Casting Christmas When God Turns Makes You Wait: Simeon and Anna

Transcription

1 Transcript Casting Christmas When God Turns Makes You Wait: Simeon and Anna Aaron Brockett Luke 2:21-35 I want to welcome all of our campuses right now. I want to say hello to North, Downtown, West and anybody tuning in online. In fact, here at Northwest could we put our hands together and just greet all of our other campuses? Love you guys. If you ve been tracking with us over the last couple of weeks, we ve been talking about the focus of our year-end giving. So I just want to draw a little bit of attention to that if you ll just give me a couple of minutes to do that before we jump into the message. God has opened up some really incredible opportunities for us as a church over this past year. And I think that it is fitting for us in the last few days of this year to look back and to reflect and to thank God for where he has brought us as a church. In many ways 2017 has been a banner year in the life of Traders Point. We launched two campuses within six months of one another, which is just crazy but God has really taken that and blessed it in so many ways. I remember when we first started talking about becoming one church that would meet in multiple locations around our city, about five or six years ago now, we had questions about it. How will we do this? What will it look like? And, why would we ever do this? There were a number of people who came up to me and were like, Why would we ever leave Northwest and show up at a middle school at 6 o clock in the morning in the middle of an Indiana winter and set up and tear down? Why would we do that? And those are all really, really good questions. We just kept driving it back to saying that the word go is used a whole bunch throughout the Scriptures. In fact, Jesus would tell us to go. And going is not just for those of you who would move to the other side of the world, or those who would move to Santa Barbara, but it s for those of us right here in our own city. To be a follower o Jesus means that you re going to be on mission with God right where you live, work, and play. We love every part of our city and we recognized five or six years ago, we were having people drive as much as 50 minutes to an hour to come to the Northwest Campus, which is great but it was going to be limiting at some point to their growth. And so we just believe that following Jesus works better when you can worship, serve, and lead closer to where you live. So we just started to identify where we had groups of people more than 20 minutes from this campus and then we began to pray about God opening up those doors. I just want to celebrate some of this. It should not be lost on us what God has done, alright? Two years ago we sent about 350 people from the Northwest campus to North. And we started

2 at Creekside Middle School. And two weeks ago they had nearly 1,400 people in their own, permanent facility just amazing. That campus is crawling with kids, right? They are just being overtaken with kids. It s great. And then about a year ago we sent about another 300 or 350 people to the public library downtown to begin meeting for weekly worship services. Two weeks ago they had nearly 1,400 people in their own, permanent facility as well. Right now I just want to address the Downtown crowd. I want to brag on you guys. For those of us at Northwest and any of our other campuses, if you ve not checked out Downtown, there are so many great things happening on that campus. It s just electric. It s diverse. It s exciting. I just love what God is doing down there, so way to go. Then back in August of this year we sent another 300 people out to Avon North Middle School on the west side to start that campus. They are only about four or five months old and they have between 700 and 800 people showing up every single weekend. And I want to say, Good job guys. And we ve had 780 people this year put their trust in Jesus and go public with that through baptism. That s just unprecedented. It s amazing to see all of that. And I don t want us to get used to that or to take it for granted because that s not normal. God has just seen fit to do some incredible things around here and we re really, really humbled by it. So I want you to know this. As your pastor I want to lead us into this season right now where as a church we would simply be asking this question: God what s next? God what do you want us to do? Where do you want us to go? I never want to get out in front of God and tell him what I d like for him to do. Have you ever done that in your life? It usually never works out, alright? I want to be behind God and I want to say, God, would you please go before us. Would you please open up the doors? Show us what it is that we need to do and where we need to go. So where is the next campus that we need to launch? And God, how do we meet the tangible needs in our city so that we don t just become known for having a service on the weekends but we are known for mobilizing out into our city during the week. We know right now that drugs are tearing our city apart, which is then tearing the family apart, which is then tearing kids apart. And so we re asking God right now, God, how do we step into that and meet a tangible need? The foster care system has great needs adoption we want to lean into that among other needs. God how can you use us to be part of the answer to the needs of this city? So here in the beginning of 2018 specifically the first week, we may extend it our staff is going to be praying and fasting and I want to invite you, as a church, at all of our campuses to join us in your own rhythms of your life. We want to pray and fast asking God s direction and guidance for this next year. Now, what I mean by fasting is that we re going to give something up and take that time and devote it to just seeking out what God would have us to do as a church? That could be food. That could be a meal. That could be social media. That could be Netflix something that you say, You know what? I would 2

3 normally be devoting some time to this but I m going to actually not and I m actually going to devote this time to asking God to guide and lead our church. So I want to invite you to that the first week of this next year. Our year-end giving is going to go toward our ongoing efforts here in the city but also around the world. So we ve been telling you over the last few weeks that we re going to plant four churches in Peru with a partnership with Stadia and Compassion International. And how this is going to work is that as we plant these churches, Compassion International is going to go around and identify the children who are in these four communities who are in need. We re going to do a big child sponsorship weekend at the beginning of Compassion will be here at our campuses to help facilitate this. And we want to sponsor all of the kids who are in these communities as we are planting these churches. Christ Church of the Valley, which is sort of a sister church of ours in Phoenix, Arizona just recently did this two or three weeks ago. And to give you a little bit of context, Christ Church of the Valley is about 20,000 across eight campuses and they set a goal to start eight churches in South American in partnership with Stadia and Compassion. So Compassion came along and said, Well, we ve identified all the kids in these eight areas. They did a big sponsorship weekend just two or three weekends ago and they set the record. Compassion has never had more child sponsorships in a weekend than what Christ Church of the Valley did. They sponsored get this they sponsored 11,000 children in one weekend. Ashley Wooldridge is the lead pastor at Christ Church of the Valley. He is a friend of mine. He posted a picture on Instagram the day after of Compassion s website. What he did is he went in to the search criteria for these eight regions and typed in: I m looking for a child in one of these eight regions. And he got this little message back that basically said: there are no kids left. They sponsored them all. And I am like, That is so cool. So Compassion has forecasted for us that there will be roughly 800 to 1,000 kids that they think need to be sponsored in the four areas where we are going to be planting a church. I think that we can take all of them. What do you think? So on child sponsorship weekend I want you to be praying about that. Be thinking about that. Budget for it and let s see if we can sponsor all of the kids in those areas. As we come down to year-end, I just want you to know that your year-end generosity provides opportunities for us, as a church, to be generous all year long. And it allows us to pivot and to speak into needs as they arise. We live in a world where needs pop up out of nowhere. For example, we have a partner church in Ventura, California Mission Church. If any of you remember Jodi Hickerson, she has been on campus to teach, that s the church that she and her husband, Mike, serve. They are a distribution center to meet the needs of people whose homes have been burned up by the wild fires out west. Well, because of your ongoing, weekly generosity we were able to just pivot and send them resources. So I want to thank you for that. And our year-end giving will provide a real shot in the arm for this vision that we believe that God has placed in front of us. So, if you ve already given thank you so much. You have until December the 31st if you haven t. You can give online, on the app, or in the wall boxes. 3

4 Let me go ahead and pray and then we re going to jump into the message together. Father, we come to you right now and I thank you so much that I get to be a part of this church. And, God, we have so much to learn and so much to get better at and yet, at the same time, we thank you for the way that you are working in and through us so that as many people as possible in our city and around the world can come to know that Jesus can be trusted. So, Father, thank you for this past year but we don t want to live there. We want to look out into the future and ask what s next and how you want us to serve in such a way that it will advance your name and your kingdom and meet needs and provide hope right here and now. We ask this in Jesus name: Amen. Well if you have a Bible or a Bible app would you please meet me in Luke, chapter 2? If this is your first time to be with us, we are in the middle of a series called Casting Christmas where we are basically looking at the people and the details surrounding the story of Jesus birth. And this particular season of the year, this particular time of anticipation of Jesus birth comes from the Latin word advent, which just basically means: coming or arrival. So what we ve been doing over the last couple of weeks is that we ve just been looking at the details around the arrival of Jesus when he came to earth. And the story of Jesus arrival is unusual to say the least. He didn t just show up one day, do his thing, and then leave. He actually came to earth in the most human of ways. He came to the earth the way that all of us have arrived here, through a birth. And then he lived among us and lived with us for 33 years. In fact, the author of Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 4, We have a high priest, and a priest is just somebody who connects you to God. We only need one and Jesus is that high priest. He has connected us to God and Hebrews says that we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with whatever it is that you and I might be experiencing or going through in this life right now. That means that Jesus knows what it is like to be hungry. He knows what it is like to be thirsty or to be tired. Jesus knows the pains of adolescence and he knows what it s like to be rejected by a friend. And Jesus knows what it is like to wake up one morning and not want to get out of bed or just feel depressed and not really know why. Jesus knows all of those things. There s one big difference between Jesus and us though. It s that he never sinned. Not even once. That means he never let his pride get the best of him. He never said I m sure there are moments when he wanted to but he never said: Hey, God. Forget you. I m going to do my own thing. And during this season of advent we are not only reminded of this but we anticipate his next arrival, when once and for all he will make right all that has gone wrong in our lives and in this world. For hundreds of years it had been prophesied that a Messiah would come and that he would come in a very specific way involving very specific people at a very specific time. But yet, 4

5 from the nation of Israel s perspective this was such an extended period of time that they were beginning to wonder if it was ever going to happen. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago that between Malachi, which is the last book in the Old Testament, and the first book of the New Testament, which is Matthew is just one flip of the page for us, but it was 400 years for them. And they were beginning to wonder if God was really going to come through on what he had promised them. And at just the right time the Messiah was born. And God cast these regular, ordinary people just like you and me to play a role in this narrative. Here s the thing. When we read about these people in the Bible, they weren t just perfect Bible people who had it all figured out. They were just imperfect people like you and me who just happened to be in the Bible. They had questions and they didn t necessarily know where this was leading and it would require a great amount of courage and trust and faith for them to step up and say: God, we trust you. So two weeks ago we looked at Mary and Joseph and how they were willing to allow their whole world to be turned upside down. They put their dreams aside to be the subject of harsh gossip that would have come from family members and the community because what God was asking them to do was pretty scandalous. I m sure that they faced embarrassment and shame and yet they came to this place in their life this place where I desire to be, but I m not there yet this place where we can say, You know, God. I trust that you are for me but I also know that this isn t about me. Man, if I can find myself in that zone where I know that God is for me but this isn t all about me, then it frees me up to be used by him in tremendous ways. Mary and Joseph modeled that for us. Last week we talked about the shepherds and that we sort of take them for granted in the Christmas story. They are always kind of off to the side in the Nativity scene. It would have been unusual to have involved shepherds in the first century because they were looked down upon. They were sort of a despised group of people and yet God turns the light on in the middle of the field and he exposes them for who they are and he drives out their fear. He redirects their confidence and says: Listen, there is a Messiah who has been born and I want you to go see him and then I want you to tell everybody that you know about it. And what that tells us what that reminds us of is that this is for everyone. There is nobody who is disqualified. I don t care what you ve been through, what you ve experienced, what s been said about you, what s been done to you. When God turns the light on, it changes things. Well this week I want to look at a couple of people who very rarely ever get attention or recognition at Christmas. In fact I was thinking through this this past week. I don t ever remember hearing a sermon on this passage at Christmas. I don t remember ever preaching a sermon on this passage. And I m kind of scratching my head trying to figure out why that is. 5

6 This couple doesn t get enough attention and recognition. I want to look at their story today. So look with me in verse 21 of Luke, chapter 2. Look what it says. It says, Eight days later, so this is about a week after Mary has given birth to Jesus, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived. So the one thing that I want you to recognize I want you to pay attention to all of the details that Luke gives that, I guess maybe at first glance you d have to ask yourself, Is this really necessary? Case and point: circumcision. Is it really necessary that Luke tells us that Jesus was circumcised? I don t know. Luke was a doctor so maybe that s why. It s like, Thanks, bro for that detail. But Luke gives us all kinds of details and I want you to pay attention to the following verses as we read through this. He s going to give us all kinds of details, because Luke wants us to know that this isn t just a once upon a time fairy tale. This is a real story involving real people and he gives us these real details. Going on in verse 22 it says, Then it was time for their purification offering, talking about Mary and Joseph, as required by the law of Moses after the birth of a child; so his parents took him to Jerusalem, about six miles up the road from where they were, to present him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, If a woman s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the Lord. So they offered the sacrifice required in the law of the Lord either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. So what s going on here? Well, according to the law of the Lord, which is found in Leviticus, chapter 12 the first eight verses there actually talks about this. It says that according to the Jewish law whenever a couple has a male child they immediately should take him to the Temple and they should offer a couple of turtledoves, which is actually somewhat expensive, or if you couldn t afford that you could offer a couple of pigeons in their place. Well Mary and Joseph are in that tax bracket. They weren t wealthy enough to offer two turtledoves whatever a turtledove is. I don t know. But they offered a couple of pigeons. So that s what s going on. But I d like to know what s really going on. I d like to know what s going on in their hearts. Mary and Joseph leave and travel six miles to the Temple in Jerusalem. Could you imagine just for a minute what they are experiencing emotionally and what maybe Mary is experiencing physically? Now if you have had a child then you probably know a little bit about what I m talking about. Those of you who have kids, can you remember the day that you brought that baby home from the hospital? You re first one. Wasn t it terrifying? I can remember this distinct feeling My son is 15, he s our oldest, but when we brought him home from the hospital I remember thinking, Should somebody be with us right now? Should there be a professional who could come home with us? Basically the only qualification was that the nurse made sure that I locked him into the car seat, right? And it s like, Okay, there you go. And I was like, Okay, I had to have a test to get my 6

7 driver s license, but become a dad? I just show up, right? So I remember going home and being like, Am I going to do this right? About seven or eight days after Connor was born we were living in northern California at the time and Lindsay was exhausted. She was trying to recover from the delivery. And we had family come out to visit and to help out, and they did. So they were at our apartment our tiny little apartment and I remember that we just needed to get out of the apartment one day and get some fresh air. So we said, Let s go to San Francisco. It was about an hour drive from where we were, Let s go to San Francisco and do some sightseeing. So we get in the car, we drive down there. And when we got there somebody in our family recommended that we go on a tour of Alcatraz. Exactly somebody just said, What?? That s what I said. We have a seven-day-old baby and I don t know if you ve ever been to Alcatraz it s not kid friendly. It s a little rock and it s in the middle of a very windy bay and it s a decaying prison. So there s rebar and there s concrete. There s no play area, alright? So we get on this island and I tell my wife, Why don t go with your family to take a tour of the prison. I ll give you a break from the baby. I ll stay outside. Now keep in mind the total amount of time that I had spent with a baby alone was like 30 minutes. At that particular moment in time I just hadn t had a lot of experience with a baby and my wife gave me this look like: are you sure about this? I was like, I ve totally got this. So they leave. I m all by myself with my son. I ve got the stroller, the diaper bag, everything. He immediately begins to cry like uncontrollably. I can t control him. He won t take his bottle. I m trying to figure it out. Through a process of elimination I realize that he needs his diaper changed. So I m looking for the bathroom. Now Alcatraz has a bathroom. One bathroom, alright built in 1920 not made for tourists so it s very, very small. There s this line of like 30 guys out the bathroom. Connor is crying the whole time. I m waiting in line. Finally get inside and there are only like two urinals in the whole bathroom. And I m looking for a changing table, which did not exist in But they outfitted this bathroom with one. So there s like a Blue Koala Bear changing table. They put it there was no other place for it they put it right over the urinals. So when you lowered it you basically Nobody could use the restroom as you re changing the diaper. Well, I m not very good at this. I m trying to figure it out. Connor s crying, screaming the whole time. The line is getting longer behind me. I ve got an audience. And the whole time I m just like, I am so sorry. I m apologizing to him, I am so sorry. I am messing you up for life. I finally get the diaper changed. I hold him up and it falls off. It was horrible. 7

8 I ll never forget that there was this guy like four or five people behind me who muttered loud enough for me and everyone else to hear, he simply said this. He goes, This guy doesn t know what he is doing. I was like, Yeah, what gave you the clue. Of course I don t know what I m Yeah, I don t know what I m doing. I remember in the moment feeling really, really alone and really wanting somebody, preferably somebody older and wiser than me, to walk up beside me and put his arm around me and say, Hey, man. It s going to be okay. You ve got this. But it was Alcatraz and that person did not exist, alright? I want you to put yourself in Mary and Joseph s shoes after they d given birth to Jesus, in a barn, in Bethlehem. I m sure they were asking some very, very similar questions. Like: Man it s been several months since we ve heard from the angel and our family has shunned us are we going to be able to do this right? I mean, it s a lot of pressure being a parent. Could you imagine being the parent of God? Jesus has come to take away the sins of the world but what if we mess him up before he can do that? What if he ends up in prison or rehab before he can actually go to the cross because we messed him up as parents? I m imagining that they were feeling some of these things and that s why what we read next is so great. And it can easily be missed. Look at what it says in verse 25. It says, At that time, and I wonder what that means. At just the right time, maybe when Mary and Joseph were asking these questions, there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord s Messiah. That day the Spirit led him to the Temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required, Simeon was there. I want to jump down to verse 36. I want to introduce you to Anna and then we ll go back up and we ll finish this passage out. In verse 36 it says, Anna, a prophet, was also there in the Temple. She was the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. Keep in mind, once again, Luke has given us all of these interesting details. Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been, here s that word again, waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem. There are a couple of things that I just want to bring to our attention from what Luke has just told us here. The first thing is that Luke just really wants us to know that Simeon and Anna are getting up there in years. They were old. Now I don t think that he tells us that for any other 8

9 reason than to provide a little bit of context here to say that they have been anticipating the Messiah for a really long time like decades. This is the end of their life. They d been looking for this for a really, really long time. The second thing that I want you to notice is that the Spirit of God was coordinating this whole interaction. If you ll notice it says that the fear of God led Simeon to the Temple. That Mary and Joseph were going to be there. They needed a word of encouragement and affirmation to be sure. But I think that this was also, equally, encouragement and affirmation to Simeon and Anna. We see this back up in verse 28. Look at it with me. It says Simeon, took the child in his arms and praised God, saying, Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your, not a baby, not a child but I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel! Jesus parents were amazed at what was being said about him. Man I read this this past week and it seems like as soon as I read it it was like, Man, where have I seen this? Where have I seen this? Where have I seen it? And then it dawned on me, I know, the movie The Lion King, right? That s just kind of what is going on here. Simeon is in the Temple and they re dedicating Jesus and Mary and Joseph are standing there and Simeon is basically saying this: Finally I can die a happy man. God you promised me And I don t know when it was that God promised him. I don t know if he was in his 20s or his 30s or his 40s but at one point God had promised Simeon. He was like: Simeon, you re not going to die until you ve seen the Messiah. And Simeon is like: Now I ve seen the Messiah. I have lived a full life. I am satisfied at this because this child embodies the life and the hope of the world. It s a beautiful picture in this Temple. And if it would have ended there it would have been great. But it doesn t end there. In fact Simeon goes on and what he says next I think really would have caught Mary off guard. Look at this. He says to her, This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul. Wow! We communicate with emojies a lot. I was thinking this is the emoji I think Mary would have used in this moment Like: Simeon you just took a turn toward crazy town, alright? I imagine that she s standing there holding Jesus and she s looking at Joseph like: can we leave now? This is very weird. 9

10 And it kind of is. You read this and you go what in the world is Simeon talking about? Here, let me connect the dots for you, because as it turns out Simeon does know what he is talking about. Simeon says that Jesus will cause many in Israel to fall. Well in 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 8 it says this, He [Jesus] is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall. How does he do that? Well, he will always confront your pride and when he confronts your pride it causes you to stumble. Simeon would say that others he will cause to rise. Well, in James, chapter 4, verse 10 it says, Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. And when I mess up in my life that s when I try to lift myself up instead of humbling myself and letting him lift me up. Simeon would say that many will oppose him. Well Jesus would say of himself in John 15:25, They hated me without cause. Simeon says to her that the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. Well in John 2:25 it says, No one needed to tell him about human nature, for he knew what was in each person s heart. Simeon says to Mary: Mary, there is going to come a day when it s going to feel like a sword will pierce your soul. And in John 19 we get this image where Mary is standing at the foot of the cross watching the life of her little boy slip away: this little boy that she would have fed, this little boy that she watched take his first steps, this little boy that she heard speak his first words. Could you just imagine that for a moment? Standing there at the foot of the cross watching this group of Roman soldiers throw dice for his clothes the clothes that she had likely purchased for him, what would that have felt like? I don t know. Like maybe a sword piercing your soul? That sounds about right. As it turns out, Simeon knew exactly what he was talking about and he was preparing Mary for this experience. I ve oftentimes been in awe of how composed Mary appears to be at the foot of the cross. I don t think that was any accident. I think she had 33 years to get ready for it. I think there were all kinds of moments throughout Jesus life we don t know a lot from his birth all the way up to when he begins his first public ministry at the age of 30, but I would imagine that there were plenty of moments when Mary reflected back on this bit of an awkward conversation that she had with Simeon and it prepared her for what was coming. And I am sure that there were moments when Jesus tested her patience, I m sure there were times when she was like: Jesus, I ve told you for the hundredth time to pick up that toy in the hallway. And then she walks out in the hallway and steps on it: Oh, I m going to kill that kid. And then she thinks back to this conversation with Simeon. 10

11 She comes home from a long day and all she wants to do is draw a hot bath and just sink into the bath tub but Jesus turned the water in the bath tub into wine and she s just like: Jesus, I m going to kill you, alright? You know it would have happened. And then that time when Jesus crashed the family camel on his way home from his friend s house totaled it and their deductible just went sky high. There are all of these moments that she would have come to her wits end as a parent just like all of us. And yet she thought back to this conversation and it prepared her for what was coming. So here s the end of another year. A few days before Christmas and I m just wondering if there are any of us who need that reminder for our own lives. See here s the thing about life. If there is anything that we know about life it s that it is unpredictable and that s the word. There are several things as I reflect back on 2017 that I just could not have anticipated. As great of a year that it was, there were a lot of things that were just unpredictable that actually threw me for a loop, actually to drive my faith deeper. And I know, looking ahead to 2018 that I m going to look ahead with a great amount of hope, but I also know I ve had experience in the last few years to know there are going to be some things in 2018 that I m going to experience that are unpredictable. I never could have seen them coming. They are going to be painful. They are going to hurt. There are going to be some things that you ve been waiting on in 2017 and you re still going to be waiting on them in Have you noticed that so much of our days, so much of life is just waiting, isn t it? This time of the year may bring this to the surface more than any other. We re waiting in line, we re waiting in traffic. We re waiting for the doctor to return the call. We re waiting to maybe get pregnant. We re waiting for that relationship to get worked out. Can I just simply ask you right now what are you waiting for? And what does it look like for it to arrive? Here s the thing about life. There are some things that I was waiting for when I was a kid. And they would finally come and here s the thing I would all of a sudden be waiting for something else. When I was a young man I was waiting for maybe a certain opportunity. And then I got the opportunity and then I was waiting for something else. I never really relished the arrival and I never really thought about the journey that God had me on while I was waiting. I think it would do us all good to just simply identify this: What am I waiting on right now? And to recognize that our hope is at risk as we wait because maybe you ve been waiting for a really, really long time. So how do you keep hope alive in the midst of that wait? It can so easily This time of the year exposes some of our greatest vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and fears. And the illusion of Christmas I think one of the reasons for so many of us I ve talked to a number of you this weekend. We love this time of the year, but yet we know that the week ahead is going to be exhausting. It s going to demand a lot of us. And I think maybe one of the 11

12 reasons why some people struggle this time of the year is because they were hoping all year long that this would be the time when we would finally receive what it is that we are waiting for and then Christmas comes and goes and we re still waiting. We see this theme throughout all of our favorite Christmas movies, right? It s like: I ve been waiting and waiting to get that Red Ryder BB Gun and my mom and told me I m going to shoot my eye out, but I don t care. Maybe this is the year I m going to get it. Or maybe this is the year when I m going to finally get reunited with my dad and he s going to stop selling really bad children s books and he s going to give me the attention and the affection that I need now that I m a 40-year-old and I grew up at the North Pole and was raised by elves. And this is the year that my boss is going to finally give me that bonus so that I can put a pool in the back yard. And if he doesn t then I m going to have a cousin who can go after him. Some of you were wondering if I was going to get it in there. I have a minute left. Three for three, baby. See the whole reason why we say things like: It s the most wonderful time of the year is because somewhere buried deep within us, maybe under the layers of skepticism and shame is hope. And I want to encourage you to keep hope alive. Maybe some of you have begun to let go of it. Maybe this year you re hoping that that family rift that opens up every time you get together with them, wont. Maybe this year you can finally find whatever it is that you re looking for that will satisfy the longings of your heart. Maybe this year you re thinking, Maybe I can get a handle on my anger. Or, Maybe this year this will be the year that the bitterness that has kind of been gripping my heart will begin to loosen its grip. Maybe this year is when I can find some happiness and some joy, and so we wait. I don t know about you but I don t like waiting. I don t even like the sound of the word wait. And I m not very good at it, right? Would any of you say that you excel at waiting? Like if you were interviewing somebody, Tell me what you are good at. Well, I m really good at waiting. Tell me what one of your top three spiritual gifts are. Ah, waiting. Nobody says that they are good at waiting. Nobody likes to wait. And yet we re all waiting. We re all in a season of waiting. So how do we hold on to hope as we wait? Here s what we learn from Simeon and Anna. I ve only got one application. And this is simply it. Waiting is preparation in disguise. Waiting is preparation in disguise. 12

13 It s what we learn and are reminded of from Simeon and Anna. This is why, once again, going back to the details that Luke provides in the narrative, Luke says that Simeon was devout. Simeon was a righteous man. That as he was waiting he was preparing. He says that Anna would go to the Temple every single day. She was fasting and she was praying. Well what does that mean? She s preparing. When I invited you to join us at the beginning of the year for a time of praying and fasting what is that? Well it s preparing. It s saying, God before you actually use us to make a difference in this city and around the world, you ve got to prepare us first. You ve got to do a work of the heart first. So, God, we want to invite you into that space and we want you to do it. The nation of Israel had been waiting for 400 years and it just seemed like God was silent he wasn t doing anything. But you look back in retrospect, especially what was going on in the world at the time; God was actually moving things around like Chess pieces. And he may not have been saying a lot, but that didn t mean that he wasn t doing anything. See what made it so difficult for the nation of Israel as they waited is the Roman occupation. The Romans came in and actually occupied the promise land and Israel was living as slaves in the land that God had given them. And Rome was charging them rent. They were taxing them up to 80 percent of their income. And it was a horrible, horrible thing from their perspective. Yet, here s the thing, at a very high level what came with the Romans was roads. They were building all of these roads so that when Jesus was born, news of his arrival could spread faster than at any other time in the history of the world. And during the time of Roman occupation it says that everybody learned to speak a little bit of Greek. Everybody was beginning to speak a very similar language so that when the Messiah would be born news of that arrival could spread fast. So from their perspective it looked like God had forgotten about them. From God s perspective he was preparing them and the world for Jesus arrival. Here s what I simply want to leave you with. Man, whatever it is that you are waiting on I just want you to know that God is in control. And you may not feel it, but I want you to know it and I want you to hear it and I don t want you to let go of hope because I know that in the middle of your wait it can feel pretty hopeless. But cling to this promise. What we see here in Luke 2 is that at just the right time God came through. He did it once and he ll do it again. He always does. And waiting is preparation in disguise. I want to invite him into this space right now. Father, we come to you right now and every single one of us is waiting on something. We re waiting for a phone call, were waiting for an , we re waiting for a conversation. Maybe our 13

14 wait has something to do with our health. Maybe our wait has something to do with our emotions. God, in the middle of our waiting our hope is at risk and so we want to grab a hold of it. We want to keep hope alive by trusting that this time of year is a reminder that you always fulfill your promises and that you always come through at just the right time. And, God, some of us just really need to just hear that and be encouraged by that. So I pray this week of Christmas that we would hold on to that and we would invite you into our lives and we would embrace the fact that in the middle of our wait you are preparing us for something something we maybe can t see right now but real none-the-less. So we trust you. We invite you into this space. Work on our hearts. We ask this is Jesus name: Amen. 14