As time goes by, the unexpected circumstances of your existence can push you into the slump of reactionary rather than intentional living. This can happen in your relationships, your career, your use of your resources or your walk with Jesus. To truly live an intentional life in the grand design of God, you must arrange your life based on two things: your worldview and your place within that story. As we look toward a new year, we will continue to reflect on the implications of the arrival of Jesus, taking our cues from an older righteous man named Simeon and an elderly prophetess named Anna. In them, we will find the manner in which God expects you to posture yourself to participate in His overarching purposes.
What Are You Waiting For?
Simeon was waiting with eager expectation for God's salvation.
Luke 2:22-35 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”, and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
God had promised Simeon that he would be able to see the consolation, the comfort, of Israel after years of oppression at the hands of foreign empires, though Simeon had no idea how God would bring it about. The four Gospels and the book of Acts give us clues as to how God will bring His salvation to our city in our times. Read them as Simeon did the Old Testament Scriptures and expect Jesus to bring His salvation.
To better understand Simeon's joy at meeting Jesus, we need to understand the storyline upon which Simeon was placing all of his hopes. Why was he so enthralled when he met the person of Jesus and why should we be?
Timothy Keller expressed it well in a 2012 post explaining the reality of the Christian worldview and storyline in which the world finds itself:
Look again at the uniqueness of Christianity. Only the Christian worldview locates the problem with the world not in any part of the world or in any particular group of people but in sin itself (our loss of relationship with God). And it locates the solution in God’s grace (our restoration of a relationship with God through the work of Christ). Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply divide the world into the heroes and the villains. (And if we did , we would certainly have to count ourselves among the latter as well as the former.) Without an understanding of the gospel, we will be either naively utopian or cynically disillusioned. We will be demonizing something that isn’t bad enough to explain the mess we are in; and we will be idolizing something that isn’t powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all other worldviews do.
The Christian story line works beautifully to make sense of things and even to help us appreciate the truth embedded in stories that clearly come from another worldview. The Christian story line, or worldview, is: creation (plan), fall (problem), redemption and restoration (solution):
The whole world is good. God made the world and everything in it was good. There are no intrinsically evil parts of the world. Nothing is evil in its origin. As Tolkien explained about his archvillain in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in the beginning ‘even Sauron was not so.’ You can find this ‘creational good’ in anything.
The whole world is fallen. There is no aspect of the world affected by sin more or less than any other. For example, are emotion and passions untrustworthy and reason infallible? Is the physical bad and the spiritual good? Is the day-to-day world profane but religious observances good? None of these are true; but non-Christian story lines must adopt some variations of these in order to villainize and even demonize some created thing instead of sin.
The whole world is going to be redeemed. Jesus is going to redeem spirit and body, reason and emotion, people and nature. There is no part of reality for which there is no hope.
- Timothy Keller post 12/26/12 on The Christian Storyline, http://kellerquotes.com/the-christian-story-line/
Simeon had been waiting for the predictions of the prophets to be fulfilled for the entirety of his life. Upon meeting Jesus with Mary and Joseph at the temple, Simeon rejoices in the fact that everything God promised the people of Israel was finally coming to pass. He quotes the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6), who wrote about the Savior of all the world 700 years prior to Jesus' arrival.
In the midst of all that Jesus would do, Simeon accurately prophesied about Jesus:
1) He would be a great source of controversy amongst the people.
2) Jesus' work would expose the thoughts of people's hearts and pierce their souls.
Jesus does this as He reveals His unique identity as the only living God, the Messiah who comes to make all wrong things right as He delivers His righteous commands that are to be obeyed.
3) He would be the source of salvation for the Jews and the Gentiles.
This is what Jesus is through His sinless life, death on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for sins, and His resurrection from the dead. Jesus offered Himself for all of humanity and turned the known world upside down as He brought men, women and children to repentance and faith.
As it was with the shepherds' finding Jesus in the manger, all things that God has said will turn out exactly as He said they would be. To find ourselves in right standing with God and ready to be a part of His redemptive story, we want to have the same posture of expectation that Simeon had.
Peter, one of the inner circle of disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry, exhorted us to be like Simeon in this manner:
1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Looking with expectation prepares you to see what God is doing and how you can be involved.
What To Do While You Wait
Anna was preparing for God's salvation with faithful fasting and prayer.
Luke 2:36-40 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.
Anna would have hardly expected to have lost her husband at such an early age. Despite this tragedy, Anna found her refuge in the house of God and built her life around the coming kingdom of God through fasting and prayer.
What do fasting and prayer do?
Fasting humbles you before God when you acknowledge your deep need for the Holy Spirit to move in and through your life. It intensifies your sense of dependency upon Him.
Prayer involves you in the purposes of God by preparing you for action.
In the midst of her loss, Anna's response enabled her to play a special role in announcing the arrival of the Messiah that, undoubtedly, prepared the people of Israel for the redemption of Christ. With fasting and prayer, you can take part in Jesus' gospel purposes in your family, city and the nations today.
Anna never left the temple. We should never leave these two postures of a lifestyle of fasting and prayer. The kingdom of God is not to be an interesting or a beneficial part of your life; it is to be the central thing. It is those who are looking for the redemption of Christ that will be a part of what He is doing when the times will have reached their fulfillment.
Being devoted to God and righteous like Simeon and Anna does not at all mean entering a convent and spending the entirety of your days there. It does mean devotedly doing business, relationships and life according to the leadership of God's Word and counsel. It means they stayed connected to the house of God, were able to meet the Messiah and be involved in announcing His redemption that Jesus would one day bring to the world, particularly to all of those who have been waiting for Him.
This was part of the inspiration behind the name "Second City."
Why Second City Church? (Pastor Rollan shared the vision behind Second City Church.)
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Let's welcome Christ this holiday season with the same expectation and devotion that the old man (Simeon) and the prophetess (Anna) displayed. If you've never repented of sin and put your trust in God as they did, do so today and watch Him bring His redemptive purpose to your life. If there are sin cycles in your life of which you have not repented as a believer, do so today. Let's build expectation for what the Lord will do in every area of your life and this city in the new year!
Next week we will speak about how to, like Christ, grow in strength, wisdom and the grace of God on our lives.
Second City Church- An Unexpected Journey Sermon Series 2014