Let’s come to the Lord once again as we approach His Word. O Lord, you have told us that whoever listens to Your Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he is like. We do not want to be like that, we do not want to be those who walk away and forget everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve heard, so we’re asking, Lord, that we would not be those who merely listen to the Word, who simply set our watches for 30 or 40 minutes to endure the next sermon and get on to the rest of the day. O Lord, what a waste that would be. We do not want to deceive ourselves, so give us power to do what Your Word says, to be changed by Your Word, to listen and hear Your voice. We pray for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Our text this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, Song of Simeon. We’ll begin reading at verse 22 through verse 35.

So here we are, actually after that Christmas day, when Jesus is presented in the temple.

“And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.’ 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. 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 blessed God 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.'”

“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.’

In order to fully appreciate what’s going on in this passage and the setting that leads Mary and Joseph to the temple, we need to know something about the Old Testament. Joseph and Mary, as you can see by these quick allusions, are fulfilling two different Old Testament customs. The first is the presentation of the firstborn.

If you just keep your finger in Luke, turn back to Exodus chapter 13, Exodus 13, we read in verse 11, “When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites as He swore to you and your fathers and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the Lord all of the first opens the womb, all the firstborn of your animals that are male shall be the Lord’s, every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it, you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?” you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery for when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals, therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first opened the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.'”