Simeon, the prophet Anna, and the voices that bless.

Welcome to the First Love Church podcast.

This is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised common lectionary and recorded weekly in Ocala, florida.

We're so grateful that you gathered with us this morning as Carol celebrates Cloyce being with us.

We're grateful for that as well For every person who has come on this particular day.

I think there's days that are significant.

In all, days matter.

All moments are sacred before the Lord, but days matter, and so I'm grateful for you coming this morning.

On this day, the end of the year and the beginning of the next, this kind of liminal space.

We give thanks for what is ending and also give thanks for what is coming.

I think sometimes we have to be mindful that we don't just grieve endings and we don't celebrate beginnings.

And every ending is a beginning, every ending is a beginning, and so we see the Lord in the midst of us, in our endings and in our beginnings, in our triumphs and in our failings, in our hope and in our loss.

Christ among us, god among us.

I'm grateful that you have intended on allowing wonder and awe and beauty and love to shape your heart, because sometimes the things around us also shape us, but they are not wonder and beauty and awe and the good that is in the world today.

And so, in this place of abundance, I commend you and I thank you.

I've been doing a lot of reading and Advent provides that opportunity for me.

The dark is a good time to turn on our lamp.

I give so much grateful thought for the electricity.

It's hard to read by candlelight, at least it is for older eyes, so I'm grateful that to turn on a lamp and to be able to read.

And there has been so much beauty in what I have read.

But I have also felt a lot of heaviness from sometimes what people are reading about and it's this year.

Try more.

This year, lift more.

This year, go further.

This year, go harder.

And I just want to tell you this morning in God's house this year, go softer.

This year, let your gentleness be known to all.

This year, rest in the beloved.

This year, allow all of God's goodness to permeate your life, but then remember there is no striving that you will ever do that will make you more worthy of love.

You are worthy of love now because you bear the image of Christ, and so this year, let your imagination be filled with a holy imagination and believe for miracles, believe for things that are outrageous, because love is outrageous, but also be so gentle.

Be gentle with your heart, be gentle with your thoughts, be gentle with the trueness that God has called us to.

Love is gentle.

Amen.

Well, we welcome you to church, either here in person or online, and we are excited about your new year, even if you're not, because we happen to know something that maybe you don't know.

But we'll tell you, god's really good and he has good intentions for you, and His plans are for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope, and that is that's exciting.

That's something that can cause us to be excited to wake up.

Amen.

When you say that, it reminds me of one of the prophets said.

This is what God said do not seek good for yourself because I, the Lord, have already planned it.

I just want to tell you, if anyone's going to do the planning, let God do it, because God is so big and beautiful and wonderful.

We look at our world and we look at the incredible vastness of it, but we also consider moss.

Have you looked at moss recently?

I encourage you to do it this year.

Pick up a tiny piece of moss and look at it.

Allow the creativity of God to just inspire you that God cares about the tiniest things and he cares about you, he cares about me, he cares about the world, and what God is inviting us into is co-creating, is bringing the love of the realm down here to earth, even as it is in heaven.

One of the neat things that happened to me a couple of years ago when I was hiking up in the Isle of Skye in Scotland was I'm up in this really high mountain and it really shouldn't be called a hike, it was a mountain climb just to walk up.

I mean it was so steep and I got up there and it was so cold and rainy up there and I just kind of sat down for a second and I looked all around me and all these jagged, rough rocks and stuff in like the little corners and crevices, but all around me were like little plants growing and I thought, man, you are a hearty little plant to be growing up here up so high and with such terrible weather.

And then I was reminded of the fact that God said and it was, and even in a rough climate like that, it's going to be because God breathed life and so that life can't help it, it's gotta grow, even up there.

And so I wanna remind you, even in your rough situation, if God has spoken over you something which he has that you'd have life and have that more abundantly, then I don't have to be a try to drum it up myself or be afraid that it's not gonna take place.

There's such a simple revelation, but powerful.

To look at that poor little plant, it can't help but grow, because God has seeded this planet with this kind of life and what's more, you have been seeded and embedded within you is God's life.

And that should get more than one amen, but I'll take one Thank you.

This morning as we gather, I don't want your pity amen.

Maybe it just took a minute, maybe it's not pity Maybe it's adjoining this morning, as we gather.

I remind you kind of where we are.

We're at this place where last week we celebrated Christmas, christmas day, and I remind you the Christmas is not one day.

Christmas is 12 days, because you can't have 40 days up into that.

I mean, this is Christmas tide, if you wanted to know what day it is.

This is Christmas tide right now, and we're gonna celebrate this all the way until epiphany, and Christmas tide is a really beautiful place.

It's kind of a dark place, like Advent, but it's where you know something is coming.

It's not there yet, the light hasn't been shown on it, but there are things in our hearts.

There are gentle, there are hopes, there are dreams in our life that maybe don't need to be announced to the whole world yet, but you hold them and you're excited about them and they push you, propel you forward, and so we honor this time among us as Christmas tide and I wanna tell you get ready though.

The light is coming, epiphany is coming, and what a beautiful season of revelation and hope that is there.

But right now, in this season of Christmas tide, we remember the light is coming, the light has been given.

We read from the Gospel of John, and in John's version it's a cosmic Christ.

He reminds us from the beginning of time, the same energy that spoke the word.

The word became human and dwelt among us.

And in that humanity Jesus came and said I have come to you that you would have life and have it to the fullest.

So why follow Jesus, why make the attempts to live like Jesus did?

Love it, I tell you, it is this.

It is so that we can thrive in our humanity, that the flourishing is not just for us but it's for the whole world.

How we live in love, how we learn how to be better lovers of each other, of ourselves and the world, it matters.

And in the Gospels we see who Jesus is and who he loves and how he is formed, and we emulate those things.

We're invited in this particular time of the year we get to talk about this story that I've been to church for a really long time.

I've been to church for over 50 years and I didn't just visit churches.

I was in a church for the first 17 years of my experience, that we went to church every single day and twice on Sunday.

So I have heard the stories beloved.

I myself have read the stories.

Then we went to Bible school and then we've been pastors ourselves, and so I love the stories and I want to tell you the story that we get to tell today is one of my favorites.

It's one of my favorites maybe because they didn't tell my kids give me a hard time about this Well, what story would you say is not your favorite?

I could tell you those, but we don't want to say them on camera, and so, anyway, the scripture is full of all kinds of stories, some of them texts of terror, but this one is not.

This one is so encouraging, and so I want to tell you that it is with great excitement that I invite us all to think about and to remember this, and I also want us to remember this intentionally.

This is from the Gospel of Luke, and in the context, luke is writing about something that has happened, something that he heard about, and he begins to give this beautiful temple imagery.

But I want to tell you that, in the current state that Luke was writing this, this temple had already been destroyed, rome had already come in and raised this.

There was nothing left of it.

So when he talks about the temple and he begins to say it.

It would be a very grievous thing for people to remember, remember when we had a gathering where the presence of God was, and now this empire has come and completely swept it away from us.

And Luke is reminding us that Jesus, that God, is never going to be held in a temple, in a building, but that it was always the intention that love, extravagant love, would get out all over and on everybody.

But this morning from Luke's Gospel, then it was time for their purification offering, as required by the law of Moses after the birth of a child.

So his parents took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

This verse reminds us that Jesus's parents were devout Jews.

This required making an effort to get to temple.

This required doing the sacrifices, participating in this and allowing themselves to be formed by their tradition.

The law of the Lord said if a woman's first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the Lord Makes a lot of sense if you knew that when you were in slavery, the slave master always took your first son.

And so God said if you're going to be my people, you'll give him to me.

I don't know if you could ever have imagined a better place to give your son than to the Lord.

If a woman's first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the Lord.

So they offered the sacrifice required in the law of the Lord either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon.

He was righteous and devout and he was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel.

And the Holy Spirit was upon him.

He's praying, he's worshiping, he's offering the sacrifices, and so if you could see this cast of characters, we have the temple and there's so many people there and we have other priests, but we have Simeon and he's called out.

So if this was a play and this was a stage, the spotlight would be on Simeon, an old man devout, the Holy Spirit upon him, and he has a yearning and a longing and he believes that one day Israel will be rescued, one day God will show up and deliver, one day God will make good on the promises.

I want to go back to that verse so we can read it in context.

The Holy Spirit was upon him and the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah.

So the Spirit says to him it's coming, be excited.

You won't die until you actually see the coming of this.

And that day, the Spirit led him to the temple so that when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord, as the law required, simeon was there.

Beloved, don't miss the day that the Messiah is going to show up.

Don't be sleeping in on that day when everything the stars have aligned and something beautiful is happy.

And Simeon was there and he took the child in his arms and he praised God, saying Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised.

I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people.

So just imagine this with me.

Simeon is in the temple, there's a lot of people around, many people coming bringing babies, and he takes this one and he says let your servant now depart in peace.

That would get some people's attention.

I can die now in peace.

And he says, because I have seen it, you've promised it and I have seen it.

He's so full of the Spirit of the Lord that not only does he begin to prophesy, but it begins to have this beautiful effect of saying this is what it looks like, beloved, be encouraged.

I imagine if I was around listening I would.

I want to see what Simeon was looking at, I want to hear what Simeon was hearing, and this became this beautiful broadcast in the temple.

You know, Simeon didn't get an email.

Oh he may have?

I'm pretty sure he didn't.

I'm going to go out on a limb and the thing is, how did he know that was a baby?

The baby didn't do anything.

Yes, exactly, it's the Holy Spirit.

However, how did he learn to hear the Holy Spirit?

How did he learn to discern?

Are you preaching or am I?

preaching.

We're preaching together.

Well, you start up, that's right.

And so I really want you to look at something because we can breeze past that.

Yeah, it was, and he was right.

But he didn't know he was right unless he had learned how to follow the Holy Spirit, how to trust the Holy Spirit's voice and the Holy Spirit's direction in his life.

And there's a key element Heather hit upon it and it's that he was faithfully there.

There is something that is so underrated in our culture and it's being faithful.

It is such a powerful place where God will meet you and bless you.

It's not rewarded that much in our culture and in our society.

It's not honored the way that it should be.

But I'm telling you, of all the great things Heather does, it's really important to me that she's faithful.

That's a deal breaker, think about it.

And God honors faithfulness and he will honor your faithfulness.

And I'm gonna tell you this wasn't the first time Simeon goes.

I'm gonna try out this following the Holy Spirit thing.

I got this idea in my head, this voice, this feeling that I've seen Messiah, so convinced that he says I can die now.

He knew he was promised to see Messiah and just by running into that baby that day in the temple, he knew that he could go ahead and die now, and I believe that that came from a life or prior experiences of having the Holy Spirit Say, hey, why don't you say this to somebody?

And you open up your mouth and say something and then you go oh, I missed it there.

Well, let me learn and discern what was the difference between that and the time that I said something?

And you begin to develop.

And so what I'm saying to you is this is not just for Simeon.

He said that he has given the Holy Spirit to us, and so I believe that, through your faithfulness and your maybe, I'll say experimenting, but as you learn and grow, you can trust the Holy Spirit for something so certain that you could know it's okay for me to die now, not having seen Jesus fulfill the promises.

He was content because he knew the Holy Spirit that well.

And the Holy Spirit can direct us.

And why is that important?

Because we need to cheat codes.

My kids play video games and they'll find the cheats and it's a way that you can do well in this thing that you're doing, and I'm gonna tell you something God has made a way of escape for us.

Amen, the Holy Spirit will lead and direct us.

I don't think I'm selling them on it.

No one seems excited about it.

No, they already are.

They're listening with their Holy.

Spirit.

They're like oh yeah, no, that's right.

I sense their attunement to the Spirit and this is for us an invitation For all of us.

This is an invitation because when you tell me those stories, I think of.

The story comes to mind of Samuel, whose mother earnestly prayed for him, and so much her prayers were, so full of grief, that the priest in charge thought she was drunk, thought she can't even be, you know, and so that's always nice too.

Don't let anyone tell you that your prayers in earnest are anything before beautiful before the Lord.

But she has this baby and she brings him to the house of Lord again with the law of Moses, and at some point Samuel begins to hear the Lord and he mistakes the voice.

That's good.

And he comes to the priest in charge here who's not even a very good one, I would tell you and I'm not the judge of this history is he's not a very good one.

And he comes and says I heard you call.

And the guy said I didn't call.

Go back to bed.

If anyone sends you back to bed, unless you're like five or 10 years old, first of all be grateful for the nap, but that's not what God is doing.

So he hears the voice again and he comes in and he said you called.

And the guy goes no, I didn't go back to bed.

And he comes in again and he says I heard the voice.

And the guy goes oh, oh, that must be the Lord.

Next time you hear it, answer here I am, I'm listening.

So he does and he begins to hear the voice of the Lord.

But sometimes we need someone in our life to go.

Next time you hear that, open yourself up to the conversation.

And that's the important of community, because you can.

I remember someone was coming to me and they said you know, I was getting my hair cut the other day and these people having a conversation about God and I couldn't help myself.

I just blurted some stuff out and I couldn't believe that.

I said that they go.

It sounded super intelligent.

I didn't know.

I knew that and I said well, remember, the timeless one lives on the inside of you, the Holy Spirit.

And when the Holy Spirit will give you a knowing, you know that's a supernatural spiritual gift.

And so I was able to say to that person that is the spirit of God.

Look for that in other times, when you're in a situation with people and all of a sudden you have this burning.

Now don't get me wrong.

There's other times you have a burning to say something and you need to keep.

That's your ego.

You need to just give that to Jesus.

When you kind of zinger loaded up and you can really put them into her place.

No, love, love pulls over everything.

But I'm telling you that is part of the discernment.

I wanted to say something.

So, boy, I said it.

And then you ate the fruit of that, didn't you?

You know it caused pain, it caused hurt, and so then we discern.

Well, I gotta make sure I never do it that way again, cause the Holy Spirit oftentimes is telling us not to say something.

I know people like me hate to hear that truth.

And then there's the quiet ones, the Holy Spirit's nudging you to say something, and oftentimes it's, I think, almost all the time.

It will push you out of your comfort zone because it's in that place.

Then we find and depend, and need to depend on trust, you know, and that's that faith connection we have with God.

I also want to go right back to the verse before it.

I've seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people.

Please don't miss the all people part of this.

The salvation that was prepared was for all people, all people.

He is a light to reveal God to the nations and he is the glory of your people, israel and Jesus' parents were amazed at what was being said about him.

So they come to the temple to do their duty, to give their offering, to pay what is due to the Lord.

And now this guy grabs the baby and says it's good for me to die now.

Sovereign Lord, let me now depart in peace, for I've seen your salvation, the glory of the nations.

And the parents were amazed.

Now, this is not the first time that amazing things have happened to them.

Remember, this is Mary and Joseph.

Angels have showed up before, shepherds come rushing.

The wise men aren't there yet, but they're coming next.

I mean.

So there's more and more and more things that are being said, but so they're listening and they're amazed.

Now we know what Mary does with amazement.

She doesn't disregard it, she ponders it, she stores it up in her heart.

Maybe it's how she's able to get through the very difficult things.

And then Simon bless them.

Don't miss that either.

It is our job, not in a way that we have to do it, but we get to.

As believers, as lovers of God, we get to bless the world.

It is our job, it is our gift to be able to bless people that we are in county and see me and bless them.

And then he says to Mary he specifically speaks to her, the baby's mother.

This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall and many others to rise.

He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him.

We pause here for a moment to thank you for joining us today.

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Could you return that blessing and give me another one?

Give me another one where everything will be good and people will know this baby is a sign and they will worship, they will know that this is the right thing, and he's just gonna tell her the truth about what is gonna happen.

This is gonna be difficult.

This baby is from God.

This vulnerable gift is from the Lord and many people will not be interested in this gift.

As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your very soul.

You know, one of the things that I wanna you to think about is maybe if you could change the view of how maybe you approach church and even your Christianity, you maybe make a little shift in it.

Because I think that most of us come to God because we kind of mess things up and so we're coming to get a fix.

I want forgiveness of sins, I want transformation or whatever, and so we kind of get up in the line and it's the line of stuff I need.

And then sometimes we stay in the line our whole walk and there's another line you can get in and it's a line of when am I gonna get to bless somebody?

I can get in that line and it dawned on me.

You know, I run into people that I haven't seen in years because I youth pastored.

We had tons of kids back at that church and over the years, you know, and I'm sure you had teachers and stuff you know, all of a sudden you and they have to introduce you.

You're an adult, so you kind of look the same.

They're kids.

You would never recognize them.

But I'll run into people that are 40 years old.

You look almost as old as me and they were my youth group.

They were that little irritating.

I don't say that, but that's the one.

That's the one they were.

And they'll come up to me and they'll go hey, pastor Dennis, this is my son, this is my daughter.

And I'll look at him and go, oh yeah, looks like you.

Is this one wild too?

No, I won't.

What I'll do is and I stumbled on this I go oh my God, you have such a beautiful baby.

Can I bless your baby?

And I just bless that baby Secretly, hope it here.

And it's not, he's your mom.

Yeah, Well, the blessing was that you could find another person.

I get to just bless.

And then I'll look up and inevitably I'll just see those people weeping and the joy that their old youth pastor ran and just blessed the thing that's the most important to them.

And I realized there's another line to get in.

There's a line of going around blessing people.

And you know what, if you get out of that old line of just needing stuff all the time, you get in a new line where he meets your needs and then you can just spill out on other people.

And then all of a sudden you start looking around.

Who else can I bless?

Imagine this saint who was just there and looking around.

And Joseph and Mary this is their first, this is their first kid.

Is this how everyone gets treated?

When they show up at the temple?

They grab your kid and bless it and say it's the greatest of all and now they can die because they saw your kid.

I was pretty excited when I saw my kid too, but this is a bit much.

It's really nice coming around you.

Imagine the opportunity that you can have to begin to see yourself differently, as ones who can go around and bless.

The gift that Joseph and Mary had was the Messiah.

You know, these young people carry gifts.

Nathaniel's gift becomes obvious.

When I was just playing jumps for a church and Carol said, are you going to be playing jumps in Nathaniel here, because you beat them things too loud?

I said, woman, I play those things like they're supposed to be played.

And she rebuked me in Jesus' name.

But nevertheless, there's a gift.

Do you ever bless it?

Do you see your place to call out even a blessing?

Oh no, that's not my well, you're going to stay in your little line and just thank you, son.

I have a little more in my bowl, or can I just spill?

That was my bad impression of what's his name.

Thank you so, but we can pour out on people, bless them, and I want you to begin to see that that's part of the abundance of the Holy Spirit.

There's enough.

You don't have to worry about that.

You're not going to have enough.

You begin to pour that out and you realize there's a flow here.

And then for us that are a little bit older and keep in mind you're older than somebody- yes, Sawyer's here.

I think he's three months old.

And so we're so grateful for yeah, so it's beautiful.

In the midst this morning I was thinking how I was so excited that Abby brought him and I want to remind you to bless.

Mamas.

I want you to bless Mamas who bring their babies, because it's hard sometimes to show up at church with a squiggly baby who sometimes doesn't want to do what you want to do.

Sometimes babies do that and so it's important and we do.

This morning I was at worship and I looked over and I saw him and I was so much joy and I just blessed him in my own self.

I didn't even have to say it to him, but I said I bless you to know your place is always in the house of the Lord.

There will always be a place for Sawyer in God's house.

Always he belongs in the house of the Lord and for every child.

And in this story we see babies, we see parents, middle-aged people and we see old people and we see them all part of the cast that God is saying.

This is what it takes everyone to tell this story.

As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your very soul.

Sometimes, the very thing that God is doing for you and is doing for the world can cause you pain, can cause you grief.

What Nobody liked that one.

The spotlight goes on someone else, anna, a prophet, who was there in the temple.

Anna is the daughter of Fenial from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old.

They said of Simeon he was old, and they said of Anna she was very old.

You could do the math here it gets complicated.

Her husband died when she had been married only seven years.

That part is important.

That's not how she thought her life was going to go.

She was going to marry this man and they were going to have a family, and she was going to be married until she was an old woman.

And here, whatever has happened, she has an unmet expectation.

She has a tragedy, and here's where she turns to her tragedy.

So she lived as a widow to the age of 84 and she never left the temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and with prayer.

She also, this devout person, this prophet, this person who is telling the story, anna, from this line of people who serve the Lord, shows up and will not leave the temple.

Simeon is there, he's singing his song Sovereign Lord, let your servant now depart in peace, for I have seen your salvation, the glory of Israel and a light to the Gentiles, and Anna is there.

Anna doesn't need the Holy Spirit to lead her, because Anna is already going to be shown up.

Anna is already there, the Holy Spirit is on her, she is a prophet and she came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph and she began praising God, she began to worship, she began to call out what she knew and she talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.

So there's all these people in the temple and they want a rescue, and Anna, who sees that baby, who sees Simeon, who hears them, starts praising God and says everybody, look over here.

Here is the salvation of the Lord, here is your heart's longing, here is the answer we've all been calling for.

And we see this in this beautiful cast of characters.

We see Simeon and Anna both declaring the goodness of the Lord.

They are not a married couple, but they are in the house of the Lord together, both the men and the women declaring this is the Messiah.

Have hope, the light has come.

You know, and let's be really clear and don't be those people that just agree on the computer when it says have you read?

Oh, the terms and conditions.

You just click it.

You didn't read that.

And because a lot of times people promise you stuff at church.

You know, you know, get a relationship with God and you're gonna be forgiven and everything is just gonna go great in your life, all of your problems will be solved.

And then we read this verse here and it says that the promise comes and your heart will be pierced.

It talks about this woman who is this prophet, this tremendous person of prayer.

But it's birthed out of the pain of being a young person and then being without your spouse and in that culture.

That's your identity, that's your safety, that's your security, that's you know, you're really destiny, you're going to be the mother of that person's children, and then for her to have that snatched away and then not just go, well, god's terrible, you can't serve Him Because everything's you know it was supposed to work out perfect for me, and what I want to remind you of is that in your heart's piercings and in the pain that you have experienced and in the things that have not gone the way that you hoped, needed, wanted, counted on them to go, that even in that, the Holy Spirit can still use you to bring in Messiah, can still use you to be life to your family.

I find something very interesting.

As a pastor, I get to the privilege of being with so many people as they have their home going and go on to heaven.

And I'll get with couples that are married for 40, 50, 60, 70 years and they'll lose a spouse, and so much of the time, within three months, six months, the next spouse goes and what happens is they just really don't have anything else to live for and everything was, and I don't fault them for that.

But oftentimes I'll ask them right there at the funeral home what do you got to live for?

And usually they're sitting around their grandkids are climbing all over them and I'll go.

Can you find something?

Can you find something in here and see the value that you are to your family and how, without you, they would have a hole that could not be filled?

But you have to see the value in what you have.

Or you can say the pain is too great, the pierce in my heart is too much for me to bear and I quit.

But I'm gonna tell you there is and I mean that's not a bad deal.

You still get to go home and be with the Lord, but I'm telling you there's something so amazing about being used by the Holy Spirit, getting to experience that love and that joy, and that is addictive.

It's addictive, I'm telling you, and it is wonderful, and it's something you don't have the detox from or have to lose everything that you had to gain, but it's something that God wants to bless us with.

But it really it becomes this place of.

Will I surrender this pain to God and allow him to do something in it?

Or am I going to be overwhelmed and overtaken by that pain?

And I understand that heart piercing it's tremendous and that disappointment of what?

But I do wanna remind you that God makes a way where there seems to be no way, and he will make something out of nothing and he will do something great in our lives if we will let him.

I want us to focus on verse 38 in this point.

She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph and she began praising God and she talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.

She is in the temple and she is telling everyone this baby is the Messiah, this baby is who we are looking for.

So here is a woman in the temple and she is declaring just like Elizabeth did when Mary shows up and that baby is still in her womb.

And she said my Lord and my God, blessed are you.

And so this same thing, anna, is there and she's like this baby that you have been waiting for, or this saving.

They didn't know it was coming as a baby.

They really thought God was gonna come in with a tank or some really powerful stallions here.

We were gonna come against Rome.

They did not expect the vulnerability of God.

But she began to say if you're earnestly waiting for salvation, this is the promise.

Now Simeon said something that was important and some translations.

It says like this his life will offend many, he will offend many.

So I was thinking this week how often am I offended by Jesus?

And if I'm not, am I really looking at Jesus?

Have I created a God who is so much like me that there is no offense in what I am told?

Have I created a plan that is so much like me and my family that it doesn't offend me?

And so I'm listening to this and going where is the love of Jesus so big that it is offensive to me?

Where is the vulnerability of God so shown that it is offensive to me?

And then, in my place, do I choose to be offended or do I choose to look further and to stay connected?

I also hear this in the sound of John the Baptist, who sends his followers to Jesus while he is in prison and he is going to be beheaded.

And he says are you the one, or should we look for another?

We had hopes, but we didn't think it was gonna turn out like this for us.

And Jesus sends word back and says listen the deaf now hear the mute now sing songs of praise.

The dead are raised and blessed.

Are you?

If you are not offended because of me?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

In this holy time, we need to look at the beauty of what Jesus offers us.

God with us, this cosmic Christ, who created the galaxies, who created everything that is here, who infinitely in us.

This is how we hold together.

Love sustains us and Jesus comes to dwell with us and say there is another way.

Now you think about this.

These people must have had relationship with their talking there.

Oh man, I'm really looking for the Messiah to come because we want to be rescued as people that are under oppression from this Roman government.

And they've seen the military just snatch people out and string them up and murder them, right, I mean the strength that they have in the violence.

And so you're thinking, well, if the Messiah comes, he's gonna have to match that intensity or bring greater force against that.

And but they're saying the Messiah is here, that's a baby.

That's the opposite of what I was.

So do you see the offense that would come there From that?

That's the opposite of what I think.

So a lot of times we have to, more than anything, change the way that we're thinking.

Verse 31 there says I think it's 31,.

It said you find it?

Was it 31?

It's somewhere in the Bible, I don't know, maybe it was 32.

But he says that he came.

Oh, that is that he have come prepared for all people.

That offends some people, because if the Messiah come to save all people, that means those people that disagree with your doctrine, and that includes those sinners.

They're not playing the game right.

They don't follow the rules.

They're completely outside of the boundaries of the way we set for this thing to go and he has saved them as well.

And that is an offense to a lot of people.

You know, I've had people say those kind of people are not welcome in my church.

I've heard people say that I've seen people act that way towards them.

In fact, one guy he used to come to my church and there was another group that was using our building one night and he came in and they go and they go oh, sir, you're not welcome here.

And he goes.

I come here all the time, I'm very much welcome here.

And they go nope, you're gonna have to go.

And he came back and he goes what was the deal with that?

And I go oh, I'm sorry that wasn't us.

Now I laugh but it's not funny.

But there are a lot of people that have now.

But I gotta ask you, look, because there might be a place in your life that, yeah, I'll accept those, but not those people.

And so we wanna be real careful because we wanna get on the right side of this thing.

You don't wanna be the one that's offended at Jesus.

You wanna be the one who sees him, who sees love for what it is.

Because the scripture says and over and over again we saw this people missed Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

A star was over where they raised that child when he was about two years old.

I mean, he was there for a while.

This wasn't like, oh, we missed it because we weren't paying attention.

Last week, the baby was there, they were raising this child two years old.

A star was there and so much.

A star was there and I'm a spoiler alert for Epiphany.

I mean, just definitely come for that.

But wise men and not three of them, bunches of them traveled across continents.

They traveled afar, so that we could actually, so they could worship.

And so what about the person that was next door and so busy doing their life that they missed the glory of the fact that Jesus was born right there?

And there's hope for us in the world if we would learn to see.

And the wise men.

Spoiler alert we can preach our whole of this later.

No, let's go to Nagoya.

But just it's suffice it to say they weren't Jews.

They were Zoroastrians, which they are still today, people of this tradition and they come and they worship and they recognize listen, something is happening in the stars.

They knew so well the stars that were there that they look at that.

Something is happening and we need to go.

We don't wanna miss out on this.

And then they said we're gonna meet someone pretty incredible.

We need to bring gifts, we need to worship and have a, not just a.

We think you're pretty great, we came over to see you, but how can we actually affect this?

Whatever this is, that we'll meet.

Yeah, and I think that to me that's so amazing when, like outside of your religion, someone would be affected by what's going on.

That's profound, you know, and to me, you know someone was asking me something about religion and Christianity or whatever, and I just have to feel like I might sound like that guy, but I just don't see that we fit into a religion, Because this is the God of the universe, the creator, and as you read today before about how big he is and how he's the God of, you know, I wasn't thinking he was the God of those different animals, you know, in that different location and all that.

But remember, it's the God of the universe and that's even thinking small to this planet because it's the cosmos, you know, Not even the solar system, and God is so much bigger.

And so we, you know, to try to chew, horn him into a religion, and so I gotta tell you that I think that just that idea causes people to come out of those religions into a real experience with a real God who has given us the Holy Spirit to navigate and to teach and to lead and guide.

Isn't that beautiful.

It is.

But back to the scene where Simeon is there blessing the baby, telling Mary it's gonna be hard Of all the truth that was said to her when Simeon said a sword will pierce your own heart too.

This will affect you.

Anna is there declaring praises, teaching in the temple, saying this is the one, this is the one.

Everybody, our Messiah, has come.

And when Jesus' parents had fulfilled the requirements of the law of the Lord, they returned home to Nazareth, in Galilee, and the child grew up healthy and strong and he was filled with wisdom and God's favor was on him.

Don't miss epiphany for this reason.

Okay, this is not the epiphany teaching, but I see this part, luke 22.

This is a prayer that I prayed over my own children when they were growing.

Even as Jesus increased in wisdom in favor with God and man, so may the children that the Lord gives me.

But this he grew up healthy.

I do wanna tell you that the Zoroastrians, the wise men, come and they give gifts and the news gets out and Herod gets nervous and he's like there's another king.

So all of a sudden there's jealousy and then there is a slaughter, a slaughter of children, and these same Zoroastrians are so moved by the Holy Spirit that they don't answer Herod the questions that he says.

They give him another answer and the Spirit of the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream and says leave and go to Egypt.

Now, thankfully, joseph had learned how to hear the voice of the Lord and he takes Joseph, and he takes the baby, and he takes Mary and they go to Egypt.

So I want to say sometimes if we read that they're the child grew up healthy and strong it feels like well, in the same place.

They had all the money that they needed and they just lived with their extended family and everything went as planned.

A tragedy is happening, a horror is happening.

This is terror.

And yet the overarching thing is, yes, he did grow up strong, but it wasn't without suffering, and so sometimes, if we're reading our story, we feel like, well, where is the plan then?

If we're in the suffering part and this reminds us of this incredible gift that is our place in time where we can look back and say I receive this as a gift to my faith, I receive this as a compass to be able to say what happens to my hope when things don't work out exactly as I've planned.

Well, you know, Christ has this three year ministry and there's all these stories in the gospels about it.

But then, from the time of his birth until then, we have 12,.

We have 12 years old.

He's up in the temple.

Yeah, you got the one story, the verse.

You know.

There's very little you know and to me that speaks of the ordinary, yes.

That there's just a faithfulness, you know that needs to go on.

And we're kind of all looking for the mountaintop experiences in the spectacular, you know, and those things happen, but they happen because we can be faithful.

There's that word again in the ordinary.

You know, all those years they just raised them the way they should.

It's uneventful in your life.

So much of the time, you know, you're just.

You know we're just bending down and picking up the stuff our kids dropped all willy-nilly and just serving.

And if we can do that faithfully and honor God in that and honor God with our tongues and our hearts and those kind of things, then something is being, you know, prepared in me, something is being changed in me and there's a strength being built, you know.

And the problem is, you know, a lot of times we just want what we want now and that's how much trouble's that got in the end, you know, learning that faithfulness, learning a new way, because that you know that just I want what I want now and by God I'm gonna do it.

How's that served us.

One of the ways that we practice and you had mentioned earlier that maybe Christianity can't be called a religion or at least the way that we follow it's more of a practice.

It is not just an ascent, it's not just something you agree with.

It's a way of living, it's a way of navigating the world, it's a way of saying this is the hope that I am invited to co-create with the Spirit this kingdom that we're praying for, as it is in heaven, may it be done here on the earth.

We hope you've enjoyed this week's sermon.

If you would like more information about us, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg.