Waiting, Waiting, Waiting
Notes
Transcript
Merry Christmas, everyone! We told the Christmas narrative last week. We saw how Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, and the Wise men all experienced the Presence of God through the coming of Emmanuel, God with Us.
Now, let’s read what happened after Jesus was born, about forty days.
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.”
Today, we are going to talk about waiting. But, before we do, will you pray with me?
Pray
Background
Background
I need to fill in some background on this passage.
Four thousand years before the occurrence of this passage. God created the heavens and the earth. He made it perfect. Called the sky and the stars and sun out of nothing. Spoke the grass and the flowers and the trees into existence. Molded the animals and the fish. The works.
Finally, he created humanity. Placed them in the Garden. Told them to that he had provided everything for them. They just had to stay away from the one tree. Everything they could have.
Well, they willingly chose to disobey God. They convinced themselves that God was withholding from them, so they tried to supply for themselves what was lacking.
They ate from the fruit of that tree. and sin came into the world. Death came too, physically and spiritually. In the midst of Genesis three, the judgment passage, God presents a promise:
He speaks to the serpent, Satan, and says:
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
This is the first telling of the Gospel. Someone is going to come who will crush the head of the devil and everything that went wrong on that day will be made right.
I can just imagine Adam and Eve hearing this. The thorns and hard work, painful labor, broken marriages and relationships, are all hard, but it will change.
So, they waited. And they waited. And they did not see a change in their lifetime. 930 years of it.
Their children waited. Until Noah came. Huge flood in his lifetime. The whole world is destroyed. And God makes a covenant, a rainbow in the sky, that he will not flood the earth again. And I can just see Noah and his family, the change, the one who would restore creation into the relationship with God, that God promised almost two thousand years before would happen. And it didn’t.
Abraham came about four hundred years after the Flood. He is told that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him and his descendents. That points to the Messiah, the one who would change the world. But, he doesn’t come.
David will have a son who will sit on his throne to rule the world in peace. He doesn’t come.
Isaiah prophesies about a suffering servant who will die for the sins of the world. Instead, Babylon takes over Israel and destroys everything.
The man promised doesn’t come.
Israel comes back to their land. They are led by the prophets of Zechariah, Malachi, and others. They are told that the Messiah is coming. And then, there is 400 years of silence.
Zechariah prophesied:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
And what happens? Nothing.
The people of Israel were never good at waiting on God. But, over and over again, God promised a Messiah who would rescue his people and who would restore the world to what it was created to be. The perfection that was would be again. The relationship that the creation had with the creator would so sweet again.
And, so they waited. For 4 thousand years, they waited. People have a hard time waiting in line at Casey’s for a few minutes.
4 thousand years.
Simeon
Simeon
Simeon was one of those who were waiting. Luke records for us:
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.
A couple notes about Simeon. He was righteous and devout. This means that he tried his hardest to keep the Law, not because he wanted status, but because it was what God said and he wanted to follow God. He was a faithful man.
He was waiting for the consolation of Israel. He didn’t want political deliverance from Rome. He wanted salvation for the world from sin.
Israel’s consolation was Jerusalem’s redemption, as Anna will say:
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.
He looked for the coming of God’s kingdom, as Joseph of Arimathea points out:
Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God.
He was looking for the Master’s return
like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.
Which all ties into the resurrection of the just and the unjust, as Paul said.
and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
We don’t know much about Simeon. We don’t know his background. We don’t know how much he knew theologically about what was going on.
All we know is that he was faithful and that:
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.
When did God reveal this fact to him? The Bible doesn’t say. But, we know that it wasn’t on this day. Simeon had been waiting.
Israel had been waiting for two thousand years. The world had been waiting for 4 thousand years. Simeon had been waiting a lifetime. Day in and day out. Is today going to be the day? And it wasn’t. He goes to sleep, and wakes up again. Is today going to be the day. And it wasn’t. He repeats the cycle. And instead of giving up hope, he lives faithfully, constantly waiting, constantly looking until God says: Go! Moved by the spirit he goes into the temple.
And Simeon sees him. He rips Jesus out of his parents’ arms and praises God.
“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.”
He turns to Mary and Joseph and prophecies about the future:
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.”
After a lifetime of waiting, Simeon sees the hope, but he dies before Jesus grows up. He dies before Jesus performs his first miracle. He sees a taste of what is to come, and dies waiting for the fulfillment.
Us
Us
Christmas is a season of Joy, excitement. Our kids bought presents for each other December 8th, and they have to wait until tomorrow to give them. David has been dying to tell me what he bought me. He kept coming up to me and asking: do you want to know what I got you! And I tell him that he can’t tell me yet, it is a surprise. And he asks “why?” They are all bursting with excitement to give those presents.
We in America have a hard time waiting. Young people refuse to wait to experience the benefits of the covenant of marriage. People refuse to wait to save up money to buy something, instead going into debt. We read stories about people who have been accused of doing different things, and we don’t wait to see what the trial says. We are impatient.
This next generation is being raised on the internet and social media. They don’t know what waiting means, because they can find any fact, any picture, any video, they can post something and see what people think about it in milliseconds.
We don’t know what it means to wait any more.
But, we are in a waiting time period. Jesus came 2 thousand years ago. He was born of the virgin Mary. Lived a perfect life among us and died for us. But, he didn’t stay dead. Three days later, he rose from the dead, proving that he had conquered sin, death, and the devil. He appeared to over 500 people, proving that he was actually alive. Then, he ascended into heaven in front of all those people.
And then they stared up in the sky, dumbfounded.
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
So, they return to Jerusalem and they wait. They wait for the Holy Spirit to come. They wait for God’s direction for how to live this Christian life. They wait for direction on church leadership and outreach. They wait and they act and then they wait some more.
Their life was a life of waiting on God until Christ would finally come back.
But, he hasn’t come back.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians:
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
All the signs concerned Jesus’ return has not happened. So we are waiting.
This Christmas season, we are waiting. We do all the activities of celebrating Jesus’ birth, but we are waiting for his return to call us home, to change this world, so that everything that is wrong would be made right.
But, we don’t like to wait. Instead, we take matters in our own hands.
We say: he’s not coming back right now, so we can do whatever we want to do. And we make up our own morality. Our own rules. And reap the consequences of that.
We say: we are tired of waiting, so we create our own messiahs, and place our hopes in men and women to affect the change that only Christ can bring.
We say: that we are impatient. Waiting on God is too hard, so we create busyness in our lives. So much so that even our time to spend with God is taken over. We are too busy for him, because we want to forget the fact that we are waiting for a promise to be fulfilled and he has refused to fulfill it. So, we fill our lives with everything that is not him.
Instead, we are called to wait.
As the Psalmist wrote:
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
As Jeremiah wrote:
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
Simeon waited. And then he saw.
In the busyness of this season, in the busyness of this life, may we take some moments to stop and wait. To reflect on our God who has promised something so amazing and allow that promise to change our lives. May we be known as people who wait for God, instead of people who forget him.