Tonight, as we wrap up “the Weary World Rejoices,” we look at the story of Simeon and Anna and how their reaction to Jesus as a baby helps us think about how we should respond in joy.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Simeon and Anna waited years—possibly decades—to see the Messiah, yet they rejoiced at seeing only a baby, still essentially a “coming soon” sign rather than the full, visible fulfillment of the promise. What does their example teach us about finding contentment while waiting for God’s promises to be fully realized in our own lives?
The sermon opens with the problem of post-Christmas letdown—joy that “comes to an abrupt halt” when normal life returns. What practices or mindset shifts could help you maintain spiritual focus and joy throughout the year, not just during the holiday season?
The sermon asks, “What do I want from God?” The pastor contrasts wanting God to be a “miracle provider” who solves all our problems with simply wanting to experience God Himself. How would you answer that question honestly right now, and what would it look like to shift your focus more toward experiencing God’s presence rather than seeking resolution to specific prayers?
Simeon accepted that the Messiah’s coming wouldn’t mean everything would be easy—he even warned Mary of the sword that would pierce her soul. Paul similarly learned that God’s grace was sufficient even with his unresolved “thorn in the flesh.” What unresolved situation in your own life most tempts you to lose joy, and what would it look like to rest in God’s presence there instead?
Both Simeon and Anna remained devout and faithful over many years without becoming bitter despite hardship. What role does faithful daily practice—prayer, worship, Scripture—play in keeping us “on the lookout” for God to work, so that hope and joy don’t get put out with the Christmas tree?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you on this Monday after Christmas. I hope you’ve had a joyful Christmas weekend. As we come together tonight, we’re going to wrap up the series we’ve been using all Advent to prepare our hearts for Christmas. Now that we’re past Christmas Day, we’re going to think about reflecting on joy after Christmas.
Tonight’s story is about Simeon and Anna. Simeon and Anna get to see the baby Jesus just a few days after he’s born when Mary and Joseph take him to the temple to complete the proper rituals that they were required to do. We get to see how they react to Jesus in that moment—not with the angels singing, not with the even striking manger scene, but a much more ordinary picture of two parents bringing a baby to the temple. As we think about that and our own reactions and feelings as we move into the rest of December and then into January, let’s go ahead and come before our God and ask for His guidance. Would you join me in prayer?
Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your love. Thank you for sending your Son into this world. What an incredible miracle it is that we have been celebrating this week as we reflect on Christmas Day. And Lord, as we move past the day, would you help us not to move past the joy? Would you guide us tonight to see more clearly what you were doing and place your truth on our hearts through your Holy Spirit? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When I think back to the days after Christmas, especially thinking way back, I find myself thinking of an old neighbor that I had when I was growing up. This neighbor was one of the people—maybe you’re such a person—who likes to take down the Christmas tree right away. In fact, by the time I’d wake up the next morning, I’d look out our living room window and see a sad sight like this: a tree laying discarded. A tree that had been in all its glory just a few moments before, just hours before, all lit up, everyone singing Christmas carols, and then just put out to the side of the house ready for a garbage man to pick it up. There was so much joy and yet then it just comes to this abrupt halt.
I struck thinking about that contrast between joy and that sense that we’re not there yet last night. My family had a family Christmas gathering over a video conference. It was wonderful to see everyone. It was wonderful to have some of the conversations we have every Christmas. Yet there was also that sense that, yes, there’s joy, and yet it also felt a little cut off because we weren’t actually together. We talked about, well, hopefully later this year, hopefully by 4th of July we’ll all be together. And it feels a little like joy, but then joy paused. Sort of like that tree had joy and then it just came to an abrupt halt.
I think for most of us, at some point after Christmas, it sort of feels like we have a moment like that because we’ve had all this build-up, all this excitement, and then, and then it’s over. And life returns to normal. And normal isn’t celebration. Normal isn’t peace on earth and goodwill to men. Normal is grumbling at the traffic in front of you and dealing with co-workers and wondering how life is going to work out in so many different ways. And it doesn’t necessarily feel very much like we have that hope any longer.
Last week we talked about Mary and how she had hope and expectation in less than complete fulfillment because she heard the promises of who her son was going to be. And yet there she was in that nativity scene, in that manger scene, still in a place that felt very alone. A place where everything wasn’t working out. God hadn’t provided a royal army to salute Jesus as he was born. Yes, there were the angels, but they were distant. Here she was in a stable.
Likewise, in the years after, and yet we see that Mary hoped and we see tonight that Simeon and Anna hoped as well. And if we’re trying to think what does that look like? How do we live like that? How do we take that hope and that joy that we feel on Christmas and carry it into the new year? How do we carry it throughout our lives? I think it looks something like what Simeon did, and that is living on the lookout. Living on the lookout for God to work.
You see, we’re told in the introduction to this passage we’re going to be looking at that Simeon was in the temple and he was very careful and devout. He came regularly doing all the things that a good, devout Jewish person should do to come and be before God and to praise Him. But lots of people do that—lots of the people that came in and out of that temple every day, and they knew there was a promise of a Messiah, yet they didn’t really live with hope because they’d go on with life and they might get really excited sometime when they’d hear someone in synagogue reading the promises about the Messiah, and then they’d go back and there’d be cruel Roman soldiers around and the normal everyday drudgery and trying to make sure their family had food and everything else, that in many ways sounds very familiar to us.
But look at the story of Simeon for a moment. Mary and Joseph and Jesus enter the temple. Jesus is just a baby and at that point we turn to this moment: 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. 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. So Simeon is devout but he’s not devout in the sense that everything that he’s focused on is simply making sure he checks off rituals and can say he has done all the things to make himself a good religious person. In the midst of that he’s genuinely devout. He’s genuinely focused on the Lord. In that we see that God has allowed His Holy Spirit to come into Simeon’s life.
We talk about that a lot today—that Christians receive the Holy Spirit—but in those days before Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to all believers, it wasn’t a normal thing to have the Holy Spirit come upon you. It was the sort of thing that happened to prophets on occasion. And the Lord clearly recognized the care and the love of God that Simeon had, and he was given this special gift that the Holy Spirit came upon him and gave him a message. And it was a good message, although in a way it’s also a somber message.
Simeon would get to see the Lord’s Christ—or as we might say, the Lord’s Messiah. Christ and Messiah are the Greek and Hebrew words respectively for the same person. He would see the Lord’s Messiah, the Lord’s Christ before he died. And so it wasn’t a promise everything in his life was going to go great, everything was going to be easy, everything he had done as far as being devout would be perfectly rewarded in this life. What was the promise? It was that he would see the Messiah before he died. But he paid attention to that and we don’t know how many years he waited to see the fulfillment of that. Presumably, it wasn’t just the day before Jesus came into the temple. Because this message was one that sounds like one that the Lord had given him so that he’d know that sometime in his lifetime, sometime in however many years he lived, he would get to see the Messiah.
And it gives us reason to think, presumably at this point as we enter into Simeon’s story, that he’s probably an old man. There’s a good chance he’s been waiting many years for the fulfillment of this promise. And yet he’s still ready to see the fulfillment. He hears God’s promises and he doesn’t lose the expectation. He’s on the lookout. He’s looking not for what disaster is going to come next to him; he’s looking for what great thing God is going to do in history that he gets to witness. And so because he’s in that place where he’s looking for God’s fulfillment, he is ready to see his God do the amazing things he knows his amazing God can do.
Then he gets to see this amazing moment where Jesus comes into the temple and, through again the Holy Spirit, Simeon realizes this little baby is the fulfillment of that promise. That he gets to see not some triumphant king come into the temple and say, “Oh, there’s the Messiah! This is clearly a king!” No, he sees a little baby with this little couple of no significance coming in. In fact, we read right before where we picked up that Mary and Joseph have to give the lower-priced sacrifice that was required of them. There were different tiers depending on what you could afford. And they had to give the one that was for impoverished people. They didn’t have great means; they wouldn’t have looked significant coming in.
If Simeon was watching from the background, he wouldn’t have looked at them and thought, “Wow, look at the majesty of that family.” No, he would have thought, “Oh, there’s an impoverished family coming and being faithful.” I don’t think actually he thought that at all. He simply saw these people, and in particular this baby, and thought there is God fulfilling the promise he gave me. That’s what he saw.
Likewise, we see later on, if we jump ahead a little to verses 36 to 38, Anna, when she became aware of what was going on. It says: There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, and she was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was 84. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him as Jesus to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Based on the phrasing Luke uses, it’s a little unclear, but it appears the story of Anna is essentially one where she married fairly early in life, was married for seven years, and then her husband died, and she spent the rest of her life widowed and focused on praising God. She didn’t take that time and those circumstances, the tragedy that had happened in her life, and become bitter. No, she was focused on praising her God. She also was on the lookout. When she heard, perhaps she heard the commotion with Simeon, perhaps she saw it for herself, but she hears what’s going on in this temple at this moment. She spends every day in the temple worshiping God, and she celebrates because she sees this fulfillment, this amazing thing happening right in front of her eyes. Because she was living in the expectation, that hope, she was ready to rejoice in that moment.
I think it really comes down to a matter of focus. What am I focused on? Am I focused on what I get now, how everything in my life will come together in the next day or month or year or years? Am I focused on the wonder of who God is? You see, Simeon and Anna were focused on the latter. They were focused on how wonderful God is. And they had spent their lives waiting to see fulfillment. Much of it, it seems, probably was a story that we would deem tragic. It wasn’t like they had wonderful, overflowingly successful lives, at least in a worldly sense. But they were so focused heavenward, so focused on who God is and who God is to them as their God who loves them, that in this moment they got to feel and experience an indescribable joy because they saw what God was doing.
You see, the matter is that they had their hope in God and not in their own experiences. So often I want to focus on my experience. How am I feeling? How are things going? Is everything the way I would like it to be? That I can lose sight of that hope I have in my God. I think we all can do that. And there’s lots in our society that want to peel us away and cause us to do that, whether it’s people who are angry and shouting on television, or just the chaos in the world, or a pandemic going on, and all these different things that happen that cause us to start to lose the joy that we experienced a few days ago. And we need to go through a whole other year and get all the way built up to Christmas again, and then it knocks us in the head for a moment, and then we go back to, “Well, but I’m not feeling very good right now.”
But look, in the midst of whatever life Simeon had had, whatever he’d experienced, this is what he says when he sees Jesus. It says, “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, he took him up in his arms and said, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’”
Notice what he says there. He doesn’t say, “And now, Lord, I know that the rest of my life is going to be easy. Now I know that you’re going to invite me into the service of this Messiah, and I’m going to be promoted, and everyone’s going to look up to me.” He doesn’t even say, “And now I know that people will never forget me because someday a gospel writer is going to write about me.”
What does he say? “Now I can die in peace, because I’ve gotten to see what you promised me, God. I’ve gotten to see what you’re doing, and I’ve gotten to see what you’re doing in this baby.” Think about that for a moment. Simeon knew there was the promise of this Messiah who would come, who would rescue his people Israel. Most people were looking for a political rescue, a rescue from the oppression of Rome. And he sees this little baby, and this baby isn’t going to do anything in that moment.
We’re not watching The Mandalorian. This isn’t Baby Yoda who’s going to cause people to be elevated, lift up some enemy, and throw them off or something like that. This is a baby human being. Jesus was born as a genuine human being, and as he holds this baby and looks at him, he sees a baby. But he knows who God is, and he knows what God has promised to him. And so in that moment, he doesn’t say, “Now God, you need to let me live long enough to see what this baby is going to do.” He says, “No, I can. My life is complete, because I have seen the salvation of Israel, and I’ve seen someone who’s going to bring peace to the entire world.”
He sees the scope of what Jesus is going to do, and he sees it without actually seeing Jesus in ministry teaching, or Jesus doing some miracle. He simply sees Jesus as a baby. He sees, in some sense, still a coming soon sign for the promise, because the promises aren’t happening in a really tangible form yet.
It reminds me of a few years ago when Chick-fil-A finally came to St. Charles. And of course, that’s the promised land of chicken, right? The Chick-fil-A sandwich, and the wonderful Chick-fil-A sauce, and the amazing waffle fries. And it was so exciting that there was this coming soon sign—Chick-fil-A was coming into town. It wasn’t going to be a big drive to go to Chick-fil-A any longer.
But then, I didn’t really just want a sign. I wanted waffle fries. And seeing the sign just made me hungrier for waffle fries. We don’t want coming soon signs in life. We want the fulfillment of what those coming soon signs promise. And it would have been so easy in that moment to imagine Simeon saying, “God, I want the fulfillment. I don’t want to see a little baby. You promised me the Messiah, and I want to see a king. I want to see him come in here and triumphantly push off Rome or something. Do a miracle.”
The people, many people, even when Jesus was fully grown and was teaching, and they could see him teaching with authority, doing miracles all the time, wanted more than the promise of something coming soon in the future. They didn’t want to see that sign saying the restaurant’s coming. They didn’t want to see the sign the Savior is coming, or He’s even here, but He’s not overthrowing Rome yet. They wanted to see someone make everything right in their lives in that moment, in an earthly sense. They wanted political freedom.
And notice Simeon, that’s not even on his radar. Simeon, even as he looks at that baby, is rejoicing because he realizes that whether he had, whether the Holy Spirit revealed the details or not, he was looking at that baby and he knew that baby was going to provide him with salvation. That baby was more than just a baby. That baby was going to make the world right. Maybe not his life, but the world.
And that is a really hard place for us to reach. Because Simeon acknowledges he’s going to die, and he had every reason to expect he probably wasn’t going to live to see that salvation come in a way that he could really tangibly sense in an earthly time period. But he trusted God. And he trusted God even as he saw these things and processed these things and realized that everything wouldn’t be easy from the moment that this baby was in his arms to the moment that baby would save him.
Notice what he says to Mary as we pick up in verse 33. It says, “And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. 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. And a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.’”
There’s been a lot of debate on exactly what Simeon meant there. But what is clear is that Simeon recognized that this promise of this Messiah didn’t mean that everything was going to be easy, not even for God’s people. He saw some of the division that was coming, and whether he was referring to the fact that Mary would someday watch her son be crucified, whether he was talking more about the discord amongst God’s people as they wrestled with whether Jesus was the Messiah or not, and some of them would reject Jesus, it really doesn’t matter that much. Simeon knew clearly that everything wasn’t going to be easy. Everything wasn’t going to be smooth sailing from this point forward, and yet he rejoiced.
And I think that challenges us to ask a very difficult question of ourselves. That’s this: What do I want from God? What do I want from God? Often what I want more is a solution to pain, a solution to fear, a solution to the things that are difficult in my life, the things that I don’t know how to resolve, those sorts of things. And I’m sure that Simeon and Anna both would have liked those things. They were human beings. They weren’t supernatural, and they weren’t perfect. They were sinful people like us. And yet, if you’d ask them what did they want, they just wanted to rejoice in their God.
Simeon wanted to see the fulfillment of the promise of the Messiah, not so he could see it all work out and make everything okay in his life. He just wanted to see his God work. To rejoice in Him. And in that, Simeon is contented. And the more that we can focus on just experiencing God, experiencing His promises, experiencing His love, and less on wanting everything to be resolved and holding more tightly onto the things we want resolved than on God’s love, the more we can join Simeon in that contentment. The more we can join Anna in her contentment.
Paul faced a similar challenge a few decades later in his ministry. You see, Paul had some kind of challenge. We don’t know if it was a physical ailment, a spiritual one. We don’t know exactly what it was. He refers to it as the thorn in his flesh. But he talks about coming to the Lord and asking for that to be resolved in this life. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12, he says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
When we boast in our weakness, when we’re willing to have those thorns in the flesh, when we’re willing to be like Simeon and say, “I see God working and I am content. My life is fulfilled, whether I get to see resolution to prayer requests A, B, and C in my life. I’m simply content to know that God is with me.” That’s what we can go into 2021 and call a successful year with. When our focus is on seeing God’s love and not seeing the fulfillment of certain requests, we will see far more wonder than we would if we saw those requests fulfilled.
So many people try to turn God into a miracle provider. I was reading a book from a popular Christian pastor not long ago and he was talking about how we just need to not be content. We need to demand more. We need to say, “I deserve more of this and more of that. More success, more money, more comfort.” That’s not what the Bible talks about. Simeon didn’t get any of those things, but he got something far better. He got to see the Messiah face to face. And because he was on the lookout, because he was putting his hope in the experience of God and not in his own earthly experiences, as he saw that even though it was just seeing a little baby, he could rejoice. Anna, after all her life, got to see a little baby and could rejoice.
As we think about the miracle of that baby being born, and in our own lives there are so many things that seem unfulfilled and unresolved, and we think about that baby, the man he grew up to be, and the cross that he bore for us, and the promises that he will return and he will be our God and he will wipe away every tear someday. And in this moment, as we wait, may we join Simeon and Anna, praising God.
In the midst of this weary world, may we rejoice because our God is with us. Would you pray with me, please? Father, sometimes it’s hard to rejoice. Sometimes we’re so focused on really big things, even. They’re not necessarily insignificant things. They’re frightening things. They’re overwhelming things in our lives. We just want resolution to. We lose sight of your ultimate promises. Lord, as we end 2020 and go into 2021, would you help us to focus more on what you’ve promised for all eternity, the salvation you bring to this world, the salvation you bring to us as we trust in Jesus, and less on worries about the things of life that may or may not get resolved? Would you help us that even when there’s uncertainty in those things, that we can join Simeon and say that we have had lives that are fulfilled simply by seeing you, seeing your love? And would you give us the strength to hold on to your promises and to experience that contentment through the power of your Holy Spirit? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this concludes our Christmas series, but there are still more days left of the 12 days of Christmas. And I think one of the ways we can help ourselves keep our eyes heavenward, keep our eyes on the light of the world and the hope that He promises, is to use those remaining days of the 12 days of Christmas.
So I’d like to invite you, if you haven’t already, to pick up a free copy. You can download it on our website of our devotional, The Light of the World. It has a reading for each of the 12 days of Christmas, just a short moment to reflect on the promises God gives us of bringing light into the world, His salvation to our lives, so that as we go into 2021, we are focused like Simeon was on God as the one who consoles us and comforts us and loves us.
I hope that you’ll join me on that journey if you haven’t already. I can’t wait to share it with you. Likewise, as we go through these 12 days of Christmas, we’ve decided to extend O Christmas Stream, the live stream we’re doing with other Faith Tree Partner churches. And if you could use just a few moments by a roaring fire, a few moments singing wonderful carols and other joyful songs about what God has done by bringing salvation to the world, a few moments reflecting in God’s Word, I hope that you’ll tune into it sometime this week. It’s streaming, and you can go to our website and view it on Facebook or YouTube. We’ll be adding some additional content to it, so I hope you’ll check that out.
You can see all these things and relive parts of the past Christmas season by going to littlehills.church/christmas. We have all kinds of wonderful things up there to share with you.
Also, next week we are beginning a brand new series. Speaking of Paul in 2 Corinthians earlier, Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians, that second letter, by calling them to do certain things in the process of rejoicing. These are things that are so essential as we seek to be restored from the areas that our hearts are pulled away from our God and to focus more on Him in the New Year. So I hope you’ll join us for this brand new series, Renewed.
I hope that tonight and this whole series has been encouraging to you. If it has, would you please give us a like, leave a comment, share this video on your Facebook page or by email or by a personal invitation? You can help us get the good news out of the God who we can rejoice in even when the world is difficult. I’m so grateful when you do that.
If there’s any way I can be praying for you this week or you have any comments or questions, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen or leave it down in the comments below, and we can have a conversation together with everyone else watching. I’d be happy to do it either way. I love when I get to pray for you.
I hope that you have a wonderful rest of this Christmas week, that you have a very merry rest of the 12 days of Christmas, and I can’t wait to see you for a brand new series next week. Have a blessed week.