Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

I was recently reading about the beginnings of evangelicalism.

It started way back in the 1700s with the Great Awakening and then soared to prominence in the 1800s with the Second Great Awakening.

But one of the major tenants of evangelicalism was the individual experience that comes with faith.

Rather than being catechized into the church and developing one’s faith over time, there was a moment of salvation and an individuality to faith.

I think in one sense this was a good thing, a shift in the right direction.

But, as often is the case, it went too far, leading to an individualized faith in which churches and communities of faith became less and less important.

Doctrine and theology came second to personal ideas about the Bible.

The historic creeds and confessions were thrown away and the idea of “no creed but the Bible” replaced them.

Rather than the eager expectation of Christ’s return for his Bride—the Church at large, there was the eager expectation of Christ’s return for me.

This morning, we get two see two people who got to see Jesus as a little baby.

That’s the first and only time they would see him, but it was enough.

And while we won’t be able to get to it this morning, I want us to notice who it was in which they both were waiting.

As we look at this morning’s passage, we see two depictions set before us.

I want to deal with a third, which is the real crux of the text, but I will have to wait until next week for that one.

So if you’re taking notes in the notebook we handed out at the beginning of Luke, just know that we will be in this text for two weeks instead of just one.

Write accordingly.

What we’ll be looking at this morning are my first two points; the first being the depiction Luke gives us of the parents and then move onto the depiction of the patient.

Depiction of the Parents

Depiction of the Patient

Depiction of the Parents

Quickly I want to make sure that we see how Luke depicts the parents in this passage.

First we see that Mary and Joseph are faithful.

One may think that the parents of the Savior of the World might be tempted to think that they had their meal-ticket!

No more worries for those two!

They could do whatever they wanted.

The Son of God has their backs.

But not Joseph and Mary.

These two were faithful to God and his law.

Back in Genesis 17 and again in Leviticus 12, the people of Abraham were told to circumcise their sons on the eighth day.

It had become custom to also name their child on the eighth day as well.

So when the eighth day came, Joseph and Mary had Jesus circumcised and then named him as the angel had commanded.

In both respects, they had been faithful.

Faithful to the Abrahamic covenant and faithful to Gabriel who proclaimed his name.

But even more so, we see that even though Mary had given birth to the Son of the Most High.

She had given birth to the one who was holy and pure, she herself was not clean.

So forty days after Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary went to the temple to offer the purification sacrifice as required by the Law of God.

These two were not trying to skirt the law.

They weren’t trying to skate on by because of who they knew.

Here were two people, whose homeland was known for its dreadfulness, doing as the Lord commanded.

Church family, much like Mary had nothing to do with God’s favor being placed upon her and so placing the Christ-child in her womb, so we had nothing to do with God’s grace upon us and placing his Holy Spirit within us.

We have been unconditionally elected and yet justified by faith alone.

But like Mary who now carried the Savior of the world in her arms, so we, once Christ is ours, are still to walk in obedience to God’s Word.

As James would say, “Faith without works is dead.”

And as Paul would tell Timothy,

Yet at the same time, without the work of the Holy Spirit, then all our efforts are in vain.

We do not put ourselves into God’s gracious gaze by our obedience.

But it is because we are in that gaze by grace that we can and ought to obey.

But we also see that Luke depicts them as poor.

The purification ceremony also included a sin offering.

One lamb for purification and one turtledove or pigeon for the sin offering.

If one could not afford the lamb, they would bring an extra turtledove or pigeon, thus making a purification by one bird and the sin offering by the other.

Clearly Luke intimates that the young family could not afford a lamb and brought the two turtle doves instead.

Brother’s and sisters, it’s popular today for ministers and churches and people to say and believe that God does not want his people to go about poor, but we cannot dismiss that the very Son of God was born into a poor family, nor that as an adult Jesus stated he himself had no home, no place to lay his head.

Wealth or lack of it has nothing to do with how God perceives you.

Struggling financially does not necessarily mean God’s judgment, and prospering financially does not necessarily mean God’s blessing.

So whether rich or poor, let us continue to live faithfully to the Word of God by the power of the Spirit of God.

Depiction of the Patient

We’ve seen the depiction of the parents, but lets also quickly look at the depiction of the patient.

Here I mean Simeon and Anna.

I call them patient because that’s what they were.

Both are said to be waiting.

We aren’t told how old Simeon was.

Most believe he was an old man when he saw Jesus.

I think that’s probably right.

There is that sense of long-awaited expectation to receive the Messiah to himself as we read this account.

But Simeon is said to be righteous and devout.

He is said to have the Holy Spirit upon him.

In fact, Luke makes it a point not just to say that he has the Holy Spirit upon him, but in verse 26, we read

So he was given a word from the Holy Spirit.

So he has the Holy Spirit upon him and the Holy Spirit spoke to him.

But wait!

There’s more!

Luke 2:27 (ESV)

And he came in the Spirit into the temple. . .

So he has the Spirit upon him, he is given a revelation by the Holy Spirit, and he is led into the temple in the Holy Spirit!

Luke really wanted Theophilus to pick up on who this Simeon was.

He wasn’t some crack-pot.

This was a righteous and devout man whom the Holy Spirit visited, spoke, and led.

Beloved, I have heard from so many of you the desire to have some type of experience like this very thing.

You want the Holy Spirit to speak to you and lead you.

But the reality is, if you are a believer, he can and he will.

This is the job of the Holy Spirit!

In this one verse, we see that the Holy Spirit who is in you (due to your faith in Christ Jesus) will both guide and speak to you all truth.

In an effort to distance ourselves from those who claim “new knowledge” that “God revealed to me” some extra-biblical, anti-Scriptural non-sense, we have shifted the pendulum so far over that we have grieved and even quenched the Holy Spirit and deprived him of two of his main duties!

To guide us and speak to us God’s Word.

Again, not in extra-biblical terms, but in real understanding and real guidance.

After all,

I certainly don’t have time to expound this text in full, but I do want you to see something significant.

We typically use verse 19 to state how we can’t even imagine what God has in store for us.

But that is exactly opposite of what Paul wrote!

His quoting that verse is about the rulers of the age.

Verse 20 tells us that God revealed these things to us by his Spirit!

The whole text is about the power of the Spirit to teach, speak, guide us into understanding.

If you want to be guided by the Spirit and hear and learn from the Spirit then you need to get out of your own way.

Stop denying the power of the Spirit and start praying for it instead.

It is the natural person who does not accept the things of the Spirit, not the spiritual person.

That’s Simeon: a righteous, devout man who has the Spirit upon him, guiding him, and speaking to him.

But then there is Anna.

Anna is an older woman.