If you turn again in the scriptures
please to Luke's Gospel and Chapter 1. I'll read a short passage
from the beginning of Luke's Gospel, Chapter 1. Reading from
Luke 1, verse 1. For as much as many have taken
in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things
which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered
them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect
understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto
thee in order, most excellent Theophilus. that thou mightest
know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.
There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea a certain priest
named Zacharias of the course of Ebeah and his wife was of
the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. For as much as many have taken
in hand to set forth in order a declaration those things which
are most surely believed among us. Luke in his gospel seeks to set
forth as he depicts Christ as he sets forth the message the
account of Christ the gospel of Christ he sets forth those
things which are most surely believed among us. Most surely. There was no making up of this. This is not a collection of myths.
He did not exaggerate. He did not elaborate. He did
not try to make out that things were greater than they were.
But Luke set forth as led by the Spirit of God, those things
which are most surely believed among us. They were eyewitnesses,
those who were there. And these things were delivered
unto Luke from those others who saw, from those disciples, from
the others who saw at the time everything that happened. All
these things were seen. Witnesses saw them, they believed
them. And Luke here most surely believed
them. And his record is a record of
that which is most surely believed. But as we've seen with the other
Gospels, there are four Gospels given to us in the Scriptures,
and there are differences between each Gospel. Four different writers,
yes, but the differences aren't merely down to the memory or
the recollection or the understanding of four different men. It's not
that each had a different way of telling the same tale. That
certain things stood out as more important to Matthew than they
did to Mark or they did to Luke. Now each gospel is written in
a distinct and a deliberate manner as the Spirit of God led each
writer to set forth Christ in a certain light. We have as it
were four sides of a prism. Four aspects of the same thing. but showing forth the light of
Christ in a different way. So each gospel writer seeks to
present Christ in a certain fashion and to present the truth of Christ
according to the truth that they want to show. In Matthew, Matthew
writes to present Christ as the Messiah, that prophesied Messiah
that the Jews waited for, that the whole of the Old Testament
scripture spoke of as the King. and his gospel and the record
of the things in his gospel is so ordered to present Christ
as Messiah. A genealogy is given in Matthew
to show his royal descent. And so much is regarded in respect
of the kingdom of God. Christ in Matthew often speaks
of the kingdom of God and the disciples and the citizens of
that kingdom. Mark's gospel as we saw last
week, shows forth Christ as a servant, but a servant in a very particular
way, very much the preacher. Mark's gospel has no record of
Christ's birth, no genealogy. Christ simply appears as a man,
and as a man who comes preaching the gospel. The message of the
gospel and the preaching of that gospel is paramount in Mark's
gospel. John's gospel, as we may see
in the future, and as we've looked at in the past, is very different
from the other three gospels. It sets forth Christ as the Son
of God distinctly. He is, of course, the Son of
God in the other three gospels too, but John's main purpose
is to show the divinity of Christ. Luke's gospel, again, is different.
Luke has a different intention. Luke opens differently from the
other Gospels, very different from Mark's Gospel. Everything
in Luke here is centered at the beginning on the temple, on Christ's
birth and Christ being brought into the temple as a babe, Christ
returning to the temple at 12 years old and then later on Christ
coming into the temple many times preaching the Gospel. We have,
right at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, this account of Zacharias,
a priest, serving the Lord according to the customs of the law. And
how the Lord God appears unto Zacharias and makes, and by an
angel, God gives this message to him and his wife that they'll
have this child who will be called Jordan, who will prepare the
way for the coming of Christ. Following this we see the appearance
to Mary of the same angel Gabriel and his promise to her that she
will bring forth a child and that that child shall be called
Jesus. We of course have the accounts of his birth, of the
reception to his birth, following John's birth and we have the
account in chapter two and verse 21 onwards as we read earlier
of how at eight days old the parents according to the law
brought the child Jesus at the time of circumcision into the
temple and they offered up turtle doves as an offering. They did
all these things according to the commandments of the law and
in the temple there was a man there who awaited them a man
who saw this babe come in, a man called Simeon, one who was waiting
for the consolation of Israel, a godly man, one who looked for
the coming of Christ, and one upon whom the Holy Ghost fell,
who was shown that this babe, this child in his lifetime, this
one was the one for whom he waited. Oh, how must Simeon have felt
when the parents brought this child into him? What a sight,
what a privilege to be able to take that child in his hands
and to say with a certainty, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. How old Simeon was, how old Anna
was too, of whom we read, another old saint. who'd waited many,
many years for this day, probably thought she might never see it,
she might die before it came, but she waited. They were given
that faith, they saw the promises in the scriptures, they knew
that Christ would come, they knew the Savior would come. They
believed their God, they most surely believed these things.
And in their lifetime, this babe came. And Anna spake to all them
that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. She spake to them,
she told them that one would come, and here he was, the Redeemer. Luke opens in the temple. In
chapter 24, at the very end of Luke, you'll see that he closes
in the temple. Christ, after his death, comes
to Jerusalem where the disciples are gathered. in verse 36 he
comes into that place where they're gathered and says as he stands
in the midst of them peace be unto you and he shows them his
hands and his feet and he shows them that he is risen indeed
and he tells them in verse 44 that these are the words which
i spake unto you while i was yet with you that all things
must be fulfilled which were written in the law of moses and
in the prophets and in the psalms concerning me then opened he
their understanding that they might understand the scriptures
and said unto them thus it is written and thus it behove Christ
to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance
and remission of sin should be preached in his name among all
nations beginning at Jerusalem and ye are witnesses of these
things. Then in verse 50, he led them
out as far as the Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed
them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him,
and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually
in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen. Yes, the book opens
in Jerusalem in the temple. and it closes in the temple.
And this is intentional, this is part of Luke's message. He
wants you to see certain things from this. He wants you to see
certain things from the fact that he draws such attention
to the priesthood in the temple, and the customs of the law, and
how the parents of Christ brought the offerings according to the
law. and how at the end in chapter 24 as we read, Christ himself
draws the disciples' attentions to the law and the prophets and
the Psalms and how they all pointed to him and how they were all
fulfilled in him. When Christ comes in this gospel, there are those, a few, One or
two. Simeon, Anna, Zacharias and Elizabeth. One or two. And a few others
to whom Anna spake. A few waited. A few were waiting
and watching. There was an expectation. An
expectation for the coming of Christ. Not many. Not many, not a great crowd,
not a great welcome. But here in this gospel, we see
that there are those, a remnant of few who were looking, who
were waiting, who longed for the coming of Christ, and who,
when he came to them, rejoiced with overwhelming joy in his
coming. Do you look for his coming? Have
you looked? Is it something that matters
to you, the coming of Christ, the person of Christ, who this
is, who this was that was born in Jerusalem, that was born in
Bethlehem, that was brought to Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, that
brought such joy to these few people at that time? Does he
matter to you? Or is he just a name in the books
of history? scoffed at by modern man, questioned
and doubted that he even was whom he claimed to be? Is he
just someone, a figurehead of religion, who some fools follow? Are you more taken up with the
here and the now, that that you can touch and feel, that that
you can sense? Those things that seem to matter. Or has God granted you the understanding
that he granted unto Simeon and unto Anna? Has he caused you
to look beyond the here and the now? Has he caused you to question
what will come in the future? Has he caused you to awaken to
the fact that this world is not all there is? And time is not
all there is, but time is fleeting. And when this world is brought
to a close, when your life is brought to a close, there is
an eternity into which you will enter. There is a destiny before
you and you will go to one place or another. That what you are
and what you are like matters. How you live matters. The reality
of whether there is a God matters. And the reality of what will
happen the other side of death and whether you will come to
stand before that God matters greatly. As the Lord started to show you
that you have a need. A need to be right with this
God. The God that made this world. The God that put you upon it.
The God that grants you life. The God that keeps you alive
this moment. That what you are before him
matters. And where you stand before him
matters. has he shown you that your conduct
brings about consequences, that it's not neutral, that there
is right and there is wrong, that your life is full of actions
which will be judged according to a standard of righteousness,
and that the God that made you will question how you have lived,
and what you think and what you do, and depending upon your record, he will decide whether you will
enter into eternal glory, heaven, or whether he will say, depart
from me, you worker of iniquity. Yes, there's a day of reckoning,
and it comes upon us all. And we all have a need to be
right with this God. We need to be righteous. Anna knew this. And Simeon knew
this. And they knew that in the coming
of one that was promised, there was an answer to their state
by nature. For they knew that they were
corrupt. They knew that they were sinners. They knew that
they had a need. They knew that they needed salvation. And they knew that salvation
could only come in the coming of a savior. So they looked for
the coming of the savior, the redeemer, the Christ. And this is the one who Luke
will have us see. That Christ is the savior. The one who was prophesied. The
one who was said to come. The one who will save his people
from their sins. The one who was certain to come. And the one who did come. and
the one who did save, the one who brought a great salvation,
the one who Simeon took in his hands and said with true faith
and with a certainty, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Luke sets forth the Savior. But
Luke sets forth this Savior in a certain way. Christ in Luke
is not simply the saviour, but the whole emphasis on Luke is
on how he came to save, on the role in which he saved us. All the setting, all the context
is in Jerusalem, in the temple, in the priesthood, in the rites
and the rituals and the customs of the law of God. The book opens
with this, it closes with this. It's mentioned throughout. This
savior is one who would not come to Jerusalem and would not come
to the Jews and to Israel and simply dispense with all that
they had been given before. But he came as one who would
fulfill all that they had been given and all that they had been
shown. These ones who waited for him,
Simeon, Anna, Zacharias, Elizabeth, they were devout in the things
of God. They knew the teaching of God
in the scriptures. They knew the record of the patriarchs
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. They knew God's dealings with
the children of Israel. How Israel was taken into captivity,
how this nation grew up from the descendants of Jacob. and how they multiplied in Egypt
in captivity. They knew how God sent a deliverer,
Moses, to bring that people out of Egypt, to bring them through
the wilderness, to bring them into the promised land, into
Canaan. They knew how God gave unto Moses
a law, a law, the Ten Commandments and many other laws as part of
the entire law given to Moses, given to the children of Israel.
They knew how God gave them a law and how that law proved them,
how it tested them, how it showed them that they were sinners.
How soon when Moses came down from the mount carrying the tablets
of the Ten Commandments written upon stone, how soon the people
had sunk into the depravity of sin. For when he was in the mount,
they rose up to play. They had an idol made, a golden
calf. They bowed down to worship and
they fell into all sorts of iniquity. And he brought this law down
that immediately exposed them for what they were. They did not worship the Lord
God as the one true God. They made themselves other gods. How soon they were condemned.
Simeon and Anna. knew the righteousness of this
law, they knew how high it reached, they knew that by their strength
it was unattainable. We cannot keep it. Every day
we break the ten commands. Every day we don't worship God
as we should. Every day we rise up in pride. Every day we're angry with our
brother. Which as Christ says, if you
call your brother a fool, you have in your heart murdered him.
Every day we lust, every day we covet. Every day we sin. They knew the
law and they knew the condemnation of the law. But they also know
how when God gave the law, he also gave unto Moses and the
children of Israel strict teaching regarding a priesthood, and the
observance of that priesthood, and how that priesthood would
offer up sacrifices for the people, how there would be a tabernacle,
how the priest would be dressed in a certain manner, how there
would be many customs and rites. how such things should be done
at certain times in order to offer up sacrifice unto God,
to appease the wrath of God which burnt against the sins of such
a people. God in this law pointed the people
to the need for sacrifice. the need for an offering for
sin. He showed the people, He showed us that we are sinners. He showed us that we need an
offering for our sins. We need our sins taken away.
We need something to be offered up in the place of our sins.
We need His wrath to be appeased, to be propitiated, quenched,
taken away. And the priesthood and the sacrifices
pointed the people to this, the need of sacrifice, the need of
salvation. These sacrifices and this priesthood
never brought this salvation about. Some rested in the forms
and the figures. Some thought that if they kept
the commandments of the law according to as he commanded them, that
by their mere observance of these things, that by their attempts
to keep the law, and by their offering up of sacrifices through
the priesthood, that by these things they would be saved. But in such a way they stumbled.
For Israel, seeking righteousness by the law, stumbled at the righteousness
of God. What the law pointed at was one
who would come of whom that law, that priesthood, those sacrifices
were a figure. And Simeon and Anna were amongst
that few whom God gave the faith to look beyond the form to that
which was typified, to that great savior. that great priest, that
great sacrifice, Christ, who would come to save them from
their sins. Yes, Luke sets forth the Savior,
but he sets him forth very particularly as the priest, the great high
priest, who was figured by the old priesthood who was pictured
by these offerings and customs, but who was the priest who would
come with one offering, one offering to be offered up once and for
all, never to be offered again, by which he would save his people
forevermore. He was a priest and he was the
sacrifice. he came to offer up a sacrifice
suitable, sufficient to the sins of his people. One which really
could save. One which was not a figure but
was the reality. And the only thing he could offer
up which really could save was his own self. And the only blood
that he could sprinkle upon the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies,
which could quench the wrath of God against the sin of his
people, was his own blood. What a saviour. What a priest. What an offering. This is what
Luke points us to. This is why Luke emphasises Jerusalem,
the temple, the customs of the law, and his coming to the priest
in the temple, and his coming to those who offered up in the
temple, those who waited for his coming, those who longed
for his salvation. He's the priest. The Christ,
the anointed, Christ means anointed. He is the anointed Saviour. Christ
Jesus, the anointed Saviour, God's anointed Saviour, the one
that God anointed. As He anointed Aaron, as Aaron
was anointed as the pie priest and had the anointing poured
down upon him, this one came, of whom Aaron was the figure,
anointed by the Father, anointed by God. as the great high priest,
one who would not fail, one who would bring about salvation with
a certainty, one who came to do what he purposed to do and
do it once and do it to perfection, to save a great multitude, to
be the mediator of his people, to lead that people unto God. There is our salvation in the
priesthood of Christ and his sacrifice. Pictured by Moses,
yes. Pictured by the priesthood, yes.
But fulfilled in Christ. There is our salvation. We need that salvation. We need
a sacrifice. And we need a priest to offer
it for us. Why? because of those sins, because
of those sins that have multiplied from the day of our birth, because
of that fallen nature which we've inherited from our father Adam,
that corrupt nature when Adam fell and brought the whole human
race into sin when he rebelled against his maker and we in him
rebelled against our maker. We're born sinners. And we're
born telling lies, we come forth from the womb telling lies, we're
corrupt from head to toe, we're lepers, we're black. And that sin needs to be answered.
And Hebrews 9 tells us that without the shedding of blood, there
is no remission of sins. For sin before God is guilty
of death. And either our blood is going
to be shed in death when God judges us for our sin, for our
sins, when he judges us on that great day that comes, on that
day when we pass from this world into eternity, when we die, we
will stand before him. And if we die in the rebellion
in which we're born, if we die continuing to shake our fist
against our maker, If we die mocking His Son, mocking His
Christ, mocking His Gospel, despising Him and His Word, if we die in
such a state, our sins will damn us, our blood will be shed, and
the wrath of God will burn upon us for all eternity, in a place
where there is no escape, in a place where there is no letting
off. For in that place there's nothing more that can be done
about our sin. Our sins remain, and they'll
remain forevermore. For we turned our back on the
one place, the one source, the one way in which we might be
delivered from them. We fought it nothing. We trampled
the blood of the Son of God underfoot. We spat upon it. Oh, don't be the fool that says
in my heart there is no God. Don't be the fool that mocks
his son and the gift of his son, which he gave freely to wash
people, sinners, from their sins. Yes, there's a need of sacrifice.
We need it. If our blood is not to be shed
then we need a sacrifice shed for us that is sufficient for
those sins, that can pay the price that we cannot pay. Eternity is not long enough for
us to pay the price owed by us unto God's justice. We could
not pay if we had thousands and thousands of years to pay. If
we did our best to live as well as we could, we'd never undo
it. Eternity is not long enough.
We need our sins removed and we need a price sufficient. We
need a price paid which is sufficient to the cost of those sins. We
need them removed. And that can only come through
sacrifice. If it's not through our death,
it must be through the death of another. The sacrifice of
the animals in the Old Testament, the lambs, the goats, all pointed
to the need of sacrifice, all pointed to the need for blood
to be shed and sacrifice to be made for sins to be removed.
They all pointed. and we need what they pointed
to, we need our sins removed, we need redemption, we need to
be set free from that prison in which our sins have locked
us fast, we're captive, we're jailed, we need a ransom price
to be paid, a price to be paid to set us free, We need to be
reconciled unto the God that made us. Made at one with Him,
brought to peace with Him. The God in whose hands our eternal
destiny lies. We need to be right before Him. We need our sins taken away and
we need to be made righteous. We need righteousness. Righteousness. And we don't have any. We don't
have any righteousness. It's not that we don't have enough.
For our righteousness it is said in the scriptures are as filthy
rags. What we think is good before God is black. We're black through
and through. And yet we need righteousness.
The gulf is so great. Where we are and where we need
to get to to enter into heaven. It's so great, it's such a chasm. We can't leap it, we can't wait,
we can't climb through it, we can't build a bridge over it,
we cannot get past. We're lost. The more we may work
to make ourselves better to appease this wrath of God that burns
against our sins, the worse we get, the deeper we sink. We're
sinful through and through. Condemned utterly. The law condemns
us, our conscience condemns us, and the very righteousness of
God as he is in himself condemns us. We're shut up, captive, lost,
under condemnation, under wrath, and we need setting free. And
the only way that we will be set free is if one comes and
offers a sacrifice sufficient to the need. is if blood is shed,
a life is given to appease God's wrath, there is no remission
of sins without the shedding of blood. That's what all these
Old Testament sacrifices and priesthood taught us, that's
what they show us. That's why God gave them, to
show us our state and our need. God didn't give Israel the law
that they might work their best and attain to it, they could
not. That's not its purpose, its purpose
is to condemn, to show us what we are, and to show us that there's
only one deliverance from the condemnation it brings, and that
is in Christ. the Redeemer, the one to whom
the sacrifice is pointed, the Saviour. All these figures, all
these customs were very strictly commanded, very strictly observed. As we read in Hebrews, turn to
Hebrews 9, you read the meaning of all these things. It's a wonderful
commentary on the Old Testament Scriptures, Hebrews. Hebrews 9 tells us in verse 1
that verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine
service and a worldly sanctuary. There was a tabernacle made,
the first wherein was the candlestick and the table and the showbread
which is called the sanctuary. and after the second veil the
tabernacle which is called the holiest of all which had the
golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about
with gold wherein was the golden pot that had manna and Aaron's
rod that budded and the tables of the covenant and over it the
cherubims of glory shadow in the mercy seat of which we cannot
now speak particularly now when these things were thus ordained
the priests went always into the first tabernacle accomplishing
the service of God But into the second went the high priest alone
once every year, not without blood which he offered for himself
and for the errors of the people. The Holy Ghost this signifying
that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest. while as the first tabernacle
was yet standing, which was a figure for the time then present, in
which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not
make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the
conscience, which stood only in meats and drinks and diverse
washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time
of reformation. Yes, they were all a figure.
observed perfectly, rigorously, how careful the Jews in the Old
Testament were about their worship of God, how careful they were
in their observance. These things were important to
them, they didn't take them lightly. And yet despite all the carefulness,
they never saved. They were but figures, but figures. But how solemn. The high priest
went into the holiest of holies, not without blood. He had to
sprinkle it upon the ground. He had to walk on that blood-sprinkled
ground. The place wherein he walked,
as figurative of the presence of God, was so holy that should
he step on any ground upon which he had not sprinkled the blood,
he would have been struck down dead. So serious was this. but he sprinkled the blood and
he sprinkled the mercy seat and he went out backwards, not daring
to turn his back to that mercy seat. He would look facing it,
he would walk out backwards before he could come again to the people
who waited, who waited longingly to know that the sacrifice had
been accepted. What a sacrifice, what a picture. But all this pointed to one much
greater. All this pointed to that which
Luke is pointing us to. This one who was brought in at
eight days, a babe, at the time of circumcision, brought into
the temple, brought to Simeon, brought to Anna. the priest of
whom the priests were but a picture, the sacrifice of whom the sacrifices
were but a picture, the lamb of God of whom the lambs were
but a picture, who in due course when he came to Jerusalem at
the end of his life and was nailed to a cross and shed his blood
would shed that blood of which the blood of the lambs and the
goats were but a picture. For as we continue to read in
Hebrews 9 verse 11, But Christ, but Christ be in come, and high
priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building,
neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood,
He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and
of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkle in the unclean,
sanctify it to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to
serve the living God? for this cause he is the mediator
of the new testament that by means of death for the redemption
of the transgressions that were under the first testament they
which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. Where a testament is there must
also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament
is of force after men are dead, otherwise it is of no strength
at all whilst the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first testament
was dedicated without blood. when Moses had spoken every precept
to all the people according to the law he took the blood of
calves and of goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and
sprinkled both the book and all the people saying this is the
blood of the testament which God have enjoined unto you. Moreover
he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels
of the ministry and almost all things are by the law purged
with blood and without shedding of blood is no remission. It
was therefore necessary that the pattern of things in the
heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacrifices of these. For Christ is not entered
into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures
of the true. but into heaven itself, now to
appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should
offer himself often as the high priest entereth into the holy
place every year with blood of others, for then must he have
often suffered since the foundation of the world. But now, once in
the end of the world, have he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men
once to die, but after this to judgment, so Christ was once
offered to bear the sins of many. And unto them that look for him
shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation. Yes, here's the priest of whom
those were but the figure. This is who was brought to Simeon
as a babe. This is he who came into the
temple at 12 years old at the time of the offering of the Passover. The figure of him who is the
lamb who was offered as the Passover of his people. He who eventually,
in the end of Luke, should be crucified in Jerusalem. He who
would go as that priest to offer up himself as that sacrifice
upon the tree. He who was a priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek, one who came from God, without beginning,
as God. One who could go to God. One
who was both man and God, a great high priest. One who could go
into the holy place, which was pictured by the holy place in
the Old Testament. But is that holy place in glory
above? one who could offer his blood
and take it into the very presence of God and sprinkle it upon the
mercy seating glory above and propitiate God's wrath against
the sins of all his people. This priest could go where no
one else could. He went to the place of sacrifice,
he was the only one who could go and offer himself up on that
altar in Jerusalem. But then having ascended, as
Luke records, and this is why Luke records the ascension where
others don't. Not all of the Gospels record
it. Luke makes sure he does because he ascends to go into glory,
into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle his blood. He alone could reach
from man to God and from God to man as a perfect mediator. He alone was without sin, perfect,
without peer, incomparable, able to offer a sacrifice in which
he did not need to offer for himself for he had no sins of
his own to offer up for. But he alone could be a substitute,
a perfect substitute for the sins of his people. He alone
was both God and man, unique, able to reach to God and to reach
to man, able to breach that gulf between us. He alone was able
to suffer as a man, be an equal to man, but able to conquer death
in so doing, for he was also God, and could lay down his life
and take it up again. He alone could do this. And unlike
the priests of old, he alone only needed to go and offer up
this sacrifice once. For it was perfect and it accomplished
all that it was meant to accomplish. Nothing needed to be repeated.
Nothing was left undone. Nothing was insufficient. He
saved. He offered up his soul, a sweet
smelling sacrifice to his God. And when his father smelt it,
he was well pleased in his son. He alone could take away sin.
There was one offering offered once and for all. He alone could
do this. Oh, how great he is! How far
he went! What depths he stooped to, so
lowly, so meek! So full of compassion to come
into our presence, to walk with sinners, to walk with lepers,
to touch lepers, to heal the sick. What love, what mercy,
what grace. What a Saviour, what a priest. Oh do you know Him? Have you
as it were been able to take Him and handle Him as Simeon
did? Have your eyes seen his salvation? Has he been offered up a sacrifice
in your place for you? Has he died for you? Is he your substitute? Did he
take your sins away with his blood and his flesh? Has he redeemed you? Do you look
for him? Are you looking for redemption?
Have you looked? As Anna looked, as Simeon looked,
have you seen Him? Have you beheld the salvation
of the Lord, the Saviour, the Great High Priest? Do you believe
in Him? Are these things, these things,
most surely believed among you? Amen.