Christmas 2

Really grateful, Father, for this good day. We're really grateful for your book, Capital B Father, I praise we think today about the responses of the Jewish leaders of this man named Simeon, this woman named Anna, that you would guide us to think about our own hearts, our own habits, our own responses to the Lord Jesus as we await the Second Advent. So may we have your guidance and direction. We entrust ourselves to you. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Friends, this morning I parked my car 5.5 miles from the building at 4:30 in the morning and I walked to worship. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to walk through the dark. It was a beautiful, beautiful night because.

The moon was out, it stopped raining. It was gorgeous. The weather wasn't too cold, it wasn't too hot. It was a wonderful walk.

Now you're thinking OK. The stress of pastoring has pushed Dave over the edge. What in the world is wrong with him that he would do that? I did that because it was 5.5 miles. It's a very important distance.

In today's message, 5.5 miles. And we're going to talk about that distance in just a minute, but I walked here for a reason and I want to ask you to think about that walk and the Pharisees and the question of how am I responding to the Lord Jesus now that I'm not at the first Advent, but I'm here for the second Advent.

The Pharisees, the Scribes and the Chief Priests: “Hey Jesus! /get out of my Temple!”

So 2000 years ago this was how people were responding to him, and now we have our own choice, our own chance to respond to him, our responses to Jesus. Are not primarily based on who Jesus is. They're really based on who we are. They're based in our own hearts, our own choices. They're based on what we have disciplined ourselves to be. They're based on who we have become.

Our responses grow out of who we have practiced to be. I am the person I

am today because I have practiced to be this person, good, bad, or otherwise.

You're the person you are because you have practice to be that kind of a person.

Matthew 15:18, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and that is what defiles the man. We are people who are expected to discipline our hearts. Proverbs 4:23, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” And part of the message is that today's choices matter, and they matter intensely because I am today discipling myself to be the person I'm going to be tomorrow.

All of us are doing that. And if I want to live a faithful life, I have to be faithful for about 25,000 days. Now when I stacked 25,000 faithful days on each other, then I have accomplished what would amount to a faithful life. So the Pharisees had discipled themselves to be specific people. And they're the kind of people they showed up in their response to Jesus. Simeon and Anna had disciplined their own hearts to be different people. And the hearts they had showed up in the ways that they were responding to the Lord Jesus.

So Matthew chapter 2:1-6, I want to start here with the Pharisee scribes, chief priests, and think about how these people, these leaders of the people of Israel responded to Jesus.

Matthew 2:1, “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod, the king Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem saying, “Where is he who has been born? King of the Jews.” This is a very critical statement. Friend. Born king of the Jews. Jesus was born to the throne. Herod usurped the throne. He was the king of the Jews as we read this, but he went through all kinds of political gyrations to get to where he got, and that's part of the reason his ears perked up when the Magi said where is he who was born King of the Jews? It's part of the reason Herod hated him.

We're not going to talk about his response, but here he killed all the children, 2 years old and younger, trying to make sure that he crushed the Messiah, because he was not born the king of the Jews. The Magi said we saw his star in the East, and we have come to worship him. When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Gathering together the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what is written by the prophet.

“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by number means least among the tribe above the leaders of Judah. For out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israe.l” Matthew 2:6

 So the Pharisees were a group of ruling Jews. They were very famous for strict adherence to the law, famous for making up other laws that weren't actually in the law. They were famous for tithing, mint, dill, and cumin, but ignoring righteousness. They were famous for prominence, they were famous for giving alms in the street in front of other people to be noticed and they were very influential over the people. Now at least two of them came to faith later on, Nicodemus and a man named Saul who became Paul. They were Pharisees

and another group of people involved here was the scribes. These were the scholars who taught the Old Testament law to the people of Israel. And they were people that also made-up a whole bunch of other traditions that they wanted to follow. And they had a huge influence on the people. And then the

chief priests. These were the people who sat on the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel. And they were mostly from the group called the Sadducees. So these people held power and they intended to keep power. They had discipled their hearts to love power, and they had every intention of keeping a hold of this power. And so having trained their hearts to do that, as we just read, they didn't go rushing down to Bethlehem to find Jesus. They didn't even go down to Bethlehem to find Jesus. Friends, the people of Israel have known for millennia that the Messiah was coming.

Genesis 3:15 (pro evangelium) “The first announcement of the gospel. God said there that Jesus would bruise the head of Satan, and Satan would bruise the hill of Jesus.” Genesis 3:15

The Gospel is announced. Genesis 3:21, “God kills animals to cover the shame and nakedness of human beings.” The first example of blood sacrifice. Genesis 3. We've known they've known this for millennia. Not only that, but in 1400 BC Leviticus was written, all the laws of sacrifice showing that there was finally coming. An ultimate sacrifice that was going to actually cover sin once and for all. Micah 5:2. 700 years before the Messiah said he'll be born in Bethlehem, and now the 400 silent years. They haven't heard from God since the prophet Malachi. They know where he's going to be. They've known for millennia that he was coming, but they had no interest in going down there. They knew where he was. They told Herod where he was. He's down in Bethlehem. But they were apathetic and then jealous and then hostile and then murderous.

The Lord Jesus, that was the process that they followed. Why is that?

Well, it's because Jesus said about their lifestyle and about their beliefs and about the things they loved. So they started out being apathetic. They would have needed to walk 5.5 miles to check out Jesus. That's about how far it is from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Now, depending on where Jesus was born and where the particular Pharisee lived, it might have been 3 miles, it might have

been 20 miles. How could we know? We can't know.

Friends, that's the distance that an old man can walk before church. That's how far it is. It's nothing. It's not egregious. Especially compared to the magi who walked or rode camels hundreds of miles over the course of months.

And of course, when you write them down there for months, you got to go back for months. I mean, they were knocking themselves out to find a Messiah. But these people said, no, it's not worth the walk. I'm not going to do that. So they went from apathy, then they went to jealousy. And so what happened was Jesus was cutting into their territory, Jesus was cutting into their popularity, pulling away their disciples, and they were extremely upset about that. John 3:30 John the Baptist said Jesus must increase, but I must

decrease. But the Pharisee said we must increase and Jesus must go away.

So they go from apathy, then they go down to jealousy, and

now they move to hostility. Why were they hostile toward him?

Well, because he habitually said you love money and not God, He officially said you value the Sabbath more than the man. He continually said to them your tithing meant dill and cumin, but you don't even care about justice. He continually said to them all you're doing is just getting the best places in the synagogue and you're giving your alms in the street for everyone to see. You're hypocrites. I mean, he didn't pull any punches with him. And then

so they go from this jealousy, then they go to hostility.

Jesus made it clear that he came to divide people over. His identity is very clear about that. Luke 12:51 to 53. He divided people in the first Advent. He's dividing people right now. He's dividing families over Jesus. He's dividing people in the Treasure Valley over Jesus, people in Quito, Ecuador over Jesus. People are making a decision about Jesus, and they are. Divided about

who he is.

So then they move #4 to murder. They move to Matthew 12:14. Matthew 27:22. It's the final step in the journey from apathy to jealousy to hostility. Then they just kill him. We just have to get rid of him. Well, we're going to, we're going to deal with him once and for all. So I want to ask you to think about this question of why were the Pharisees apathetic, jealous, hostile murderers?

Why were they that I want to suggest to you because they had weird affections. They loved the wrong things. This is a concept that I only learned about at the ripe old age of 70. James Barber, one of our students here, sitting right here. I think yes, keeping his head down so I won't notify him, but James

is a student at Ambrose. He wrote this paragraph for me about the issue of what it means to have rightly ordered affections. The idea of rightly ordered affections is of course based in scripture. However, it was fleshed out more thoroughly by the early church fathers who established.

Meaning Augustine, for example, referred to the idea of or do amoris, Latin for ordered love. He viewed our affection for things as virtuous not only if those things are loved, but loved in the right extent, in the right way, and in the right order. He argued that while created things and even aspects of created things are good and should be loved. They're only rightly loved when they are loved with a preference to those things discerning deserving higher love.

For example, a father of four might love his classic Camaro. Now anybody

who loves a Chevy, first of all they have issues to start with. OK, OK. Yeah, now there. You started that, Dave.

However, if he loves his classic Camaro more than his four children, his loves are misordered and he does not love either the car or the children rightly.

Augustine even went so far as to say to call this kind of love an evil love. He also explained how God, being perfection of all goods, cannot be loved too much and thus he stands at the pinnacle of this ladder or pyramid of loves.

Thus he defined virtue itself as the proper ordering of one's love. I'm simply saying, friends, that the Pharisees were people who loved the wrong things in the wrong order to the wrong degree. They had completely gotten themselves in the ditch because their hearts had been discipled to love the wrong things. What am I discipling my heart to love? What are you discipling your heart to love? Let me tell you how you can answer that question. Do an audit. Of

your time. Your money and your habits.

And in auditing your time, your money and your habits, you can answer the question, what am I discipling my heart to love? What am I? How am I ordering the loves in my life? It's the daily habits that shape our lives. There's a writer from, I don't know, 80 years ago named William James. He said all of life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

My whole life is just a mass of habits. The Pharisees' habit was to love God, was to love prominence, was to love the chief seat in the synagogue. They used those habits to train their heart and their hearts were trained to love the wrong things and therefore they hated Jesus. They trained themselves to love the wrong things.

Simeon: “I have seen God’s Salvation, now I am free to die in Joy!

The second person I want to look at today is this person named Simeon. I want to read about him in Luke 2:25 to 35 and think about this man named Simeon. “There was a man in Jerusalem whose name is Simeon, and the man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him, and had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in

the Spirit into the temple. The Holy Spirit led him to go to the temple at that moment.

And when the parents, that is, Joseph and Mary, brought in their child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law. Then he took him in his arms, and he blessed God and said, Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant to depart 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 and his father and mother were amazed at these things which were being said about Him.” 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. And a sword will Pierce even your own soul. To the end of the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.

Simeon's basic response to Jesus was I've seen God's Messiah. I'm free to die in peace. I'm free to die in joy. I am a person who was promised to see this child. I saw this child beam me up. God, I'm ready. I'm done. Thank you.

Thank you for doing what you said you would do. He's described as a righteous man. Doesn't mean he never sinned. It means he had ordered his will. Underneath the will and character of God. He is described as a devout man.

He had reverence for God. He was a pious individual. He's described as a bondservant of God.  

Famous New Testament concept where a slave who served a family well was offered their freedom to go. Be a free person. And they said, no, I love this family. I don't want to go. I'll stay here and serve you. And so they would take that person, stand them up against the doorpost, take the lobe of their ear, put it against the doorpost and drive and all awl through it like you drive through leather. And that hole in their ear was the description that they're a bond servant, voluntarily staying with the family even though they were offered freedom. This man is a bondservant of God, Paul said. I'm a bond servant of Jesus. I am serving him voluntarily and I'm going to stay with him. Simeon was looking for the consolation of Israel, the Messiah. He was one of the people who was actually concerned when he was going to get here. He was one of the guys who would have walked 5.5 miles. He didn't have to because they brought him to the temple.

But he said I'm looking for this comfort. This consolation that God is bringing to our people by the Messiah. We sang it this morning. “Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel, come, God with us.” And this man was looking for it and he saw it.

And so the question is, you know, am I, like Simeon, looking for the Savior here at the Second Advent? There's so much said about this man, we can't cover it. Controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. He saw that God did what he said he would do. He was free to die.

Enjoy. He's seen the salvation or the rescue of God. He said. This is for all people. Men, women, children, boys, girls, every ethnic group, every place on the planet, every language. It's for all the people that Jesus died. Simeon saw that, he understood that. And then he said Jesus is the light of revelation to the Gentiles.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 4 found out that John the Baptist was taken into custody and so Jesus left Nazareth and moved to Capernaum, up on the top of the Sea of Galilee.

The area of Zebulon and Naphthali. The light shone on the Gentiles because Jesus himself moved to this Gentile area. Simeon saw that. He declared it. This is the one to glory in. And then he gives this prophecy to Mary. About Jesus.

He says to Mary, He's slated for the rise and fall of many. Some people in Israel will rise over him, and some will fall over Him, depending on their choice. He's assigned to be opposed. He is also going to reveal the thoughts of many hearts and Mary, there is a sword going straight through your own soul.

You're going to stand at the foot of the cross and watch your son, your beloved son, your first born son, the one God gave you, be killed, murdered with thieves right in front of you.

That sword is going through your own soul. Miserable hard things that she was going to experience based on what was going to happen to her son. And the application I think very powerfully is Jesus is a divisive figure.

He said to us in Luke 12:51-52. “Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on the earth? I tell you no, but rather division. From now on, five members in one household will be divided 3 against two and two against three.”

In my own family of origin, we're divided about Jesus. You probably are in your family of origin. You certainly are in your neighborhood. You certainly are in your workplace. Some people say he is the Messiah. I'm betting my life on it.

And there's others who say, no, he's a lunatic, he never existed.

We're divided over the person of Jesus. The Pharisees had the same evidence as Simeon, but Simeon had a starkly different response because he had rightly ordered affections. He loved the right things in the right order to the right degree. And he got there because he had disciplined his own heart. He didn't wake up that one morning and just be there. He discipled his own heart to get to the place where he needed to be.

So if you look at both Anna, who will look at her in a minute, and Simeon, these are people with the rightly ordered affections. The application is ridiculously obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway. What are you and I doing

to disciple the affections of our hearts? How are we teaching ourselves to love the right things in the right order to the right degree in our schedules?

In our habits, in our spending, in our associations, in our reading, all of it. How am I training my heart to love the right things?

Anna: “Thank god, the Redemption of Jerusalem is Here!”

The last person to look at here is this woman named Anna is also found in Luke chapter 2:36, “And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel. Of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage and then as a widow to the age of 84, she never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers. At that very moment she came up and began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. Spirit brought this woman named Anna in she's been anticipating this Messiah, she said OK.

God's redemption is here. Just like Simeon, she saw him. Just like Simeon, she knew who he was. She recognized him. She believed in him. Listen, friends here, this woman is called a prophetess. So a prophet speaks to people for God. A priest speaks to God on behalf of people. She's a prophetess. She was speaking to people on behalf of God. It further says of her she was married seven years and a widow to the age of 84. For the sake of easy math, let's say she got married at 17, which is very common for a Jewish girl. She would have

been married until she was 24 when her husband died. And now she's been

in the temple for 60 years. 60 decades in the temple. Who's in the temple? God. Who's the one saying being in the universe? God, She spent 60 decades in the presence of the one totally sane being in the universe.

Friends, each one of us is to some degree insane. We believe stuff that's false. Now, if I knew what I believed was false, I'd abandon it. I just don't know what it is. But she was 60 years old in the presence of this same being. She gave thanks for Jesus. She told everyone who would listen to him. You know, when you see a great movie or read a great book, you become an evangelist for it.

Well, she was an evangelist for Jesus. I will tell anybody who will listen to me

because the redemption of Israel is here. It means to buy someone off the slave block of sin. So I'm standing here. I'm on this slave block. It's called sin. I'm ready to be.

Old Jesus comes up. He pays with his precious blood. He buys me. He redeems me out of sin. And that's what Jesus does for us, what he does for the people of Israel. How many times have I said this? They're going to replace me here soon. Friends, we're going to find a new pastor and you're going to have to, you won't have to hear this anymore. But I'm going to say it again.

Sin, separation, substitution, trust, It's the core truth. I'm a Sinner. It separates me from a holy God. Couldn't fix it, but Jesus paid for it. I can be forgiven by putting my trust in Christ. That's the core message, the redemption that Anna saw in Jesus and that we see in Jesus. If you don't understand that message, please come talk to me. I'll sit right up here in my goofy teal shirt. Come talk to me and I'll be happy to talk to you about this question of what does it mean to be redeemed and brought back into a relationship with God. So Anna was all in for the Messiah. She had the same evidence as everyone else had.

But she had rightly ordered affections. Here's what else she had. She

had an amazing rule of life. An amazing rule of life.

What is a rule of life? Thank you for asking. Where are my friends? Am I

behind you or ahead of you? Yeah, I want to catch up with you. She had a beautiful rule of life. What's a rule of life? A rule of life is the tiny,

unrelenting, beautiful habits that a person builds to make themselves be the person they want to be, the person they should be. The best example is the example of a trellis. So if you have a climbing rose, you put a trellis behind it. The Rose goes up that trellis. And it goes much, much higher than it would go without a trellis. So when we talk about a rule of life, we're not talking about.

Laws that you have to follow. We're talking about guidelines that lead you to maturity. This concept of rule of life first came out of the 3rd century. The desert fathers around Alexandria, Egypt, where these believers were driven into the desert by persecution. They lived in caves. They spent their time praying, fasting, reading the word and teaching other new believers and they talked about the rule of life building for yourself a set of Tiny, beautiful, unrelenting habits to grow your life on the kind of a trellis that you grow up.

You can grow up straight and tall. You can become much more than you would have been without that trellis without, without the book, without God's guidance. So the question we have to ask is what? What trellis am I building my life on?

Word of God.

Instagram.

TV.

Video games.

Fox News.

I got all kinds of choices. Friends. If I'm not, if the trellis of my life is not this book, I'm on a trellis that's about 1/2 inch off the ground and it's just snaking around going nowhere and it ends in a giant frozen over mud puddle. Those are not trellises that bring me to love Christ and to love God, bring me to love other people. This woman had an amazing, amazing rule of life. There's a book called the Common Rule, Habits of Purpose for an Age of destruction.

Habits of purpose for an age of distraction, where he flushes out this whole thing about having a rule of life. The Pharisees had misordered loves, and they built their lives on a trellis of greed and pride.

Simeon and Anna had ordered lives, and they built their lives on a trellis of

the Word of God, anticipating the Messiah and looking forward to Him. Here's a core idea.

Core Truth: Great responses at critical moments are the result of rightly ordered affections and a beautiful rule of life. Rightly ordered affections and approval rule of life. So the question is, what am I doing?

Conclusion:To disciple my own heart to become a person who has ever increasing affection for the person of Christ. It's easy to say to ourselves, hey, if I'd have been here at the First Advent, I'd have gone down there. I'd have walked 5.5 miles to see him. Well, we don't know if we would have or not, and truthfully, it doesn't matter. Because here we are waiting for the second Advent. What matters is not whether I walked 5.5 miles 2000 years ago. It's the weather today. I am building a rightly ordered affections in my heart. And whether today I am building my life on a trellis that matters, that straight and tall.

And it's growing me up to maturity and it's growing me up to be satisfied in Jesus. It's my choice. It's up to me, it's up to you. It's just our choice, whatever we're going to do.

I want to close today by reading a quote from an author named Stephen Walker. You probably know him as Steve Walker. He wrote a book called The Way. Steve Said. “One of my favorite quotes is from a little known author and speaker, HG Prochnau. I don't know what caused him to express this, but it strikes a chord in my heart. This author said, “this is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow or the relentless drift of events will make the decision for us. Steve says being passive or ignorant about life's

passing does not make it slow down or stop. Actually, the implication is even darker. If you relax and let life happen to you, you will end up where you'd rather not be. You'll be someone you wish you weren't.”

The question is not about movement, but about our intentional direction.

And intended destination. Am I discipling my heart to love the right things?

Building my life on a set of tiny, unrelenting, beautiful habits that bring me to be a person who embraces the Messiah.

Let's pray, please. Very thankful, father, for your book. We're very thankful for these two people, especially Simeon and Anna. Lord, I pray for each one of us that you would convict us, You would guide us. I pray for all of us, myself included. Lord, we would just go home and say, how can I be more intentional? What will I do to discipline my own heart? To be a person who loves Christ more, who loves the right things in the right order to the right degree. Is building my life on a trellis of the Word of God. Please give us your help to this

end and we pray in Christ's name, Amen.