Welcome to ECB's weekly sermon podcast. ECB is
an international church in Bangkok, Thailand,
with dozens of nationalities worshiping together.
We invite you to connect with us from wherever
you are through our website, ecb .asia, or our
mobile app. And now we pray that you are blessed
by this week's sermon. I have lived in Chiang
Mai for 17 years. I lived in Singapore for four
years prior to that. So I've been in Asia for
over 20 years. And I live and work with ABTS,
but I am self -supported as a missionary. And
I remember when I first went to candidate school
with my mission. And, you know, I was young,
naive, didn't know what I was doing. And you
go to this group and we're preparing for overseas
work. And this is what they told me. Expect the
unexpected. Has anybody ever told you that? Don't
you hate it when people tell you that? What are
you supposed to do with this phrase? How can
you expect that which is unexpected? Of course,
what they're telling you is you have all of these
grand ideas in your mind of what's going to happen.
And guess what? It's not going to happen that
way. There's going to be unexpected things in
your life, and you need to be prepared for that.
And there's value to that. Expect the unexpected.
You see, life is full of expectations. In fact,
that's how we live our lives. When you woke up
this morning, you had a number of expectations
that brought you here today. First of all, you
expected that you would wake up, right? You expected
that when you wake up, your body would have enough
power and ability to get you out of bed and get
you into the bathroom and downstairs eventually.
You expected that you'd still have a home, that
there'd be clothes in your closet, that there'd
be food in the refrigerator. You'd expect that
if you're driving here, your car is still there,
that it still functions, that you have gasoline
in your car to get you here. Or if you're taking
a grab, that there is still such a thing as grab.
You expect all of these things. In fact, when
you get here, you expect you're not the only
one that's here, right? That there still is a
Sunday morning worship service at ECB at 9 o
'clock. And so when you get here, there's all
these expectations. And usually in life, our
expectations are fulfilled. For example, you're
here now, which I'm assuming that all these expectations
you had this morning have been fulfilled appropriately.
Life is like that. You have to anticipate a little
bit into the future so that you know what decisions
to make. and how to move forward in life. But
sometimes those expectations are not fulfilled.
Sometimes the unexpected happens. And at times
like that, you can be discouraged, maybe confused,
maybe distressed. Depends on the level of your
expectation. For example, maybe after church
you're thinking, I'm going to have beef for lunch.
And you get home and you realize that your spouse
instead made chicken. Well, you had an expectation,
and depending on how much you like beef, it could
have been a serious distressing expectation that
has now been unfulfilled. But usually that's
pretty minor. You're like, okay, I can eat chicken
today. But there are other expectations in life.
For example, maybe you think you're going to
have a long life, but at a very young age you
develop cancer. Or maybe you have children, and
your expectations that they're going to grow
up in the love of the Lord, but instead they
fall away from the faith. How do you manage those
expectations, those distresses? Sometimes we
expect the wrong things, right? Skewed expectations.
And it can be devastating when we are trying
to understand God's role in this world and in
our lives. Because usually the first thing that
happens when our expectations are skewed or unfulfilled
is we wonder, God, where are you? What are you
doing? And it could be a crisis moment. So I
don't believe the answer to this is to lower
our expectations. I think our answer is to align
our expectations with God's word. That's what
we're going to look at today. We're going to
look at a story in Luke chapter 2, the story
of Simeon, which is usually like a Christmas.
Sermon, a Christmas story, but we're going to
take it out of Christmas. We're going to have
Christmas in June. Okay? Sound good? And Simeon
is a story of Jesus coming into the world. He's
40 days old, and he's coming into a world of
expectations. People who are anticipating somebody's
going to come. They're anticipating a Messiah
who's going to come and relieve the people of
Israel from their distress. And so what does
that look like? How did Simeon, how did he expect
the Messiah? And what did that birth of Jesus
look like in this context? So we're going to
read together Luke chapter 2, and I'll read this,
just follow along. When the time came for the
purification rites required by the law of Moses,
Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present
him to the Lord. As it is written in the law
of the Lord, every firstborn male is to be consecrated
to the Lord. and to offer a sacrifice in keeping
with what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair
of doves or two young pigeons. Now there was
a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous
and devout. He was waiting for the consolation
of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It
had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that
he would not die before he had seen the Lord's
Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the
temple courts, and when the parents brought in
the child Jesus to do for him what the custom
of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms
and praised God, saying, Sovereign Lord, as you
have promised, you may now dismiss your servant
in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the
glory of your people Israel. The child's father
and mother marveled at what was said about him.
Then Simeon blessed them and said to marry his
mother. This child is destined to cause the falling
and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign
that will be spoken against so that the thoughts
of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will
pierce your own soul too. So there is the passage.
And as we see, Mary and Joseph have a little
baby Jesus. And they're on their way to the temple.
And they're there at the temple for two basic
reasons. The first reason is for purification.
This is going back to Leviticus chapter 12. So
Mary just had a baby. And so according to the
law, after you have a baby, there's the flow
of blood. And so you have to go through purification
rituals. You have seven days of being unclean.
You then circumcise the boy on the eighth day.
And then you have another 33 days of uncleanliness.
So at day 40, you then have to go to the temple
to present an offering. Now, according to Leviticus,
the offering should be a sacrifice of a lamb
and a bird. But it makes a concession if you
don't have much money, if you're poor, that you
can offer two birds instead. And as you can see
from Mary and Joseph, they offered two birds.
So they were not very wealthy. They are there
for a second reason, and that is for presentation.
And this is going back to Exodus chapter 13.
You remember the story of the Passover, right?
We all remember that story, and God had passed
over the firstborn of Israel, and as a result,
he says, now what I want you to do is to consecrate
to me every firstborn male that's born, right?
And you're going to consecrate them to me, kind
of like giving them to the Lord, but you can
redeem them back by paying five shekels to the
temple. So Mary and Joseph, of course, their
baby was a boy. And so they go to the temple
to present this baby boy there and to redeem
him back. So we learn here that Mary and Joseph
are pious and they're rather poor. They are offering
the doves, but they're actually doing what the
law requires of them to offer Jesus at the temple.
As they're walking there, they meet this guy
named Simeon. We don't know much about this guy.
Usually when we think about Simeon, we think
he's a bit older, maybe. Maybe he's like some
kind of priest or some kind of guy like that.
We're not even sure of that. We're not even sure
why he's here necessarily. He's just this kind
of like random character who's here, but it's
actually quite important because we have a little
bit of a description about him. The passage says
he's righteous and devout. We don't know exactly
what that means, but he's a person who is following
the law, who's following the Lord, seeking to
live his life for the Lord. In other words, he's
kind of an ideal Jew. If you think of Luke writing
this passage to people who are trying to understand
who Jesus is, the very first person who, after
Jesus is born, is going to declare who this son
is, we can trust him. He's reliable. His testimony
is reliable because he is a faithful Jew. He's
also, we're told, led by the Spirit. Several
times here, verse 25, the Spirit was upon him.
Verse 26, the Spirit revealed to him that he
would see the Messiah before he dies. Verse 27,
he's led by the Spirit specifically at the temple
at the right time on the right day to meet this
baby boy. Now think about it. You don't have
WhatsApp. You don't have Facebook. You don't
have Line. How do you figure out when the Messiah
is going to come to the temple? This is a tough
one, right? And so it was the Holy Spirit that
told him, okay, go to the temple. And I don't
know if it was an actual audible thing or just
kind of he felt led to go there. And I don't
even know how he knew of all these boys, little
boys coming to the temple that this was the Messiah,
but he did. And it was the Spirit that revealed
that. But perhaps most significantly about Simeon
is we're told he's waiting for the consolation
of Israel. Consolation of Israel. Consolation
is a strange word. We don't use that word very
often in language. Many of us, English is a second
language. I probably would guess you don't use
this word at all. I don't even use it, and English
is my first language. What is consolation? When
I first heard this word, I go back to the 1980s
when I was a kid. I grew up in America. And in
the 1980s, what we would do is watch game shows.
And you still have game shows today, right? In
all countries where people go up and they play
these games. And if you win, you get a prize,
right? But if you lose, what they would tell
us back in the 80s is you get a consolation prize.
Which when you hear that, you're thinking, oh,
you're a loser. You know, that's a negative thing
to get the consolation prize. Nobody wants that.
So when I first heard this, consolation kind
of takes on negative terms. Of course, it's not.
Consolation means to console, to comfort. It
implies a need, that you're in need of comfort,
that there's some kind of pain or circumstance
you're going through that therefore you need
comfort. Israel was in need of consolation. Why
is that? Well, as you know from your Old Testament
history, hundreds of years ago they went into
exile, right? The Babylonians came in and they
took over Jerusalem and they sent them into exile.
Eventually they came back, but Jerusalem was
never the same since. You had the Babylonians
take over. You had the Persians take over. You
had the Greeks take over. And now, of course,
you have the Romans. Idolaters. You're being
ruled by foreign idolaters in the land of God,
God's holy land. So the end of the exile seems
like it had never come in truth. And the problem
that the people of Israel had is they read their
Old Testament. And as they're reading passages
of Isaiah and many of the prophets who are proclaiming
that God is going to make all things new. He's
going to liberate Israel. And they're going to
rule again and the temple will be built and it's
just going to be better than old times. And yet
they look around them. And the Romans are ruling.
The reality is not liberation. The reality is
oppression. They need a Messiah. And in fact,
in the first century, there were so many people
looking for Messiahs. In fact, many false Messiahs
came around at this time. And there were groups
gathered who were kind of anticipating a Messiah
in their own way. One of these groups were the
Pharisees. We're very familiar with the Pharisees,
right? As we said when we were a kid, the Pharisees
are not fair, you see. They believed that consolation
is going to come through self -discipline. Their
motto, God helps those who help themselves. Because
the Pharisees were all about the law. If there's
going to be consolation in Israel, it's going
to come through following the Torah. But they
were very concerned, not only that we follow
the Torah, but that we don't break any rule even
closely connected to the Torah. So they added
more rules to the Torah. Now, I don't know if
you've read your books of Leviticus and Exodus,
and you've looked at all the laws. There's already
plenty there, right? It seems like we're okay.
We've got enough. But they felt like there should
be more, so they added around 600 more that have
to do with ceremonial purity, like washing your
hands, things like that. maybe things like tithing,
they were very careful. We have to make sure
we follow the Torah. In fact, we have to put
all these guardrails up there with extra laws
so that we don't even get close to breaking any
of those laws. And if we are faithful enough
and we work hard enough and we are good enough,
then consolation will come. That's the Pharisees.
Jesus did not have all those great things to
say about the Pharisees. The other group were
the Sadducees, who were sad, you see. They believed
that consolation came through political maneuvering.
See, their motto was, God helps those who get
political. Because the Sadducees were often the
people who were in the high ranks of religious
society. Oftentimes high priests, or at least
on the Sanhedrin, priestly caste. And so these
were people who were getting political. Let's
try to maneuver with Rome and do things with
Rome and see if we can make this work in our
favor. They were the elite aristocrats, the high
priests who had political power. Okay, Pharisees,
Sadducees. Jesus didn't have very good words
for the Sadducees either. One group that we're
not as familiar with because we don't hear this
name in the Bible are the Essenes. And the Essenes
were kind of a unique group because they believed
that in order to get consolation, they had to
escape. They are the people who created what
we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, this
is the cave where those scrolls were found. And
they lived in the deserts. They kind of formed
their own unique community with their own rules
to escape everything else of what's going on
in town. And basically their belief was God helps
those who flee the world. If consolation is going
to come, we're just going to sit here and wait
for it. Was the idea. Right? We're not going
to go in town. We're not going to try to change
things. We're not going to get political. We're
not going to fight. We're going to escape. And
we're going to be in our little lifeboat here
in the desert waiting for the Messiah to come.
Okay. Fourth group. The zealots. We do encounter
these in scripture, right? Their view was consolation
comes through force. And their motto, God helps
those who are willing to fight. Because the zealots
had zeal. Zeal for the nation of Israel. Zeal
against the unlawful rule of Gentile rulers.
A revolt against Rome. That was their viewpoint.
Look, we can't just escape. We're not going to
get political because that doesn't work. Following
the law, okay, fine, but how is that really helping
us? Instead, we've got to go out there and fight.
Get up your swords. Let's go out and start an
insurrection. Of course, we encounter some zealots
in Scripture. One of the disciples was a zealot.
Do you remember who it was? Simon, right? And
of course, Jesus was crucified, and they let
go a zealot, probably, Barabbas, who was an insurrectionist.
So we have these four groups. And as Jesus is
born, these four groups are the ones who are
anticipating the Messiah largely. This is what
he's born into. The anticipation, the expectations
of the people of Israel were kind of like this.
And here is Jesus born into the first century
and Simeon holds him and is going to give a prophecy
about his expectations. And Simeon had very different
expectations. We see it in verse 29. He says,
Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may
now dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes
have seen your salvation, which you have prepared
in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation
to the Gentiles and the glory of your people
Israel. What was Simeon's expectations? What
was he looking for in a Messiah? Well, interestingly,
as you read through this prophecy, it connects
a lot to Isaiah. Especially the suffering servant
of Isaiah's prophecy of who this Messiah will
be. He talks about this Messiah delivering from
oppression. Of course, the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
the Zealots, the Essenes, they'd all be in favor
of this. They'd believe that. He also talked
about the establishment of righteousness and
justice. It's not just about freeing a nation.
So that they don't have foreign oppressors. It's
about bringing peace and righteousness and justice
to the earth. He talks about how this Messiah
will bear our iniquities. At least in the book
of Isaiah. So he's not just here to give us what
we want. He's here to give us what we need. That
is the rescue from sins. And he's going to be
a light to the nations. This Messiah is not just
here for Israel. He's here for the Gentiles as
well. He's here, in fact, for the nations. And
his kingdom is going to expand throughout this
whole earth. It's so much bigger than what these
first century groups were anticipating. As we
learn in the passage, Mary and Joseph are listening
to this. They hear this prophecy and they marveled,
we're told. If you were to look at their faces,
it would be like, you know, what? Our son? They've
already seen and heard so many wonderful things
during the birth of Jesus, right? With the shepherds
coming and the kings and all those things. And
now Simeon gives this amazing prophecy. And as
they're marveling, Simeon's not finished yet.
And we're told he looks specifically at Mary.
And here's what he says. It's not all good news.
The child's father and mother marveled at what
was said to him. Then Simeon blessed them and
said to Mary, his mother, This child is destined
to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel,
to be a sign that will be spoken against so that
the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed,
and a sword will pierce your own soul too. Up
to this point, it was really good news. And everybody
could get on board with that kind of Messiah,
right? But here now, we have this prophecy that
turns into a little bit of a negative. Kind of
counter expectations that something is going
to happen with this Messiah. He's going to be
rejected by his own. Of course, Isaiah prophesied
this, right? Despised and forsaken of men. And
he looks specifically at Mary, which I find quite
interesting. Why Mary? You know, if you're a
mother, I think you kind of understand this a
little more. Here's your baby boy. And this is
going to be a Messiah and you have such high
hopes for him. But Simeon's kind of warning her
of what's to come. There's going to be an end
that's going to be a bit shocking. People are
not going to all follow him just simply because
he's the Messiah. He's going to be rejected.
But most significantly, Mary, a sword is going
to pierce your own soul too. Who knows what that
means? It could mean something about her own
relationship with her son and whether she believes
and how that goes about. But most likely, it
refers to Mary standing before the cross as her
own son is brutally tortured and killed. That's
hard for anybody. Imagine your own son and having
to watch that at the foot of a cross. And of
course, Simeon is also telling us that there's
going to have to be a response. The Messiah doesn't
just come and make everything great and everybody's
happy. He comes and brings what we need, and
that means there's going to be a response on
our behalf. We have to respond to this, and not
all of us will respond well. It will cause the
rising and the falling of many. See, Jesus doesn't
come to meet our expectations. He doesn't come
to conform to our expectations. He challenges
what we think we need and offers what we truly
need. And isn't this why Israel rejected him
in the end? If you think about the life, Jesus
had these followers and people who were with
him, but at the end they turned their backs on
him and they yell out, crucify, crucify. This
isn't the Messiah we signed up for. He's not
meeting our expectations. He's supposed to just
kind of come in as a king and take over Rome,
but instead he's talking about sins and he's
going to a cross. It reminds us of Isaiah where
Isaiah talks about the stone metaphor. Remember
the cornerstone? You can stumble over that stone
or it can be the corner of your house, of your
building. What's your choice? So the question
for us today is, who is your Messiah? You know,
in the first century, these different groups
were expecting a Messiah. They had read Isaiah.
They knew Isaiah frontwards and backwards. What
happened? How could their expectations be so
skewed? They perceived the Messiah through a
nationalistic lens, that God is going to send
a Messiah to deliver them from Roman oppression,
to free them from political aggression so that
they can live in freedom in their land. And God
had a bigger purpose. A more significant role
of not just giving them freedom in their land.
Hey, that's great. But there has to be a deeper
problem that's resolved. The problem of sin.
And they miss that. Well, what about us? We have
the advantage of the New Testament. We come to
church. We talk about the Messiah all the time.
We think we're different from these groups. We
have the right Messiah. We understand scripture
well. And maybe we do. But just like the people
of the first century, cultures can skew our expectations
of the Messiah. For some of us, we grew up in
cultures where we were looking for a therapeutic
Messiah. A Messiah that will make us feel happy
and good about ourselves. So that when trials
come in our life, we kind of look around and
say, what happened? Where's God? I thought he
was here to make my life better. For some of
us, we're looking for an on -call Messiah. We
can go about our lives on our own, and we're
perfectly fine until something happens in life
we can't control. Sickness, a death, loss of
work, no income, the list goes on. And then suddenly
we're on our knees crying out, Lord, where are
you? Please help me. Have you been there? That's
me. I'm sufficient in myself. I can kind of make
this happen. It seems like life is going well
until it doesn't, and then I'm on my knees crying
out to the Lord. Just remember the last time
you were sick, right? And the problem with these
messiahs is they're all focused on me. God's
there for me. Or we think we can control God.
We expect God to meet our expectations to do
what we want. And what Simeon and Isaiah remind
us is this isn't about us and we don't control
God. He is saving the cosmos and we fit into
his plan. Isn't this the value of living in a
different country for many of you? I assume many
of you live here and you've maybe traveled the
world and you've seen different things. At least
I have. And it kind of reminds me that God is
not American. Can you believe it? And sometimes
you get that perspective when you're just stuck
in one spot. You just think, okay, I think I
got a grasp of what God wants. And then he kind
of conforms to those expectations. But when you
travel, it broadens your perspective and you
realize, oh, God's doing a lot of things I didn't
even understand. And it humbles me. I don't have
the answers like I used to when I was 20. Travel
adjusts our expectations. It removes our provincialism.
It gives us a bigger picture of what God's doing.
Reminds us that God is a light not only to the
nation of Israel, not only to America or Thailand,
but to the whole world. But secondly, we don't
control him. He confronts us and he demands a
response. And to tell you the truth, the reason
I'm giving this sermon today is because this
is what I struggle with. It's a feeling of like
I have control of my life and I expect God to
meet those expectations. I can kind of maneuver
him to do what I need him to do. Let me give
you a story about this. We've lived in Asia for
20 years. Our very first year we moved to Asia,
2004, we adopted a child. As soon as I say that,
it already gives you a lot of information about
the expectations that were already unfulfilled
in our lives for me and my wife, Karen. When
you're young and you're 20 and you get married,
what are your expectations? We're going to have
children. So for 10 years, we struggled with
infertility. We met with doctors. We had no answers.
We finally realized, okay, well, maybe this isn't
for us. We moved to Singapore and we thought,
let's do adoption. So in 2004, we adopted our
baby girl, Ella Grace, or Cheng Jing Ying, who
is Chinese, born in Taiwan. And she was three
months old. And from the start of when we first
put in our paperwork to adopt Ella to the time
we picked her up, it took three months. I don't
know if any of you are involved in adoption,
especially international adoption, but that is
remarkably fast. It usually takes one or two
years at least for paperwork to be processed
and where you can actually pick up a child. So
our baby daughter was very young. She was only
three months old. So we were able to go to Taiwan.
That's a picture of me holding her for the very
first time. And the joy of that overwhelmed those
expectations I had of having my own children.
Like if you've had adoption, it's like a whole
unique, amazing experience. I wouldn't trade
it for anything. And so like God fulfilled our
expectations in ways we didn't even expect. But
that's not the end of the story. You see, our
expectation was to have several children. So
we adopted Ella. It took only three months, as
I said. She graduated actually just this year.
She's 22 years old. She just graduated from college,
so she's now a little bit older. But after about
a year, we decided let's try for a second. So
what we did is we went to the same orphanage
in Taiwan. We figured it only took three months
the first time. This is going to be really fast.
You know where this is going, don't you? We send
in our paperwork. And the paperwork comes in.
We get the response, okay, now we're waiting.
Three months goes by. We're thinking it should
be any day now. Of course, it takes four months,
five months, no response. About six months, we
go back to the orphanage. We say, did you get
our paperwork? Is everything okay? Yup, yup,
it's just things are slower now. You might have
to wait longer. Okay. Well, the year goes by.
And about that time, our school decided to move
from Singapore to Chiang Mai. So we moved to
Thailand. which means we have to get all of our
paperwork renewed, we have to pay all the expenses,
we have to do home studies, we send in all the
revised paperwork. Okay, it should be any moment
now. Another year goes by. Another year goes
by. In the meantime, my daughter is like four
or five years old, and every night I sit with
her at bed and we pray for her baby sister, that
she would come soon. We prayed that way for years.
After six years, We finally decided God doesn't
have this for us. That's painful. Now let's process
this for a moment. Does God love families? Does
he want us to have children? Does he love adoption?
He adopted us as his children. There are so many
kids out there who don't have good homes. We
want to bring a child into our home. Doesn't
God want that? So what happened? Why didn't God
meet this expectation? You know what? I don't
have an answer for you. And that's the point.
I don't control him. And this is the value, the
power of this passage, because if you look at
this passage again, he's not my Messiah. He's
not your Messiah. According to Isaiah, whose
Messiah is he? Look at your passage. He's the
Lord's Messiah. God sent him for his purposes,
to do his purposes, to meet what he wants to
do in this world. It's not about me. You know
what I need to do? Is trust him. I wish I had
a second. Honestly, I really do. And it's hard
for me even sharing this today, after all these
years. But I trust him. I trust him that he knows
what he's doing. I trust that he knows what is
good and he's doing what's good in my life. And
I trust and surrender to his will. That's hard
to do, isn't it? And I pray for you if you're
going through something like that, that today
would be that day of trust and surrender. Heavenly
Father, this is hard to speak about. These are
not easy things. Really hits at the core of life
and the struggles that we face in life and how
it is that we walk by faith because when things
don't happen as we expect, especially big things,
we wonder where you are and what you're doing.
And what a great reminder today that your Messiah
is doing things even bigger than we expect, that
we can trust you, that you know what is good,
you know what is perfect. We surrender. Amen.
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you.