Tough No.7 Hanging on - Simeon & Anna

The reading is in Luke's Gospel and chapter 2 and we start to read at verse 21. We read predominantly of two people, Simeon and Anna. Two people who had passed through a lot within their lives and had had disappointments and yet were still looking and faithful to God and for the Messiah.

So Luke 2 and verse 21. On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. When the time of their purification according to the law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

As it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of doves or two young pigeons. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God saying, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too.

There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was very old. She had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage and then was a widow until she was 84.

She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth, and the child grew and became strong.

He was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. Amen. Let's pray.

Father, it's good to be here. To spend a day in your courts is worth far more than a thousand amongst the ungodly. Some of us know very little about you.

And yet maybe we're discovering not only that God is, but God is for us. Concerned about the minute details of our lives. A loving Heavenly Father who reveals himself spectacularly through our Lord Jesus.

And we just come to you now and we pray that from your Word, its immediate context and its broad sweep, that you will speak to all our hearts. Lord, some of us are having a rough time spiritually. The psalmist speaks about God hiding himself in the pavilion of darkness.

Sometimes for us, the heavens do seem as brass. We find it hard to come to grips with your slowness. We're impatient because we want to see more divine activity.

Help us, Father, to discover how to hang on when you seem distant. And even more, to realize that any sense that you are distant is really an illusion. For you have said you will never leave and you will never forsake.

So minister to all our hearts. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

I tried to find in a book my wife has, of English verse, that well-known poem of Rudyard Kipling. You remember it's entitled If, and it puts up many propositions, many possibilities. Although I couldn't find the poem, one particular line stands out in my mind.

If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs, you'll be a man, my son. And I guess it's that whole area of keeping our heads, of what the Americans would call hanging in, that really confronts us this evening. We are called, all of us, to put our trust in God.

And yet he who declares from the pulpit that having made such a commitment as that will lead you into a life where there are no further problems at all would do an injustice to Scripture and would also pervert what is the experience of many of God's children. Becoming a Christian is the most logical thing to do and acknowledging that God is, is the most reasonable assignment for you to engage in. But when you have done that, when you have realized that God has revealed himself to you through the person of the Lord Jesus, that his death on the cross atoned for your sins, that his resurrection was the underlining of who he is, his authority, his power, his majesty, his deity.

When you've come to an appreciation of the fullness of the Spirit, if that is your experience, it does not even then necessarily mean that life for you will be a bed of roses. Jesus did not promise that. Bonhoeffer, a man who was tragically executed some time before the end, only shortly before the end of the Second World War, a great German Christian had this to say, Jesus calls men, come and die.

And there is a sense in which having put your hand to the plow, having made a commitment to the Lord Jesus, he will then allow that commitment to be tested. I think one of the conglomerate, one of the widespread conclusions that I make from my journeyings around last year is the fact that God does, in sometimes most frustrating ways, sometimes in an almost insensitive fashion, allow Christian people to be so stretched, to go through deep and harrowing experiences in order to demonstrate that his power can be made perfect in their weakness. Sometimes he allows what seems to be the whole of the country to be eclipsed by a foreign religion, like when the Japanese took over Korea and made Shintoism the national religion.

And then having allowed that, he demonstrates his power and pushes back the Japanese and pushes back the Shintoism, and having brought men and women, very often privately and secretly, to implore that he will demonstrate his power and his authority, then he says, now watch me work. And in an incredible fashion he's done that in Korea, as he's done that in the Republic of China. And wherever you find that God has, in a remarkable fashion, seemed to have withdrawn and then come near to a country, you always discover also that there have been a handful, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands, but a relative small minority compared with all the population of those countries who have retained faith in God and believe that somehow he would vindicate his name.

But it's not always easy, is it, to hang in. It's not always easy to keep a positive faith. And so the people who come spotlight, or central stage, and have the spotlight thrown upon them in our study this evening are two men, or rather one man and a woman, who are both elderly and they live at the time of the wise men.

It's perhaps not always realized that the nativity stories in the gospel of Matthew and Luke also embrace the experience of two Hebrew pensioners whose names are Anna and Simeon. We've had their stories read to us by Jim just a little while ago. These people, Simeon and Anna, are in Jerusalem around the time that the wise men visit Bethlehem, around the time when the shepherds who were keeping watch over their flock by night were suddenly interrupted to have the angels telling them that God had moved into time and space.

When our Lord Jesus was born, two or three hundred years had elapsed between the writing of the last book of the Old Testament and what ultimately was to be the writing of the New Testament. I recall, and I've quoted this before, an editorial in Time magazine looking back upon our centuries and saying, why is it that God hasn't spoken for two thousand years? Now I've argued that God has spoken. He spoke through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The problem is with the editorial staff of Time magazine. They haven't heard. They haven't listened.

But the question might well have been put, in the days of Simeon and Anna, why has God not spoken? So many decades have gone by since Malachi and the minor prophets heralded the word of the Lord, but God seems to have gone dead. He seems to be silent. And if you'd looked out of your window assuming you were living in Jerusalem at that time, you would have found much to indicate that God had indeed made himself absent as far as the Jews were concerned.

On the streets of the Holy City sometimes were draped the Roman standard, the banner of the eagles, the jackboots, so to speak, of Roman soldiers could be heard going over the cobbled streets of that holy place. Jerusalem was controlled by non-Jews and so was the whole of Palestine. And it seemed as though darkness had eclipsed the Jewish nation.

Where is God in all this? How do you hang in to faith in God when the political situation seems to suggest that God is no longer interested at all? It's not easy to hang in, is it? It's not easy to hang in in a football match when the other side have got twice as many players as you have and they put the referee in their goal. But some of us are made of sterner stuff and we hang in when all the odds are stacked against us. But more seriously, my friends, Simeon and Anna, these two elderly Jews were representative, or so it would seem, of a minority of people referred to collectively in the 38th verse of Luke 2 who were still looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

How do you hang in when the going gets tough in your Christian life, assuming you are a Christian? And incidentally, if you're not, then I think I have more sorrow for you than for any other group of people in our world. Because to have faith in nothing, not to appreciate the reason why you are here and that God does love you and has revealed himself to you through the person of the Lord Jesus, that to me is a tragic situation for anyone to have been in. And if you are in this condition right now, let me suggest to you that you read for yourself the Gospels and ask God to disclose himself to you, to authenticate his word if it is correct.

I believe that if you come humbly and positively to the reading of the fourth Gospel especially, the Gospel of John, you will discover that God is and that God has a love for you. Somebody has said that man can live without anything. Are you listening? Man can live without anything, but he cannot live without hope.

He cannot live without hope. I met a man in Korea whose parents had been beastly treated by the Japanese during the war. Their thumbs had been cut off.

They had been physically butchered. And he found himself as an orphan, tossed around as a young fellow, part of the jetsam and flotsam of Southeast Asia in the years just after the war. When the Japanese left Korea, then the Communists took over.

It seemed as though they had gunned the Koreans from the frying pan into the fire. And yet this man who had seen so much hardship in his own life and he was brought up in North Korea, still remembered the God of his father and the fact that he had been told that one day God would vindicate his purposes towards the Korean nation and towards him as an individual. I was with that man just about a month ago.

He's now the headmaster of the largest school in the world, a school which has 10,000 students. And the school is dedicated to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It wasn't always like that.

In Seoul, two or three decades ago, he had absolutely nothing. He came across a crowd of young boys and girls from North Korea who were huddled together under one of the bridges that spans the river that goes through Seoul. He started to teach them.

Got a bit of a canopy, a tent from the U.S. Army. It became his first school. He believed that God could not only bless his ministry but bring together lots of boys and girls who needed to be taught in such a fashion as this.

And the story, it's one of the most exciting that I've ever heard, that I've ever read, continues up to the point where now he's the headmaster, as I say, of the largest school in the world. What kept him going during all those years of difficulty? Well, the fact that he had a hope. You can live without anything, but you can't live without hope.

If you're there in the ocean and there's just a piece of driftwood, you will have almost a supernatural ability to cling onto that driftwood that is keeping you afloat, provided you can convince yourself that there is help coming. But once your mind has registered the fact that your situation is without any chance of recovery at all, then you're doomed. You can only live when you have hope.

Men endured the enslavement of Japanese prisoners of war camps because they believed that ultimately they would be released. But I have known, hear me, people in Worthing who have moved in a slovenly fashion into retirement, who have been actively engaged during their working years, day by day, week by week, with enormous responsibility. And when they have retired, it seems as though everything has gone out of their life.

There is nothing left worth living for. And as a result, and I offer this not as a medical person, but I think my conclusions are reasonably accurate, medically and also psychologically, they have died prematurely. There was nothing worth living for.

Now here is Simeon and Anna, and I put to you the question, why is it that these elderly people, when the Jewish state is plunged into one of despair because of the Romans, and when it seems as though God has not been speaking through the prophets as he did in former years, how is it that they can still maintain faith? And the fact of the matter is they continue to hope in the promises of God. The 29th verse makes it very clear as Simeon now comes central stage and will put the spotlight on him. Sovereign Lord, as you have promised.

He's an old man, and he takes into his arms a little infant that's been placed there by the young Mary and Joseph. And as Simeon takes that little child into his arms, he prophetically realizes that the hopes of the years have been fulfilled, for encapsuled in that little boy is all the plan and the purposes of the Lord for the Gentile and for the Jewish world. I can't tell you very much about Simeon because there's little concrete information we have.

But there is a trace of a rumor in Jewish writings that Simeon was actually the son of a man called Hillel, one of the greatest Jewish rabbis and teachers of all time. The tradition also says that he was the father of Gamaliel, another man who became a remarkable Jewish teacher. But Simeon was sacked from his office as a rabbi simply because he was preaching that when God's purposes were fulfilled, when the Messiah spoken of in the Old Testament came into the world, he would not reinstitute the Jewish nation in terms of a powerful political force, but he would establish a spiritual kingdom.

And it seems as though Simeon, and there's lots of evidence in this prayer that he offers over the arrival of the Lord Jesus, it seems as though Simeon has a remarkable insight into what is wrong with the Jewish and Gentile world and how God will remedy that which is wrong through the coming of our Lord Jesus. All the time in the anonymous years that he spends in Jerusalem, perhaps once a man who had been extremely well-known, extremely influential, he nonetheless was able to keep going. Why? Because verse 25 tells you he was waiting for the consolation of Israel.

He believed that God would keep his word. He was living in hope. That's why you see it's good to sing the old hymns as well as the new.

Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. We have a hope that is steadfast and certain, gone through the curtain and touching the throne. I ask you whether you be a pensioner or a young person this evening, what is the object of your life? Do you have a hope? Do you realize that you're now clutching on to some driftwood with the idea that help will never, never come? Or do you appreciate this? That God has revealed himself through the Lord Jesus, that he loves you and has a plan and a purpose for your life.

Someone who has a hope like that can hang in when the rubber touches the road and the journey gets difficult. You know that despite all the changes and all the unpleasant things and all the problematical situations that sometimes accost people, nonetheless, God has his hand upon you. He's not going to leave you.

He's not going to let you go. He's promised that you are his and he's got a work for you to perform. And one day at the end of life he'll bring you safely into his immediate presence.

Simeon has a hope. As also does Anna. I find it very interesting, my dear friends, that in the incarnation narratives the spotlight falls upon a woman.

As when our Lord Jesus is raised from the dead, the spotlight falls upon a woman. Mary Magdalene is the first one who broadcasts the fact that Jesus is back from Golgotha. And here you find this aged woman, perhaps 84, maybe older, depending how you read the Hebrew sentence, its syntax.

We read in verse 36, There was also a prophetess Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old. She'd lived with her husband seven years after her marriage and then was a widow until she was 84.

What kept her going to such a ripe old age? I've mentioned, and I hope you're going to have a look at the pictures because he's a very dear man, a very great man. I've mentioned to you from the pulpit several times the name of Wang Mingdao, 90 years and older, in Shanghai. Gone through circumstances, through experiences, the like of which very few people here, if any, have ever had to undergo.

And in two or three of the most remarkable hours of my life, he told me a little bit about what kept him going and his dear wife. As separated from one another, they found themselves incarcerated in Chinese communist prisons. They believed that God had a purpose for them, that he would vindicate his promise.

As Anna believes that God also will vindicate her promise, not to her specifically, but to her people collectively, that he would bring into the world someone who would redeem it. And that's the nature, is it not, of her anticipation. She too takes and thanks God for the young child Jesus.

Verse 38, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. How do you hang on when the going is tough? You hang on with the presence of hope. I'll tell you something else.

You'll hang on too with the absence of bitterness. The thing that robs most Christian people of joy in serving the Lord is resentment. Why did you allow it to happen to me like this? Why is it that the lions have not fallen out on more pleasant places as far as I'm concerned? You see, this was the problem, wasn't it, of the man in the 73rd Psalm.

He says, surely God is good to Israel, yes, the general level that I believe, but as for me, I'm an exception to the rule. And he talks about the difficulty he has in hanging on. My feet had almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped.

What causes difficulty in terms of holding on when the Lord doesn't seem quick in redeeming his promises? It seems to me the presence of bitterness. Take Anna, eight years married, then her husband goes. Why me? Probably at that stage she was just a young teenager or just into her early twenties, for they married young or seemingly so in those days.

Why has everybody else got their husband and their children? Why is it, Lord, that you have allowed these things to come into my life, but when you sift through the narrative of both Anna and Simeon, there is an absence of bitterness. Are you bitter? Do you compare yourself with someone else and think it's easy for them? Jesus once gave this directive to those who were looking over their shoulder at others when he told them that they were not to be concerned. He's referring to one of his disciples or the other man, but to be concerned with himself.

Simeon and Anna have something to go on. They can go on the promises of God, because if you want a third factor in this whole equation of how to hang on, it's not just in terms of the presence of hope and the absence of bitterness, it's also the grounding in truth. Sovereign Lord, says the old pensioner Simeon, as you have promised.

Anna too has her mind seeped in Scripture and she realizes that in the universe there is one thing that is utterly impossible and that is that God should lie. God is working his purposes out as year succeeds to year. It's not always easy for us in patience to believe this.

Carlisle says the greatest problem about God is his slowness. But if you can come to terms with the fight that you don't control, the time factor as far as the divine plan goes, if you can do a Simeon, if you can do an Anna, then you can discover how to hang in during all the days and years when God seems uncomfortably silent. A man who hangs in can face death in the most remarkable fashion, can't he? Our Anglican friends have made the response of Simeon as he takes the young Jesus into his arms into a prayer.

They call it the Nunc Dimittis. Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. And it's daring language as it's put together in the original.

It's really the language of a man who's escaped from a prison. You see, when you have the ability to build your life on hope as Simeon does, then you are able to look death in its face too and say, Lord, it doesn't really matter why. Well, because mine eyes have seen your salvation.

Says John Newton talking about Simeon, what a way to go with Christ in your breast. For Simeon has got the young Jesus cradled in his arms and he believes that through Jesus, the Lord God will work out his plan and purposes. Mine eyes have seen your salvation, which will affect the Gentile world as well as the Jews.

And incredibly, Simeon puts the Gentiles first as though he's got some idea that Israel's eyes will be darkened to the purposes of Jesus until the final moments prior to the return of our Lord. And Anna too, this old woman, nearing though it doesn't say how close, to her own deathbed, is able to give thanks to the Lord because of what had been fulfilled in the coming into the world of this child, the Lord Jesus Christ. Are you having difficulty hanging in right now? Let me conclude by saying this.

To abandon the Christian faith is absurd because there's nowhere else to go. That's what Peter said when Jesus realized that the large following that had been attracted because he'd miraculously fed thousands of people had evaporated just like the dew on the leaves in the warmth of the Palestinian morning. They melted away.

And Jesus says to Peter, will you also go? And Peter says, to whom can we go? What are the options? Our conclusion is that there's no one quite like you. We're staying by you even when we can't understand you. And that's one of the things that you've got to realize that the only person who makes sense out of life is the Lord Jesus.

And as you trust Him, as you hang on to His coattails, as you believe even when things happen to you in your life which are unpalatable, He'll reward that faith. He'll reward that trust. The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, unless He will not, He cannot, desert to its foes.

Build your faith on Jesus. Hope in Him. Get rid of all bitterness.

And allow your life to be erected on the infallible Word of Scripture. Because God cannot lie. And He has said, I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you. Not until the loom is silent will the shuttles cease to fly. And the shuttles cease to fly.

Will God unfurl the pattern and explain the reason why the dark threads were as needful in the weaver's skillful hands as the threads of gold and silver for the pattern He had planned. Simeon and Anna, they saw it all. The tapestry opened in front.

And all the dark years began to make sense as they caught the silvery beams just directed into their lives Because Jesus, the Christ child, had been born. Hang in. Like Anna and Simeon.

There's no other sensible option. Let's pray. Father, we live in a society when many are losing their heads in as much as it seems as though they're like direction.

And some believe that there can never be any direction. No rhyme, no reason in life. But Lord, you have shown dramatically in recent days that you control world affairs.

The nation's power as fine dust in the balances before you. The boasts of mighty men you see as the croakings of grasshoppers. You pull down kingdoms and you allow kingdoms to emerge.

And ultimately you laugh men to scorn when in their puniness they claim to have harnessed divine power. Help us, Lord, to appreciate that you're teaching us in modern times what you taught Simeon and Anna. That the whole of the future is controlled by the Christ and he will work out his purposes.

Help us to see him more clearly, love him more dearly, follow him more nearly all our lives. Good God and Father of Jesus, help each one of us here to hang in. Amen.

His angels prostrate fall before the royal choir. Give him heart and peace. Give him all his best joys and praise.

Give him handsome love of all. Give him handsome love of all. And he will take you by his breast and hand.

We ask his sweet reward. We ask his sweet reward. If he ever loves his son.

And crown him, crown him, crown him, crown him, crown him, crown him, and crown him Lord.