What Are You Thinking?

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Sunday, 26 December 2010 09:54

December 26, 2010

“WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?”

Luke 2:25-35

by Pastor Ole Lillestolen

What you think is more important than what you do. Don’t take this wrong and think that what we do doesn’t matter, it’s just that what we do isn’t where God’s focus is. He focuses on what we think, perhaps because what we think eventually becomes what we do. Proverbs 23:7 says, “as he thinks within himself, so he is.” Simeon is reminding us of this issue this morning.

Just after Jesus was born His parents brought Him to the temple to perform a sacrifice required for every first born son in Israel. As they came, a devout Jew named Simeon was there who, as our text says, was “looking for the consolation of Israel.” He believed in the coming of the Messiah and he eagerly awaited His arrival in Israel.

Simeon loved God and his passion was to be God’s man, to be a part of what God was doing! So, God planned a very special blessing for him and, as Luke writes, “it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.” God blesses those who make God their passion. I wonder what special blessings God has for us, when we walk in fellowship with Him?

The Holy Spirit was leading Simeon that day and when he saw Jesus, “he took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said, "Now Lord, You can let Your bond-servant depart In peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.””

What a wonderful privilege to be able to know, like the shepherds, the wise men, and Mary and Joseph, that this child was the promised Messiah! And, what a wonderful revelation the Spirit of God gave to Simeon to share with us. The Messiah was not to be just a gift to Israel, but He is to be a “Light of revelation to the Gentiles”, to us as well! Jesus confirmed this promise in Acts 1:8 when He said to His apostles just before He ascended into Heaven, “you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

It’s wonderful to know that we are not an afterthought in God’s plans. In fact, Simeon’s words, “A light of revelation to the Gentiles” are taken from Isaiah 42:6 where God describes the Messiah and His role of not only bringing peace to Israel but of also bringing light to the Gentiles, and what is the point of that light of revelation if it is not to make available to us the promises of God? Israel is God’s advertizing tool to reach us Gentiles with His grace! The Christmas story is good news for us too! Praise you God Jesus said, “God so loved the WORLD!”

Now, Jesus’ parents, were being bowled over by what God was doing in their lives and they, “were amazed at the things which were being said about Jesus.” But, notice that there is a shift in Simeon’s focus as he talks to Mary and Joseph. In the first half of this encounter Simeon focuses on Jesus’ impact on his own life, “Now I can die. I’ve seen the Messiah who has come for everyone in the whole wide world.” But in the second half of this encounter Simeon looks at Jesus’ parents and speaks to them, and his words were not very uplifting.

Simeon said to Mary, Jesus’ mother, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed--and a sword will pierce even your own soul-- to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” Simeon tells Mary three things. First that though many in Israel will rise because of Christ, his emphasis is upon the many who will fall because of Him.

This prophecy was already being fulfilled. Wise men were traveling from the area of modern Iraq to see Jesus. This was the first opportunity for Israel’s leadership to learn about the birth of the Messiah, but when the wise men came they turned their hearts away from Jesus and, instead of celebrating, they stood by to watch the killing of innocent babies in Herod’s effort to kill Jesus.

For every Simeon there would be hundreds of very religious priests, pharisees, sadducees, and scribes, as well as common Jews who would turn their backs on Jesus and in the process fall away from God altogether. God is not a stagnant God. When God moves on, we either move with Him or we become left behind! When Jesus arrived, Israel did not have the option of accepting Him or of carrying on the way they had for centuries in approaching God through the temple sacrifices. Jesus at that moment became “The way the truth and the life!”

The Apostle Paul wrote that he dearly wished that he could even give up his own relationship with God in order that the Israelite people could be saved, but they became lost when they rejected Jesus, even though they kept on worshiping God as they had been worshiping Him in the past! Luke also writes in Acts 4:12: “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.”

All of this would mean for Mary a painful end to her relationship with Jesus as her earthly son. Simeon told her, “a sword will pierce even your own soul.” There is no bond so profound as the bond between a parent and a child. Parents enjoy their children’s successes as if they were their own. But, they also feel the pain of their children’s failures and trials as if they were their own. Mary felt every jolt of the hammer at the core of her being. Her soul agonized in pain as Jesus hung on the cross. A sword pierced her own heart as the spear pierced Jesus’ body to prove that He was dead.

What would Mary say about her experience as Jesus’ mother? Would she do it again if she knew the pain of the sword that would pierce her soul? Before Jesus was born her relative Elizabeth told her, "Blessed among women are you!” (Luke 1:42) Did Mary feel that she was truly blessed when it was all over?

This leads right into the last thing that Simeon said that day. He told her that her soul would be pierced by a sword, “to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” This may seem like a strange way to end this little speech of Simeon’s, but when you stop to look at it, this is the focus of the whole message he had to deliver to us. Ultimately Jesus came to make it possible for us to have new hearts.

God told Ezekiel to tell Israel, in Ezekiel 36:26,27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

We understand the principle. What’s it like to have a relationship with someone whose heart is not in it? How much fun is it, for example, to be married to someone whose heart is somewhere else, wherever that else may be? Often spouses with wandering hearts make life absolutely miserable by all of the heartless things they do. On the other hand, there are spouses with hearts elsewhere who try to be good spouses, trying to do all of the right things. Yet if your spouse’s heart is elsewhere you can end up on pins and needles knowing there is something(one) else.

The Israelites who rejected Jesus were highly religious people, in the sense that they did all the right things in terms of maintaining their responsibilities toward God. They sacrificed, and they went overboard in interpreting and follow God’s laws to prove their zeal to God! But, God knew their hearts and, when your heart is in the wrong place it will always and inevitably trip up what you do. They ended up rejecting, humiliating, and killing God’s greatest gift to them, and they didn’t even really know what they were doing!

So Simeon reminds us that the central issue of Christianity is what is going on in our hearts. The central issue of Christianity is what we are thinking! Perhaps one way of getting at the core of this is to ask the question: “Why do you do the things you do?”

Obviously, there are many things that are simply out of bounds for Christians. They should be out of bounds for everyone because they destroy and leave scars on everyone involved. But, otherwise, the issue isn’t so much what you want to do, but why you want to do what you want to do! Here’s the thing. If you can’t answer the question of why you want to do something with the answer that you want to please and serve God by it, you are thinking wrong and whatever you are doing, whether it is morally right or not, will end up being destructive to your relationship with God, and it will also be destructive to others.

How is this different than what the Jews were doing? The difference is in the “why!” They didn’t have a passion for God in their hearts. They were trying to keep Him off their backs by doing all those religious things. They had their eyes on other things and they were merely paying God their dues so they could have those other things, including wealth. God was not the end. God was more of a means to the end!

But let’s remember King Josiah who lived during a time when people’s hearts were elsewhere than upon God. They had even let the temple fall into disarray and disrepair. Yet, when young king Josiah heard the word of God for the first time, he turned his heart to God and made this covenant in 2 Kings 23:3, “to walk after the LORD, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book.”

Where is you heart? What do you think about? Let us not be distracted by the empty destructive promises of Satan and this world. Let us join Josiah and pray,“I will walk with you Lord, keep your commandments, testimonies and statutes with all my heart and soul and serve you in all the ways you lead me by your word and by your Spirit!” Let us have a passion for God as we move from the scenes of Christmas into the new year!