Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for allowing us to gather with our friends and family to rest in celebration your birthday. This time of refreshing you provided us will fuel our coming year with much more adoration and blessing. I pray the Holy Spirit comes to us today. That it fills us with much power and insight because we know your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts. And God, we need your thoughts and need to practice your ways. As we reflect on this year and prepare for the next, we believe you will be empowering us to bless others in ways we don’t even understand or comprehend yet. It’s just that reason that makes us so excited as we wait on you. We lift up our entire church family to you, so your will be done in each and every single one of us. Show us your purpose for us today. In Jesus name. Amen.

Today, we have something to learn from two people we traditionally don’t read about in Christmas stories. Mostly because these two individuals witnessed Christmas 40 days later. And for us, that seems like missing the mark, but it’s actually perfectly on time. Yeah, I know some of you had to postpone Christmas celebration with family because of COVID. That’s exactly why this first Christmas from these two individuals are so important for us today.

Luke 2:22-38.

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.”

³³ And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. ³⁴ And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed ³⁵ (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

³⁶ 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, ³⁷ 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. ³⁸ 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.

(Luke 2:22-38 ESV)

Simeon the righteous and devout, and the prophetess Anna. Through the Holy Spirit both Simeon and Anna were prophets speaking prophetically to build up Mary and Joseph, but also to foreshadow the gospel of Jesus. That’s what Luke is illustrating.

The word “prophetic” trips up a lot of people, so I want to define that because some of us are thinking “fortune teller.” That’s not it at all. The word “prophet,” in the Bible simply means “a person called to speak or proclaim.” In the Old Testament, prophets would proclaim the truths God reveals about a situation to his people. The reason we tie it so closely with fortune telling or predicting the future is because God is revealing things to the prophet about consequences for actions people are telling. Consequences are  always in the future, that’s how it works.

In the New Testament, according to the framework the Apostle Paul gives us about spiritual gifts, “prophecy” or “prophets” are people who can accurately discern God’s heart for a situation and help people experience and understand God’s voice in their lives.

Simeon and Anna’s experience in the first Christmas is going to teach us to tap into our own prophetic gifting—discerning God’s heart for a situation and helping people, sometimes ourselves, understand and experience the voice of God in our lives. Here’s the big idea:

Waiting with faith enables us to receive God’s promise.

There’s this children’s book. It’s one of Kate’s favorite books called “The carrot seed.” It’s about this boy who plants a carrot seed and takes care of the soil, watering, weeding, the whole thing. Meanwhile everybody tells him that the seed “won’t come up,” implying that he should give up. Then one day the carrot sprouts up, and it sprouts up so big that the boy needs a wheel barrel to harvest it.

That’s the promise of God, that when we wait long enough and it’s ripe in our lives because we’ve been doing what people who are called to God’s promises do, then we’re going to reap a harvest that only God promises through faith.

Don’t lose this thought: faith is doing the work of worshiping with fasting and prayer as God fulfills his promises.

That’s what I want for my life this next year. That’s what I want for you also.

If you’re about to give up on faith, or if God’s promises don’t seem like they are for you because you’re listening to the voices who are telling you that it won’t happen, then check this out in verses 21-24 which is real interesting for those of us who seem like unlikely candidates for receiving God’s promises:

²¹ And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

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.” (Luke 2:21-24 ESV)

Three things I want to highlight:

1. Jesus, although was God, had to wait to be presented to God in accordance to the law. We know this because Jesus was circumcised 8 days after his birth, that’s in verse 21, and then in verse 22, the time came for him and his mother to be purified at the temple. Under Jewish law, a woman giving birth was ceremonially unclean for 33 days after the circumcision of her son.
   1. Jesus walked in our very nature and was under the same laws that condemn us.
   1. God fulfills his promises in his ways, not ours.

• Jesus, to fulfill his duty as the redeemer had to first be redeemed. We see Luke’s aside in verse 23, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” That goes back to the Passover in Egypt. This idea of redemption is an exercise in confession for the Jewish people, it acknowledges their inability to save themselves.
  • When Jesus is presented at the temple, he is redeemed with five shekels. A working person in the first century would make about 2 shekels a month; so the price of redemption wasn’t cheap.
  • We were saved at an expensive cost, God’s blood. To make us holy, ready for his purposes in faith, that’s also going to cost something. Be ready to pay, you may be paying right now because you’re taking a stand in faith that costs you a job, or contract, or a relationship, and that’s okay.

• Jesus was not only born into the nature of humanity, he was born into a poor family. Luke quotes the offering of two turtledoves or two young pigeons, but that’s the offering required if you can’t afford a lamb.
  • God could have chosen anybody, but choses an impoverished family to do his will.
  • Don’t rule yourself out because your circumstances or your origins don’t make you the likely candidate.

You belong to God and have been redeemed by Jesus for a purpose. Your identity is not staked on where you are from, but who you believe will fulfill his promises. That’s the good news.

So three ways to wait with faith. The first way is this, We

Wait for God’s timing

This goes to what I was just saying about God’s ways are not our ways. Look at this in verse 25.

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. (Luke 2:25-26 ESV)

The context set up by Luke hints at Simeon being an older man. He had been waiting for the Messiah. He dreamt of the day the Messiah would show up so that he could die fulfilling what he was promised in faith by the Holy Spirit. We don’t know when he was promised he would see the Messiah, but we do know Simeon waited.

Don’t lose hope in God’s promises after you leave the parking lot today. Definitely don’t lose it when you get to work tomorrow.  Don’t lose hope after your first set back or relapse.

Literally waiting in faith is going to require us to wait.

When God put it in your heart that you will have kids and it’s not happening right now and everybody else around you is popping out babies, don’t lose hope. Wait for God to deliver. God doesn’t let any of his promises fall. He fulfills all of them. He sees you. He hears your prayers. We will pray together in waiting. That’s what we do when we wait in faith.

Let’s pray together because your wayward child has been wayward for twenty or thirty years already. The decades you’ve been praying, sitting on the sidelines watching them mess up, it’s killing you. Keep waiting in faith.

Michelle and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this past week. Yeah, you can all clap. That’s a gift from God that she is still married to me despite me. I’m sharing that with you because I’ve known Michelle for 20 years. In fact, we were friends for 10 years watching each other’s lives on the sidelines before we went out on our first date. It took 10 years for God to bring us to same place at the same time to realize we were the person we were asking God to bring into our lives. All of that happened at Summer kids camp! I’m just saying, I know it’s a way to early plug for volunteers, but don’t rule it out, Pastor Eric is taking volunteers now. Is it the whale of a client you’re trying to land so your business can stop being on life support? Maybe it’s a spouse. Don’t rush it. Don’t quit. Wait in faith for God’s timing.

If you think that’s too long, look at the prophetess Anna. Let’s pick her story up in verse 36.

³⁶ 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, ³⁷ 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. (Luke 2:36-37 ESV)

She’s 84 years old. She’s been waiting for most of her life and yet she keeps showing up, waiting for God’s promises.

When we wait in faith, we:

Wait with devotion

Luke says in verse 37, that “she did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.”

Waiting in faith requires devotion. You know what was harsh about Anna’s life? She was married for 7 years in her 84 years of life. We don’t know anything about her personal life except that. But let’s say she got pregnant right away, when her husband died, who was likely the primary bread winner in the house, with her oldest child being only 6 years old.

The very fact that at 84 she is still worshipping, fasting, and praying at the temple, that devotion comes from understanding her purpose. Her purpose was not being a wife, or perhaps even a mother. Her purpose was worshipping God, as she waited with devotion for his promises. Life’s hard circumstances did not cause her to lose faith. Her life is a lesson in devotion for all of us.

A devoted person, based on this story at the first Christmas, is a person who understands their PURPOSE in God and therefore won’t quit until their purposes are complete.

When we understand our purpose and start pursuing our purpose instead of chasing some idea or notion of happiness, the balance on our 401k wouldn’t matter; the failure of our 6 month diet plan wouldn’t depress us; our outlook on life wouldn’t change because our career plan was wrecked.  Trust me, you’ll have so much more joy  while you wait in faith when you understand your purpose and pursue it with devotion.

Purpose is what compelled the devotion we see from Simeon or Anna, waiting for the Messiah. Their age, their circumstances, it didn’t matter, they were devoted because they chose to pursue their purpose in faith.

All of us, if we believe Jesus saved us from our sin, have a purpose. You may not know or fully understand your purpose in life yet and that’s okay, you’ll get there. But in the meantime, Jesus gives us a framework to understand purpose based on the relationships we have with other people around us—that’s simply to bless people for the glory of God.

The example we have here from Simeon and Anna are to bless people in the same spirit God gives to us. That’s what it means to use our prophetic gifting.  

For those of us who need a picture of what purpose looks like: take a look at the screens. If you’ve been through the Coaching Circles with us, this should be familiar to you, but if you haven’t, ask us how to get into one.

These four concentric circles illustrates how Jesus teaches purpose to his disciples based on our relationships with strangers and friends.

I know most of us live in the “it’s complicated” relationship paradigm where people are not really strangers or friends, but in practicality, people are either strangers or a friends. The difference being you know them and not just know of them.

Now, the two outer circles represent our actions when we are engaging strangers with purpose. Likewise, the inner two circles represent our actions when in engaging friends with purpose.

The fulfillment of our purpose with other people is simple: to get to know them and to disciple them. So how do we do that devotion because we’re waiting on the promises of God.

If they are strangers, then get involved with them. Meet them instead of staying at home for yet another rerun of Big Bang Theory. Get involved with their lives because sitting at home watching TV will not help us with waiting in faith.

Once you get involved with strangers, then start serving them. Solve their problems and meet their needs. For you sales people—this is the secret to long term sales. Once you get involved with people, you find ways to serve them. As you serve them, you actually become friends with them because you purposefully show up. They will naturally come to their friends.

When you become friends, to invite them to things. Bring them into your world. Maybe to your family gatherings, or to church, or if you want it to be less awkward, then your life group.

As you spend more purposeful time with people, then you hit the sweet spot of your purpose—discipleship. Let’s not get technical with what it is and what it’s not. But in it’s simplest terms, discipleship is heart level conversations with people because that’s where God moves, blesses, and fulfills his promises.

Waiting with devotion means taking hold of your purpose as Christ follower no matter how turbulent life becomes.

The last way we wait on the promise of God is to:

Wait in God’s Spirit

This is probably the most important part of waiting in faith. Let’s pick it up again in verse 27.

²⁷ And he [this is Simeon] 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.”

³³ And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. ³⁴ And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed ³⁵ (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2:27-35 ESV)

Verse 27 highlights the role of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Holy Spirit is mentioned three times in the introduction to Simeon. And, as Simeon comes to the temple that day, he comes in “the Spirit.” Simeon is a man who walks with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is upon him, the Holy Spirit has spoken to Him, and the Spirit of God marks his life and gives him purpose. The Spirit is key to Simeon’s waiting. Simeon recognizes the Messiah because the Holy Spirit.

Waiting in God’s Spirit compels us to bless God for the promises we will receive. Blessing God is praising and giving thanks to him. You haven’t received what God promised yet, but when you thank God for it, you’ve already received it in the spirit.

In addition to blessing God, waiting in the Spirit also leads us to bless other people as we are empowered to bless them. Why do you think waiting in devotion causes us to have purpose with people? Why do you think people don’t just naturally start with each other as friends? Because it’s about God’s timing. Waiting in faith is the only way we can receive God’s promise.

In fact, the Holy Spirit reveals and enables us to receive Jesus as our Savior—our promise to become as an heir of God. We receive Jesus Christ in faith as the Holy Spirit empowers us so that in eternity we will be with our Father in heaven.

When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior, it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard the gospel. My parents were sharing the gospel with me my entire life. I was just a kid who wasn’t interested. When the Spirit of God reached my friend and penetrated his life, altering how he would live, he couldn’t stop talking about it because he was so filled with the Holy Spirit by it. He served this guy he grew up with but grew apart from in high school and invited him to something he was connected to, so that he could engage your pastor in discipleship. His purpose was fueled by the Spirit of God and in God’s timing that same Holy Spirit opened my eyes and changed my heart.

Jesus is good news for everyone. He was born to a virgin. He lived under the law and was found perfect in every way. He became the sacrificial lamb for us, to pay the price for our sins. He was presented and redeemed at the temple for that purpose, to be the Lord’s. He died on the cross, and was buried. Then was resurrected on the third day to show us that as we died with him on the cross in faith we would be resurrected to be with God, our father, in eternity.

If you never gave your life to Jesus Christ and you’ve been waiting for God’s promise in your life. Then receive the spirit of God, let it rush into your heart, and praise God for the promise to secure your eternity.

If you’ve forgotten what it means to wait in faith for the promise of God because honestly, the world we live in is hell, then allow God’s Spirit to energize you and give you the devotion you need to wait in faith.

Come on, 2021 might have been the year of waiting in faith, but 2022 is going to be the year of God’s fulfilled promises.

Heavenly father, thank you for sending your son Jesus to redeem your promises for your children. Help us receive Jesus as our Messiah in all aspects of our lives. You fill us with the Holy Spirit to move against our senses, our gut feelings, and our natural inclinations and pursue the purposes of our faith.

We believe in your timing for our lives, the fulfillment of your promises to us, the plans you have for us, to bless us, and send us out. We receive it and we step up in faith. As we close this year, I ask that we can faithful look at our lives and re-evaluate how we devote ourselves to your purposes this coming year. Give us the boldness to be faithful to you. We believe you called us and set us aside for a moment like this.

I ask that for every single person in this room, from the oldest, whose lived a long life of faithfulness, to the youngest, who are still only understanding the initial samples of your glory. Allow the joy of being devoted to you saturate our precious moments, our fleeting memories, and our ambitions. For those in the room who are trying to figure out their purpose in life. They have been seeking ambition and goals, but now open their minds to their purpose, let it be clear today and in the days to come. Have it written on their hearts so they do not lose heart, ever. Allow us to chase you and be like you. Yes Lord. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Let’s stand and sing together.