Advent: Simeon’s Song (Luke 2:22-35)

Make sure you hear that part of Simeon's Song today. To rest in Christ alone for salvation means you will rise with Him unto eternal life. To reject Christ is to fall to your eternal death. Neutrality with Jesus is impossible. The great question of the hour is now and always: "So, what will you do with Jesus?"

The second part of the sermon, if you will, hits Mary hard. It tells her that in the life of her son, who is the Savior of the world, Mary will be pierced through with a sword of pain. The original indicates that the sword is the large and broad sword, a symbol in the Bible of intense pain, of frightful and piercing anguish.

Someone has written:

"At the cross her station keeping

Stood the mournful mother weeping.

Close to Jesus to the last:

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,

All his bitter anguish bearing,

Now at length the sword had passed."²

Of course, the poetry misses it when it says that "all his bitter anguish bearing"—for Mary could never know the fullness of Christ’s anguish as He bled and died for the sins of many, but she knew great pain.

Now what is the lesson here? To follow Jesus and rest in Him alone is not without pain in this world. I would lie to you today if I invited you to "turn to Christ and the rest will simply be a garden party!" Following Christ meant a piercing pain to Mary. She would watch as her son put aside His hammer and plane one day in the shop of Joseph and walked toward a pathway that end at a cross. She would, like others, be despised and rejected by others for confessing Jesus as Lord. Of course, Mary knew a pain that is different than any other human knew, for she knew the pain of watching her innocent Bethlehem babe being nailed to a cross. But you must know that there is pain in following Jesus as you put Him above all others and bear the reproach of a devout disciple.

Simeon's Song—this portion of God's Word—ends with this line: "That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

As I read this and prayed over it, I began to experience a pain myself: the pain of realizing that my sins—not just other's, but my sins nailed Christ to a cross. He suffered and bled and died for me. And dear friends, Christ came to shed the light of God's holiness on your life and show that you are a filthy sinner without His blood to wash you clean. You are a hopeless case without Jesus.

Conclusion

The whole of the matter is simply this: God wants you to rest in Jesus alone for life and eternal life.

Simeon has helped us learn some lessons about that:

1. We rest in the Lord as we obey. We find the true power of Christ in our lives as we "go up" to dedicate ourselves to Him, to follow His revealed will in our lives. We come to know the fullness of the Lord as we, particularly, obey God in going into His House.

2. We come to rest in the Lord and experience His power in living when we are led by the Spirit of God.

3. You are not ready to die until you confess Christ as Lord, until you commit to follow Him, until you confess your sins and turn from them.

4. There is a cost to following Jesus Christ.

Beethoven died and left an unfinished symphony. Simeon died after seeing the Savior, and his song is a hauntingly beautiful composition that exalts the God of Salvation and predicts His suffering, but it, too, is an unfinished symphony.

Mary would weep, to be sure. There would be a crucifixion for certain. But there would be a resurrection.

The Holy Spirit Himself finished this Song with the words of another Mary: "He is risen!"

This Christmas it is good to keep that in mind as well.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, You who came in the fullness of time to the earth in Your first Advent and who will come in Your perfect timing at the second Advent, do come into our lives today. Do come, Lord Jesus, and give us the joy of Your presence and a taste of the reality of Your resurrected and reigning glory. Help us to practice holy waiting in all of our lives, that we may give all the glory to You as You work out Your perfect plan in our lives. And so in waiting we worship You Son of God, Son of Man, Lord of Life, Savior of the World. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Luke, p.170.

2. As quoted from Hendriksen, Luke, p. 171.