AN ERA OF HOPE AND PEACE Forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem at that prescribed time for dedication and purification according to Jewish Law. A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King, which was Simeon’s lifelong prayer, forever waiting and exp...
AN ERA OF HOPE AND PEACE
Forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem at that prescribed time for dedication and purification according to Jewish Law.
A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King, which was Simeon’s lifelong prayer, forever waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, The Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and began praising God.
‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)
On that day this prophetic man Simeon took his place in entering the era of new hope and peace that had come upon all of humanity.
Joseph and Mary stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus.
Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her blessed child;
‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed.
This momentous prophesy declares Jesus as the one who stands at the centre of the scales of every life, where we weigh the major decisions of our lives. This challenges us to either respond to or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his perfect life, his voluntary sacrificial death and his glorious resurrection. These truths are the challenges that provoke opposition and denial in the human heart, where all inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart to account.
Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind, and sadly ignored.
A woman named Anna was also there in the Temple that day, a prophetess of the Jewish tribe of Asher, and was eighty four years old. She lived a cloistered life in the Temple, dwelling there night and day, worshiping God in praying and often fasting.
She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and The Spirit gave witness to her spirit that this was the promised Saviour and that the Messiah had finally arrived. She began thanking God and proclaiming this truth of hope to everyone in Jerusalem. She too had now entered the era of hope and peace that had come into the world.
Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East, and they were asking about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts. Babylon was the first civilization in the East from 700 BC to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets (wandering stars).
They would study any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. They had been following an exceptionally bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem.
These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel, and many scribes and teachers knew from the Scriptures the Bethlehem region of the child’s birth;
Micah 5:2, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will abandon his people to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last his fellow countrymen--the exile remnants of Israel--will rejoin their brethren in their own land.
And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall be secure, for he will be greatly honoured all around the world. He will be our Peace
The presence of these men in Jerusalem and the line of questioning and discussion they were having with the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod The Great, who had been appointed by Caesar Augustus to rule the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he had become extremely agitated about the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he was threatened by it. He didn’t want that sort of competition. He had his own dynasty to create.
Herod summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them there were vague reports about the general whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, deceitfully telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king.
After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who seek to understand what it means to live a life shared with God.
Gold speaks of the nature of God on display through the Holy Spirit in a human life.
Frankincense speaks to us of prayer and praise arising out of a true heart.
Myrrh speaks to us of the necessary reality of suffering, and its meaning for our life, as we give thanks to God in all things, because without that there is no spiritual growth.
That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him. Herod had commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah;
Jeremiah 31:15, In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss.
So Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night.
Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1).
However, when Joseph learned that Herod Antipas the son of Herod The Great, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. So they came and settled in a city called Nazareth, and another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult.
Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.
The word ‘grew’ in that Scripture is the word ‘prokopto’ in the original language, and it is a military term which means ‘moving forward blow-by-blow’. The life of Jesus was a continual blow-by-blow journey of overcoming the self-centred nature of all of humanity from the time of Adam. Jesus bent back the crooked independent disposition of the Adam that still distorts the human heart in each one of us. He straightened out that bent and crooked nature and he straightens it out in us too and grows us as we walk into each blow-by-blow experience of our lives empowered by his enabling grace to call upon his strength in our constant experience of weakness.
During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year. The feast was always very crowded and lasted for seven full days and there was a lot of activity and celebration of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt, and they travelled to and from the feast in a caravan of hundreds of people, pitching tents and camping on the journey.
When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was mingling with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, and when they couldn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only after three days of searching and making inquiries that they finally found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers of the Law, discussing deep questions with them and astounding everyone with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. However, his parents were perplexed, not knowing what to think, and his mother asked him in her distress why he had done that to them. Mary told him that she and his father had been frantic, searching for him everywhere.
Jesus asked them why they felt they had to search for him and why they didn’t realize that he would be here in his Father’s house, sharing in his Father’s work. But they didn't understand what he meant. It could have appeared to be insubordination, which was puzzling and very uncharacteristic of him, to not respect his sonship in their family.
But Jesus had not betrayed his sonship. In this encounter with his distressed parents, this maturing child was wisely coming to grips with the complexity of the relationship between his identity as Son of God and as a son in the family of Joseph. He did this for us too, knowing we would grapple with this earthly and heavenly fatherhood quandary in our own lives, and would be made whole in Father’s unconditional love. So he went home with them and was subject to them. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and was admired and respected by all the people in that place.
Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life. This had never happened before, this new form of life, God and man together, a new creation. Because of this new creation a new connection between man and God would be possible. Through what this man would accomplish in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he would experience with his Heavenly Father would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family. And through this man a new hope would sit in the hearts of those who found the peace of that bond of oneness through their faith. The Bible says that faith is the basis of hoping – the assurance of the unseen activity of God. That hope blesses you because you can now live a life knowing that someone is personally thinking about you continually, working life out for you far better than you can for yourself. That is a living hope that lasts forever.
