Okay, let's get started. Merry Christmas to you from all of us here at Truth for Life. On this Christmas Day, we are continuing our study in the Gospel of Luke, looking at Simeon's first encounter with the infant Jesus.
His remarks were extraordinary, and today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg examines a devout man's astonishing response to the newborn child and helps us understand why it's significant for us today. Well, the verses to which I'd like to draw your attention are essentially 29 to 32. These are familiar words to everyone who was brought up in the context of Anglican liturgy, which means that rules out about 99 percent of the present congregation. I think they also probably were a feature of Lutheran worship and certainly of Roman Catholic worship.
So they will be familiar words to many of us, and those of us as well who come from none of those backgrounds. They've actually been with us in terms of Christendom, in terms of the church, for a very long time. Going back even as far as the fifth century. But they were catapulted into usefulness in the sixteenth century, when Archbishop Cranmer included these verses, 29 to 32, as the final canticle, or song, that was included in the Book of Common Prayer. It was Cranmer who wrote the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer. And we often refer to it here and do so, I think, gladly and somewhat helpfully. It is a matter of encouragement to me to realize that when I turn to these pages, although they're not obviously the pages that were penned by Cranmer, they still are the same words. Cranmer was born in 1489. He was the archbishop of Canterbury, as you remember, during the reign of Henry VIII.
He also was archbishop during the reign of Edward VI, and also for a short time during Mary I, just in case you're thinking about it and looking for him. But the point is that for hundreds of years, congregations have ended their day in worship by reading the ancient words in light of the exposition of the gospel. And it really is a quite wonderful end to the day, isn't it? And one commentator, his appropriateness for evening worship is that it expresses a readiness for death. Which of course it does. And his appropriateness for evening worship is in the fact that it expresses a readiness for death, which the commentator went on to say, of which every night brings a type in sleep.
Which it does. Because to die is to fall asleep in the arms of Jesus and to waken up and find out that you're home. I went to bed every night as a youngster from as early as I can remember reciting, Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. And I didn't pray the American version, but the British version. The British version went, And if I die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take. It didn't seem to bother my parents at all to confront me as an infant with the reality of death. After all, what were you going to do when people started to die around you?
It'd be better that you learned it from your parents than that you had to learn it from somebody else. Anyway, it is an appropriate verse, because it is an occasion of reminding us of the brevity of life and the solemnity of things. And I would imagine that every believer, certainly I feel this way myself, would want, if possible, to come to the end of our earthly lives with these words, at least on our hearts, if not on our lips. My wife and I had occasioned to be in the home of one of our members who passed away during the summer, and it was a wonderful testimony in absentia to the fact that this particular brave and sincere and godly woman ended her life, essentially, with Simeon's song in her heart. We say, Well, why are we here tonight? It's communion.
Well, I want to be dead honest with you. I have found myself very loath to leave behind the infancy narratives this year. I've spent more time studying these infancy narratives this year than at any other point in my life, and I've found them to be rich. It is such a shame, isn't it, that they've become Christmas stories? The apostles would have wondered what in the world we were talking about if we said, Well, we only read them at Christmas. They would have said, What is Christmas, for goodness' sake? No, it's a fund of vital and important information. And I was struck, because we were using Luke, by the fact that I said, Well, we must finish at verse 20, and trust me, I'm not going to go on and pick up the series again.
We'll leave it as it is. But he doesn't end—Luke doesn't end the infancy or the birth narrative with the arrival and departure of the shepherds. He takes us beyond there to give us a glimpse of two occasions of Jesus in the temple. In the first instance, he is carried in there by Mary and Joseph.
And in the second instance, which begins recorded for us in verse 41, he is there at the age of twelve, when he is separated, you remember, from Mary and Joseph and the rest of the group, and as they retrace their steps and find him, once again he is a source of amazement and of wonder to them. We're not going to go there, but we just need to say a word concerning this lovely man Simeon. It would be nice to grow old and be a kind of Simeon, wouldn't it? We don't really know anything about him apart from what's written right here in Luke's record. So we're thankful to Luke for introducing us to him. Otherwise we wouldn't have known there was a Simeon. Of course, we recognize that Luke wrote, under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, therefore God wanted to make sure that we knew this man Simeon.
And that's why he has recorded the story of him here. His life, you will see from the text as we read it, was characterized by religious devotion. He was, in Jerusalem, righteous and devout. We're told that he was waiting for the consolation of Israel, which is just another way of saying that he was waiting for the Messiah to come. We remember Isaiah 40 begins, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says the Lord. And one of the ways in which the Jewish people looked for the arrival of the Messiah was in light of the comfort that he would bring. And so when Simeon is described as waiting for the comfort of the consolation of Israel, that's exactly what is in mind. We're also told, you will notice, that he enjoyed a peculiar power and presence of God the Holy Spirit. Before Pentecost, long before Pentecost, we're told that the Holy Spirit was upon him, verse 25, and as a result of the Holy Spirit being upon him, it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
There's a lot in that which we need to leave aside, but it will repay your further study. And it was in light of that that we're told here by Luke that the appearing of Mary and Joseph was the occasion of his declaration in the nunc dimittis, as it is referred to in Anglican liturgy in the Latin that opens it. Now the appearance of Mary and Joseph was in accordance with the law, you see. When the parents brought the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law—and that was in relationship to this matter of purification and when the time came for their purification—the law, Leviticus 12, made it clear that there was seven days to the circumcision of a male child, and thirty-three days followed that in relationship to a male.
It was longer in relationship to a female. Don't ask me why, but it was. You can read all about it in Leviticus chapter 12. And provision was made for the sacrificial offering that was given on that occasion. That's the significance in the text here, where all of a sudden you have these turtle doves and young pigeons flying out of the rafters, so to speak.
And as you read that, you say, My, my, I don't really know what that's about. Well, this is the final verse of Leviticus 12. And the instruction of the law of God was, if she—that is, the mother—cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtle doves, or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. And they come into the temple. They have their baby with them—it's a boy. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, Simeon took him up in his arms. Well, that's customary. I suppose old people are allowed to say, What a lovely baby.
Can I hold him for a chance? And she said, Yes, go ahead. But look what Simeon then said. It's another reminder to what we learned this morning, isn't it? People can look at the Bible and see nothing. They can look at Jesus and see no one. How could Simeon possibly look at this poor couple carrying this wee boy and say what he said apart from the promises of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit of God?
And it was as true then as it was later in Christ's manhood, and it is as true today as we were reminded this morning helpfully. Simeon's language is dramatic—"Lord, now you are letting your servant apart in peace." The word that he uses for Lord is not kyrios, which is used six thousand times or so in the New Testament. He uses a word that is used only five times—three times of God, two times of Jesus the Son.
Despotes, despot. He uses the terminology of a slave owner who had complete control over the slaves in his possession. And that is the word that he uses. Taking the baby in his arms, he addresses God in that way. He acknowledges God's absolute right over his life, whether to retain him or to dispense with him. "'Lord,' he says, you are now letting your servant depart in peace.
The promises in your word I've tracked them. The arrival of your Messiah I have anticipated. And now, in the wonder of this moment, here I bless you, God. My eyes have seen your salvation." Of all the things that people say when they take a baby in their arms, nothing compares to this.
Oh, he has this, looks like his mother, all that kind of stuff. But have you ever, ever heard somebody take a child and say anything that approximates to this? Has anyone in the whole world ever said anything like this? No one ever could, for they apply to no one else in the whole world.
Salvation is found in no one else except in Jesus. And I wonder, does your mind work like mine? I hope not. But in case it does, don't you think there must have been an encouragement here for Mary particularly? There's all the excitement of having a baby, at least from the father's side of things. You know, we get to be excited about it.
The mother has to produce it. But there is a measure of excitement and joy in that, I believe, by report and observation. In the first few days are pretty interesting.
People come around. But then it's seven days and ten days and a week and two weeks. And the questions are, did you sleep last night? I don't know.
I was up. Did he feed? Well, not as much as I would have liked. And unless you have some kind of Jesus who wasn't really human, then you have to believe that the real challenges of childbirth and child-rearing were part and parcel of that. And so three weeks become four weeks, and four weeks become five weeks. And one night, as Mary's going to bed, she says to Joseph, What do you think's gonna happen next? He said, Well, what do you mean? He says, Well, I know the angel came and, you know, announced the thing, and I know we have the baby, but, you know, what are we supposed to do now? Joseph, being a carpenter, a good solid citizen, a sensible soul, says, Well, I tell you what we're gonna do.
We're gonna do the next thing. What is the next thing we're supposed to do according to the law of God? Well, according to the law of God, we're supposed to, at day forty, when he's about six weeks, we go up to the temple in Jerusalem. Joseph says, That's exactly what we'll do. And we'll do what God says, and then we'll see what God does. That's a good way around to go. Some of us are waiting to see what God does before we do what God says.
That's completely upside down. No, we'll do what God says, and then we'll see what God does. And it is in the context of their obedience that they run into the ministry of this lovely old man, whose words are a reinforcement of the angelic announcement, so that if there was any sense of diffidence in the mind of Mary, saying to herself, Goodness, I wonder if that was a dream about that whole angelic thing.
Did I dream that, or did that happen? Is this really the Messiah of God that we've got here bringing up to the temple? And this old man comes up and says, Excuse me, give me that towel for a minute, will you? And he takes the baby in his arms.
He goes, Lord, despota esapolues. You can let me go now, for my eyes have seen your salvation. And the blessings of salvation you will see, which is really what I wanted to talk about, but now it is a series, but the blessings of salvation are described as threefold. So I'll just point them out to you, and then we'll have a prayer.
They're not just personal. Let's take them in reverse order. The blessings of salvation are for glory to your people Israel. For glory to your people Israel. In Jesus Christ, there is not only consolation for Israel, but there is glory. There is glory.
We do not have time to unpack this, but it is there to be done. You remember when Jesus meets the woman at the well, and she asks the question about, Listen, do we go up to Gerizim, do we go to Jerusalem when we're doing the worship and sacrifice thing? He says, Listen, man, salvation is from the Jews. Salvation is from the Jews.
And it is. And every Gentile one of us needs to remember that. That God in his purpose chose, mysteriously, marvelously, to bring his Messiah through this royal line of David and bring him to the world in that way. That was why Paul agonized so much over his own people in the book of Romans. When he's working his theology out at the beginning, he says, What advantage has the Jew?
Or what is the value of circumcision? He doesn't say, Nothing. No. He says, Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some of them were unfaithful? Does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means let God be true. Though every one were a liar, it still remains true. And to the Jew has been given the law and the covenants and the promises, and that's what makes the prologue of John's Gospel so devastating.
He came to his own, and his own received him not. Surely we long for the day when one of the greatest, most horrendous, despicable, effective lies of the evil one is dealt with in great measure, for what an amazing lie it is that the evil one has, to an almost exclusive dimension, convinced Jewish people that their problem is one with Jesus, when in actual fact their glory is in Jesus. It is their glory. It is the glory that comes from the very line. There is a mystery in this. That's why I think that my forebears in Scotland were so committed to Jewish evangelism.
Murray MacShean, who knows what he might have done if he hadn't died at twenty-nine. But he had gone by the age of twenty-nine to Israel on a number of occasions. So concerned was he for the salvation of the Jew. It's for the glory of the Jew. It's for the light. It's a light for the nations. This is all from the lips of this man by the Holy Spirit.
It's so fantastic, isn't it? It's a light for the nations. I'm holding in my arms a light for the nations, and I'm holding in my hands a great torch.
You see, he knew his Bible, Isaiah 49. Is it too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel? I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. And Jesus steps onto the stage of history, and he says, I am the light of the world.
And it means not only glory for Israel and light for the nations, but it means peace for the individual. Lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace. Simeon's saying, I can now face death in the knowledge of all that is here in this precious bundle, Jesus.
What a picture it is. What a privilege he enjoyed. What a pattern he provides, seeing in Jesus the salvation of God and receiving him for ourselves. When you read on and your own, you can realize that Simeon also understood that there was suffering involved in this.
He was explaining to them all that would still come. He was the child who would be appointed for the fall and the rising of many, and a sword will pierce through your own soul. He would be the means whereby the thoughts of many hearts were revealed and so on. This is not some kind of cozy little verse. No, he's saying that the peace that comes to the heart of the individual that embraces Christ is a peace that has been purchased at great cost. It is a redemption that has been provided by the shedding of blood. It is a pardon that is found in the one who came as a friend of sinners.
And what a lovely picture it is of this elderly gentleman—I presume he's elderly—and he takes the child up in his arms, and he holds him to himself. And in the same way that he embraced Christ in that physical dimension, so each of us must come to embrace him as our own. There's not a child that was here earlier that will be in heaven just because you, as his mom or his dad, love Jesus. The grace of God does not run through human veins.
Every one of these wee ones needs to embrace Christ for themselves, to find in him a Savior and a Lord and a friend, to grow up and say, I can actually go to sleep now in peace, because I know that my salvation is found in Jesus. He is a glory for Israel. He is a light for the nations.
And he is my friend and my Savior. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Today's message wraps up our short Christmas series titled Good News, Great Joy, and if you'd like to re-listen to or share any of these messages with a friend, you can listen or watch or download the complete series for free using our mobile app or online at truthforlife.org. Now as you're gathering with family and friends through the holidays, maybe you can take some time to point them to the teaching from Truth for Life to help them learn more about Jesus. Let them know how they can download the free mobile app that provides access to thousands of sermons on a wide variety of topics and also includes studies through complete books of the Bible. All of the sermons are available on our website at truthforlife.org. Our passion is to share the gospel with everyone. We believe that as more people hear and understand God's word, more will embrace a saving faith in Jesus Christ. We are so glad you've joined us on this Christmas Day and here is a special word from Alistair.
Hello and my warmest Christmas greetings. In chapter 9 of Isaiah, the prophet writes, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone.
And hundreds of years before the birth of the Lord Jesus, the prophet anticipated all that would come, that the Lord God, who is the source of light, the only true, pure, radiant light, enters into his own creation to bring salvation to men and women, a God of immeasurable mercy and grace. And it is this that allows us to really, truly celebrate Christmas, to rejoice that in Jesus our sorrow is replaced with joy and our darkness is illuminated by light and we live with a living hope. So let me say on behalf of all of us here at Truth for Life, thank you for the partnership that we enjoy and I wish you a very blessed Christmas. Thank you Alistair. Our offices are closed this week while our team is celebrating Christmas. We'll reopen on Monday, December 30th.
I'm Bob Lapine. I want to join with Alistair and wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas. Tomorrow we'll hear a special message from the first Psalm. We'll learn the only way sinners can claim righteousness. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
