Loving Jesus: Extraordinary Joy for Ordinary People

Intro

I listen to 98.9 FM sometimes during the Christmas season. I’m not much of a radio guy; I prefer my playlists on my phone. But at Christmas time I like to listen to the Christmas station. I’m always surprised by how quickly they cut off the Christmas music. December 25 at 11:59pm, if you flip to that station, you might hear Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. If you keep it on until after midnight, you’ll hear N-SYNC or Taylor Swift. And this is especially interesting considering the fact that they start playing Christmas music in early November. So they play Christmas music the better part of the two months leading up to Christmas, but they cut it off on Christmas Day, not even a full day after.

This transition is hard for some of us, isn’t it? The festivities of Christmas each year inevitably and abruptly give way to cleaning up wrapping paper, lugging toys into the house, taking down Christmas lights. Sometimes it can feel like the only thing to look forward to after Christmas are the Christmas leftovers. I’s a shock to our psyche. We’ve been anticipating Christmas, spending money on Christmas, cooking for Christmas, packing for Christmas, decorating for Christmas for months beforehand. And all of a sudden, after a blur of activity it’s over. If we’re honest, the excitement of Christmas morning has become a feeling of disappointment, even emptiness, by Christmas night.

And the world’s solution to this problem is to insist that we can have Christmas all year. Just keep the love in your heart, right? Cherish these feelings all year long, we’re told. But that rings hollow. You can’t manufacture feelings. And so it ends up becoming not much different from the aging man who keeps trying to dress like he’s 25 years old even when he’s 45, 55, 65, 75 and up. It’s superficial; it’s empty; it just doesn’t work. We need something more substantial to bridge the gap between December 25 and December 26 and every day thereafter.

Now God cares about our problems - He cares about the feeling of disappointment and emptiness we feel after Christmas. And His word reveals to us the way that we really can keep Christmas going all year round, except it’s not by manufacturing fake feelings of love and joy. It’s by making a deliberate and intentional effort to treasure the One who is the centerpiece of Christmas. What might it look like if starting today, we began to really take our relationship with Christ seriously? What if Christ Himself is the bridge between December 25 and 26? What if treasuring and loving Him and finding our satisfaction in Him became our supreme goal in 2021? What might it feel like? It would feel like joy, peace, love, and most importantly, deep satisfaction.

Simeon is a man who models this for us. He models this lifestyle of treasuring Christ above everything else. But it’s not about Simeon. In fact, this short narrative about Simeon in Luke chapter two is noteworthy precisely because it is about the supreme desire in Simeon’s heart: the Messiah. He practically overflows with this affection, this longing, this love for Jesus. And out of and through that overflow, the word of God shows us three things about Jesus - three things to keep in mind, three truths to cherish and hold fast, three reasons why Jesus provides ordinary people like us with extraordinary joy. These are things we need to remember daily.

#1: Remember that Jesus is the fulfillment of your deepest desires (vv. 25-26)

Chapter two verses 21-39 take us right up to the point of eight days after the birth of Jesus. In obedience to the OT law, Joseph and Mary take Jesus to the temple to present Jesus as the firstborn son. In Judaism, every child was to be raised in the fear of the Lord, but the firstborn son was to be specially dedicated to the Lord. Jesus, as Mary and Joseph’s firstborn son, is both the firstborn Son of God and the firstborn son of Mary and Joseph. So Mary and Joseph go to the temple and go through the rituals to do this, and they offer a sacrifice as well while they are there.

And at some point, maybe just before they’re about to load up their camels and go back home, they encounter a man they will probably never forget. His name is Simeon. What do we know about Simeon? Well, we know very little; we know nothing about where he’s from; who his mother and father were; what he did for a living; how old he was. We don’t know much. But we do know all that we are intended to know. We are intended to know what Luke highlights for us, which is two things.

The first thing Luke highlights is Simeon’s godly character. So verse 25 says “And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout.” When it says he’s righteous, Luke means he treated to do what is right. Simeon was the kind of man who wanted to do right by others.

Now that would make Simeon a good man but not necessarily a godly man. What makes Simeon a godly man is that Luke tells us that not only was he righteous; Simeon was devout. It means careful, cautious. He was careful about following the law of the Lord. He was cautious in his worship, making sure he offered the right sacrifices and performed the rituals. [See JC Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke vol. 1, for the distinction] And he did these things not as empty formalities; but as the overflow of a heart that was on fire with love for God. How do we know that?

Well, we see that in the fact that Simeon was, according to verse 25, “looking for the consolation of Israel.” Now if you underline in your Bibles or highlight in your Bible app, this is a good word to underline. Underline the word “looking”. Your translation might say “waiting for”, or “looking for”. The word means anticipation. It means excitement. It means, probably more than anything else, longing. And what was he longing for? He was longing, Luke says, for the “consolation of Israel.”

Simeon was longing for comfort. He was longing for consolation. He was looking for encouragement. This means there was something missing in Simeon’s life. Can you relate? This means Simeon had that feeling we all have that things just aren’t quite right in this world. When Simeon lived, Israel had been occupied by four different foreign governments for 400 years. During this time, Israel had suffered the most unimaginable indignities at the hands of the tyrants of Assyria and Babylon, Greece and Rome and Persia.

We can relate to that suffering a little bit. We’re currently living through a global pandemic. We have in this country the best hospitals, the most advanced technology, the most educated doctors and the most brilliant scientists and researchers. Medical students come from overseas to study at our great teaching hospitals in our major cities. And yet with all our expertise and education and confidence, COVID-19 has smashed this country. And what that ought to do for us is smash any illusions of finding heaven on earth and humble us into the dust. So far that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Now, every longing and desire that you and I have points ultimately to a lack in us but most importantly, it points us to the One who wants to satisfy those desires and longings. And He wants to do that ultimately by giving us Himself for all eternity, by bringing us into an eternal covenant relationship with the Father in which we belong to Him and He belongs to us. That is ultimately what our hearts desire, and that is ultimately what our God provides. And sin, fundamentally, is the attempt to find ultimate satisfaction in something other than God. G. K. Chesterton said famously that every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God. His point was that our sinful desires are really desires for God that have become misdirected, and we’ve been living that way for so long that we’ve lost any consciousness that that’s what we’re doing.

In fact, could that be the reason we feel empty after Christmas? Could the reason for our sadness and depression that so many of us feel after the holidays be that our Christmas celebrations had become more and more about the season itself rather than the reason for the season? That would actually be good news. Because once we’ve repented of that we’re led back to Christ, who is the source of all that we long for at Christmas time and all that we miss when it’s over.

Remember that Jesus is the fulfillment of our deepest desires.

Secondly, remember that Jesus is the Savior of all people.

#2: Remember that Jesus is the Savior of all people (vv. 27-32)

Ill. The Bible tells us the story of a disobedient prophet named Jonah. We know the story, many of us, from the Sunday School versions of it told to children. We know Jonah was swallowed by the big fish because he was running from God, but we’ve perhaps forgotten why he was running from God. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he didn’t want to preach to Nineveh, see them repent and turn to God, and see God show them mercy. Jonah hated the Ninevites. He thought they were beyond saving. This is what Jonah said.

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 4

But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” 4 The LORD said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?”

We don’t know what Jonah said in response, if anything. But we do know this: Even after Nineveh repented and God turned back His wrath, Jonah still held out hope that God would blow Nineveh off the map. In fact, he had the ancient equivalent of a tailgate party to entertain himself while he waited for the fireworks to start. He found a place up on a hill under a nice shady plant. God causes the plant to die, Nineveh gets angry, and God calls Jonah’s bluff:

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 4

Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” 10 Then the LORD said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?

How different was Simeon from Jonah! Simeon is brimming with joy and excitement at the fact that the One had come who would bring salvation to the whole world - not just Israel. Somehow the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that this baby with this young couple was the Christ child. There’s no way he would have known that on his own. Mary and Joseph were just ordinary people; they weren’t angels. And Jesus was an ordinary human baby; He didn’t have a halo around His head when his parents brought him into the temple.

And this is the moment that Simeon had been waiting for.

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 2

And he came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, ato carry out for Him the custom of the Law, 28 then he took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said,

29 “Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace,

According to Your word;

30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation,

31 Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

32 A LIGHT OF REVELATION TO THE GENTILES,

And the glory of Your people Israel.”

He says “for my eyes have seen Your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples” - and then notice how He describes this salvation: It is, he says in verse 32, “a light of revelation to the Gentiles” - the non-Jews - “and the glory of Your people Israel.” We might expect Simeon to reverse these, to say “the glory of your people Israel” first, because Simeon himself was an Israelite. But he places “a light of revelation to the Gentiles first” to show how important this aspect of Jesus’ ministry was to Simeon. Simeon took great joy in knowing that the Christ child in his arms would bring not only Israel back to the Father but a people from every tribe, language, tongue and people.

There is something right now in our country growing and festering that needs to be stamped out. It’s called Christian nationalism. It’s the linking of Christianity with being white and being American. It says that we need to purge our country of everything that is non-white and non-American and non-Christian, so that we can finally build the great American theocracy God intended. This is blasphemous. I thank God for my citizenship. I’m proud to be an American. But before I’m am an American, I’m a Christian. More important than my citizenship in this country is my citizenship in heaven. America is a great nation, but it is most emphatically not the chosen nation of God. The people of God today aren’t bound by racial or ethnic lines. Jesus Christ came to be the Savior for all people, not just Americans, not just whites. When we quote John 3:16, we should remember that John wrote that Jesus died because “God so loved the world” - not God so loved the United States. Simeon corrects us here. He proclaims and finds great joy in the fact that Jesus is “a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.”

Remember that Jesus is the Savior for all people.

Lastly, remember that Jesus is the cornerstone of history.

#3: Remember that Jesus is the Cornerstone of History (vv. 33-35)

Ill. When I was in seminary, I worked at a Walgreens for awhile in the pharmacy as a pharmacy tech. There was a lady a little older than me who had some issues that she struggled with and we would talk about them sometimes. I invited her to church once or twice. She never came. But still, the invitation was there.

A few months later, when I had my annual review, do you know what was one of the issues my boss had with me? He said I pushed my faith on others. The girl I had invited to church had complained and told our supervisor that I was aggressively trying to get her to become a Christian. It’s kind of funny when I think about it, because I always felt like I hadn’t been pushy enough. All I had done was invite her to our church and talked about my faith in Jesus a time or two.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re having a conversation with someone about religious things, everything’s fine until you bring up the name of Jesus? You can talk about God in an abstract way with an unbeliever for hours. No problem. God is love, God is kind, God is for us. These things even most non-Christians would affirm. As long as just talk vaguely about God and faith, the world has no issues with us.

But everything changes if you mention Jesus. Suddenly it’s awkward. There’s tension. People take offense. In the blink of an eye, what had been an innocent conversation about faith and religion suddenly seems to the person you’re like talking with like an aggressive and coercive attempt to force them to believe. Of course that’s not what we’re doing. So what changed? What caused the conversation to go south? Jesus.

Simeon helps us understand this. After Simeon has prayed his prayer of thanksgiving and worship, verse 33 tells us that Mary and Joseph were amazed at the things which were being said about their son. Then verse 34 says, “And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed.” Simeon is tapping into an OT prophecy here. Isaiah 8:14 says this,

English Standard Version Chapter 8

And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem

In other words, Jesus is someone who will trip people up. Not everyone. Some will trust in Him and be saved. But others won’t be. They’ll stumble over Jesus. They won’t know what to do with him. After all, He makes audacious claims - He claims to be able to forgive sins; He demands complete and total allegiance, nothing short of absolute allegiance - an allegiance so total that if it comes down to Jesus or your spouse, Jesus or your kids, Jesus or your parents, it’s always and forever Jesus that you will choose. Obviously that is offensive to a lot of people. We don’t like the thought of someone owning us that completely, we don’t relish the idea of someone demanding that kind of commitment from us.

And so when Simeon says “this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel”, he means just that: Jesus will be so polarizing that many will stumble over him, they will fall; but many will also rise, meaning they will find Him to be a sure foundation, a trusted cornerstone, a rock solid platform building their lives on.

And because so many will take offense at Jesus, because so many will, as Simeon says, will fall over Him, Simeon also says that Jesus will be a sign to be opposed. A sign of what? A sign pointing to the redemptive work of God. The Israelites expected that redemptive work to take the form of liberating them immediately from Roman captivity, setting up his kingdom immediately from Jerusalem, and ruling over the nations with an iron fist. They neglected the fact that Jesus would suffer before He entered His glory, and they didn’t like the fact that the same will be true of us - we will suffer because we are associated with Jesus (people will reject us, think little of us, talk about us, maybe even harm and kill us) and only through that suffering will we enter the kingdom of God.

Now Mary and Joseph are beginning to see that all is not rosy. The great things Simeon is saying Jesus will do are going to come at a steep cost, and Mary herself is going to pay dearly. He says to Mary, “and a sword will pierce even your own soul”. The NT has a couple of words for “sword”. One of them is kind of small sword. The other is a much larger sword, a thrusting sword. That’s the one that’s used here. Simeon is saying that Mary will suffer intense emotional anguish, so intense and so painful that the only way to describe it is as a sword piercing her soul.

Ill. I’ll never forget something that happened in my hometown of Morganton when I was in a college. A guy who was a year younger than me, a junior in high school, was on his way to soccer practice when he ran head-on into a transfer truck on Highway 64 south of Morganton. I went to his funeral and remembered how odd it was that his mother got up and read a poem about death. She was very composed - too composed, almost emotionless. Then a week later, she rented a tiny compact car, drove down Highway 64 to the place where her son had died, waited for a transfer truck to come along and drove headlong into it. That’s a true story.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. My guess is that this poor mother’s anguish was so intense, she yearned for her son so deeply, that taking her own life was better than going on living. I don’t know why she did it the way she did, unless she was so grieved by the fact that she couldn’t be with her son as he died that the only way to make up for that, the only way to identify her suffering with his, was to die in the same way he died. That’s speculating - I just don’t know.

What I do know is this: Those of you who are parents and grandparents can relate to this. Your heart is bound up with your child’s welfare. When they hurt you hurt. Jesus will suffer hurt during his life but mostly during His death. Mary witnessed that. And here Simeon has the foresight to see that Jesus will be so polarizing that there will be people who will despise Him so much they will put Him to death. And so he warns Mary in advance.

It’s true. Jesus is the great divider of mankind. Jesus Himself said, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of His household” (Matt. 11:34-36 NASB).

Can this really be the case? Didn’t Jesus come to bring peace on earth? Of course He did, ultimately. But before then, Jesus will actually increase conflict. He’ll increase conflict because a man who is married with children who is dramatically converted and becomes a believer - that man is going to change. His wife and children may or may not change with him. He’s going to become a different person. Jesus will now be His supreme treasure. His whole outlook on life will be radically transformed. Some will like the new “him”, but others won’t. That ‘s what Jesus means when He says “I came to set a man against his father”. He’s not saying that’s the goal of His coming. He’s saying it will be the inevitable result of His coming.

Jesus is the divider of mankind because He is the cornerstone of history.

Today we hear a lot about being on the right and wrong side of history. Being on the wrong side of history is the only unforgivable sin in our culture today. Being on the right side of history means affirming what our secular culture affirms. Mainly, it means being in favor of the sexual revolution. It means embracing science as our sole authority. It means elevating to the level of God my right to do as I please no matter who it affects or what it is. That is what our culture says it means to be on the right side of history. Some houses have these signs they’ve put up in their yard to indicate that they are on the “right side of history.” They say

In this house, we believe:

Black lives matter Women’s rights are human rights No human is illegal Science is real Love is love Kindness is everything

Notice how it reads like a confession of faith, almost like a creed. It’s the religion, the faith system, of our secular culture. Affirm these things, and our culture will affirm you. Deny these things, and our culture will cancel you. You’re on the wrong side of history, they’ll say.

May I point out though that the Bible seems to indicate that history is all about Jesus Christ? All history comes from Him as Creator and is moving toward Him as King and Judge. Simeon says one day every thought will be revealed. Simeon says that some will stumble over Jesus; he says some will rise on Jesus as the foundation of their lives. Because history belongs to Christ, comes from Christ and is moving toward Christ, it’s not those people who affirm the progressive creed those who belong to Jesus who are on the right side of history.

We find lasting joy by being united with Christ, by having a relationship with the One who is the Cornerstone of history.

Conclusion and call for response

Simeon was definitely on the right side of history. Simeon shows up here in Luke for these 11 verses and then is gone and never heard from again. We don’t know anything about him. In the world’s eyes, He didn’t leave a legacy at all. He is known only for this: his longing and affection for Christ. That is His legacy. That is the only real and lasting and true legacy a person can leave behind. And this means that what is most significant to God is not our careers or our bank accounts or our looks or anything like that. It’s our love for His Son. Simeon’s affection for Jesus is forever enshrined in Scripture.

You want to know something cool? The Roman Catholic Church and eastern orthodox church read Simeon’s song regularly. “Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant in peace, according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32). This song has been sung daily and weekly in the Roman Catholic Church and the eastern orthodox church since the 4th century. That’s the legacy Simeon left. An ordinary man with an extraordinary love for an extraordinary Savior, who out of His affection and love for the Savior, spontaneously broke out into worshipful song. That song is recorded forever in Scripture and is sung or recited regularly by the church now for 1600 years.

What kind of a legacy will you leave behind? Will people know you as an ordinary person who believed in an extraordinary gospel, an ordinary person who loved an extraordinary Savior? Will you be known as an ordinary person who engaged in the extraordinary work of evangelism? A real legacy is forged through being an ordinary person who follows and loves an extraordinary Savior. And in that we find extaordinary joy.

So maybe this morning is a time to recommit. Maybe for some of you it’s a time to finally, really commit your lives to Christ. Maybe you’ve never really trusted in Him for salvation. Maybe you’ve been going through the motions, thinking that coming church, just being here, is enough. It’s not. Just like the shepherds, you and I have to personally respond to the good news with faith and obedience. That means saying, “I know I can’t be good enough on my own; I trust in you, Jesus, that your death on the cross is sufficient to atone for my sins; henceforth I rely not upon my own goodness to make me right with God, but on Christ’s righteousness alone.”

Maybe others of you need to make that commitment public. You’ve trusted in Christ but maybe it’s happened gradually over the course of a few months or even years. It’s time to make your commitment to Him public. Whether that means finally joining our church, or being baptized for the first time, Jesus means for us not to hide behind the pews but to let the world know, “I belong to Jesus. I’m not perfect, but He’s accepted me for better or for worse. And for better or for worse, I want to live my life for Him.”

Whatever the Holy Spirit is showing you today, don’t miss the opportunity to respond. You can do that where you sit; you can come down front and pray with me or pray alone. The important thing is not where or how; the important thing is that you respond to what God has shown you this morning.

Simeon’s contribution to history - Nunc dimittis

Wrong side of history?