Sermon Tone Analysis

Recap: Simeon

We discussed Simeon, now let us examine Anna.

She was a prophetess.

Not many prophetesses are listed in scripture.

She joins the likes of Miriam, the sister of Aaron, who led the women in a chorus celebrating the Lord’s triumph over Egypt at the Red Sea.

As well as Deborah and some others who were noted in scripture.

Note that Luke includes some further identification for Anna.

We considered last week that Simeon may have been so well known that no further description was needed, beyond that he was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

We guessed at who his Father and grandfather may have been, but Luke did not record this information for us.

However, for Anna, he did.

Luke tells us that Anna was the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.

And I will mention briefly that Asher was one of the ten so-called “lost tribes” of Israel.

However, there remained a remnant of them who remembered their lineage and kept record of it.

From time to time it is good to remind ourselves of some principles of reading and studying and understanding the bible.

There are several basic rules to do a proper job of study, and I will not give the entire course at this time, but let me remind you of a couple things to keep in mind.

First, when reading scripture, we must never take an interpretation the original author did not intend.

This is very important, because since all of us have a sin nature as a result of the fall, we tend towards selfishness.

A result of this selfishness is sometimes manifested in our insistence to pull the text of scripture immediately into an application that applies to us.

We want to understand it in our own context, and right now.

Some may think to themselves, “Don’ waste my time telling me about what Israel was like at that time, or about who the author was and who he was writing to.

I don’t care about all that, I just want to know what it has to do with me.

And many preachers, aware of this desire, in order to please their listeners, will skip over some important parts of study and moving immediately to application, which has the result of pleasing some people, but at the same time leaving them with an incomplete understanding of the scriptures.

I don’t think anyone who preaches regularly is not tempted to do this at time.

They want to make their congregation happy.

Well, good news for you!

I don’t want to make you happy.

I want to deliver to you the Word of God in a wholesome and complete way.

We need a well-balanced diet, and when it comes to God’s Word, we need to not only consume calories that give us energy for the moment, we need the protein and vitamins and minerals that will build our whole spiritual selves so that we can move forward in spiritual health.

Besides, I love you too much to simply make everything easy to swallow for you.

So we study scripture, and we must never take an interpretation the original author did not intend.

And along with that, we also must not take a meaning that the original readers or hearers of this passage could have taken.

Now, in this case, Luke is simply recording an event.

And while we will draw some lessons from this, it will not be a lesson that one reading this at the time Luke wrote it would not also have been able to glean.

So Anna is a prophetess, and the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.

We must assumed, then, since Luke took the time to add these identifying descriptors, that this is not an allegory, or a nice story that became a legend.

When these very specific details are given, if we do put ourselves in the shoes, or sandals, of those original readers, we can see that someone who wanted to try and refute Luke’s gospel would have a more difficult task since it would not be very hard work for someone to disprove this if it were a lie.

He says specifically many details.

She was a prophetess who was from a certain family and a certain tribe, and she was advanced in years.

She had been married for seven years as a young lady, and her husband had died, and she never remarried.

So she lived the rest of her life as a widow.

Some translations say something like she lived another 84 years after her husband dies.

Which would mean she was well over a hundred years old.

It seems more likely that she was 84 years old, not well over a hundred, and the reasons have a lot to do with how translators have wrestled with this, but the general consensus is that she was 84.

We should keep in mind that 84 is a good old age even today, but in that day and time, average life expectancy was much lower than today.

If you made it through childhood, you could expect to get a good 40-50 years.

Anna surpassed that by quite a long shot, whether she was actually 84 or much older.

Either way, Luke rightly points out that she was advanced in years.

And she did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.

Now, we do not need to take this literally, Luke is not saying she literally never left the temple.

Obviously, she had personal needs like we all do, so she would have to leave to take care of those needs.

What Luke is driving at is not an absolute statement that she never left the temple, but something more like, “she never missed a worship service or prayer meeting”.

In our context today, this would be the true church lady.

If you went to the temple, you would see Anna there.

When you did see her, she was probably on her knees.

And just as Luke could not have meant she never left the temple literally, he also did not mean she fasted without ever eating or drinking.

There is no implication she was somehow supernaturally fed and sustained in that way.

However, spiritually, she was sustained, and she did this work in her service to God.

Her work, her occupation, her calling was to pray.

Giving thanks to God was part of Anna’s routine.

A devout person like her surely knew how to pray the Psalms, which include Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

In her prayers she, like Simeon, prayed for the consolation of Israel, that is, for the Christ, the Messiah, to come.

Likely Simeon and Anna knew each other.

It is a beautiful thing to note that in Luke’s gospel, he is sure to make note of many women who were involved in the story.

To Luke, the gospel is for everyone, so naturally, he wants it to be known that in all of this, the story of Jesus, women were ever present and played a vital role.

Now, hopefully we have understood somewhat how the author, Luke, intended his first readers to view these narratives.

Let us now look to see what we can glean from this.

Anna, after being married only 7 years, was left a widow.

Certainly she could have, at that age, remarried.

But she chose not to do this.

We do not know the exact reason.

We also do not know what she did for the middle period of her life.

We only know for certain what the scripture tells us, and anything else is a guess on our part; even an educated guess is still a guess.

We do know that in these later years, she was a devout servant of God at his temple.

She worshiped with fasting and prayer night and day.

And without overtly saying so, Luke is commending her devout service to God.

She is an example of piety, which simply means a reverent person.

Someone who lives out a life that is devout and dedicated to honoring God.

However, this example is not given in the way as to say this is the best way for everyone to worship.

This is something to be cautious of, and perhaps even more so for new Christians.

We can look at those before us who seem to be very devout, and feel inadequate.

Someone who does secular work may feel inferior to the one whose career is in some sort of ministry, and yet God has not called all to the exact same thing.

His purposes for us as individuals and the church are for His glory, and so he has given to us a variety of gifting and talents.

It is easy for us to look to that great example of Anna, and think we could never make it, then, compared to her.

Who else can even spend this much time in prayer and service and worship?

Each needs to follow their own calling, and to serve God with their whole heart, and give their talents up for service to God.

But let us be careful that we do not measure our own service compared to what someone else is doing.

On the one hand, we could look to Anna, and say, “I am a failure, I do not do enough”.

From the other side of it, we could see someone in the church who really isn’t doing much for the Lord at all, and we can think to ourselves, “Compared to that person, I am doing more than my share.”

And we can quickly become puffed up, the very thing scripture warns us not to do.

Now, let us talk about Anna as a widow for a moment.

Paul wrote to Timothy a whole paragraph or two on how the church should help widows.

Interestingly, he makes clear that the church is to honor widows, “who are truly widows” (1 Tim 5:2).

This may seem at first glance to be a strange thing to say.

Is a widow a true widow or not?

It seems there is only one qualification for widows in our minds.

A woman whose husband has died is a widow.

But Paul makes this clarification, not at all to diminish one woman’s loss of her husband compared to another, but her need for help.

So let’s look at how Paul qualifies those who are truly widows.

So the first qualification, of course, is a woman whose husband has died, but now Paul says that there is a distinction.

If she has family members to take care of her, they should.