The Whole Bible is about Jesus
At the end of Luke’s Gospel, he tells a story about Jesus appearing to two of his disciples after he rose from the dead. As Jesus talks with them, Luke tells us, “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (24:27). Then later that evening he appeared to all the disciples and said, “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (24:44).
The whole Bible is about Jesus. The Old Testament and the New Testament are about him. The Bible is a library of sixty-six books that tell one story. The main character of the story is Jesus and the main plot is summarized in the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for sinners.
Luke’s Gospel is the story of how Jesus fulfills the law and promises of God. That’s our main point this morning. We’ll see in verses 21-24 how Jesus fulfills the law of God and in verses 25-38 how Jesus fulfills the promises of God.
Jesus Fulfills the Law of God
First, in verses 21-24, we see an example of how Jesus fulfills the law. In these four verses, Luke says three times that Joseph and Mary are doing things according to the Law of the Lord (vv. 22, 23, 24, cf. vv. 27, 39). Jesus’ parents were faithful, law-abiding, Israelites.
Luke mentions three rituals that Mary and Joseph partook in when Jesus was a baby: circumcision, purification, and presentation. Let me go through these one at a time.
Jesus is Circumcised
First, Jesus is circumcised when he was eight days old (v. 21). The Law of Moses required male babies to be circumcised on the eighth day (Lev. 12:3). Circumcision was instituted by God in Abraham’s time as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 17:9-14). It reminded Jewish men every day of the promises God made to Abraham. It reminded them that they were “cut off” from the rest of the world and set apart to God.
Jesus was circumcised in accordance with the Law of Moses, but why? He was coming to inaugurate a new covenant so why did he need the sign of the old covenant? Jesus was circumcised out of obedience to God and in order to identify with God’s people.
Jesus took this sign in order to obey God, or to fulfill the demand of the law. As Paul says, Jesus was “born under the law” (Gal. 4:4), so everything the law required of Israel was required of Israel’s Redeemer. Jesus’ circumcision was the first time his blood was spilt to satisfy the law’s demands.
Jesus also took this sign in order to show that he was a true son of Abraham, that he was one with his covenant people. His circumcision meant that he was a full member of Israel’s covenant community.
Jesus’ Purification
The second ritual they undertook was purification (v. 22a). According to the Law of Moses, a woman was unclean for forty days after giving birth (Lev. 12:1-4), after which the woman would bring a lamb and a pigeon or turtle dove, or two turtledoves or two pigeons if she couldn’t afford a lamb, to the priest at the tabernacle or temple as a burnt offering and a sin offering (vv. 6-8).
Mary needed to follow this purification ritual in order to be made “clean” before the Lord after giving birth. What does this teach us? It teaches us that Jesus’ parents knew and faithfully obeyed God’s word. It also means that Mary gave birth in a very normal way and was thus considered unclean. We often talk about the “virgin birth,” but the Bible doesn’t talk about anything miraculous happening in the birth of Jesus. “Virgin conception” is more accurate.
Mary’s participation in the sin offering also teaches us that she understood herself as a sinner in need of forgiveness. The sin offering and burnt offering made atonement for the sin of the one offering them (Lev. 5:7-10). So the idea of an “immaculate conception,” or that Mary was free from original sin from the moment of her conception, established in 1854 as the official teaching of the Catholic Church, and the idea that Mary was free from personal sin, affirmed by the Council of Trent in the mid-1500’s, are both refuted by this text. If Mary wasn’t a sinner, why did she offer a sin offering? Scripture is clear that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) except for “the one who did not know sin” (2 Cor. 5:21), Mary’s son, Jesus.
One final lesson from the purification ritual is that Jesus was born into a poor family. Luke tells us this by quoting Leviticus 12:8 in verse 24. Mary and Joseph couldn’t afford a lamb for the offering so they were allowed to offer two turtledoves or two pigeons. The eternal Son of God who has an infinite wealth of glory entered the world through poverty. The incarnation, among other things, is a living example of the Lord’s identification with the poor in the Old Testament. For example, Proverbs 19:17, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.” The irony of the incarnation is that the rich becomes poor so that the poor can become rich. Paul says it this way, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). The King of Heaven came to earth to live with a family who couldn’t afford the standard sacrifice. Joseph and Mary couldn’t afford a lamb for sacrifice, but they held in their arms the Lamb of God who would be sacrificed for all who understand their spiritual poverty and come to him for the riches of his grace.
Jesus’ Presentation
The third ritual is Jesus’ presentation, or dedication, in the temple (v. 22b-23). This ritual goes all the way back to the exodus. Just before the Israelites left Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine” (Ex. 13:2). God gave this ritual to Israel to remind them how he struck down the firstborn sons in Egypt in order to redeem his firstborn son, Israel.
This encourages us to set our own children apart for God. We don’t do it by baptizing our babies because baptism is for those who repent and believe, and we don’t have to do it through a “baby dedication” service at church. If parents want to do that, we’re happy to do it, but we aren’t commanded by Scripture to do so.
Perhaps the main way we set our children apart for God is through praying for them. As soon as each of our children were born, I knelt beside Suzy’s hospital bed while she held them and we prayed something along the lines of, “Lord, you created this baby, they belong to you, help us to steward the gift you’ve given.” And now we pray over our kids daily, often praying the blessing of Aaron from Numbers 6, “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may he make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (6:24-26). However you do it, parents need to bring their kids to the Lord through prayer as an act of faith, trusting that he loves them more than we do.
One of the other ways we give our children to the Lord is, as they get older, we let them go. We shepherd them while they’re with us and then we release them and give them space to become who God made them to be. This takes faith and pushes against our desire for control, but it honors the Lord when we remember that our kids must learn to trust him for themselves.
Jesus Fulfilled the Law for Us
What does all this mean? Why does Luke give us these seemingly insignificant details about Jesus’ circumcision, purification, and presentation? Because he wants to show us that Jesus fulfilled the law by obeying it perfectly, and he did this for us because we can’t. Jesus saved us from the curse of the law by actively keeping the law for us, and then passively taking the punishment the law demands even though he kept the law. Paul says it this way, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). As one writer says, “We are saved by Christ’s death on the cross, but we are also saved by his life on earth, in which he fulfilled all the righteousness that we owe to God.”[1]
We owe God obedience because he made us, but we pay him with indifference and disobedience. But in grace God comes and pays what we owe, both through his righteousness and his death. We need both and he gives us both. We need our sins atoned for so Jesus dies, but we also need righteousness to qualify for heaven, so Jesus lives a perfectly righteous life so he can give us his righteousness through faith. As the Ligonier Statement says, “He takes our filthy rags and gives us his righteous robe.” Or as Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Jesus Fulfills the Promises of God
The next part of our text shows us how Jesus fulfills the promises of God (vv. 25-38). When Joseph and Mary come to the temple they meet two people, Simeon and Anna, a man of faith and a woman of prayer. These were ordinary people who walked with God and the Lord graciously allowed them to see their Savior before they died.
We don’t know much about Simeon, other than that he was a man of character and faith, “righteous and devout” (v. 25). The Holy Spirit had shown him that he wouldn’t die until he saw the Savior (v. 26). We wonder how long he’d walked through the temple waiting to see the child who would be the Messiah. Simeon shows us what being a believer looks like: waiting in faith for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
One day, by God’s design, he was in the right place at the right time so he could see Jesus (v. 27). When he saw him, he held him and his heart soared in praise to God (v. 28). And then by the Spirit he offered a prophetic word about the child he held (vv. 29-32).
In verse 30, he says that, in the baby Jesus he sees his salvation. This is amazing. No one is saved by Jesus’ birth. Jesus still had to live a perfect life, die on the cross, and rise from the dead, but already at this moment, Simeon saw that salvation had come in this boy. This child wasn’t part of his salvation, but salvation itself. Simeon understands that Jesus is all anyone needs to be saved.
After seeing Jesus, Simeon is released from his watch post and ready to die. This teaches us that we aren’t ready to die until we’ve seen Jesus with the eyes of faith. Whether young or old, if you’ve not seen Jesus, you aren’t ready to die.
When we’ve seen Jesus by faith, seen his death as for us and his resurrection for our salvation, then and only then are we ready to depart this life. Like Simeon, are you prepared to die?
The Salvation of the World
The baby Simeon held wasn’t just for his salvation, but the salvation of the world (vv. 31-32). So far in Luke, every time someone prophecies about Jesus we learn a little more about him and what he came to do. Through Simeon we learn that God’s Messiah will have a global ministry. The salvation that Jesus brings is for “all peoples” (v. 31) and he will be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (v. 32). He’s saying that the Messiah came for Gentiles as much as for Jews.
Simeon’s song teaches us that the Messiah came for the world. And his song wasn’t a new song. It’s a fulfillment of the promises of God to make the Gentiles part of his people. Simeon is alluding to when Isaiah says this about the Servant of the Lord, “I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth” (49:6).
This is why, as a church, we care about missions and evangelism. Simeon’s prophecy tells us that Jesus’ salvation is for people all over the world, that his light can push back darkness in any nation or any human heart. Because of him, we have a message we can take anywhere and offer to anyone. So we pray and look for ways to share the gospel, and we pray for the nations and give to missions and consider whether the Lord wants us to go to people still in darkness.
Simeon says that Israel’s Messiah would bring God’s light to Jews and Gentiles. Israelites like Joseph and Mary didn’t understand this, which is why they respond the way they do in verse 33. They couldn’t understand how Israel’s Davidic King would establish a kingdom for all the nations.
“A Sign That Is Opposed”
But then Simeon says something that was really shocking in verses 34-35. This part of his prophecy begins to tell us how Israel’s Messiah will go about setting up his kingdom.
Simeon is hinting at the great suffering that the Messiah, and his mother, will undergo. We’ve learned that he’ll be great and will be the King and the Son of God, but here we learn that he’ll also be opposed, “the sign that is opposed” (v. 34). Many in Israel will “fall” because of him. Many won’t understand why he came and will oppose him, despise him, and stand against him. Ultimately, they’ll nail him on a piece of wood and watch him die.
This is the sword that will pierce Mary’s soul (v. 35). God is preparing Mary for the crucifixion of her son. When she stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross (Jn. 19:25), watching her son die unjustly, the blade of grief would pierce her soul.
Simeon’s prophecy tells us that Jesus’ death was always the plan. The NIV uses the word “destined” instead of “appointed” in verse 34. Jesus’ destiny was to die. He was born to die. He would live for us so that he could die for us. His death is foreshadowed at his birth.
When Simeon says that he came for “the fall and rising of many in Israel” he’s saying that Jesus came to judge as well as save. Through him, the “thoughts from many hearts (will) be revealed” (v. 35). Jesus came to expose what’s really in our hearts. Those who’re humbled by their sin and see their need for grace will be drawn to Jesus and will rise with him to glory.
But some people refuse to be humbled by their sin. They constantly compare themselves to others so that they can feel better about themselves or compete with others to prove that they’re better than them. Instead of humbly acknowledging their sin, they proudly assume that their sin isn’t that big a deal. Many will stumble over Jesus’ death because deep down they don’t see any need for it.
Dr. Phil Ryken pushes us to probe our hearts deeply because the stakes are too high not to. He says:
“What is your response to Jesus? Are you for him or against him? Will you rise or will you fall? This is the great question of life and death, because what God will do with us for all eternity depends on what we do with Jesus right now. He is the Great Divide. God uses his cross to reveal our true character…There is no neutrality. Either we are with Jesus or we are against him. And if we are against him, we will fall down to spiritual death, down to physical death, and down to hell itself. Luke tells us this so that we will come to faith in Jesus Christ, not falling, but rising.”[2]
Anna’s Worship and Witness
In the next few verses, we meet one who was rising (vv. 36-38). Anna was a prophetess (v. 36), one who spoke the word of the Lord. And she was a woman of prayer (v. 37). Luke took special notice of the women around Jesus’ life, mentioning thirteen women not mentioned in the other Gospels.[3] The Bible everywhere affirms the full dignity of women and honors their work for the Lord.
Anna shows us what serving the Lord through every season of life looks like, fasting and praying for decades after she became a widow. Like many senior saints, she felt a special burden to pray. She practically lived at the temple because she was so spiritually hungry, not trying to work for her salvation but as evidence of her faith as she waited for her salvation. Is it any wonder that a woman like her had no trouble at all recognizing Jesus for who he was when she saw him?
When she saw him, she does what everyone who comes to Jesus does, she thanks God for him and then tells as many people as she can (v. 38). After meeting Jesus, like the shepherds, her life becomes about worship and witness.
People truly following Jesus understand that gathering with other followers of Jesus at a local church is a basic part of their faith and not an optional add-on. And they understand that Jesus is too good to keep to themselves, so they pray and look for ways to share him with others.
A Man of Faith and a Woman of Prayer
When I think of men of faith and women of prayer, I think of my grandparents, Gene and Hilda Foster, who, like Jesus, were born into poverty and hardship, growing up on farms in Eustace in the 1920’s and 1930’s. About a year before my Papa Foster died, I asked him if he was ready to see Jesus and he said, “You bet, I’ve loved him a long time.” He was ready to die because he’d met Jesus. He was a man of faith.
My Grandma Foster told me for as long as I remember that she prayed for me every day. And I believed her because I saw her prayer list on the breakfast bar where she’d sit every morning to start her day. She didn’t have much by the world’s standards, but she prayed for me every day. The Lord used my Papa’s faith and my Grandma’s prayers to change my life. I’ll never forget that.
What about you? What kind of man or woman are you? Have you seen the beauty of Jesus as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets? When you do, the ambitions of your life begin to shift and you start to become like these old saints Simeon and Anna who saw Jesus and worshipped him. Don’t you want to be like them?
[1]Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Volume 1: Luke 1-12, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009), 91.
[2]Ibid., 97.
[3]David E. Garland, Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2011), 25, n. 22.