A Thrill of Hope - Christmas Eve 2021

God takes all of His promises, puts them in one book, and gives them to one people, the Jewish people. But very, very few actually take that word seriously, take those promises seriously.

But Simeon did and Hannah did. And I just want to underscore that. The most hopeful people I have ever met are the most spiritual people.

The world has experienced so much upheaval in the last couple of years, making it hard for many people to feel hopeful about the future. But today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares about the unshakable hope you can find in the birth of Jesus. Before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that puts Skip's years of Bible teaching in your hands to help you build your legacy of faith. Skip often has the privilege of hosting guest speakers, guests like Franklin Graham and Lee Strobel, who've become great friends to Pastor Skip Heitzig in this Bible teaching ministry.

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Get your copy of Skip and Friends when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Luke chapter two as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. Christmas proves that God was in control of human history, that God has a plan for the flow of history. It's Christmas that makes us realize that history is His story, that God interrupted the flow of events with a birth, the birth of a child.

Not a normal birth, not an ordinary birth, not a normal ordinary child, a miraculous birth. God interrupted history to give us a Savior. He stepped out of heaven to pay for our sin and He promises to return to rule and reign with those of us who have been cleansed from sin. And so Christmas is a time of hope and it's sort of summed up in that anthem that we have used for this service and for this season. From the song, O Holy Night, long lay the world in sin and error pining till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Well, there's two people in the Christmas story that embody this hope. Their names are Simeon and Anna. These two people, both of them Jewish, both of them old, they're elderly, both of them very godly.

These two people in our story embody the hope of this season. Now Simeon and Anna are part of what I call the backstage crew of the Christmas story. Most people don't pay a whole lot of attention to Simeon and Anna. They didn't write any great book. They didn't write a rock and roll song. Their names are not in Hebrews chapter 11.

They were probably not even very prominent in Jerusalem at the time, but they are noted here in Scripture. And I say that most people would pass over them. It's sort of like most people when they go to a movie don't sit around and watch all the credits afterwards. Most people, some might, but most people don't care about who the musical researcher for the film was. Most people don't care about who the grip was in the second camera, things like that.

All due respect, if you're in the movie industry, you're all important, but most people don't do that. Most people only care about who's starring in the movie, and we know who's starring in the Christmas movie. We know it's all about the babe in the manger. And then there's Mary, and then there's Joseph, and then there's the shepherds, then there's the magi. There's even the donkeys and the sheep and the cows. They at least make it onto the Christmas cards, but not Simeon and not Anna. Nobody really mentions them during this season.

Nobody puts their pictures on Christmas cards. But they are part of the story because they provide, according to Luke, eye-witness testimony as to who this baby really was. Luke introduces him as the savior, the virgin-born son of God, but then he brings eye-witnesses who testify to that. And Luke is a very careful historian. I'm reading out of Luke chapter 2 today for our Christmas story. Luke is very, very fastidious, and he shows us that Jesus, when he was eight days old, was circumcised. That's mentioned in the story previous to this. Then later on, he is presented in the temple for Mary's purification 40 days after the birth of Jesus. And then he mentions Simeon and Anna.

Now, what I want to do is pretty simple in the next few minutes. Since this is all about a hope, the thrill of hope, I want to look at hope as our main picture, but I want to draw a four-sided frame around that picture. So the first side is that hope is for the godly. Hope is for the godly. Godly people of all people should be people of hope.

In our story, it reads this way. In Luke chapter 2, verse 25, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just or righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And so he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and he blessed God.

That's Simeon. Let me introduce you to this gal, and that is Anna down in the same chapter, verse 36. Now there was one, Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age. It's a nice Bible way of saying she was an old lady and lived with a husband seven years from her virginity. And this woman was a widow of about 84 years who did not depart from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.

And coming in that instant, she gave thanks to the Lord and spoke to him of all who looked for redemption in Israel. Both of these folks were godly people. Not a lot is said about them personally. We don't know, for example, their educational status. We do not know what occupation Simeon had prior to this throughout his lifetime. But we know that both of them were very spiritual individuals.

Because it says Simeon was just and devout or righteous and devout. And both of them were in the temple. Both of them were filled with hope. So here you have two godly people filled with hope. You know, most of the atheists and agnostics I have met are not hopeful people. I've met a lot of them.

I had a lot of conversations with them. Most of them are not filled with hope. For that matter, some religious people that I meet are not too hopeful. Israel is an example. At this time, the nation of Israel, most of them were backslidden and hypocritical. They were into their ceremonies and their rituals and their traditions. And they all claimed to be looking for the Messiah. But there were very few, a very small, tiny group, a minority of people that really were waiting for the Messiah. And two of them are here, Simeon and Anna. And things really haven't changed that much.

It's the same today. In Judaism, only 30% of Jewish people actually belong to the synagogue. Much fewer than that are actually Orthodox Jews. Even if you go to Israel today, a very small percentage of the population, less than 10%, are people who actually take the laws and promises of God seriously.

So just think of that. God takes all of His promises, puts them in one book, and gives them to one people, the Jewish people. But very, very few actually take that word seriously, take those promises seriously.

But Simeon did and Anna did. And I just want to underscore that. The most hopeful people I have ever met are the most spiritual people. They are by far happier. They are by far more confident.

Study after study shows this. A Pew Research study noted that globally, they studied this globally, that generally spiritual people are happier and healthier. And there was a study done down in El Salvador of the youth. Young people, they noted, were getting spiritual, they said. That's their term for conversion. They were becoming spiritual, and the article noted that it is the Christian understanding of God and transcendent worldview that offers them a source of hope.

And you know what? Even when the world isn't what it should be, even when things don't work out the way we want them to be, even though we plan for things and those plans fall apart, spiritual people are still hopeful. Even the psalmist in Psalm 45 said to himself in the psalm, he wrote about it, Why are you cast down, O my soul?

Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, he said. Hope in God. He's saying to himself, Hope in God. When the world falls apart, he knows that he can hope in God.

Now, having said that, I've noticed that some people, in fact, a majority of worldly people, like to mock those of us who are spiritual people and say we believe in God and we believe in an afterlife and we believe there's hope because of God's promises. They listen to us and they say things like, Get real, man. You need to live in the real world. That's a make-believe world. I live in the real world. You need to live in the real world. And my answer is simply this. We do live in the real world.

We face all the same things you face. We live in the real world, but we also know there's a really real world beyond the real world that is actually even more real than this. There's a movie put out years ago. In fact, there's a new one coming out called The Matrix. The whole premise of that series of films is that we live in a program, a computer program. The world is nothing more than a virtual reality program. And very few have actually penetrated the veil to see reality. And one of them is a guy, the main character, named Neo.

Morpheus, in the first film, talks to Neo and explains it to him this way. He said, You take the blue pill, you wake up in your own bed, and you believe whatever you want. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland. Most people take the blue pill. Most people wake up and they believe whatever they want.

They kind of dictate their own reality. Those of us who are spiritual, we've taken the red pill. We see beyond the veil. We see the real world, but also the really real world. So hope is for the godly. Now, let's keep going with that picture. So we have one side of the frame. The other part of the frame, the second part, is that hope rests on certainty.

Hope rests on certainty. In verse 25, it describes Simeon as somebody who is waiting. Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

This man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. Now, both of them are pretty old. We are told that Anna was of great age.

She was an old lady. We can infer that Simeon was also very old, because twice the passage mentions his death. He had a promise from God that he wouldn't die until he saw the Lord's Messiah. And then when he saw the Lord's Messiah, he said, I can die now.

I can depart in peace. Your servant has seen what you promised. So we can infer that both of them were pretty old, which means they have been waiting a long, long time for this promise.

You know, it's hard to wait for something anyway, but it's really hard to wait a whole lifetime like they did. Several years ago, a psychologist by the name of Walter Mischel devised a simple little test that has become known as the marshmallow test. I'm sure a lot of you have heard about that. He took four-year-olds. He took groups of four-year-olds. He gave each of the children a marshmallow and told them to wait 20 minutes before eating the marshmallow.

You know how hard that is for a kid? So they had to hold this marshmallow, but they couldn't eat it for 20 minutes. But he said, if you can wait 20 minutes and not eat the marshmallow, if you can do that, I'll give you another marshmallow. And so he waited, and he watched, and some kids waited. Some kids did not wait, but they ate the marshmallow.

So they made note of this phenomena in their study, but they did more than that. They followed the kids in this study throughout their lives a little bit further, and they watched them as they grew up, and they made note of the fact that the kids who were able to wait became better adjusted, were more dependable, and scored an average of 210 points higher on their SAT exams than other kids. Because they could wait. They learned to wait. Now, I would just say right now, I would fail the marshmallow test. I would eat the marshmallow, and on the way out of the classroom, probably steal a kid's marshmallow and eat that as well. So I would not have done well on that.

Simeon and Anna passed the test. They waited, and they waited a long time. But here's what I want you to make a note of here. When the Bible speaks of hope, it is not speaking of some dream, or some wish that they have, or some fantasy, or some illusion. In the Bible, hope simply means truth that hasn't yet happened. It's truth that hasn't yet happened. So you can dream and have an illusion about a lot of things that will never happen.

Here's an example. Let's say you're a 35-year-old guy living in your parents' basement, and you work at Waffle House. But you have a dream that you will meet Miss America, that she will fall in love with you, that she will walk into Waffle House and see you flipping those pancakes and cooking those hash browns, and it will just be too much for her. She'll run into your arms and rush down the aisle with you and get married. Nice dream. That's not hope. That's not biblical hope.

That's an illusion. That's a dream. That's like a dream that people have to win the lottery.

The chances of that happening are like maybe 0%, maybe. Hope is different. Hope looks forward to what you know is going to happen. And I just want to say for some of you, it's time for you to upgrade your dreams to a hope.

Upgrade your dreams to a hope. They had a certainty. What was the certainty?

What was it they knew was going to happen? I mentioned here the consolation of Israel. They knew that one day God would send the consoler. That's another term for the Messiah. They knew that the Bible, the Old Testament that God gave the Jewish people had predicted time and time and time and time again various aspects of the Messiah, and they were waiting for the consolation of Israel. A very famous Jewish prayer was, May I see the consolation of Israel?

That's a prayer of saying, I want to see the Messiah. In fact, did you know that the Jews, the Hebrews have a name for the Messiah? They call him the Menachem. Menachem. Some of you have heard of the Prime Minister of Israel years ago, Menachem Begin. The word Menachem means the comforter or the consoler. And the rabbis would talk about when the Menachem comes, the great comforter and consoler of Israel, when the Messiah comes. Interesting about Simeon, we are told, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

Now, I don't know how that would work out like at home with his wife, if he still had a wife. I can just sort of hear his wife saying, Simeon, you don't need too much of that. You could get sick. Yeah, but I won't die. Better watch out, Simeon. Don't go to the temple. You could get COVID.

Maybe so. But I won't die. I mean, imagine living with that kind of promise that you will not die until you see the fulfillment of God's promise. This man was anchored in that hope. So hope is for the godly, but hope rests on certainty. Here's a third side to this picture.

Hope produces ecstasy. Now, how do you think Simeon and Anna felt when they finally saw that baby come in? When that baby finally came into the temple and they saw Jesus and Mary and Joseph. You know, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, that area where the temple was built, is huge.

It's 45 acres. Thousands, in fact, potentially hundreds of thousands of people can all converge into that one area. The chances of these people all meeting up together on a human level is slim. And Simeon did not exist in Joseph and Mary's world. Anna did not exist in their world.

Joseph and Mary did not exist in Simeon's world. But they met each other in the temple. And I can see Simeon going into the temple every day, kind of just looking around every day. And he sees a baby and he says, Is that the one? Is that the one? But one day he comes in and it's as if the Holy Spirit prompts his heart and says, That's the one. That's the baby.

That's the hope. That's the consoler. That's the one you've been waiting for. And I can see Simeon just sort of walking up to this couple, total strangers, and saying, Excuse me.

I know this isn't going to sound weird, but can I just hold your baby just for a second? And it says in verse 28, He blessed God. In verse 38, it says concerning Anna, And coming in that instant, she gave thanks. See, they were both, no doubt, overwhelmed with joy because Simeon said, I can die a happy man. My eyes have seen your salvation. Now, I mentioned that godly people are hopeful people.

I want to complete the statement. Yes, godly people are hopeful people, but also hopeful people are happy people. Even when they don't see the reality of that promise, as I mentioned, hope is what tethers them. Paul said, We rejoice. We rejoice.

We get happy. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Simeon and Anna had hoped and hoped, and there he was. And they got so ecstatic and so excited and overwhelmed with joy, and they blessed God. Now, I just got to say, when I read this passage, I get excited because I know things Simeon didn't even know.

I live now on this side of the coming of Jesus Christ. And I know that people did get saved because of this child. And I know that the gospel would go out into all the world and change the lives of people on the other side of the planet, including this country.

And I get excited because I know that is the truth. And even Simeon, though he saw Jesus, he didn't see all that would happen. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Christmas Messages. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way to connect you and many others around the world with God's Word. The world tries to silence us whenever we stand for Jesus and His truth. But that's all the more reason we should speak out and share the gospel as much as we can.

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