Standing for a New Testament reading coming from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort, too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him, we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please join me in prayer. Most holy father, we recognize how dull our ears are so often. How foolish our hearts are as you speak to us through your word. How easily distracted we are, our minds moving about from one thing to another. Hardly attentive to what is before us. And yet, how desperately do we need you to speak to us today? With what great desire, if we were in our full senses, would we reach out and cling to every word that you speak to us? And so, Father, we pray that you would put aside in our minds and our hearts all dullness and foolishness. All criticism and anger. And that we would come before you. eager and hungry, waiting to hear how your Holy Spirit will minister to us the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his work. I pray that this would be my experience as well. As a hearer of the word and as the speaker this morning, Father, strengthen me by your spirit so that it would not be me, the preacher who stands here, but your Holy Spirit who ministers to your people and simply use this eminently forgettable and weak vessel for your great and holy purposes. We count on your spirit, and without him, we can do nothing. Without our Lord Jesus Christ, we dare not even stand here and hear your word. But in him, we have every confidence that you love us and that you desire us to grow in our holiness, in our love, and our devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ. Send your spirit that that might happen this morning. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Christmas is magical. It's brief and its powers are limited, but it can make you happy if that's what you want. It only works once a year, of course. In August, the songs sound dumb. You have to work up to it through the fall, starting right after Halloween. Thanksgiving, of course, is sort of a dress rehearsal, Christmas minus the gifts. And then December is like a fast shoot that you sit down on it and shoop, shoop, shoop. Suddenly it's December 24th. And here it is. Thus wrote Garrison Keillor. And of course, he was speaking about Advent, although we call that whole season Christmas, but we'll forgive him for that. It's a pretty common error these days. Now I know that the stockings are taken down. and the gifts are unwrapped, but we are still in the Christmas season. In fact, today is the first of two Sundays of the season of Christmas this year. Christmas is a 12-day season starting on December 25th, ending on January 5th, thus making for the 12 days of Christmas. That being said, we understand that the Christmas season includes Advent. That's when all the decorations come out and everyone gets ready. And the entire season certainly does go fast. I realized just this morning that I really have to start my Christmas shopping quite soon. I'm a little late this year. My wife told me that I, she said that I shouldn't wear my red tie. And I said, but it's a Christmas tie. And she said, Christmas was yesterday. I said, you're the pastor's wife. You ought to know that Christmas goes till January 5th. But finally she won out because I recognized that a red tie with a blue shirt with white stripes kind of made it look like flag day. And so burgundy it is. Now why would people call Christmas magical? It seems like a strange word to be associated with any Christian holiday, really. But of course, nobody is suggesting that Christmas is a time for witches and spells, the nightmare before Christmas accepted. When people say that Christmas is magical, they mean that Christmas brings things that are entirely unexpected. Something otherworldly. And even amidst all our Christmas traditions, when you see a house lit up with nice Christmas lights on a cold night, the tree inside with all the lights around it, knowing that you have family and friends inside who are waiting for you to come and join them so you can all celebrate together, it does seem otherworldly, doesn't it? It does seem magical. Now, in some ways, this is doubly strange because magic is all about surprises. That's what makes magic fun. And again, before you start writing emails, you understand I'm not talking about paganism. I'm talking about David Copperfield and pulling rabbits out of hats, that sort of thing. You expect that a lion was going to be in the box because there was a lion there just a minute ago. But surprise, the lion is now a lady and the lion is gone. You expect that the card that you selected randomly from a deck and signed your name to and watch the magician tear up and burn in front of you is gone forever and surprise, it's been in your hand this whole time. If this were a different sort of church, I'd actually do a magic trick right now, but it's not. But I say it's doubly surprising, it's doubly odd here, because Christmas is very much a time of tradition. You know exactly what's going to come next every year for your whole life. Every year it's going to be the church's Christmas dinners. Aunt Edna is going to send her fruitcake. We're going to listen to an Amy Grant Christmas album. We'll watch Rudolph and Charlie Brown on TV, open a special gift of pajamas and hot cocoa, call grandma, and the next day have Christmas dinner with the cousins while the kids play Nerf with Nerf guns. Whatever your traditions are, you probably have them or you've had them and maybe you're part of a new family now and you're trying to develop them. But the point is that at Christmas time, nothing is really unexpected. And yet the whole season is filled with expectation. You know you're going to get presents, and yet here they come, wrapped up neatly and nicely, tied with bows and ribbon. And there's expectation, even though you knew it was coming. Even though I know some of you ladies chose the gift and wrapped it up and told your husband what he got for you, because after that incident with the green sweater five years ago, you're not going to have him do that again. for all the cultural influences that were created and co-opted from various sources to make our Christmas celebrations what they are today with the trees and the candles and the evergreen and all of that, and I know all the sources somehow Amidst all that secular influence, they've still done a wonderful job at providing a sense of wonder and surprise in a season defined by tradition. And that's wonderful because that's what the first Christmas was all about. The Messiah was long expected. The hymn has it entirely right, come thou long expected Jesus. But the fact that he was prophesied about in scripture didn't take away from the delight and surprise at his arrival. It's not at all clear that he would show up, at least it wasn't clear to everyone, that he would show up born as a baby. Many didn't realize where he was supposed to be born in. and specifically that he would show up at the temple at the same time as Simeon, who had not only been waiting for him, but had been told by God that he would actually see him before he died. He knew it was going to happen, and yet Simeon's reaction, which we'll focus on today, is one of pure surprise and delight. So the promise that Simeon had received is found in Luke 2.25, if you look there, that he would see the consolation of Israel. The word consolation is a word that means encouragement or exhortation, particularly in the face of sadness. Encouragement in the face of sadness. It carries a profound sense of an emphatic concern. Someone who is consoled has this hurt deep down in their heart. And the consolation is a way of building them up in light of that hurt. So the constant consolation of Israel means that Israel was hurting. That Israel as a nation was in pain. And then this consolation would be the very thing that lifted them out of this pain. The very thing that Israel was desperately waiting for. So Simeon was promised that he would see the consolation of Israel before he died. So we're going to look at these three things. What did it mean for him to see the consolation of Israel? Who was it for? And what does it do? What did it mean? Who is it for? What did it do? So first, what does it mean? We often hear that Israel at this point in their history was looking for a political savior, someone to save them from the oppression and the occupation of the Romans. Now, this is certainly true. It was true for Simeon as well, it's true for us even though we don't expect that our true political freedom will be achieved by anything less than the return of Christ himself. But at this point, while some were looking for nothing but a political Messiah, there were many others who had recognized there was a unique spiritual identity attached to the promises of the Messiah. So much so that in fact the political element for them was greatly diminished. So while John the Baptist, for example, preached against the king, his preaching was of a spiritual nature. He talked about character, talked about his sin before God. The focus, John the Baptist being the last prophet of the Old Testament era, his focus was not on getting the Romans out of the land, but getting the sin out of your heart. His biggest targets were not the Romans, but the spiritual leaders of Israel. His message, repentance, not military strength. And the Jews at this time, Israel as a nation, was a nation in perpetual exile. The Jews had been sent into exile when Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and they had never truly returned. They came back, but they were still a nation under the control of another king. They didn't rule themselves independently. And spiritually, they remain shut out. There's no indication that the glory of the temple, there's no glory cloud when they returned. That didn't seem to exist. They had promises from God, but those promises to them did not seem like they were being fulfilled. And in fact, there was a period of over 400 years in which they were waiting and this was not happening. And so it gradually became clear to them that their return from exile would not be simply political, but that it would be spiritual, would have to do with their hearts, their souls before God. And as they searched the scriptures, this became increasingly clear because it's all right there. So the consolation that Israel needed was that it needed to see salvation. It needed a salvation bringer. Politically and spiritually and they needed that one who would bring salvation the one chosen by God to bring it. If you look in verse 26, he was told that he wouldn't see death until he met the Lord's Christ. The word Christ comes from the root word chrisma, which means to anoint something, particularly the oil. The classic word for infant baptism is called christening. It's an anointing or a washing. So you think of King Saul or King David having oil poured on his head when he was declared by Samuel to be the future king, right? And so Simeon puts this together for us. He says in verse 25, he's waiting for the consolation, or read, sorry, in 25, that he's waiting for the consolation of Israel. In 26, we know that he will see the Lord's anointed, the Christ, kingly imagery here. And then he declares this in verse 30. My eyes have seen not just the consolation, not just your Messiah. My eyes have seen your salvation. To see the consolation of Israel is to see Jesus, the Lord's Christ, and to know that in seeing him, you see salvation. And I should say, not just to know it, but to delight in it, to find joy and satisfaction in salvation. Do you delight in your salvation? That which you have from the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you celebrate? Do you really rejoice in it? When we sing in worship, are you singing because this is the hymn that we put in front of you? Or because your heart is full of wonder? and amazement and thanksgiving and love that you're overwhelmed that a sinner like yourself would be saved by a Messiah like that. Do you have that confidence that as you see Jesus Christ with the eyes of your heart, as you see Him by faith, you are in fact seeing salvation? That you know that your sin, all of your sin, your past and your present abiding sin And everything and every attitude that you will have in the future, every way that you might rebel in the future, has been nailed to the cross and put to death by the Lord Jesus Christ. Does that fill you with assurance and joy and a holy fear? If it doesn't, if it's dim, did you realize that you were in danger in the first place? Did you realize the depth of sin and the woe and the sorrow that sin brings about? When I was a kid, a bus cut a corner kind of tight. I was kind of standing on the corner. Nowadays, I would have been looking at my phone, but all of our phones plugged into the wall. So that'd be funny, though, wouldn't it? Beep, beep. Standing on the corner, just looking at nothing. And the bus cuts it real close. And of course, they're very wide. And so the middle of the bus was coming at me and would have knocked me down and probably The back tires, they ran over where I had been standing. So I'm standing there and all of a sudden I get yanked back by some kid. And I kind of turn around. I was annoyed at first. Who's pulling me around? And then I look back and I see the bus roll over what would have been my legs. And I'm glad to be standing here today. Thank you very much, Tim Hockett. I owe you one. It didn't occur to me to be thankful for Tim yanking me back until I realized what kind of danger I was actually in in the first place. This is why our worship always emphasizes a recognition of and confession of our sin, not because we want to make you feel guilty, but because we know you're guilty and we want you to take your guilt to the Lord Jesus Christ and to delight in the salvation that he has given you. If we're not face to face every week with our danger, we'll never be able to worship God in thanksgiving and praise for granting us salvation. We might see him as powerful and sovereign, but we'll never see him as a savior. And so our second question, our second point here, who is it for, also serves as a simple diagnostic question straight from the text to see if you delight in salvation. Who was the consolation for? Well, Jews at the time of the Lord's birth had all sorts of ways that they kept themselves from the Gentiles. They wanted to maintain a ritual cleanliness. They had invented laws that they thought kept them pure from sin when in fact those laws just kept them purely away from people. Even the Apostle Peter had to be confronted by the Apostle Paul after the resurrection, long after, because he was segregating himself from the Gentiles in the church, eating with Jews only. Now in opposition to this, Simeon saw salvation correctly, as Isaiah had prophesied, as light for revelation to the Gentiles. Gentiles, of course, were non-ethnic Jews living outside of the nation, the Romans and everybody else. So here it is. Do you see salvation as something that is intended for people like you, to the exclusion of others? So do you expect your church or your Christian fellowship, to be among people with your same hobbies and interests, whose lives look the same or similar to yours. For Christmas Eve this year, I got to, my family got to go and join the Fomachenkos at their table, and the Getmans were there also. We had a wonderful time with them, and Hannah got to talk about some of her experiences in growing up as a Korean American. The Fomachenkos had also invited their neighbors, who are natives of Slovakia, Those are my people. And they told us a little bit about life in their country, what it's like to live in the former Czech Republic, what it was like, how they came to immigrate to the United States. And as I was sitting there, it occurred to me, how often outside of the church would an American like myself, meaning I have no connection to any other country, get to sit and compare stories from families who have either immigrated from or directly from Slovakia, Russia, Korea. Slovakia and Russia might go together, but Korea is kind of widening the net there quite a bit. I can't imagine what that is, but it's probably a fairly small number. The only time I've ever experienced anything similar is at university at a particular international event when they ask people from different countries to come together. In regular life, in a neighborhood, not very often. And this, of course, applies to race, culture, interests, even religious experience. Do you suppose when Simeon uttered those words, a light to enlighten the nations or the Gentiles, he was expecting that adding Gentiles to the number to be enlightened by Yahweh who would come to worship God would be like adding little covenant children? No, they're Gentiles. They're going to come in with their Gentile stuff and their habits and patterns that they have from being Gentiles. And we see this in the early church, don't we? the big issue in Rome. I think the book of Romans exists because of the tension that you faced having Jews and Gentiles coming together to worship one God. So, of course, it's messy. That process is messy in the Bible. It's difficult for us to have people who are not like us come and worship with us. It brings up all sorts of questions. I've said before, I'm sure that all of you would be happy to have someone with a tarantula neck tattoo come and worship with us some Sunday, and none of you would be happy to have your child come home with a tarantula neck tattoo. We want everyone, and yet we don't want to imitate everyone. It's a fundamental question of what a church is supposed to be. is a small group of like-minded individuals drawn together by their common experience in a larger, typically secular environment. So a military chapel, for example, the large common experience there is being in the military or being on the aircraft carrier or wherever it might be. And then you have, from that common interest subset, you draw together worshipers. When they do cowboy church, they're on the other side of the fence. Cowboy church. I don't know which offends me more, but certainly in the running is the idea that it would be called a church. It's certainly not a church. It's a group of cowboys, and they have a little worship service together. That's not the body of Christ. That's simply some Christians coming together. Now, as far as it goes, I suppose that's good if they're going to, I would assume they put the horses in the stables for the day and come to worship like the rest of the Christians, but in any case, insofar as it goes, I'm glad that at least they're worshiping, although there's some larger issues there, but it's not a church. It's a special interest group. You cannot have a special interest church. You can't have a cowboy church or a biker church. And inevitably it's going to happen, you're not going to have, if you're somewhere in northeastern Washington, everyone who comes to church is going to be from northeastern Washington, maybe from Canada as well. But as you come together as a church, you're not going to, there are limits to that. Right? But they're not limits that we're imposing. They're natural limits that come with geography and location. It should never be economic. It should never be a matter of class. It should never be a matter of education. Sometimes people ask me about the liturgy. One of the things that liturgy has always done is it has united the educated and the less educated. This was common throughout Europe. Everyone worshipped in the local church and they worshipped all together and liturgy made it possible for the least educated to actually participate in a meaningful way. You'll recognize that if your children have ever sung the doxology because they recognize the pattern. The church does not exist for our common comfort amidst a suburban middle class, although many of us are well described by that. The church exists to cut across all of those lines. So let me ask you then, do you see salvation as something for us, for me and my people? or as something for them and also myself, whoever they may be. Would you be like someone who celebrated that salvation, or would you kind of hope that they find another church somewhere else? Consolation means salvation. When we see it, we delight, we rejoice in it, and we want others to experience it. Now finally, what does it do for us? When we determine what this salvation does for us, we get to the heart of why we would want others to see it in the first place, why we would want to share this. So there are a lot of things that we could say about the benefits of salvation, particularly with regards to the final judgment, the pains of hell, the glories of eternal life, but those are not here in our text today. Today's text demonstrates some different things for us. First off, it brings peace even in the face of death. Some of you, I realize, have no fear of dying because you simply haven't faced it. You're young, you're healthy. The idea of dying is very far off to you. It almost seems at this point in your life like a fiction. So if that's you, and it may well be, I'll simply trust that in hearing this message again and again for the rest of your life, that when your day comes, you will be well prepared. It is part of a pastor's task to prepare his people for things that they do not yet face. And what a blessing it would be to be old and gray and lying on your bed with a lifetime of teaching behind you, preparing you for that day when you would cross over. Others of you though are facing illness or age and the idea of dying is not as foreign to you as it once was. We have certain events in our life, certain things that we look forward to. We look forward to graduating kindergarten, to going to a new school, to getting married, to having children. to getting a promotion, retiring, to seeing your grandchildren grow up. But eventually there comes a point in a long life when there's not much expectation left and really the next marker is the grave. What does Simeon teach you or what will he teach you on that day long from now? If you think about it, you could turn this prophecy that he received around, you could say that he had a promise that he would live until he saw the Lord's anointed. You might imagine that if that was me, I might go around saying, well, if I'm not going to die until I see the Lord's anointed, I'm going to go somewhere where the Lord's anointed is definitely not going to be, that way I won't see him and I won't die. I know, I'll go to Egypt. It doesn't work. You have to read Matthew, you'll get it. But what does Simeon say instead? He says, I'm now prepared to die. He says, I'm now prepared to die. Lord, you're now letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word. We assume that Simeon was old. We don't actually have his age. He could have theoretically been a young man, but we assume he is old because he says, now I can die in peace because I have seen the Lord's anointed. This means that as you face death or whatever other kind of trouble you might face, Salvation means that you know how the story ends. If you're anything like me, when I get in a really suspenseful book or something, I always skip ahead to the end and see. I've just got to know what's going to happen. I must have read Lord of the Rings twice as I skipped ahead 200 pages to make sure everybody's okay and then went back to where I was. I just couldn't stand it. It was just too much. I couldn't focus on where I was. I wanted to know how it ended, and knowing that it ended well meant that I could enjoy where I was. Now, some people like the suspense, but I like to know how it ended, and that way I could patiently, I could take my time and enjoy the story without just trying to blaze through to find out if Boromir is really going to make it. So when we face difficulty, when we do face death, if you know how the story ends, then you can face it without fear. But I'm convinced that there remains in all of us a degree of unconvincedness, an inner atheist lurking within, full of doubt, full of worry. Is it really true? And the reason I'm convinced that's there is how easily we all turn to fear. When everything is going well, the bills are paid, health is good, everybody's happy, we're trotting along just nicely, thinking, I'm full of faith right now. I believe in the promises of God. And then illness comes, or then the check bounces. And you think, it's over! He's forgotten me! It's kind of funny to think about, but it's very easy to happen. How quickly do we go from being adopted sons of the Most High to little orphan children whom God has forgotten? What does it take? The constant rehearsing in our minds, the remembering, the continual worship, the continual confession of faith, a life of prayer, of being reminded. Why don't we emphasize reading the Bible every day? Because it takes about two days to forget everything that you read, and it takes about a week to forget everything that you ever believed. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. You remember the facts. I know that. But in about a week, all of us turn into pragmatic atheists for all intents and purposes. And so to be able to face the fear of death requires a constant remembering, a constant beholding of the consolation of Israel. What else does it do? Well, it gives us the ability to bless others. Notice here, Simeon blessed them as he spoke to Mary. Because he had this confidence from seeing the consolation of Israel, he was full. He was full because he had truly and honestly seen, and so he was able to take that fullness, and out of that fullness, he was able to bless others. And in that blessing came something very odd. Mary was blessed with a dramatic honesty. Look at what he says. 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. This is an odd thing to say in meeting someone's baby. Remember, as romantic as we may picture swords to be, they're worn as decorative elements now, and your kids make them out of sticks, but these were not decorative elements. These were weapons that killed people. They saw Roman soldiers carrying their swords around. Think about, can you imagine? Me going to visit someone in the hospital who has just had their baby, and I'm holding the baby, and I say, you know, a shotgun will blast your soul apart for the sake of this child. You would say, this visit has gone very wrong. This is very inappropriate. Well, of course, that would be weird simply because I don't have the Word of God's biblical prophecies about your children. They're just normal children, right? But all the same, look at what that did for Simeon, is he was able to be honest in his blessing. He was able to speak a very uncomfortable truth to Mary. It's a patently offensive thing to say. unless it's actually true and you have the confidence at what you're beholding, you have the love at beholding the consolation so that you're able to speak it. If you have ever struggled to speak honestly with someone, if you ever found yourself in sort of verbal games when people aren't being clear with one another, when you're sort of guessing at their intentions or they're guessing at yours, You're trying to feel them out, you're not really sure what everybody's thinking here and it just seems like you're caught up in this kind of weird game of reading intentions and on the surface everything is fine but you just know that underneath the surface everything is boiling. How do you get through that to real honesty? Behold the consolation of Israel. Witness salvation, because when you see this salvation and you know it's yours, just like you have the confidence over all death. You also have the confidence over all conflict. You know that honesty cannot actually undo us here because I've seen salvation. I know how this ends. And so the truth matters and the way that I say it matters that I can say something hard that is at the same time a blessing. Expectation and surprise. This is a season full of expectation. and full of things that we knew was going to happen. They knew that the Messiah would be born if they believed the Word of God. They knew there would be a Messiah. And yet all this surprise as he showed up in the arms of old Simeon. What does Christmas mean for you? You knew that it was all going to happen. If you read your Old Testament, if you read your New Testament, you know how it's all going to end. There's so much that you already know that nobody needs to tell you. And yet, the marvels of how God is going to work in your life, the ways that he's going to continually surprise you, the marvels of answered prayer, the challenges that he puts in front of you. You know that that will all happen, but you don't know where or how. You know that whatever does happen, though, the Lord is with you because you've beheld the consolation of Israel. Join me in prayer. Our Lord Jesus Christ, we desire to behold you, to see you and to know you and to love you with all of our hearts. We cannot see you in the flesh. Not yet. We will someday. But for now, we see only by faith. Having the promises of things hoped for. And indeed, this hope will not disappoint. And so we trust our Lord Jesus Christ that you will make yourself known to us that by faith we will indeed see you. And then in doing so, we will recognize that this is a salvation that we desperately need. A salvation that is good. A salvation that is here for the nations. A salvation that will pierce the hearts of many. Make us as a church and as a people an outpost of your salvation. Make us into what is really truly a church for all the nations, for all of our neighbors, for every kind of sinner and every kind of saint. Bring them here that we might worship you together in the glory and splendor of your holiness. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.