A simple thought. An easy word really. But do we say it enough? Why is it so hard at times to say thanks?
Ok so it’s not that it’s hard to say, it’s that sometimes we forget to say it. At least that’s my biggest problem with today’s word. But did you know the more you say thanks, the harder it is to complain?
It’s a fact. You can’t be disgruntled about something and thankful at the same time. It’s like being blinded by light and in total darkness simultaneously. It just can’t happen!
Gratitude should probably be the word for today, but thanks is so much shorter of a word. A simple thank you can totally change someone’s day. And no I don’t just mean the person to whom you’re speaking either. I mean you. It can change your day.
Saying thank you over and over again for things will condition your brain to look for things for which you can be thankful. The more thankful you are the more you’ll say thank you and the more you’ll see things for which to be thankful. It’s like this crazy cycle of goodness!
Here’s a little secret as you try to implement this one in your life. You don’t always have to be overwhelmed with thanks to just say thank you. I’ve said thank you at times when I wasn’t really even sure that I was thankful. I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. I did it because I knew if I said thank you eventually my heart and head would catch up to my mouth. I don’t mean to be disingenuous by any means. But sometimes you have to say it out loud before you can feel it deep inside.
Today’s word comes with a challenge. What are some simple things that people do for you consistently that you could slow down long enough to thank them for today? Maybe it’s your spouse always making sure there’s food in the house – that should probably be one of mine. You know I can’t remember a time when I went to the pantry or the fridge and it was totally empty! And honestly I don’t know if I’ve ever said thanks to my wife for doing the whole people thing and going to the grocery. So here it is, in public for anyone who cares enough to read this, Thanks Dear for always making sure there’s food in the house!
As we continue to walk through the book of Romans, we pause for four simple verses that are jam packed with power. If you’ve been in the church world for any length of time, I sure hope you’ve at least heard part of this. Here are the verses on which we’re focusing this week.
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” – Romans 1:14-17
These four verses can be summed up with just three simple words. Ashamed. Eager. Obligated.
Ashamed
Paul says he’s not ashamed of the gospel. For him to state that he’s not ashamed, asserts that there will be some that are in fact ashamed of the Gospel. So this kind of begs the question, why would someone be ashamed of the gospel if it’s the good news of God?
Well, the point of the gospel is the undeserved grace of God for us. That means we don’t earn it and that’s kind of an unpopular opinion in a world that’s focused on achievement and self promotion. So when the gospel says that we can’t but God did for us, that’s kind of a shameful thing if you think your good actions get you to heaven.
Another aspect of the gospel that can cause some people shame is how it all works. If you know the story of the Bible, you’ll know that the essence of the gospel is that Jesus died a pretty horrible death in our place. That means he got punished for something we did! And that can honestly make some people a bit ashamed. Either ashamed because they didn’t have the power to do it themselves, or ashamed because of the horrific nature of the Roman torture that Jesus endured to show his love for us. Both can really lead to a feeling of being ashamed.
Eager
When we settle in on the fact that this wonderful message of the gospel is something about which we have no need to be ashamed, then there is almost an eagerness in us to share it.
Think of it like finding a cure for cancer. If you found a cure for an ailment that was life threatening to millions of people around the world, you’d probably be eager to share that with as many people as you could! The same is true for the gospel. No it doesn’t stop cancer or lessen the intensity of earthquakes and tornadoes. But it does bring a cure of sorts to a totally different problem.
The gospel is a demonstration of our salvation. Jesus died so we don’t have to die like that, and then rose so we could live in the promise of heaven. But there’s more to it even than that.
The gospel actually addresses some of the deepest longings of our hearts. Acceptance. Belonging. Worth. Value. Identity. Purpose. Calling. All these are part of the message of the Gospel. When we really understand the gospel and are unashamed by its meaning, then we have an eagerness to share it with as many people as we can find!
Obligated
This one will strike some people a little odd. Some might even think this isn’t right. But the wonderful free nature of the gospel when understood correctly obligates us to share it.
The word obligated can also been seen like the word debt. We are indebted to the gospel. We don’t owe anything for our salvation. That’s not the point. The point of this obligation or indebtedness is that we were given something that is for us and for someone else. Think of it like this.
You receive a donation for the local Ronald McDonald House Charity. It’s a sizable stack of cash. Someone gives you $100,000 in cash to deliver to the charity. It’s for them. You don’t owe the person who gave it to you a penny. But you do owe the charity that $100,000.
The gospel is similar. By not being ashamed of the gospel, we’ve already received the gift for ourselves. When we really get what it means, we essentially deposit that gift for ourselves. But the point of the gospel isn’t just that we deposit it into our account. The point of the deposit of the gospel is that we give it to those around us because it’s just as much for them as it is for us. We’re obligated then by the gospel to hand it out to those for whom it’s intended. Which if you didn’t know, is everyone!
This week I’ll end with a bit of a challenge. We talk about large events and getting the world to know the message of the gospel. But what if we started with just one person. I mean the person living next door to you. Or the one in the cubicle across the hallway. Maybe it’s a classmate or person at the gym. You pick because the point is it only takes one.
Let’s say 5 people would take this idea seriously about sharing the gospel intentionally through the context of a relationship. Let’s say those 5 people each found one person. Walked with that one person to an understanding of the Gospel and by the end of a year those 5 people had doubled to 10. Then let’s pretend those 10 did the same thing. The next year you’d have 20. If we did this for 15 cycles, those initial 5 people who were unashamed, eager and obligated by the gospel would become 163,840 people in just 15 years time. But if they did it for 30 years, that original 5 would become 5,368,709,120 people.
And it all happens when 5 people who were unashamed, eager and obligated by the gospel call found one person each and become totally sold out on the message of the gospel in which they believed.
I heard a podcast this morning about the idea of unity. You know working together with a common goal? Each using their individual talents, skills and abilities for a common good.
There’s a story in the Bible that I’m sure most of us have at least heard of at one point or another. It goes something like this.
The people of Israel were gathering together and getting better at pretty much everything. They were building a nation with cities and walls and towers. They learned how to make bricks and stack them in a way that made it safe to climb.
One day they decided that they had learned enough and had enough talent that they could probably make this tower reach high enough to see God, or perhaps at least see the world from his perspective.
They toiled day and night. Sweat. Blood. Tears. All of them flowed as they labored to build this tower.
At some point in the building process, God stooped down. By the way that’s my favorite part. They had such a tall tower that they thought they could reach God and he had to stoop down to even see it.
Then God did something astounding. He confused their languages. This is why the story is called the Tower of Babel, because he made their languages sound like babbling noises of a baby before they learn to talk. Or like Charlie Brown’s teacher on those old Peanuts cartoons.
But the reason is even more important. God, referring to their unity of purpose and mindset, said nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Do you see it? Essentially what God says here is that as long as they work together as one people, they are virtually unstoppable. They can do whatever they set their minds to, if they stay focused and work together as one.
If God knows this to be true and he’s on our side, then what do you think Satan will do with that same information?
Yep…Divide and conquer.
Satan’s no dummy. He knows that all he has to do is breathe a little discontent with one another and he wins. All he has to do is highlight the warts and flaws on the people around us and he can divide us. Then, as long as we’re distracted and divided by our differences, we move from being unstoppable to being unable.
What kinds of things keep you divided? What differences are hardest for you to overcome? Where have you let Satan bring division when God desires oneness?
One of the greatest ways to overcome this divisive spirit is personal ownership. A question I ask myself regularly in a conflict situation is what slice of this pie do I own? But it only works if everyone sitting at the table asks the same question. As soon as we all can claim our slice of the pie, it becomes much harder to throw that pie at someone else.
The church I pastor has a group that meets a couple times a month called Bible and Brew. We meet in a local pub, have a beverage of choice, share life stories, and talk about faith. Every time we get together I’m reminded how important this type of group really is, and it has nothing to do with the beverages!
This particular night one of the guys started us with the question, What does God want from us. Now that’s kind of a loaded question. And I’ll admit, it took every fiber of my being to not go all pastor on the group and try to answer the question. You see that’s the joy of this group. Generally the questions have no real answers, at least nothing that would be always right in every situation. Kind of like what does God want from us, there are hundreds of answers that all could apply perfectly.
As the discussion unfolded however, there was a theme that was starting to come into picture a little more clearly. In a world that is divided, how are we supposed to live. We talked about how political structures divide. We talked about how media has a tendency to sensualize everything only polarizing the divided landscape around us. What does God want from us?
It’s a pretty cool thought actually. When the world around us is divided and broken, how is the church supposed to act? The kind of obvious answer that came out of things was to not be divided. But how does that work?
We looked at passages like Hebrews 10 where the writer says do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. Ok so one way we stay undivided is to be together. The more together we experience, the less chance of cracks to come into our lives.
One image we sat on for a bit was the image of concrete. I have a concrete driveway. And as great as a concrete driveway is, there are some issues with concrete. One thing is pretty much certain. Concrete cracks. You’re pretty much not going to stop it from happening. They can put control joints in, you know those fancy lines in sidewalks and cuts in larger slabs. Those are intended not to prevent concrete from cracking but to stop cracks when they happen.
I made a bit of a mistake this year and didn’t fill the cracks in my driveway before winter. If you’re not aware, the little cracks in concrete, if left untreated, will eventually fill with water and in freezing temperatures as the water expands so will the crack. A tiny crack in concrete, if not taken care of immediately can result in some serious damage.
Ok back to the discussion of what does God want from us. I think if we look all over the place in the Bible, we’ll see a very common theme. Unity is kind of a big deal to Jesus. In Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer from John 17, Jesus says that they may be one as we are one. Oneness must be a huge thing. Jesus was kind of wrapping up his entire ministry and he did it by praying for unity in the body of Christ. What does God want from us?
If Jesus prayed for the church to be unified, then I’m pretty sure that’s what God wants from us and for us today. Our discussion was all over the map about unity, not uniformity but unity. We’re not all supposed to be the same or think the same but our purpose and identity is supposed to be tied to the same thing – the gospel. We used illustrations of tractor pulls and locomotives, teams of horses and mathematics lessons.
The long and short was that division isn’t math that God does. He’s not about dividing people. One of the first sermons I preached at the church I now serve was about a wedge. The principle of a wedge is that just the tiniest point of the wedge is all that’s needed to weaken the overall integrity of something. And just like that concrete sidewalk, if a crack is left unattended it can be devastating.
So what is it that unites us? Our common confession is the key. The thing that unites us isn’t a can’t we all just get along mindset, it’s not the sport team we cheer to victory, it’s not the political systems with which we align ourselves. The thing that unites us is the gospel. When the gospel isn’t the focus, when our attention shifts from the power and importance of the gospel, we run a strong risk of cracks popping up in the concrete of our lives.
What does God want? If the answer is unity, then we have to also admit that just like in concrete cracks happen in our daily lives as well. So what do we do when cracks show up? Well, we patch them. Seal them. Watch them closely over time. The same is true for all of us around the table that night. When disunity comes into play in our lives, we need to patch it with the gospel. We need to come back to who we are and what we’re called to be.
If the one thing God wants for us is unity, then we can be certain that coming to him is the best place to find that unity when a crack is discovered. Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the driveway and patch up some of those cracks so that we may be one just as God is one.
The book of Romans will be our focus for the next several weeks together. Ok let’s be honest, it will be months before we get through Romans, so stick with me here. The goal of this series of posts on Romans that should post every Monday, is to fill in the gaps and kind of summarize a portion of the book each week.
We start this series by circling the runway before landing the plane in Rome. We’ll do this by getting to know the letter as a whole and who exactly wrote it. Let’s start with the who question.
Who is Paul?
Now for some of you this might be a no brainer kind of question. Paul is…Paul right? I mean he used to be Saul but Jesus met him on the road. He was blinded and Jesus changed his name to show his new identity. The name Saul meant prayed for, but Jesus changed his name to Paul which means small or humble. Yikes what a shift!
Paul starts the letter identifying himself by his new name and then gives a couple titles or offices he holds. The first one is servant of Christ Jesus. This is pretty important. He didn’t start by showing his credentials. He started by showing his humility. He’s a slave of Christ. That means his new identity is to submit to what God wants, not what Paul thinks is right in the moment.
So Paul is now a humble servant of Jesus focusing his life and ministry on the things God wants him to do. This is a huge shift in thinking and acting for Paul! It’s only after he demonstrates his humility that he says anything about this new office to which God called him.
Called to be an apostle is the next phrase we see. This is another powerful statement. There are two different ways we see the word apostle in the Bible. One is the title like you see here. He’s an apostle, just like the original 12. There are a limited number of people that fall into this category of use. I’m of the belief that this title is reserved for these 13 men.
Then there’s another way to use the term. Instead of an office or a title, we can see apostleship as a character trait. The gifting of the apostles is a way of seeing someone as a sent one that has been called by God and sent to a place for a specific purpose of spreading the gospel.
Not everyone has this kind of gifting to be certain. Going out and starting something new for the sake of the gospel takes a special breed of individual. Paul here is using the term apostle in both ways. He was called by God to the office of apostle and with the gifting of apostleship. And he takes both of these realities very seriously.
The Message
If we circle the runway one more time, we’ll focus on the second part of what’s found in the first 13 or so verses of the book of Romans. That is the message he’s about to share. And simply put, that message is the gospel of God.
The gospel of God is kind of a unique way of saying this. Normally it’s the gospel of the kingdom in Matthew or the gospel of Christ in most of Paul’s other writings. But here it’s the gospel of God which is intended to show us that all things originate from God and this is his one and only plan. There’s no plan B. There is no other option. The gospel of God is that he would send His Son Jesus for us. It’s that simple.
This gospel will be the primary focus of the entire book of Romans. And this message of the Gospel of God is for all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. This designation shows us the gospel here is for the believer.
We tend to think of the gospel as the tool we use to share our faith with those around us. We act as if the gospel is something unbelievers need in order to be able to believe. And while that’s true, it’s only half true. The gospel is the only tool God gives us to deepen our faith and grow us as his disciples.
So if the church you lead or attend is focusing on discipleship and your primary tool in discipling isn’t the gospel of God, then according to Paul, you’re doing it wrong.
The man is Paul. The message is the gospel of God. Next week we’ll land the plane with the mission of the gospel.
Now that we’ve turned the page on the calendar and have opened up a brand new year of possibilities, it’s time to dig in a little deeper into this idea of discipleship and spiritual formation. This will hopefully be the Friday rhythm for 2024 (only time will tell how well I hold to this schedule).
If we’re going to get started getting serious about discipleship, then we should probably start by taking a look at the master. I mean after all, the only way to be great at something is to follow the one who was the best at it. Right?
And since I’m a pastor and the whole topic of discipleship is a biblical one, you probably already guessed who the master is. But for those of you who are a bit late to the party, his name is Jesus. He kind of wrote the book on discipleship. Literally.
So Jesus was a real guy, very few people argue about that one. And for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, we believe that he was also the Son of God. There’s also some pretty stark evidence to that fact as well. Regardless of what you believe about Jesus, pretty much everyone can agree that he had a pretty stellar way of doing life. I mean, if he wasn’t the Son of God and yet got thousands of people to follow him, then he’s probably pretty good at getting people on board with his way of thinking.
How did he do it? I mean, the whole discipleship thing. Remember the definition I work with is that Discipleship is the process of being transformed into the image of Christ for the sake of others. With that in mind, how did Jesus get the people of his day to actually follow him closely enough to want to do what he did.
Think about the story in the Bible of Jesus walking on the water. He’s out there for a nice evening stroll across the water by himself. His disciples are in the boat trying to get through the head wind, when one of them sees him. Not knowing what was going on and realizing that water walking was not a normal part of life, they kind of freaked out. Then Peter, the kind of rash one, asked Jesus to call him to the water.
Wait! Did you hear that? If it’s you, Jesus, call me to come to you. What would make a man who knows how water works, want to attempt to walk on water? He probably didn’t have the class on the idea of buoyancy, but he still knew that people did not walk on water. So why?
It’s the discipleship done the Jesus way. He didn’t coerce people to follow him. He didn’t bait and switch them. He didn’t try to sell them on anything fancy. He just said Come. Follow me. That’s it.
I think a huge part of discipleship the Jesus way, is about authenticity and integrity. These two words really go hand in hand and will likely make it to the word of the week post in the near future. The long and short of these two ideas is that he was real. He was the same in public and in private. And the disciples saw that. The men and women of his day saw that. And they were attracted to the realism of that way of life. There are plenty of fakes out there, so it makes sense to want to model your life after someone who is real.
The other part of it was that Jesus cared. So much of our discipleship ideology in today’s church culture is about classes and rituals. Not so much with Jesus. He wanted people to know how much he cared. He did it by being where the people were. Getting his hands dirty. Serving the people no one wanted to serve.
If we’re going to learn from the Master and do discipleship the Jesus way, then we need to start with knowing who we are and actually caring about the people in the world around us. If we start with caring, and I mean genuinely caring, then we’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now. By the way, genuinely caring means we don’t just say we care. It means we do something with that care and compassion. That’s a great start at discipleship the Jesus way.
This year I’m trying to be more intentional about my writing. Some have said they enjoy having a place to disconnect from the stuff of life, so enjoy. Part of this new rhythm of writing intentionality will hopefully include a weekly devotion. We’ll cover all sorts of devotion-y topics. Things like prayer and bible study and transformation and who knows what. It’s still early in the year! Today though we talk prayer.
We’ll call this devotional thought Unleashing the power of prayer. Wow the title just sounds cool doesn’t it!?
I have a quilt in my house that my grandma started to make for my wife and I before we got married. Since she died before I got married, my wife’s grandma finished it. It’s a pretty cool gift that we don’t really use because I don’t want it to get ruined.
If you’ve ever looked at a quilt, you know there are patches of fabric sewn together to form a cool tapestry of shapes and colors. If we were to imagine our lives to be a tapestry like this, we would see that prayer is the thread that holds it all together. Weaving into this piece and out of that one, the prayers of our lives tie all the sorted and disjointed pieces into one beautiful whole. Often though the prayers go unseen and forgotten.
The power of our prayers isn’t in the cool words we use or the big theological terms. We don’t need to quote a bunch of bible verses or shout really loud. God’s actually close than you think and he does not have a hearing problem.
The power of prayer is found in the little pieces of our lives that we bring and the one to whom we bring them. Prayer is a sacred conversation with the God of the universe. (no not a conversation with the universe but the one who made the universe – big distinction!)
Matthew 21:21-22 in a paraphrased way say If you have faith and do not doubt, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive. This is huge! First of all it’s not saying you’ll get a new car if you just pray hard enough. It’s saying that if you have faith in God and don’t doubt the power found in Jesus, then you’ll pray for the right things and you’ll see those things come about.
The power of prayer is a pretty cool thing that we often overlook. We tuck prayer away as that thing we do when we have a big test coming up, or before we go in for surgery. We have no problem praying when the car is sliding out of control on icy roads. We don’t even mind saying a quick “atta boy Jesus” when we score the game winning touchdown.
But the power of prayer isn’t found as much in the touchdown Jesus moments, good scores on test or everything going perfect days. The power of prayer is best experienced in the regularity of the everyday. We find it in the ugh it’s Monday again moments in life.
So grab the quilt of your life, all the little pieces, no matter how torn or tattered. Bring them to God in prayer. Let him be the golden thread that binds your patchwork life together into a beautiful tapestry of faith. That’s how we can experience the power of prayer.
The common text for the week following Christmas is the presentation of Jesus in the temple. But why is this something important to study? Why does the church look at this particular section nearly every year after Christmas? What is there for us to learn from this passage?
22 And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
The time of purification according to the Law of Moses would have been at 8 days old. This was the time of circumcision for a boy. It was also the time given in Leviticus 12 for how long it would take for a woman to be clean after giving birth. Remember there were some tremendously detailed rules for how a person was to do rituals of cleaning.
When she comes to present the child in the temple and present herself clean after the days of her purification, she is to bring a lamb and a pair of turtle doves. There was a provision made however for those who couldn’t afford the lamb. They were just bound to bring the turtle doves. And this is exactly what Mary and Joseph did in our text. This can be for one of two reasons. Either Mary and Joseph were legitimately poor and of lowly means. The other option however is that the cost associated with the journey had rendered them unable to pay for a lamb. For whatever the reason, they brought a pair of turtle doves for the sacrifice.
There was great symbolism and remembrance associated with the sacrifice. If you remember the time of the plagues that were brought on Egypt. The tenth plague was the death of the firstborn unless they sacrificed a lamb and put some of the blood on the doorposts so the angel of death could Passover the house. Every year they would celebrate the Passover with a similar ritual, but it didn’t end there.
Since the Passover event saved the firstborn of the house, they also brought a sacrifice at the presentation of the firstborn child as a reminder to them that God saved the firstborn children in Egypt. So there’s a great double meaning here with a celebration of God’s deliverance from Egypt but also a continual reminder of God’s saving nature of his people.
The story then turns quickly to Simeon. We don’t know a lot about this man aside from what we’re told here in Luke 2. He’s a devout and righteous man. He had been waiting his whole life to see this child born even though he didn’t know it would be a baby.
The consolation of Israel is an interesting concept. Actually it functions as a title for Jesus. So just like he’s called Immanuel and King of kings, here he’s also called Consolation of Israel. The whole idea behind consolation of Israel is found in the more common word comforter. You’ll see this more frequently in the Bible that Jesus is called the comforter. Jesus even says he’s going to send the Holy Spirit to be the comforter.
Israel had suffered significant judgment and punishment throughout the Old Testament. They had been taken captive as the consequence for running away from God’s commands. To say that Israel needed comfort, or consolation, was a bit of an understatement. But Israel also used this idea of Consolation of Israel to help shape their view of what this Messiah figure would look like. Knowing he was going to be a consolation for their judgment and for all the trouble they had faced, they began to see the coming one as a warrior or powerhouse kind of leader. I mean how else would they be comforted for their troubles unless someone else was going to pay?
When Simeon sees in this baby the Consolation of Israel and says behold my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the gentiles he’s actually saying something really profound. Simeon is seeing in this little baby everything that Jesus would do in his ministry. It’s almost as if he hears Jesus teaching, watches him heal, sees the miracles he does, feels the pain of his death and joy of his resurrection.
Lord now let your servant depart in peace. He’s seen everything he needs to see but that hasn’t even happened yet! He is so confident in the work that Jesus will one day do, that he can die content knowing that Israel has already been saved, but not just Israel. He sees the salvation of the whole world. The redeeming power of God for all people, both Israelite and Gentile (non-Israelite). Simeon’s words also tie other passages of the Bible together to help see exactly who Jesus is for the people of his day and beyond.
Two key themes for the life and ministry of Jesus are salvation and light into darkness. Salvation is earned only by the blood of the lamb. The Israelites would have known this reality. And for Simeon to claim that Jesus is the salvation of Israel, would mean that he sees Jesus as the ultimate Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This was a monstrous claim and it meant that Jesus was everything they were hoping for in the newborn king. The only problem…he didn’t really look like the powerful king they were anticipating. His parents were common folks. They weren’t rich by any stretch. They even had to use the “low cost option” for sacrifice. A major clue for how Simeon was able to see all of this in this little child is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enabled Simeon to see Jesus as something more than just an infant child brought to the temple by his humble parents. The Spirit opened Simeon’s eyes to see something significantly more powerful.
Then there’s the Light in the darkness line. The theme of light shining in the darkness is another key theme of scripture. We see it vividly in John’s gospel account. Jesus would be the light of the world. He was the light that shined into the darkness but the darkness wasn’t able to overcome it. Simeon sees Jesus as the light of God sent to reveal all that which was hiding in the sin shrouded corners of the world.
But beyond this passage there are several others that speak to the world needing a light to show it the way. Isaiah 8-9 is another really important section that deals with the theme of even Israel being a place darkness. When Isaiah was writing, Assyria was going to invade and pretty much annihilate the landscape of the Galilee region. Isaiah 9 says that the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. This prophecy was exactly what Simeon was seeing unfold as Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the temple. The light of God was being carried into the Temple and one day would carry the people to God.
The power of this section is found not in Simeon or in his confession. It’s found in the Spirit who allowed Simeon to see all of this and understand what it was about. A people lost in their own thoughts and ways are met by the God who not only would show them the way but would be the way to the ultimate life of salvation and peace.
And this would be the message that Mary and Joseph would have taken out of the temple. This would be part of the message Mary would ponder in her heart. As she stood at the base of the cross and watched as her son was killed on the cross, she would have felt that spear pierce her own soul too.
Simeon saw the whole thing right there as he held the little baby in his arms. Pretty powerful message when you stop to think about it.
Twas the night before Christmas, when Mary and Jo In a manger were resting for their baby to show A stable was where they would make up their beds And straw was the pillow they’d use for their heads.
The evening was ending, the time was at hand A baby named Jesus was born in that land. She wrapped him up tight and swaddled him close With this child came God’s love, and a heavenly dose!
And when he was born heaven opened its light And shined on some shepherds in a field that dark night. They fell to the ground and were filled with great fear, But the angel spoke quickly, “Do not shed one tear.”
I bring you good news of great joy on this night A child has been born to take all your fright. Yes a son has been born and Christ is his name, More angels then showed to sing of his fame.
O Glory and Honor Yes praise to the King O Glory and Honor Let your peace here reign. He came down from heaven He came down for all, To die for you, Rise for you Saving you all!
We all know the story, we’ve heard it before, How he died and he rose to open heaven’s door. A cross and some thorns were the gifts that we gave, His life for ours, it’s us he did save.
And now, in our churches, we gather and sing, All honor and glory to this child, our king. For he is our hope and our peace and our light Yes he is God’s love that came Christmas night.
Now off to your homes, go forth with God’s blessing. The Father and Spirit and Son you surrounding. May God bless you this night, as he shows you his love. Merry Christmas to you, may you know God’s Great Love!
Our final stop on this Advent journey is most certainly an unexpected place. Before we can really understand the events of the next couple of days, we need to see their unexpected end. We take it for granted mostly because we know the end of the story, but hit the pause button today and think about this one.
Jesus was the long expected child to be born. John 1 tells us that He was born to be a light in the darkest place imaginable. He would bring peace to a people who knew no such peace. He would instill joy in the hearts of all who would know him.
Imagine the look on Mary’s face when she held him that first time. The shock that Joseph experienced when he heard his tiny cry. Then fast forward just 33 years.
The same face that smiled as she held her first child now has a hard time seeing anything through the tears on her face. The light that came into the world for a moment is overshadowed by darkness once again. The peace that rang through the hillside at the birth of this baby, has quickly turned to shouts of death and murder. The life that came in a manger would now be laid bare on the cross.
This is the story of Advent. It’s the story of Jesus. It’s the story of why he came the way he came. None of it matters if this is missing. The unexpected end would bring an unexpected result…his death would mean our life. If his life meant our peace and joy in this life, his death would amplify that peace and expound on that joy. His unexpected end means our unexpected beginning!
