The transcript of A Sermon on Luke 2:36-38 has been lightly edited.
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So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the Gospel of Luke. We are continuing to look at some of the peripheral people of the Christmas story. We looked at Simeon last week. This week we’re going to consider Anna and her message.
If you’re following along in the Pew Bible, we’re on page 993. And if you’re following along in the Pew Bible because you do not have a Bible of your own, please feel free to take the Pew Bible home with you. We have extras just for that very purpose.
So we are beginning today in Luke 2, verse 36:
And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was 84. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Let’s pray. Father, we are dependent upon You. We are dependent upon You for life. We are dependent upon the Son for salvation, and we are dependent upon the Spirit. To be able to understand these words that You have given to us. And so, Lord, I ask for myself that Your Spirit would be with me as I seek to explain and to teach from this passage. And I pray that Your Spirit would be with all of us, so that the words that we hear might change us to make us more like Christ. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So, have you ever thought and asked yourself the question, how dependent am I? You know, we are very proud, I guess if I can use that word, of our founding documents and that the foundational founding document is a Declaration of Independence. We don’t need nobody.
But as we progress in this life, as we age, as we deal with diagnoses and doctor’s appointments and things like that, we begin to discover that our life is marked by dependence rather than independence. We need each other.
No human being is an island unto himself. Even the hermit out in the woods eventually has to gain sustenance or help from other people within the community. But as we interact with this idea of dependence upon others, we learn something else: That we are utterly dependent upon God for life, for salvation, for sanctification, for our future glorification.
And today as we look at Anna, that’s part of what we will see. We will see that Anna spent much of her life dependent upon God. She was married and for seven years was reliant and dependent upon her husband. In that context, you were dependent upon the men in the family for your sustenance, for everything. And yet we’re told that she became a widow after seven years of marriage and then she became dependent upon the community.
And in that time, whether it was 84 years from the time she became a widow or a total of 84 years in her life, the number really doesn’t matter, she learned to be dependent upon God.
And in this dependence upon God, she learned to wait. She learned to wait for redemption. And she learned to proclaim in a prophetic way the redemption that was coming and has come from God. And in the life of Anna, I want us to see that comfort and redemption come to us through Christ and through Christ alone.
WAITING…
Well, first, the theme of waiting. We saw earlier in the life of Simeon that he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. And Anna is waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. We see in the last line of verse 38 that “she went and proclaimed the good news that she had met Jesus to those who were waiting for the redemption of Israel.”
And we’re led to assume that she was one of those who was waiting for that redemption. We’re told that Anna came from the tribe of Asher, which for you and I, we just kind of read over that as an identifier, but for the Israelite who would have originally been reading to this, this was a clue that something important was getting ready to happen. Asher was in that northern territory of Israel after Israel split into the southern tribes and the northern tribes.
Asher was part of that northern kingdom. And when Assyria finally defeated that northern kingdom and took them off, the tribes were lost. We know that Judah came back from their exile in Babylon, but those northern tribes were lost.
And here we have a clue that something big is getting ready to happen in the nation of Israel because here is somebody from the tribe of Asher in the temple waiting for something to happen.
Well, how did Anna wait? How do you and I wait when we’re waiting for something important? Maybe we’re sitting there biting our fingernails, anxiously waiting for something to happen. Maybe we’re nervously pacing back and forth in the living room or on the sidewalk or in the waiting room at the hospital.
Maybe we’re anxious in our waiting, but Anna was active in her waiting. And how was she active? Well, first, she was worshiping. She showed her dependence upon God, her waiting upon God by being in the temple and worshiping.
What do you and I think of when we think of worshiping? Many churches today in the American context have what they call worship leaders. And what do those worship leaders do? They typically lead the singing, don’t they? We have a very narrow view of what worship is. We think worship is merely just singing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs.
But the word worship literally means to serve. We serve the Lord. Yes, we serve the Lord through our singing and we lift our praises to Him through our singing.
But we have a call to worship at the beginning of the service, and we have a benediction that signals the end of the worship service. All that we do when we gather here at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning from the call to worship to the benediction is worship. But that service goes beyond the hour that we gather here.
It goes into all of our lives. We should be serving and worshiping God in everything that we do. And in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says, “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.”
Why did he say whether you eat or drink? How many of you are going to miss a meal? We’re going to talk about that here in a few minutes. It’s something we do every day, isn’t it? Many times we do it without even thinking about it beyond the question what am I going to fix today? It’s a boring, repetitive thing that we do every day, day in and day out of our lives. And Paul says even those boring, repetitive things that you do day in and day out in your lives are to be done as acts of worship to God.
Hopefully, we all brushed our teeth this morning. Do you brush your teeth to the glory of God? You’re like, “Ike, how do I brush my teeth to the glory of God?” God gave you teeth. And you take care of them. And you take care of them because you’re seeking to worship Him and to glorify Him.
And Anna showed her waiting upon God through living a life of worship. She also showed her waiting on God through prayer. We look through the Bible. We go to Matthew 6 and we see the Lord’s Prayer which helps to teach us to pray. To worship God. To adore Him. To pray that His will will come upon this earth through men and women coming to faith in Christ.
We can go to the Psalms and we can learn how to pray psalms of praise. We can learn to pray prayers of lament. Everything from the darkest of prayers to the highest of prayers. We find in the Psalms to teach us to pray.
But do we pray as an act of waiting and dependence upon God? How many of us are waiting on diagnoses? How many of us are waiting to hear from a family member? How many of us are waiting to know when is God going to fix whatever situation I’m in right now?
And it’s real easy. It’s real tempting to think, “Ok, I prayed for it a week and a half ago so God, why haven’t You shown up?” For most of her 84 years of life, Anna was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem, the redemption of Israel, and how did she wait? She waited by praying over and over, “Lord, will You send Your redemption to Israel?”
But she also waited by fasting. Now fasting is a word that literally means to go without food. But we don’t only fast food. We don’t only fast from food. Sometimes I do fast food too much.
We don’t only fast from food. We can fast from other things. But in the Old Testament, when fasting was done, it was typically done for one of three things.
It was done to express mourning. The loss of a loved one. The loss of a way of life.
The loss of whatever that caused you extreme grief. Oftentimes people would fast before the Lord in order to express that grief to God.
People fasted as an act of submission to God. What did God reveal in Deuteronomy that Jesus repeated in Matthew 4? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so in the Old Testament, they would fast to show that they were submitting to the Word of God.
And then putting those two things together in the Old Testament, they would fast as an act of repentance. Think about Nineveh. Jonah goes. He doesn’t want to be there. But Jonah goes and he declares, “Repent, for the Lord is going to destroy Nineveh in 40 days. And part of their repentance is the calling of a corporate fast in the city.
And those are some of the reasons why we might fast today as well. We might fast because we’re mourning the loss of something or someone important. We might fast to show that we are submitting to God. We might fast to show that we are repentant over sins that God has brought into our life.
But fasting here is part of her act of waiting in dependence upon the Lord. Sometimes we fast for medical reasons, don’t we? We have a procedure coming up in the morning and so that or we’re having blood drawn in the morning. And so we have to stop eating 12 to 16 hours before we’re having that procedure or that blood drawn.
That’s not a good time. You want to run into me, by the way. I hate having blood drawn anyway, but then I’m hungry on top of it.
It just doesn’t work out. But you realize within those 12 to 16 hours that you haven’t eaten, that suddenly you’re really dependent on things outside of yourself. We’re dependent upon Kroger or IGA or Walmart having stocked shelves on a regular basis.
We are dependent upon the stove or the microwave or the oven working when we go to turn the switch. Well, fasting also teaches us when we undertake fasting as a spiritual exercise, it really teaches us that we are dependent upon what God has revealed to us.
And I would encourage you to consider fasting on at least an occasional basis. I know when I have been seeking wisdom or when I have been repentant or when I have been wondering what is going to be the next sermon series, there are times when I have said, “Ok, I’m going to give up these meals this day and when the tummy rumbles, when the stomach rumbles, I’m going to go to God and say, Lord, I’m dependent upon You. I’m hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I want to want and love and know You as much as I want that cookie in the jar over there.”
We don’t do this as an act to obligate God to say, “Ok, if I fast every Friday for the next year, then God owes me X number of things.” If that’s the reason you’re fasting, you’re doing it wrong. But there are times when we should go to God in an act of dependence that helps our prayers, that helps us to understand that we need God far more than we need whatever it is that we have given up.
We need God for salvation. We need God for daily life. We need God for the decisions we make. And fasting helps us with that.
As I mentioned, it doesn’t have to be food. Some of us should not fast from food. But I’ll also tell you, fasting from coffee, you’ll learn real quick what you’re dependent on as well. Sugar, you’ll learn real quick what you’re dependent upon as well. Fill in the blank with whatever it is that you think God might be calling you to fast from.
And start small. Start with one meal or one cup of coffee or one cookie. And then as God leads you and guides you through this, you can grow it from there.
…FOR THE REDEMPTION.
So Anna spent her time waiting in dependence upon God. Well, what was she waiting for? It says here that she was waiting for redemption. The last line of the verse, all who were waiting for redemption.
Redemption has two aspects that we want to cover today. The first is the release from an obligation. In Numbers 18, v. 16, the people of Israel are given a payment that they could pay at the temple that the firstborn was redeemed.
God claimed the firstborn of every family. And in order to redeem that firstborn, you took the payment to the temple to remove the obligation from yourself. God also accepted the tribe of Levi as the payment for the obligation of the rest of the people for their service to God. The tribe of Levi served full time and the rest of Israel was redeemed from their obligation to serve full time in the temple by the service of Levi.
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, forgive us our debts. We owe God an obligation for our sin. We owe Him a debt. And somebody has to pay that debt. Either we have to pay it, or our Savior pays it on our behalf. We are released from the obligation of that debt.
But the other aspect of redemption that they were waiting for was the removal, the liberation from an oppressive yoke. Matthew 11, v. 28-30
“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Too many of us try to fulfill our obligation to God through the yoke of the law. And the yoke of the law will do nothing but pin you to the ground to where you cannot move, because we cannot bear the weight of the law.
And Jesus says, “I will take the yoke of the law from you, and I will give you the yoke of grace. You will serve Me. You will be guided by Me and My Spirit. You will be made holy by My work.” Yes, there’s still that yoke, but it’s no longer an oppressive yoke that only brings judgment and destruction.
Jesus, if we come to Him, if we follow Him, if we surrender to Him and wait in dependence upon Him, He gives us a light yoke because He has taken the impossible weight of the yoke of the law upon Himself.
ANNA SPEAKS
So Anna waited in dependence upon the redemption. And then she spoke.
Now, I’m not going to go into the prophetess word there. I covered this back in May and there’s a sermon online that you can listen to. But I want us to see why she was called a prophetess.
It’s because she proclaimed. Verse 38 again.
“And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
You know, sometimes we pursue titles without doing the work. And the work of prophecy in this context is telling other people about Jesus. That’s what Anna did.
She went out from that place and she said, “I have seen what and who God is going to use to bring redemption to Israel.” And that is what we are called to do as well. That’s part of what Christmas is.
We are called to tell people, “I have found redemption. I have found a Savior who took the law and the penalty for the law and the punishment for sin upon Himself so that I might have life, so that I might have grace, so that I might live forever in the glorious presence of God.”
Do you know the Gospel? Scriptures to back up the Gospel. And do you know how to talk about the Gospel? Many times it comes down to answering for yourself three questions. Number one, what has Jesus done for me? What did Jesus do for me? Well, He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross.
He rose again so that I might have salvation and grace. That’s question number one. What did Jesus do for me?
Question number two, or what is Jesus doing for me? So Jesus saved you in the past. Do we still wrestle with sin? Do we still wrestle with darkness? Do we still wrestle with guilt? Do we still wrestle with shame? Where is Jesus meeting you right now in those things?
And number three, what will Jesus do for me? What did Jesus do? What is Jesus doing? And what will Jesus do for me? We live in a hopeless world. We live in a world that’s chasing hope in things that will perish. Drugs, alcohol, sex, relationships, other people.
Those things are all going to perish and they’re all going to kill us. And yet, you and I have the hope that light came into the world in the form of a child. So if you know the Gospel and you know the answer to those three questions, you can be like Anna and proclaim the redemption that has come into this world.
CONCLUSION
Anna’s waiting. Anna’s dependence upon redemption and Anna’s prophetic word tell us that comfort and redemption come through Christ and Christ alone. Where were Anna and Simeon when they met Jesus? They were in the temple, weren’t they? Shouldn’t consolation and redemption come through the temple? Isn’t that where God said My redemption will come? Isn’t that where God said My comfort will be found? Comfort cannot be found in keeping the law.
The temple, the law, and the sacrificial system pointed forward to that baby that was there in the arms of Simeon, Anna, Mary, and Joseph. Redemption comes through Christ and Christ alone. And we spend too much time trying to impress God with our ability to keep His rules.
God is not impressed with our lawkeeping. God is impressed with Jesus. And when we believe in Him, He is impressed with us in Him.
Let’s pray. Father, we do thank You for this reminder that we are utterly dependent upon You for all things. Lead us to rest and to wait for You well.
I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
BENEDICTION
As we go this week, take this blessing upon you.
“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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