin Luther had this great quote. It's one of my favorite quotes in all of church history. He said, Simeon has a very penetrating eye. Remember, the infant Jesus is wrapped in filthy linens, not nice clothing, not royal garb. He's a peasant baby. He's a peasant. He's an outcast, and Simeon takes this poor peasant baby up, and Luther says he has a very penetrating eye. In this child, there's no kingly robe or royal garb to see, merely the form of a poor beggar. The mother is poor. The child is poor. The child is wrapped in very poor swaddling clothes. Nevertheless, Simeon comes right up without anyone's testimonial. Think about this. Nobody came up to Simeon and primed him for this. He didn't just come from the synagogue where he heard a sermon about the Redeemer coming and being born of a woman. And so he was not, in that sense, primed for what he does. Luther says he comes right up to this child without anyone's testimony and publicly attests this child is the savior of the world and a light to all the Gentiles. Luther says, this is a remarkable sermon. Simeon looks upon this little infant and by reason judgment, he would have had to say, this is no king but a beggar child. that's what he should have said this is no king but a beggar child I'm almost done Luther says he does not allow his reason to judge by what his eyes behold but he denominates the child as a king greater than all the kings of the earth he calls him a savior prepared for all nations a light to lighten the Gentiles here it is indeed for Simeon this was to open one's eyes wide I want you to listen to this because this is only true for those who have had the eyes of their hearts open by the Holy Spirit. Nobody else can see this. If you've not had the eyes of your hearts opened by the Holy Spirit, you cannot see what Simeon sees. You can hear it, you can process it, you can kick it around in your mind, but listen to what Luther says. He says, for Simeon, this was to open one's eyes wide and look far beyond oneself. His eyes behold the whole world from one end of the earth to the other. And he says in it, wherever there are peoples or nations, this child is a great king and a savior and a light. That's amazing. That's amazing. If that's not amazing to you, I would beg you to go to the Lord and ask him to convert you. That's amazing. In this child, look what he says, notice. He says in verse 29, now you're letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word. Now I can die in peace. My conscience has peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation. Jesus hadn't yet gone to the cross. You know more than Simeon. You hear more than Simeon. Here's a poor beggar baby, and he says, This is the Savior of the world. My eyes have seen your salvation, that you, Lord, have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles. It's not enough. Isaiah said, it's too light a thing. There's not enough glory in Jesus just being the Redeemer of the Jews. He had to get more glory, is what Isaiah says. There's gotta be more weight, kavod, weightiness, heaviness. Great, you know when people used to say, well, that's weighty? It's weighty. This is weighty. Jesus is the Savior of the world. That is weighty. There's not enough glory. In being the Savior of Israel, notice he says, a light for revelation to the Gentiles. That's us. That's most of us. I mean, we're undeserving. We were not in covenant. We didn't have all the privileges and nurtures. Our forefathers were pagans, all of us. My neighbor tells me he won't come to church. I'll have to let him listen to the sermon now that I mention him. He's great. He's wonderful. But he won't come to church, he says, because us heathens will burn the building down. And I said, we're all heathens by nature. That's the point. We're all Gentiles. We're all pagans by nature. Yes, I understand. If you grew up in a Christian home, you're a covenant child. I get that. But we're Gentiles. And yet Jesus is the only Savior for any men who ever live in the world. That's the good news. That's the news. Everybody should say amen to but here's the other side notice what Simeon now does he goes to Mary and He gives this really strange prophecy To the mother of the Redeemer and he says this child is has been appointed by God for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and is a sign to be spoken against. Yes, a sword will pierce your own heart also that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. Now, what Simeon just did is what everyone around us needs to hear today. Jesus is not just a savior. He is not going to save everybody. Jesus Christ is not going to be everyone's savior. He was appointed by God for the fall and the rising, for the casting away and for the raising up of many. This is the whole point in the Bible, right? Who is the most offensive? By the way, it is more offensive to talk about Christ in this light than it is to talk about sexual sin right now. This is more of an offense. The Bible says that he is the rock of offense, that men stumble over him, that there are multitudes that hate Jesus. But to you who believe he's precious, he's the chief cornerstone, right? It's the two sides of the Lord Jesus. He is judge and he is savior. And what Simeon is essentially saying is that the Jesus of the scriptures is the zenith and he is the end of every single man, woman, and boy and girl in this world. Every single person is either going to stumble and fall over the true Jesus of the Bible, or they are going to find him to be the most precious Savior. There is no third way. It's very common for people to talk about third ways right now, third rails, third ways. There is no third way. Either he is an offense, or he is the Redeemer. He is either an odious stench, Death to people that are dying spiritually and don't want life or he is the glorious aroma of life to those who believe he is death to death to some his life to life to others and And Simeon says he is going in that sense he puts a a dividing line between humanity and And it's very, very popular to say, I hate us-them language. Now, a lot of us-them language is very wicked language, to be fair, and self-righteous. But Genesis 3.15, God says he is going to put a dividing line through human history. that he is going to set some apart to be in union with his son, and others are going to perish. And Simeon picks right up on that, and he says the same thing Genesis 3.15 says, he says the same thing the rest of the Bible says, he says it, and here's why, because you and I need to hear it. Now, why do we need to hear it? Why? You may be here, and you may say, I hate this. And you would never verbalize that, because most people are disingenuous. Sorry for my brutal Yankee honesty. I'm not being a Southerner this morning, purposely. You may not verbalize that, but why do people either love this or hate this? Why do we need to hear that people love this or hate this? Two reasons. One, we need to say, do I love it or hate it? Do I love him? Or have I created a Jesus of my own imagination? And I've said, I don't want this Christ. I want my own Jesus, your own personal Jesus. I want to create him in my image. I want to make him a nice, dirty Jesus just like me. Because that's what we want. We heard that this morning in the reading of the law. We can make the Jesus of the Bible into a dirty Jesus that just tolerates sin and didn't come to atone for sin and doesn't call men and women to repent and doesn't work in our hearts. So I have to ask that question. You have to ask that question. Have I come to him? Am I trusting him? Do I find him to be the glorious, sweet-smelling aroma of life, or do I find him to be a stench? Secondly, I hope all of you have said, sweet smelling aroma of life. And if you have, we need to hear this because the world hates us. God behind Simeon is getting Mary and the disciples and us ready for persecution. this is necessary to hear, because if I go through my day thinking, oh, you know, everybody's just nice and live and let live and the cult of niceness prevails and it's great, and then I start to bear faithful witness to Jesus, and I start to feel the satanic opposition of the world against me for seeking to be faithful because God wants his people to be faithful, and humble and faithful, we need to hear that this is the reality of life in this fallen world. If I'm gonna make it to the end, I need to hear this. Because Jesus says in the parable of the four soils, that there are those that hear the word and they receive it for a time, but when persecution comes, they fall away. The persecution gets too hot. and they fall away. Mary herself needed this when she saw her son crucified. That's the sword going through her heart. She needed this. Here's the one that's said to be the savior of the world. Why is he hanging on a tree? Because that's how he's going to save the world. She doesn't know that yet. She's treasuring these things in her heart. She's trying to learn and figure out, who is this child God's given me? She doesn't know who he is. And Luke is telling us that, in a very real sense, the special word for Mary is to help her see don't be discouraged. It's necessary for the Christ to suffer. It's necessary for Jesus to be crucified. It's necessary for the whole world to turn against him and the powers of hell to be let loose on him and the wrath of God to be poured out on him because that's where the salvation is. Finally, I want to talk briefly about the reception of Christ. And there is that sweet little appendix, as it were. It's not just the aged Simeon in the temple. There is an elderly believing woman in the temple. Isn't that wonderful? Christ is for man and woman. I think the Bible does that often. He's for young and old. He's for man and woman. He's for every tongue tribe. nation and language there is no one outside the purview of his redemption who doesn't as a sinner qualify for their need for needing Jesus and notice there is this godly woman she's probably about a hundred and three she's been living her whole life bearing the trials of God by grace think about this her husband dies when she's a very young woman and she spends the rest of her life Not anxiously surfing dating sites. I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just saying she didn't do it. And you can say, well, that's because they didn't have them. If they had them, she wouldn't have done it. OK, I'm going to win this argument. Now, now. She's not discontent. She's content living her life, worshiping God in the temple, worshiping him according to his word. She's content serving God in whatever capacity he wants to use her. And she comes at that moment, notice, she's in the temple. And notice verse 38, coming up at that very hour, it's that language, it's sort of like the coincidental language. It's like, oh, coincidentally, here's the Redeemer. And she just so happened to come. I mean, God is just weaving all this together in the temple. And she comes at that very hour. And she thanks God. She's been waiting. She's not a self-righteous, religious zealot. She is waiting for the Redeemer to redeem her from her sins. She's worshiping God and waiting. And she comes up and she thanks God in the temple. And, and this is the fascinating thing. This is one of the great verses in the Bible. She went and spoke about him. to all who were waiting for redemption in Jerusalem. Now, we actually don't have one single word that Anna spoke. That's interesting, I think. Luke doesn't tell us, coming up, she thanked God and she said, like Simeon did, Luke tells us she went out And she found that little group of believers, the remnant, the people that were also, like her, waiting for the Redeemer. Because it was only a remnant. Isaiah says that. Paul says that in Romans. That's always only a remnant. The true church is always a little church. And she goes out, and I think it would be impossible for a woman of 103 to go out and talk to the millions of people that lived in Jerusalem at the time. So clearly she goes to that little band of believing saints, and she spoke about Christ. She said he's here. Now, this passage has often been used to help promote evangelism. If I believe in Jesus, then I should go and I should speak about Jesus, and that's true. David in Psalm 116 said, I believed, I believed, and therefore I spoke. Paul will pick up on that in Romans 10. I believed, and so I spoke. We also believe, Paul says, and so we speak. Not perfectly, oftentimes with fear and trepidation, But this passage has often been used to sort of encourage, well, if you're loving Jesus, if you're trusting Jesus, how is your evangelism? And all of us sort of take a step back and think about how much we fail. And then we start to feel guilty and we think about wanting to do better. But she actually doesn't go and witness to unbelievers. This is the really important part. The first thing she does is she goes out to others who are hoping in the same Christ that she's hoping in, and she tells them about the Jesus who has come into the world, who she has seen with her own eyes. Now, I think that this is how it works. When we receive Jesus, And he is freely offered. That's a big thing in this passage, by the way. He is just, God is freely giving the Redeemer to his people. He is the free gift of God. He's putting redemption into the hands of Simeon. He's putting redemption before the eyes of Anna. And she goes out and she talks about the freeness of the grace of God. She says, it's all free, he's here. They don't do anything. They're not called to do anything, but she does respond. She believes and she speaks. And I think when we are believing, we will then want to be with other people who are believing. It will be our chief desire to be with other believers in the church, on the Lord's day, throughout the week. We'll want to be with believers. And when we get together, we'll want to talk about Christ. And then I think that fuels our desire to talk about him to people who are not believers. I actually think when we talk about Christ together and what he's doing in us and how we're returning to him and we're repenting of our sins and I haven't been walking like I should and I'm going to the Lord and I've gone back to Christ and my life, I have too much greed and I have too much lust and I have too much pride and I have too much of this but I know that the blood of Jesus is sufficient and I've gone back to him and I'm going back to him and I know that I'm messing up every single day in a thousand ways But I'm going back to Christ. And as we tell each other that, that then has the impact of fueling our ability and desire to do it to others who don't yet know him. I think there's a correlation. I want to leave you with these thoughts. There's a lot here for us. I want to ask you when you think about the Christ that I have just proclaimed to you, not the Jesus of liberals on the media. So let's just push that Jesus aside. Let's talk about this Jesus. and everything he's spoken in his word and all that he is, all that he had to do, and the shedding of his blood from infancy till he hung on the cross. Even in the garden, he shed blood for our redemption. The Jesus who had to keep the law for us. When you think about the Jesus who is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense and a chief cornerstone, what is your response in your heart? That's a question only you can answer. What is your heart crying out? Is it saying, no, I don't want to hear this anymore? Or is it saying, yes, I need to keep hearing this? I'll never forget. I suppose I was converted October 10th or 11th of 2001. I don't think you need to know a date. My sister had called me. And she had said, you're not a Christian, because I wasn't living like a Christian. And if you die, you're going to go to hell forever. And that's not like my sister. And I was probably hungover. And I said, I need to keep hearing this. And I remember thinking, what in the world am I saying? Believers want to keep hearing the hard truths, the real truths. They want to hear about the real Jesus. That's where the hope is. That's where our comfort is. We can die in peace. We can have the hope of glory if we respond that way. I want to ask you how you're responding to the Lord Jesus. Then I want to ask you, is the Christ who you profess to believe in as big as the Christ that Simeon saw. You know, I think oftentimes even we who do believe in the true Jesus of Scripture have a truncated view of the Lord Jesus. We don't think he's quite as infinitely glorious and all-sufficient and powerful for every nation, for whoever walks on the face of the earth, that nobody is outside of the purview. Every man, woman, and child needs him. He is the only Savior. He's a light to the Gentiles, that he's spreading his light across the face of the world. No matter what we think about what's going on in our culture wars, is our Jesus the one who is unfrayed on the throne of God? He is seated right now on the throne of God. And you know what? He is not at all in any sense whatsoever wringing his hands over the culture war in America, or over persecution against his own people in the Middle East. He's in control of everything. He is the light of the nations. He is doing everything that is supposed to be done in sending his gospel out, in building up his people. And we need to have that kind of view. about the Christ that we believe in. And then finally, I want to ask you, are you talking to other Christians about the Lord Jesus? You know, that's a very easy place to start. Talk about what the Lord's doing in your life. Talk about what you're reading in the word. Talk about how you're going back to Christ. I think that you'll find as you do that, you will want to be bolder in your witness to unbelievers and you'll be built up and you'll be filled with hope and you'll be rejoicing and thanking God like Anna. Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we do pray that you would give us hearts that believe and that have right views of your son we pray that you would give us a zeal to talk about him and to delight in him even in as much Lord Jesus as we know that you are a stumbling stone to so many but a chief cornerstone to us a precious chosen cornerstone we pray that you would draw us near to you even as we come to the table now we pray that you would enlighten our minds and hearts that you would give us more hope that we would be able to say with Simeon, now we can depart in peace. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.