Twelve Extraordinary Women, Week 18
Notes
Transcript
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ANNA: THE FAITHFUL WITNESS
ANNA: THE FAITHFUL WITNESS
It is truly remarkable that when Jesus was born, so few people in Israel recognized their Messiah. It was not as if no one was watching for Him. Messianic expectation in the early first century was running at an all-time high.
How did Daniel figure in to the prophesy of Messiah?
Daniel’s famous prophecy about “Messiah the Prince” (Dan. 9:24–27 NKJV) had practically set the date. Daniel wrote,
24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.
25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
“Seventy weeks are determined … Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.” If Daniel’s “weeks” (literally, “sevens” in the Hebrew) are understood as seven-year periods, Daniel is describing a period of 483 years total: “seven weeks” (forty-nine years) plus “sixty-two weeks” (434 years). “The command to restore and build Jerusalem” seems to be a reference to the decree of Artaxerxes (Neh. 2:1–8), which was issued in 444 or 445 BC.
1 In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.
2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.
3 I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
4 Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.
5 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.”
6 And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time.
7 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah,
8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.
What year does Daniel’s prophecy roughly relate to?
If the years are reckoned by a lunar calendar of 360 days, Daniel’s timetable would put the appearance of “Messiah the Prince” around AD 30, which was the year of His triumphal entry.
Scripture records that when John the Baptist began his ministry, “The people were in expectation, and all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not” (Luke 3:15 NKJV).
15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ,
As a matter of fact, several of the disciples first encountered Christ for the very reason that they were watching expectantly for Him to appear, and they came to John the Baptist, who pointed the way to Christ (John 1:27–37).
27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”
28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’
31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.”
32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.
33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’
34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples,
36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
The fact is, virtually all faithful believers in Israel were already expectantly awaiting the Messiah and looking diligently for Him at the exact time Jesus was born. The irony is that so very few recognized Him, because He met none of their expectations.
Very few recognized Him, because He met none of __________ expectations.
They were looking for a mighty political and military leader who would become a conquering king; He was born into a peasant family. They probably anticipated that He would arrive with great fanfare and pageantry; He was born in a stable, almost in secret.
The only people in Israel who did recognize Christ at His birth were humble, unremarkable people. The Magi of Matthew 2:1–12, of course, were foreigners and Gentiles, and they were very rich, powerful, and influential men in their own culture. But the only Israelites who understood that Jesus was the Messiah at His birth were Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, Simeon, and Anna. All of them were basically nobodies.
How did Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, Simeon, and Anna know Jesus was the Messiah?
All of them recognized Him because they were told who He was by angels, or by some other form of special revelation. Luke recounts all their stories in succession, as if he is calling multiple witnesses, one at a time, to establish the matter.
The final witness he calls is Anna. Everything Scripture has to say about her is contained in just three verses: Luke 2: 36–38. She is never mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. But these three verses are enough to establish her reputation as a genuinely extraordinary woman:
36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin,
37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.
38 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.
The scene is the same one we left near the end of our previous chapter. Simeon had just picked up the infant Jesus and pronounced a prophetic blessing on Him. (Luke 2 verses 33-35) “In that instant,” Luke says, Anna happened by and immediately understood what was going on and who Christ was. Perhaps she overheard Simeon’s blessing. She probably already knew Simeon personally. Anna herself was clearly a fixture in the temple, and Simeon was described as “just and devout” (v. 25 NKJV). Both were very old. It seems unlikely that their paths had never crossed. Probably knowing Simeon’s reputation as a righteous man whose one expectation in life was to see “the Consolation of Israel” with his own eyes before dying, Anna stopped and took notice when she heard the joyous blessing he pronounced on Jesus.
Like every other extraordinary woman we have seen so far, Anna’s hopes and dreams were full of messianic expectation. She knew the Old Testament promises, and she understood that salvation from sin and the future blessing of Israel depended on the coming of the Messiah. Her longing to see Him was suddenly and surprisingly fulfilled one day as she went about her normal routine in the temple.
Anna appears only in a very brief vignette of Luke’s gospel, but her inclusion there elevates the importance of her life and testimony. She was blessed by God to be one of a handful of key witnesses who knew and understood the significance of Jesus’ birth. And she made no attempt to keep it a secret. Thus she became one of the first and most enduring witnesses to Christ. No doubt wherever Luke’s gospel is proclaimed, her testimony is still bringing others to the Savior. Thus she deserves a prominent place in any list of extraordinary women.
Actually, quite a lot about Anna’s extraordinary life can be gleaned from the three brief verses of Scripture that are devoted to her story. Luke’s narrative is loaded with key phrases that give us a surprisingly rich understanding of Anna’s life and character.
“SHE WAS A PROPHETESS”
“SHE WAS A PROPHETESS”
Luke introduced her this way: “There was one, Anna, a prophetess” (Luke 2:36 NKJV). Her name in Hebrew is identical to “Hannah.” Remember, from the story of Samuel’s mother Hannah, the name means “grace”—an appropriate name for a godly, dignified woman. Anna’s character does bear some striking similarities to her Old Testament namesake. Both women were singled out for their practice of prayer and fasting. Both were perfectly at home in the temple. Both prophesied. In Hannah’s case, you’ll recall, her celebratory prayer (1 Sam. 2:1–10) was also a prophetic psalm about the Messiah. Anna is said to be a prophetess whose heart was prepared for the coming of the Messiah.
What did Luke mean by prophetess? He was not suggesting that Anna predicted the future. She was not a fortune-teller. He didn’t necessarily even suggest that she received special revelation from God. The word prophetess simply designated a woman who spoke the Word of God. Any preacher who faithfully proclaims the Word of God would be a “prophet” in the general biblical sense. And a prophetess would be a woman uniquely devoted to declaring the Word of God.
Anna may have been a teacher of the Old Testament to other women. Or she may have simply had a private ministry there in the temple offering words of encouragement and instruction from the Hebrew Scriptures to other women who came to worship. Nothing suggests that she was a source of revelation, or that any special revelation ever came to her directly. Even her realization that Jesus was the Messiah seemed to have come from the revelation given to Simeon and p 133 subsequently overheard by her. She is nonetheless called a prophetess because it was her habit to declare the truth of God’s Word to others. This gift for proclaiming God’s truth ultimately played a major role in the ministry she is still best remembered for.
In all the Old Testament, only five women are ever referred to as “prophetess.” The first was Miriam, Moses’ sister, identified as a prophetess in Exodus 15:20, where she led the women of Israel in a psalm of praise to God about the drowning of Pharaoh and his army. The simple one-stanza psalm Miriam sang was the substance of her only recorded prophecy (v. 21). The fact that God had once spoken through her, unfortunately, later became an occasion for pride and rebellion (Num. 12:1–2), and the Lord disciplined her for that sin by temporarily smiting her with leprosy (vv. 9–15).
In Judges 4:4, we are introduced to the second woman in the Old Testament designated as a prophetess: “Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth” (Judg. 4:4 NKJV). She was the only female among the varied assortment of judges who led the Jewish people before the monarchy was established in Israel. In fact, she was the only woman in all of Scripture who ever held that kind of leadership position and was blessed for it. The Lord seemed to raise her up as a rebuke to the men of her generation who were paralyzed by fear. She saw herself not as a usurper of men, but as a woman who functioned in a maternal capacity, while men like Barak were being raised up to step into their proper roles of leadership (5:12). That’s why she referred to herself as “a mother in Israel” (v. 7 NKJV). She gave instructions to Barak from the Lord (Judg. 4:6), so it seems she received revelation from God, at least on that one occasion.
In 2 Kings 22:14, Scripture mentions Huldah as a prophetess. In verses 15–20, she had a word from the Lord for Hilkiah the priest and others. Nothing about her, or her background, is known. In fact, she is mentioned only here and in a parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 34:22–28.
The only two other women called prophetesses in the Old Testament p 134 were an otherwise unknown woman named Noadiah (Neh. 6:14), who was classified among the false prophets; and Isaiah’s wife (Isa. 8:3), who was called a prophetess only because she was married to Isaiah, not because she herself prophesied (unless her decision to name her son “Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz” could be counted as a prophecy).
Rarely did God speak to his people through women, and never did any woman have an ongoing prophetic ministry similar to that of Elijah, Isaiah, or any of the other key Old Testament prophets. In other words, there is nothing anywhere in Scripture to indicate that any women ever held a prophetic office. The idea that “prophetess” was a technical term for an official position or an ongoing ministry of direct revelation is simply nowhere to be found in Scripture.
Luke’s identification of Anna as a “prophetess,” therefore, did not necessarily mean that she personally received divine revelation. When Luke called her a “prophetess,” we are not to imagine that this was an office she filled. Most likely, it meant that she had a reputation as a gifted teacher of other women and a faithful encourager of her fellow worshipers in the temple. When she spoke, it was about the Word of God. She had evidently spent a lifetime hiding God’s Word in her heart. Naturally, that was the substance of what she usually had to say. So when Luke called her a “prophetess,” he gave insight into her character and a clue about what occupied her mind and her conversation.
MacArthur, John F., Jr. 2005. Twelve Extraordinary Women: How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do with You. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.