pastor steve: Longing to see God break into your life (Luke 2:22-40)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon December 28, 2008

Luke 2 begins with the birth account of our Lord Jesus in the town of Bethlehem when the time came for the baby to be born (Luke 2:6); as there was no room for Joseph and Mary, Jesus was placed in a manger (Luke 2:7). And about that time, an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds out in the fields nearby. In our family, when we do our Advent reading, our children love to emphasize the last word of Luke 2:9, “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” It makes it dramatic! The shepherds heard angel announcing to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10-12). And, then there was this glorious appearance of the heavenly host, the army of angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:13-14). When the angels left, you see the shepherds making their ways to see Jesus. When they saw Jesus they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.” (Luke 2:17) On returning, they were glorifying and praising God.

This probably is the all time favorite story about Christmas. Then, there is the famous Christmas carol, Angels We Have Heard On High from 1862 we all know and cherish.

Angels we have heard on high / Sweetly singing over the plains

And the mountains in reply, Echoing their joyous strains.

Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o

Shepherds, why this Jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong?

What the gladsome tidings be Which inspire your heavenly song?

Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o

Come to Bethlehem and see Him whose birth the angels sing;

Come, adore on bended knee Christ, the Lord, the newborn King

Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o

See Him in a manger laid Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth!

Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, With us sing our Savior's birth.

Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o

But, rarely do we consider what took place afterward! There is more to the Christmas story after the Shepherds visited Jesus who was just born.

1. The rest of Christmas story…

The story involves Joseph and Mary at the temple after 40 days have passed from Mary giving birth to Jesus. A mother who gave birth was to take part in the rite of purification forty days after giving birth according to Leviticus 12:2-8. We see them taking part in this rite in Luke 2:22. We also see them observing the law to present their firstborn Jesus to God according to Exodus 13:2 as well as dedication of Jesus into the Lord’s service according to 1 Samuel 1 & 2.[1] Joseph and Mary were God fearing people who took God’s prescribed way of life very seriously. Luke 2:24 mentions “a pair of doves or two young pigeons,” which was the offering of the poor. This was Jesus’ family background, a poor family, but a family who took God very seriously.

2. Longing to see God breaking into your life

Luke 2:25, we are introduced to a new character named, Simeon. He is descried as righteous and devout man in old age. He was in line with the Old Testament figures like Job who were called righteous. Darrell Bock thinks that Simeon’s qualities reflect “a wise elder who has walked with God.”[2]

What stands out about Simeon is his deepest longing of his heart to see God break into history. Luke 2:25 describes him as “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Eugene Peterson in his Message paraphrases this phrase as “a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel.” New Living Translation translates it, “… was eagerly waiting for Messiah to come and rescue Israel.” So, here waiting is not like sitting out on a porch on a clear night hoping to catch a sight of falling star. It is nothing like a person with a lottery ticket in his hand who must wait until the winning combination of numbers is revealed.

No, Simeon waited his whole life for one thing, the relief, the consolation of Israel through the coming of the Promised Messiah. When you wait for your good friend to show up at a restaurant, there is certainty about your waiting because you know your good friend is trustworthy and has track record of keeping his/her promises.

Darrell Bock describes likeness of Simeon as “Saints in touch with God’s heart often await expectantly the completion of God’s promises.”[3]

We must ask, “Do I long to see God break into my life and into those around me?” In a carpool ride down to Chicago to visit House of Prayer, a church serving homeless and served by homeless people, Adelaide asked a question something like this. What was one thing that impacted you the most in your childhood? Well, I had to think about for few minutes. It prompted me to remember a moment when I prayed to God when I was 14 years old still in Korea just few months before I immigrated to the US. I wasn’t a Christian then, but I remember asking God, “God, if you are there, I want you to show me you are there.” It was a callout to God out of desperation from a teenage boy who felt miserable because he was lost, depressed and disillusioned. It was a callout to God to break into my miserable life. And guess what, God answered my callout to him soon after I came to Chicago. Through a series of events, I ended up at a camp retreat out in the camping ground by Indianan Dunes. There I was in a tent surrounded by eight or so others who were praying for me. There, not only did God let me know that he existed and was there. He came near me. He showed me Jesus. I longed to see God and God showed himself to me through Jesus.

God always answers longings of people for God to break into their lives by revealing Jesus. When was last time you callout to God to break into your life? If you are not calling out to God to break into you life, it is because you don’t understand what Simeon understood; he understood that there was more to life in the absence of the consolation of Israel. To cultivate the longing that expresses in callout to God to come and break into our lives, there is got to be this realization that there must be more! There is a song by David Ruis called, “There must be more.” It goes like this.

Lord I groan, Lord I kneel

I am cryin’ out for something real

‘Cause I know deep in my soul

There must be more

Lord I’m tired, yes I’m weak

I need your power to work in me

But I can’t let go, I keep hanging on

There must be more

There must be more; there must be more

River flow, fire burn; river flow, fire burn

Holy Spirit breathe on me; Holy Spirit breathe on me.

Do you know there is more? If you didn’t know I tell you there is more God wants to show you. He wants you to behold Jesus. He is your salvation. He is your consolation, your rescue, comfort. Let the deep longing rise within you and callout to God. What he will give you is his Son Jesus. As Simeon did, you will behold Jesus, your light!

3. Longing fueled by the Holy Spirit

Going back to Luke 2:25, it says that the Holy Spirit was upon him. And, Luke 2:26, it was the Holy Spirit who revealed to him… that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” His longing, his waiting had already this deep element of trust in God that he was going to do what he said he would do. Now, his longing was fueled even more by certainty when the Holy Spirit revealed to him that he was to see with his eyes how God was going to unfold his rescue plan for Israel. God was going to send his Messiah and he would become the hope of Israel, the consolation, the relief of Israel.

Luke 2:27, we see Simeon going into the temple courts because the Spirit moved him. Just when Joseph and Mary were obediently following the way of God by presenting Jesus at the temple, the Spirit tucks him to go into the temple courts. And, it happened, the divinely appointed moment when Simeon got to behold the salvation, Jesus Christ. If you would consider history as in a shape of hour glass on its side, the moment Jesus was born is the narrow tube part. All the promises from the old days are now distilled into one focal point on Jesus.

What I see here is where there is desperate longing to see God break in, God sends his Holy Spirit to make sure his Son Jesus Christ gets revealed to us. For us, in a similar way from Simeon, we long for another day when Jesus is going to break into our history once again for good.

4. Longing fueling the lifestyle of worship, fasting and praying

From Luke 2:36, we are introduced to Anna. She was known as a prophetess in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets. She really is a remarkable woman. Only after seven years into her marriage, she lost her husband and became a widow for eighty four. Eighty four years of widowhood plus seven years of marriage equals to ninety one years old. It says she was very old. She was easily more than hundred years old.

Luke 2:38 describes her lifestyle. It says, “She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.” The temple of Jerusalem built by Herod was large with many little rooms for various purposes. So, she could have been allowed to live in one of these rooms at the temple. Or, she might have centered her life at the temple living nearby. We cannot be certain about her circumstance. But, what we can be certain is about her lifestyle. For her, there were no weekly holy days when she went to the temple. She centered her life around the temple so exclusively that it was like she never left the temple. What was she doing there? Three things: worship night and day, fasting and praying (Luke 2:37).

For Simeon, it was the Holy Spirit who led him into the temple because of his longing to see God break into the history of Israel. For Anna, she met Jesus because she never left the temple. Luke 2:38 says, “Coming up to them at that very moment.” It was the moment when Simeon was talking to Joseph and Mary about the child’s destiny. “The child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sigh that will be spoken against, so the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35). When I hear that Anna came to them at that very moment, I see God at work behind the scene. But, I also see how her lifestyle played into see this happen. She was well over one hundred years old. And, for majority of her life she centered her life on worship, fasting and praying to God.

What I see in Anna is the theme of running the race with consistency in her devotion to God. She reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow from Luke 18. It is a story about a widow who asks unjust judge to grant her justice against her adversary. Jesus asks in Luke 18:6-9, “… will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Day and night, Anna served faithfully at the temple worship; she fasted and prayed persistently for long time. What do you think motivated her to persistently center her life on worship, fasting and prayer at the temple? It says when she came up to them she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Here “looking forward to” is the same Greek word translated as “waiting for” from Luke 2:25 by Simeon. It is no different with Anna. She too like many along with Simeon had been waiting for, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, the redemption of Jerusalem. It was this longing that fueled her worship, fasting and praying.

5. Questions to reflect…

In closing here are some questions we need to reflect:

What do you long after? As we have seen in Simeon and Anna’s life, the kind of longing you have is very important. Longing to see God break into your life, to believe that there is got to be more with God, longing to behold Jesus as your salvation… when this longing is not there, it is like loosing heart. I am sure you all have all kinds of longings, to graduate from school, to be successful, to gain back grounds you lost over the holidays tables, to be a good person, to be good to others… It’s all good, you got to have this stream of deep longing after God that can drive the rest of longings. And, you got to fuel your longing for God to break into your life and others through worship and through fasting and through prayer as Anna did. When you set your heart on seeing God break into your life, you see the Holy Spirit moving in you. Remember, there must be more!

What gives you peace? Simeon felt peace having seen Jesus. He told God, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.” Beholding Jesus, he experienced peace, true contentment, knowing that he would soon die. Doesn’t this put things to perspective for us? We all assume that we could live longer than the number of years we’ve lived so far. And, there is no sense of impending death approaching because of aging. And, for Simeon to have experienced peace facing death, how should our encounter with Jesus affect you and me?

pastor steve

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Longing to see God break into your life (Luke 2:22-40)

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