O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Introduction: Patience gets a really bad rap in the Christian life. In fact, I have said from time to time, and I suspect some of you have said this as well, something along the lines of “whatever you do, don’t pray for patience.” There is a reason for this! Patience isn’t simply Something that is given; it is a quality that is produced through pain. Patience is certainly a fruit of the Spirit, and God has planted the seeds of patience in our heart. However to bear fruit, the seed must be cultivated. It may be the pain of suffering, the pain of inconvenience, the pain of not getting what you really want, the pain of loss, or the pain of hardship, but patience is really only cultivated through pain. And so, we act as though we don’t need or want that particular fruit of the Spirit when, in reality, the fruit of patience is one of the most essential aspects of the mature Christian life. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that to shun patience and the value of patience in the Christian life is to shun Christian maturity.

Advent reminds us of this, because the whole season is about waiting. For 400 years, the people of God waited for God to speak, and now The Word has come into the World. Since Genesis 3, the people have waited on the head crusher who would vanquish the evil one and establish His kingdom. Now, as Christians, we are reminded of this waiting again, as we live in between the first and second comings and wait for the return of our Lord. Advent is all about waiting, at least partly because the Christian life is all about waiting. As we grow in Christ, we must learn more and more of what it means to wait upon the Lord.

Advent is a season built to consider the waiting. Each week, we light a candle as anticipation builds towards the day we celebrate Christ having come into the world. In fact, Christmas itself is a season of waiting. Waiting in line, waiting to open presents, waiting for family to get here. Waiting for things to finally change. Waiting for an end to our hurts. For some of us, maybe even waiting for it to be over. One way or the other, Advent is about waiting, whether we really like it or not.

Our study today is a study of a person who waited a long, long time. And in the end, she got exactly what God had promised - she was allowed to testify in the temple of the Messiah that everyone had been waiting on.

Right after you read about Simeon, we read three little verses about a saint that, had her name not been preserved in the Scriptures, no one would have ever known anything about.

We have said before that there is a great deal of meaning in Hebrew names, and this story is no different. Anna is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew word for Grace. She is the daughter of Phanuel, whose name means before the face of God.

The richness of God’s Word never ceases to amaze me. Here is a woman whose name is grace, and whose father’s name is before the face of God. And by grace, Anna will get to behold the face of God. It is, for her, the culmination of a lifetime of patience, and worship, while waiting.

That is what this week’s text has for us. I want to examine these three verses and see what a life spent waiting on the Lord looks like, and how we can adopt that same attitude in our own lives. How can we live in a tumultuous world with peace and patience? I think doctor Luke has some lessons for us as we examine these passages together.

I can’t promise you that you will receive that for which you are waiting; but God’s Word here shows us two beautiful lessons about the power of waiting:

What awaits us at the end of our waiting is better than we imagine

God is using the waiting to produce something that wouldn’t be in us otherwise.

A life spent waiting on the Lord is a life well-spent.

What waiting does

Luke 2:36–38 ESV

And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When we sing together the song “Sovereign Over Us,” we sing the line “You are working in our waiting; you’re sanctifying us.” Waiting does something to us, and we can intuitively see this in our lives. As we age in Christ, what is supposed to happen is that we grow more patient, because we are stopping to breathe and let the Lord do His work.

But as we said last week, we struggle with the idea that we can be content while not being in control. This seems like a foreign concept for us, because we are so used to living our lives as though we really are the ones in charge. And so, we find it challenging to wait patiently for the Lord to do His work; instead, we try not to do the Lord’s Work so much as we try to be Him by doing what we think He should be doing.

I think there is no more clear examples of this in our lives than when we run headfirst into things that we absolutely cannot change, but wish would change. That may be people or it may be situations, but knowing what we think should change is made even harder when we think that we could step in and change it. This is why advice is so much easier to give than to take! It’s super easy for me to stand up here and say “be patient.” You know what’s hard? Patience. Especially when our personal hopes, or dreams, or goals seem to be hindered or slowed by waiting. And yet, this little story about Anna shows us a great truth:

Waiting fosters greater devotion to the Lord -

Here is reality for us. When we look at Anna’s life through the filter through which we normally look at life, It may be hard for us to think of Anna’s life as nothing short of a waste. We are a culture that prioritizes advancement, and sometimes Christians can be the absolute worst at this.

Look at Anna’s life situation here: For 84 years, she lived as a widow. A lifetime marked by a tragic loss, and then 84 years of widowhood, of fasting and praying and going to temple, all the while waiting on the Lord.

Most of the current and contemporary teachers of the day would tell us that she needed more faith, or that she should have prayed for a new husband, or that she somehow missed God’s will for her life. A life like Anna’s, somehow, doesn’t seem that appealing to us. Results seem appealing to us. Change seems appealing to us. Getting what we desire seems appealing to us. Not waiting. And yet, God’s working is in the waiting.

The story of Israel: wait on the Lord. Through the ups and downs of Israel’s history, we see so many people who had to wait, and who experienced great transformation through the waiting:

I think, for instance, of Abraham and Sarah had to wait on the child of promise, and God used that period of waiting to create growth and transformation in them.

Israel itself was to wait on the Lord as He raised up a redeemer for them in the form of the Messiah. At the end of Malachi, there is 400 years of silence, as the people waited. In fact, Anna’s story in many ways is a living illustration of Israel.

The Old Testament is full of encouragement and exhortation about waiting on the Lord, from “I waited patiently on the Lord, and he inclined to me” to “those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” What does waiting do?

It fosters growth and devotion in us. It encourages us to cling closely to Christ, and to trust His hand. I am convinced that none of us will likely ever know the names of the godliest people in the world. They are the Anna’s of the world, who in quiet waiting and devotion, have fostered an intense devotion to Christ and have been conformed to His image.

What God Does

But there is more to it. Patience waiting is a tool in the hand of a sovereign God that He uses to shape us and conform us to His image. But at the end of our waiting, when the time comes when we see Him perfectly, we are the ones who receive the reward! Figure that out! It’s God who does the work in our waiting, and it’s us who are rewarded for the work of God. What can that be but grace?

God honors our devoted waiting on Him

This story is packed with details that show us how God honors Anna’s quiet devotion. One of the main truths we see here, though, is that faith, not status, is what God rewards. This is a common theme in Luke - that God is no respecter of persons or of status. I mean, just look at who Anna was:

She was a woman: as a woman, Anna would have been restricted in the temple to a place called “The Women’s Court.” She would have had limited rights, for instance she wouldn’t have been able to testify in court, and in many ways would have been seen as inferior to any man. And yet, God grants her to testify to the whole world of the goodness of God.

She was a widow: Anna would have known loneliness. There was little chance at education. She would have lived her whole life in poverty. There was little to no chance to provide for herself. And yet, God appoints the loneliest of people to proclaim that Emmanuel, God With Us, has come.

She was elderly: It is most likely the case that Anna was somewhere around 100 years old. She was subject to the abuse of others. Jesus even talked about how the Pharisees were prone to devour widows’ houses in Mark 12:40. Or the tradition of Corban that Jesus speaks of in Mark 7, in which the Pharisees would convince grown children that the money they could use to support their parents would have been better spent at the temple! Elderly abuse is not a new phenomenon, even among the religious, and we see this happening even then in the time of Jesus.

This is a common problem today, as many view the elderly as a problem to be solved instead of a person to be loved. In 1984, Colorado governor Richard Lamm famously said that older people have “a duty to die and get out of the way.” By 2020, at 84 years old, he had recanted these words and expressed deep regret for saying them. But there is a reality at work here.

But God does not view the elderly as useless, or as a burden. In fact, God was pleased to to use what would have likely been the oldest woman in the temple to testify to the birth of the Ancient of Days.

And so, Anna, who waited patiently on the Lord for 84 years, is honored by the Lord by being given the chance to see a one-time in the whole history of creation event. Her eyes, like Simeon’s, would behold the Messiah! A lifetime of patient devotion to the Lord was rewarded by beholding Christ!

And that is the reward for our patience - to know that one day, we will be in the presence of our Lord, and that He will say to us “well done, good and faithful servant.”

And so, we wait on the Lord, but how?

How to Wait on the Lord

This little passage helps us immensely in learning more of what it means to wait upon the Lord. One of the mistakes that is it easy for us to make sometimes is to mistake patience for passivity, either because we are afraid that patience will be passivity, or because we think that to be patient is to simply do nothing and be comfortable with it. Both these ditches are unbiblical, so it’s worth our time to examine exactly how we wait on the Lord. I think that when we look at what Anna did, we can see five steps to waiting on the Lord:

Be consistent in worship - Anna did not depart from the temple, worshipping night and day. This is figurative language - she didn’t literally stay 24/7 at the temple, because she wouldn’t have been allowed to. But her worship was so consistent that you could say she lived and breathed worship!

whatever you are waiting on the Lord to do, you can guarantee that one of the things that God is commanding us to do in and with our waiting is to worship Him. To respond with gratitude for the grace given. To continue to regularly gather with God’s people, to meditate on God’s Word, and to reflect on God’s praises! When we do this, we have a greater chance of doing like Simeon did last week, where we take our eyes off us, and put them onto Jesus!

But this isn’t just Sunday worship. For the one who follows Jesus, all of life is worship, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do. And so, we do all of our life with an attitude of worship, responding to grace. Whatever else God is calling us to do as we wait, we can know for sure that He is calling us to be consistent in worship

2. Be persistent in prayer - you should regularly and voraciously spend time in prayer. Ps. 40:1 is one of my favorite spots in the Psalms. Listen to what David says here:

Ps. 40:1

Psalm 40:1 ESV

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.

Do you hear that? He heard my cry! Do you see what is happening here? David isn’t simply waiting; he is persistently praying to the Lord while he waits. He is crying out to God as he looks with longing expectation for what he feels he needs God to do.

Jesus tells a story later in Luke that perfectly describes what our attitude in prayer should be:

Luke 18:1–8 ESV

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Consistent, persistent, earth-shaking prayer is the key to waiting. As we wait, we speak to the Father. We proclaim to Him His excellence. We petition Him for His will to be done. And we humbly ask Him to give to us what our hearts long for, or to change our longing hearts. Anna was persistent in her prayer night and day. There is no way to truly evaluate or estimate the priceless value of a life spent in prayer. Friends, you must pray! And if we are to wait on the Lord, we must pray fervently.

3. Be proactive in looking for God’s hand - there are several things that help know that waiting for the Lord is not a passive thing. One is understanding the OT word for patiently - it can also be translated “eagerly” or ‘with intensity.” Christian waiting is active. We actively live in obedience. We actively pursue righteousness. And, we actively look to see what God is doing! Anna is said to have been “Coming up at that very hour) - she was actively waiting. It wasn’t just that God put Jesus in the temple, and then he mystically dropped in Anna’s lap - she was looking for Him!

- There are an awful lot of times in life when we stop actively looking to see what God is up to, and resign ourselves to that by saying something like “God just isn’t working in my life or through this circumstance.” But here is the thing: God is always working. We are called to tune our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to see how He is working! Chrisitan, hear me: you may be tempted to think that God is not working right now, or that nothing good is coming out of what you are walking through. Hear the truth, friend, and have joy: God is always working. He is always at work in your life. He is using your circumstances to bring about your sanctification. He is with us, and He is for us! Our job as Christians is to strive to change “God isn’t working” to “I wonder how God is at work,” and then take a spirit of holy curiosity into our lives and see what we see about the glory of God!

4. Be committed to the disciplines of grace - if we hate the word “patience” as a culture, I think we probably hate the word “discipline” even more! We avoid talk about the spiritual disciplines, yet the thing that Doctor Luke celebrates about Anna here is that she regularly engaged in the spiritual disciplines. She is fasting, praying, worshipping, proclaiming. While she waits on the Lord, she disciplines herself for service to the Lord.

- It should sound obvious to us, but a life spent regularly practicing the spiritual disciplines, communing with Christ and growing in Him through the means of grace He gives is never, ever wasted. We would all do well to be memorialized for fasting, prayer and worship. What do you want to be remembered for? These are the things that truly matter.

5. Be prepared to testify to the Lord’s faithfulness - finally Ann gave testimony to “all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.” She told everyone she could that the Messiah had come! Why? Because God was faithful, and she was so enraptured with Christ that she couldn’t help but talk about God’s faithfulness and God’s work.

as you wait for God to work, as you pray, and worship, and grow in grace, and seek to see what God is up to in your life, go ahead and be prepared to testify to how faithful He has been, even when, and sometimes especially when, we are not faithful. And then, tell others about His faithfulness! It is amazing how much our patience in grace is cultivated when we talk with one another about how faithful He is!

So, be patient, friend. Wait upon the Lord, but let it be an active waiting. Wait in worship. Wait through prayer. Wait while looking. Wait and practice the disciplines of grace. Wait and tell others of the faithful God who is always faithful.

This advent, what are you waiting on? What are you asking God to do, that maybe you have waited years or decades to do? Do not despise the waiting. See what God is doing in it. He is working in our waiting!

This week, we siing O Come O Come Emmanuel - The story of the OT is that Israel waited hundreds of years. But in the fulness of time, God sent His Son to ransom captive Israel. This song, like advent, is about waiting. This Christmas, may we wait intently on the Lord, both expecting Him to work, and to use the waiting to do the work in us.

Non-Christian - you may be precisely what someone else is waiting on. Today is the day of repentance.

Benediction: Gal. 4:4-5

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.