The Consolation Is Here

Let's turn in our Bibles.

I want to just share a very brief message with you.

This occasion just demands the Word, and if I don't have an excuse to preach, I'll make one up.

Let's look at Luke, chapter 2, and one of our wonderful Christmas testimonies.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

But we're going to pick it up after the birth of the Savior, where His parents took Him to the temple to be circumcised the eighth day.

Luke, chapter 2, verse 25.

Luke 2:25

And so they brought Him to the temple, and verse 25, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, waiting for the consolation of Israel.

And the Holy Ghost was upon Him.

And it was revealed unto Him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

And he came, by the Spirit, into the temple.

And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for Him after the custom of the law, then took he Him up in His arms and blessed God and said Lord, now let us, thou, by servant, depart in peace, knowing according to thy Word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people, israel.

And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of Him, and Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary, his mother behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be spoken against Yea.

A sword shall pierce through thine own soul.

Also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

And there was one, anna, a prophetess that ordereth the new of the tribe of Aser, and she was of great age and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she was a widow of about four score and four years, which departed not from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers night and day, and she, coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise unto the Lord and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Israel.

So I want you to look back at verse 25, where Simeon was just in devout and he was waiting for the consolation of Israel.

And that's my message tonight the consolation is here, the consolation is here.

He came and now he's still here, amen.

And so you know the Jews, or the rabbis, I should say, call the Messiah, the Consolar or the Comforter.

Now, that word Comforter is different than John, chapter 14, where Jesus said I will pray the Father and he will send another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, which the world cannot receive.

John 14 · chapter mention

That word Comforter, as we know, is Paraclete, and the best interpretation of that is not Comforter, but it's Helper, ally, strengthener, standby, advocate, so forth, so that Paraclete is that word, or Paracletos.

But this word consolation is a little derivation of the Greek.

It's the Greek word Paracletis, and it does mean to comfort, it means to console, and so you know, the Jews not having any revelation of the part of Jesus that we talk about the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Strengthener, the Standby, the Helper.

They didn't have a revelation of that.

They called Him the Consolar.

He's the one that's going to dry their tears, he's the one that's going to comfort them in a time of great trial.

That's how they look at the Messiah.

When the Messiah shows up, all the weeping is going to end, and so that's how they look at the Messiah.

It's not a complete revelation, though, of what we have.

We need the other one too.

We need the Consolar, don't we?

Especially right now, and so Jesus' birth.

You know, I wanted you to see this.

It was announced in a variety of ways.

Some were spectacular, like the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary and later on to Joseph, and then, of course, his star in the east.

The wise men saw it.

The kings of the east came and journeyed their spectacular guidance and hovered over where he was and in the manger.

They came and worshiped Him and then, of course, the angels appeared to the shepherds in the field by night.

Boy, you talk about spectacular Glory to God in the eyes, and you know these were what we call spectacular revelations of the birth of Jesus.

But then the one tonight that we read about Simeon and Anna were no less supernatural.

They didn't have the fireworks, but they had the supernatural.

They knew by the Spirit.

I mean, these two were of great age and they had been waiting on the consolation of Israel for a long, long time.

I mean, here's Simeon said you know what?

I'm even gonna die.

So you see the consolation, just wait for him.

And I mean you know he had to be at the right time at the right place.

He showed up at the temple right at the right time to see this baby, pick him up in his arms and prophesy over him and over his mother.

Glory to God.

Woo, I don't know about you, but that gives me goosebumps.

I mean, sometimes you know we're looking at the spectacular and we're missing the supernatural if we're not careful.

And of course, anna, a great age, and she came in that instant oh, there he is.

I mean, she didn't need a sign, she didn't need a neon sign saying this is him right here.

I mean she knew by the Spirit as soon as she laid eyes on him.

Woo, she told everybody glory to God.

Everybody say the consolation is here.

They were honored for their faithfulness.

They watched and prayed.

He's coming back.

We ought to be at least watching and praying for his return.

See that, to me this is just like.

This is how we ought to be.

That's how the church ought to be.

The church hasn't gotten there yet.

Church is asleep right now.

So much of it.

And we need to wake people up and tell them hey, get with the program, he's coming again.

You ought to be watching and praying.

Jesus said beware lest I come find you.

Sleeping Must be a downside to sleeping.

When he comes back, I would hesitate to say what the downside is.

Wouldn't want to miss the trip.

I'm not saying that would happen, but I just wouldn't want to test it.

And so another thing that I see here with these two is they had a habit of going to the temple.

See, we ought to have a habit of going to church.

Since COVID happened, a lot of people have gotten out of the habit of going to church.

They found out that they wouldn't be struck by lightning Isn't that pathetic?

They lost their zeal for church and now, you know, for a while they watch live streaming.

You know, that's falling way, way off.

People got tired of watching a little screen and substituting that for the real thing, but yet they didn't get back in church.

I know a lot of them.

Their church never did open back up.

But all the churches that decided they were gonna hang everything on the live stream are pretty disappointed right now because the live stream audience has shrunk considerably.

There's no substitute for what we have right here right now.

I wouldn't miss this for anything.

And so they had a habit of going to the temple and they were at the right place at the right time.

And you know, when you have a habit of coming to church, you're gonna hear what you need to hear, see what you need to see.

You're at the right place at the right time, with the right people Doing the right thing, and that's good.

That's all good.

It might not be spectacular, but it's the right thing.

So the consolation of Israel.

I know one of the devil tried to kill him.

I mean, not only is he the consoler, he's the, you know, he's the paraclete, he's the helper.

And of course, when he left, he prayed for an identical helper to come and the Holy Ghost.

The devil can't kill the Holy Ghost.

He couldn't kill Jesus either.

Jesus, nobody killed him.

He laid down his life willingly.

He said no man takes my life from me.

So all the people that think they're spiritual by accusing Jews of being Christ killers, they doubt what Jesus said about it.

By himself, he said no man takes my life from me.

I laid down my life of myself, don't you know?

I could get 40 legions of angels to take care of me.

Nobody killed me.

Nobody killed me.

So we've had close to 2000 years of anti-Semitism based on a lie.

This is the time that we need to heal the breaches between Christians and Jews and let them know that we love them and that we are for them and not against them.

Amen.

So it wasn't over at the birth.

I mean the Bible says later in the chapter that the babe grew in stature and strength, strong in wisdom and in favor.

I mean even Jesus had to grow in favor.

Even Jesus had to grow in wisdom.

I mean he didn't start off just automatically perfected.

He had to progress, he had to grow.

Why?

Because he's a human being, he's God with skin on, amen.

But the God part of him is not how he lived his life.

He didn't live his life here on earth as a son of God.

He lived it as the son of man that had to grow, had to be subject to his parents, had to learn obedience through the things that he suffered.

I mean Simeon said hey, you know he's going to be a sign that shall be spoken against.

And he's still being spoken against.

Why should we be totally surprised that people are hating the church, persecuting the church, governments, doing everything they can to take the place of the church, to render the church irrelevant?

Try to get people to look to the government for their help.

Try to look elsewhere instead of to God.

Are you with me now?

Well, the consolation is here.

We've got so much to offer.

A lost and dying world.

They only knew, and they will know.

I'm telling you, we're going to raise our voice and tell people amen.

And so we have this in John 14, 16,.

Another comforter, that's Paracletos, which the duplicate to Jesus is the Holy Ghost, and he's the spirit of truth and he's also the consolation.

He's the one that can help you when things are not really going the way that you thought they would.

Maybe you're disappointed, maybe you, you know some.

This time of year, a lot of times people get sad because they're missing a loved one that might have passed since the last holidays, like since the last Christmas, and it's it's around the holidays that people get really depressed and sad because they have to go through Thanksgiving and Christmas without their loved one that was been there all their life and all of a sudden now they're gone.

And, yeah, we can say they're in heaven and we know that, but that doesn't really translate to comforting us day to day.

Well, who's can do that?

The consoler can do that.

The church ought to be part of that consoler, being able to release the consoler.

We talk a lot about the, the Paracletos, but let's talk about the Paracletus, because people need that too.

Everybody say thank God for the Holy Ghost.

Let's just lift our hands.

Father, we thank you that you didn't leave us like orphans, you didn't leave us forlorn, but you sent the spirit of truth, and not only is our helper, our ally, but he's our consoler, he's the consolation and he's here, he's in the church, to make a difference in this world.

Hallelujah, you know, god's dropped the plumb line.

I see it more clearly now than ever.

I know I've been talking about this for oh I don't know how long, I guess, since God woke me up 1999, when he woke me up, he started getting me to wake up.

The church where I started, right here.

And but a plumb line.

Does anybody know what a plumb line is?

It's what you use in construction to establish exact vertical.

You know, if you don't have vertical, you don't have a strong gingerbread house.

Your gingerbread house will not survive the evening.

You're going to have to make sure that the walls of that gingerbread house are perfectly vertical.

And so you do that with just a weight on the end of a string.

It's just amazing.

Just some simple physics.

You just drop the plumb line.

My brick layers always use a plumb line on the edges of the brick.

You know you talk about a disaster.

That's when you lay a brick wall up the side of a house, 24 feet into the air and it's an inch out of level or out of plumb.

I should say, but what's going to happen?

Well, that brick wall, it won't fall today or tomorrow, but down the road it's going to fall out of there.

When it does, somebody will be able to get killed.

I mean, it's only strong in the vertical and that's the same with your house.

The walls of your house.

You got to have it plumb and square.

I won't mention the subdivision, but I used to drive by.

I knew the builder years ago.

He's gone now he passed on.

I don't know if he was saved or not.

When I knew him I wouldn't say he wouldn't say it.

So I don't know.

But but I still remember some of the houses he built.

He, he was not big on supervising the construction and so he had a series of houses.

I'm not going to, no, no, I'm not going to tell you where, because then you might live there and then you'd feel bad.

You'd think, gosh, I might be living in one of those houses.

You couldn't live in one of those houses without knowing it when I described what happened.

But you know, a house is supposed to be square, in other words, if it's a rectangle it's supposed to be right angles.

Well, his houses, looking at them from above, they were all like this Parallelograms.

All the angles on the outside corners were wrong, they were not 90 degrees.

I mean you could look down the driveway and I mean you could see the back, the side of the house, and it's it's traveling, you know, at an angle.

And there were five houses in a row.

So whoever set the farms and poured the slabs on those five houses had a terrible job.

And then the framer didn't say anything.

So the framer framed up the framing and by the time the builder found out about it, it was too late to change it without just tearing everything down, starting over.

We couldn't do that.

So he built five houses that are out of square.

Well, I fear that there's a lot of works in the church world that are like that.

They're out of plumb, they're out of square.

We're going to the city for square.

It's not out of plumb, it's not out of square.

That's where we're headed, and and everything down here ought to be the same way.

When you follow the Holy Ghost, he's your ally, he's your helper.

So the plumb line has been drawn, dropped and that which is not plumbed up to God's plan is going to be found wanting.

Pastor, this is supposed to be Christmas.

I'm feeling more sad now.

I'm not trying to make you sad, I'm just.

I'm just saying this is the occasion to celebrate his birth.

Everything about his birth was supernatural.

It wasn't all spectacular, but it was supernatural.

We must add the supernatural back into the church.

We've got to demonstrate the supernatural.

We must.

If we don't, we're going to have all of the devil side of the supernatural, which is what we have now manifesting in our nation.

Verse 34.

Simeon prophesied.

He said this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.

I think he could say the same thing about the church the fall and rising again of many in the church.

And sometimes things have to fall where they can be raised back up.

You know it's never, you know, the biggest mess.

You know the Holy Ghost is not intimidated by a mess.

He is delighted in getting in the mess, getting in the pit, getting in the junkyard and making order out of whatever's been filed up.

But the first step is to recognize that it's a mess, you know, recognize that it's something that maybe we built and we didn't do it under the direction of the periclyctos.

So you know, the same way I like what one great preacher I can't think of his name right now, but anyway turn of the century preacher he said the same way that brings glory and consolation also brings judgment or separation.

We're seeing a lot of that right now.

We're seeing a lot of separation.

We're seeing friendships being torn apart, even families are being distanced from one another.

Over over the things that we're seeing, and let's not let ourselves get sad.

Tap, tap into the consolation of the Holy Ghost if you need it, but don't don't back off of what you believe.

Don't give up what you know is true.

Hold to the truth and God will bless you.

So let's remember here in this Christmas season, no matter what we're going through, the consolation is here.

Let's fully demonstrate that consolation, that comfort, and let's bring in the great harvest.

I really convinced a great harvest is right in front of us.

Consolation is here.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight Hallelujah.

Glory to God.

Thank you, jesus, hallelujah.