No Ordinary Child (Part 2 of 2)

If you were trapped in a burning building it's hard to imagine you would refuse the help of a firefighter and choose to stay and find your own way out. So why is it people reject Jesus even greater offer of eternal salvation? Alistair Begg explores that answer today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from Luke chapter 2 verses 25 through 35. Here then is Simeon, a man who has reached this very significant point in his life. He is clearly not self-absorbed. He is not wracked with self and pity. He actually is able to say, My life makes perfect sense, and I am now ready to die. How unlike contemporary men and women! And he, in taking this child in his arms and making the statements he makes, presents us with a Jesus vastly different from the one who is easily accommodated or cursorily dismissed by a polite or an impolite Western culture.

This Jesus is unavoidable. And I want to show you why. In four words. The first word is the word light. Light. The second word is stone. Stone. Now, you'll look in vain for it, because the word stone is not there. But the reference to a stone is there.

You'll have to trust me on this and then look it up later. This child, verse 34, he said to Mary, is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against. Now, remember what Luke is doing. Luke is not hanging out somewhere at the beginning of everything, in the beginning of this story, hauling off from nowhere all kinds of bright ideas.

No! He is searching diligently. He is putting the pieces together. And he is now making it clear, as he brings the story of the Old Testament prophets into line with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, aha, that is now beginning to make sense of the reference in Isaiah 8 concerning this stone that causes people to stumble. There is nowhere, actually, in the New Testament where this is picked up and used to greater effect than actually in 1 Peter, when Peter, writing to the scattered believers of his day, refers to them in these building terms. And in 1 Peter chapter 2 and in verse 4, he writes as follows, As you come to him the living stone… Okay?

Who is this living stone? This is Jesus. What does he tell us about him? He's rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him.

Okay? He says, Here you are, the scattered believers, facing the persecution of Nero, but don't forget that you have been fitted in to Christ who is the living stone. You're being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

In other words, here's your identity, he says, and here is your significance. Men and women, I don't find, are particularly stumbling over issues of spirituality. They won't care if you take a little Buddha and put it up on your desk in the Cleveland Clinic.

None of that will be a problem to them at all. I'll tell you where they'll stumble. Over Jesus. Over Jesus. They'll trip over Christ.

Because he is like a rock on the Pacific Coast Highway when it has fallen in as a result of a mudslide. And the road is no longer navigable. And someone has taken and put in its place just gigantic boulders.

And those boulders actually exist to warn and to create a walkway over the chasm. Those who are careless or scornful reject the warning, refuse the way, and stumble to their own destruction. In that same section that we're reading from 1 Peter 2, in verse 8, he says of individuals, they stumble at the Word of God, for in their hearts they are unwilling to obey it, which makes stumbling a foregone conclusion. They stumble at the Bible, because in their hearts they're unwilling to obey it, which makes stumbling a foregone conclusion. But he says to the Christians, to you who believe, he's precious. He's precious. How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear!

The secularist has no interest in the name of Jesus. The profane use it as a curse. The believer says this is precious. My rock! My shield! My hiding place! Do you stumble at Christ and trip to your own destruction?

Or have you found in him the salvation about which Simeon is singing? Third word is the word sign. Sign—we'll deal with it just briefly. It's a sign that is spoken against. God has used various signs throughout the Bible.

We could ask our children, and they could tell us some of them. I saw one the other day, a rainbow. God sent a rainbow, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, a serpent, a lamb, and so on. And so Jesus, in his words and in his miracles and in his character, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection, is the great sign, is a conspicuous sign. Christ is a conspicuous sign. That's why the people were asking, when Jesus performed these miracles—you remember, John says, when he does the records for us, the turning of water into wine—and this was the first miraculous sign that Jesus performed.

He wasn't a wonder worker. He was pointing to something. It was a sign.

And ultimately, the signs pointed to himself—he who is the great sign. That's why they said of Jesus, when he calmed the sea, What manner of man is this? That's why, when the wise men looked in on the crib scene, look in on the manger, they're really asking, What child is this? That's why any thoughtful person has to be honest enough to say, When I consider these things, this is no ordinary child. Mary McDonald, in her wonderful Christmas carol, puts it as follows, Child in a manger, infant of Mary, outcast and stranger, Lord of all, Child who inherits all our transgressions, all our demerits, on him fall. You can say this, of no other child born in the entire history of humanity. No other religion makes such a claim. Only here, that in this child, taken into the arms of Simeon, we have this glorious light, we have the reality of this stone that causes some to stumble and others to trust, and we have this immaculate and wonderful, wonderful evidence of God's love for us.

You can trace this out yourselves. You can read on, and you find that Jesus, picking up on the story of the serpent in the wilderness, says that when the Son of Man is lifted up, then he will draw men and women to him. Well, when the Son of Man is lifted up, it is a sign to which some come in trust and which others speak against.

It's impossible to speak of these things without being spoken against. When Jesus did what he did, the people said, This man welcomes sinners, and he eats with them. They weren't saying, And that's very good.

They were saying, That's very bad. That was the response of religion. The response of religion was to say, Ah, we know he's doing dramatic things, but he's demonic.

He casts out devils by the power of the devil. In his trial, he was taunted, he was abused, he was mocked. It was like no trial you could ever imagine. It was much worse than the rigged trials in Russia at the moment, it would seem. Much worse than that. It was preceded and followed by all kinds of abuse.

He was scorned by the multitude. And in it and through it all, what the Bible says is that this is God's sign. This is the sign by which God is making known to us our need of a Savior and making known to us the Savior that we need. That here is the sign which gives to us the salvation which is enjoyed by those who are penitent.

Do you hear what I'm saying? It's no surprise, then, that when Paul writes of these things to the Corinthians, what does he say? The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. In other words, this Christ taken into the arms of Simeon is unavoidable. He confronts us inevitably with the crossroads. He is either our refuge or we stumble and fall to our own destruction.

He either is precious to us or irrelevant to us. He is a sign that is spoken against. Why is it that on the back bumper of a car people have gone to such endeavors to take the Christian symbol of the fish from the catacombs and reversed it? Why do you go to such endeavors to take a little fish like that, turn it upside down, and put Darwin's name underneath it?

Why do you feel you have to do that? Why do you have to speak against this sign? I thought you said that every sign is equally valid. I thought you said that every notion is equally true. Why do you have to take the cross of Jesus Christ and turn it upside down on the front of your rock albums?

Why do you have to do that? Because the Christ is spoken against. He is not simply marginalized.

He is not sequestered. Two thousand years on, the world either worships him or essentially despises him. Your sensible people figured it out. And finally, a sword. A sword. A personal word for Mary.

A sword will pierce your own soul too. Simeon is driving home the awful extent of the resistance and rejection of her son. No mother wants to hear her children demeaned or maligned. For Mary, things were difficult from the very beginning. Twelve years of age, they find him after he has gone missing from their perspective in the temple courts. He says to them, Hey, didn't you realize I had to be about my father's business? And they wondered at that. Can you imagine how Mary and the rest of the family felt when they showed up at one of Jesus' preaching events? He'd gone into the house by this time, and someone had come to Jesus and said, Your mother and your brothers are outside the portico. And he sent word back out, My mother and my brothers are those who do the will of my father. No, you see, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed by our attitude and response to Jesus.

Neutrality is not an option. But once again, if you're looking for an out from what we're considering in the Bible, there are plenty of sliproads off the freeway that lead to Christ. For those of you who, again, enjoy the luxury of time, perused the newspapers of yesterday, you will, along with me, have discovered and benefited, I think, from the two articles that relate to a new book on philosophy, which I have not had time to read—you may have read it, it's always dangerous to comment without reading the entire text—but a new book on philosophy entitled All Things Shining, by Kelly, I think from Harvard, by Dreyfus, from Berkeley. It's a review of philosophy, an explanation of how we got to where we are. And they make all kinds of generalizations, it seems, saying that two hundred years ago everybody lived with an inevitable sense of God, of his divinity, of his providence, and so on. But in the last hundred years, we've lived without that, without any sense of shared values.

And in the course of the book, they say that since men and women in the last hundred years have been living without any sense of shared value, then they have to find or create their own meaning. This, they then go on to say, has led to a, quote, pervasive sadness. A pervasive sadness.

Now, let's tie these two things together. We've got the baby boomers, 65, leading the charge. Self-absorbed and full of self-pity. Well, they're part of the generation that has lived without any sense of shared values. They are the generation—we are the generation—that has been told, You better go and try and find sense and significance and meaning somewhere else. Consequently, say the authors, modern life is marked by indecision and by anxiety.

Indecision and anxiety. But, they say, no reason for alarm. Because you can just whoosh it up. And the phrase that they use is whooshing up. I was immediately intrigued by it. I thought I would like to be whooshed up anytime soon.

I had to read on to discover what they're on about. Now, here's where you get whooshed up. You get whooshed up, for example, if you happen to be present or saw the movie or read the book of Lou Gehrig when he made his final statement at Yankee Stadium and he referred to himself, despite facing the end of his life with ALS, as, quote, the luckiest man alive. Say, Dreyfus and Kelly, in that moment, those who heard that were whooshed. The same kind of whoosh that you got when you saw Federer win and take it to a new level at Wimbledon. The same kind of whoosh that you get when you are woodworking and you manage to plane the thing to a smoothness that is well nigh perfection, and it is a whoosh experience.

Or when you are in mountain climbing. All right? Now, this is good. I like this.

This is another point of departure. I am going to be using this for quite a while, and I'm going to talk to people. I'm going to say to them, Have you been whooshed up lately? Are you whooshing it up? How was your Christmas?

How's your New Year? Any whooshing going on? They'll say, Well, what is that? I'll tell them, and say, It's this. But this is what they say.

Since there is no overarching story, since there is no big picture, since there is no significance at the beginning and no meaning at the end—right? This is their philosophical underpinnings—don't go and look for one. It will only upset you.

It will only tax you. Instead, live life on the surface. Live life seeking out these transcendent whooshes.

You can find them in sports stadiums, concert halls, political rallies, theaters, museums, and restaurants. And David Brooks, commenting in The New York Times, says, masterfully, writing ahead of me, I'd already thought it—I have to tell you, if that sounds like self-absorption, please forgive me, but it's part of my generation—but I already had thought it, and then he wrote it, and I said, Thank you, Brooks, you're right. He said, You can find the whooshness in the sports, the concert, the political rally, the theater, the museum, the restaurant. Quotes, Even church is often more about the ecstatic whoosh than theology. So those of you who have come here for an ecstatic whoosh to get your new year started, I hope it's been something of a whoosh.

But if I can speak to these guys—Dreyfus and his friend Kelly, whose intellectual shoes I am not worthy to tie—I would want to say to them, It doesn't have to be either or. According to your narrative here, Simeon did whoosh it up. He whooshed it up big time. I mean, if you took this as a definition, he said, What happened? He said to his wife, Man, I was whooshed up. You can't believe it!

What happened to me? She said, Well, is that not just a moment in time? No, he says, not a moment in time. I was waiting for the consolation of Israel. I was waiting for the Messiah.

I met him. You see, where the theory falls down is that there is actually no big picture. There's a reason for people wanting to have no big picture. Because if we can dispense with the beginning, we can dispense with the end.

Therefore, we dispense with any notion of accountability, any notion of judgment, any notion of a stone that causes us to stumble to our own destruction. If we can get rid of that, then just have a whoosh! But we can't get rid of that. And we know we can't get rid of that. Therefore, we must prepare for that.

How do we prepare for that? By accepting the only solution provided in the person and work of the child held in the arms of Simeon. That the metanarrative, that the story of all of God's purposes is in this—that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And the message of the gospel is, Receive your reconciliation.

Of course, reject it and go out and try and make your own meaning in a culture that is marked, according to the journalist, by pervasive sadness. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. Alistair returns in just a minute. As we heard today, salvation is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As you look ahead to the new year, we want to encourage you to start thinking now about three friends or neighbors with whom you would like to share the gospel. And today, we want to offer you the perfect resource to help you initiate those gospel conversations. It's a three-pack of pocket-sized booklets that provide the Gospel of John. These are durable, paperback editions designed to be handed out to others, or you can keep them handy as an easy reference when you're talking to others about Christ. At the back of each of these booklets are three suggested reading plans that will take a reader through the Gospel of John in their choice of either three, seven, or twenty-one days. There's also an explanation of what it means to be a Christian and a prayer that those who want to take the first step toward following Jesus can pray. Ask for your three-pack of the Gospel of John today when you give a year-end donation to Truth for Life.

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Now, here is Alistair. God our Father, we thank you that on this first Sunday of the new year we have a Bible to which we can turn, and we have time throughout the day that we can go back and examine the Bible and see if what's being said is actually there. I pray this morning that you would help us since the thoughts of our hearts are revealed by a consideration of Christ, that you will help us to trust in him alone, to thank you for the way that you have ordered our steps, and to live out this wonderful truth in the place of your appointing. Help us to this end, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Not only was Jesus no ordinary child, as an adult he made a remarkable claim that sparked great debate, division, even stirred great faith. We'll explore that claim tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.