crazy friends are handy too. I think about the people in your life that you might call your crazy friend and think about the time for you but the situations where you are glad they will miss you. Just crazy people can come up with some stuff can't they? Some people also realize this we're talking about that.
Do you have a crazy friend? We also need to realize some of us might be the crazy friend. I know the situations are for that description. But the thing about it is that it comes valuable.
Crazy people have the nerve to risk things. Crazy people are scared of change. They're totally cool with moving forward. They're totally cool but not knowing what's going on.
I don't have to improvise with a situation. Crazy people, good crazy people. They're not having all the details but just ranting it out. They believe in crazy things.
They look forward to crazy things. Sometimes they're convinced of things that none of us will actually believe in our right mind. They run towards things that a movie scared of. They have a completely different expectation of outcomes.
Crazy people expect to experience life differently. They're all right with that. And I love when I run into crazy people in Scripture. The crazy people we find in Scripture are directing gospel, misfits, and troublemakers.
And just stuff happens around them. And this morning in the next couple weeks we're going to look at a couple of stories of Jesus' early lives, his early days. Like today our passage comes up literally right after the shepherd's. We're starting out with eight-day old Jesus here.
Of what Mary and Joseph run into a couple of crazy people in a situation. We're going to look at what we can learn from these crazy people in a situation. This way it helps us start 2018 on the break. What this message of beginnings is like for us.
The crazy people in Scripture tend to teach us a lesson about expectation, then a lesson about experience. Open your Bible with me. We've checked two of you. The big strain behind me.
You can use your Bible like I'm doing. But listen to the word of Scripture. Glue chapter 2 verse 22. And there's time for the purification offering is required by the both who is after the birth of a child.
So his parents, that is very gentle. Took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says the most first child is the way he must be dedicated to the Lord. So they offer the sacrifice required in the law of the Lord.
Either a pair of turtle doves or two gums. So we've got a setting here. Mary and Joseph are being diligent to Jewish people and they're feared to dedicate Jesus to God. Think of the irony that first one.
This is typically 40 days after a child was born. They take him to the temple to be dedicated offering his maid. But this is a different thing. This is the center of religious life for Jewish people.
You've ever been to Jerusalem or used to lay with the wall. I don't understand what's going on with the same. But this is what's left of this wall. This temple.
They're actually in three temples. I want to picture what this looks like. The first temple saw a window that way back a thousand years before this. And the first temple was around the size of football.
Okay, it's like you found it. We've been talking about building churches. The last thing I want to think about right now is building something that's not a football thing. Like ain't nobody gonna talk as much of that right now.
But the battle is came in and tore down that temple. And then 70 years later, if you guys could have like Israel and the Amai and come back and rebuild, the temple just talks to Rubik. So it was a Rubai was temple. So that's five times for the best.
And it was about the same size that everyone like the scholars were in the Bible talks. It was just not nearly as cool. It was not nearly as good. Like if there was, I don't know what the Hebrew word for magic was, but it might so so this is this day for a few hundred years.
And then that we got to wind down again. And then you have Herod the Greg who comes in about 60 years before Jesus. I take about a hundred, about 75 years to build this temple. And it's a war for the whole temple.
It was roughly a fifth of the entire city of Jerusalem at that time. So every good Jewish person comes in to make their offering to redeem their firstborn child. They believe also this is where God's presence and literally was. That this is where God developed.
It got sacked in the heavens and in the earth was a split stool and the temple was as automated as he was propped of laws. He's way too strong. That we, that Jesus was there. So Mary and Joseph come to dedicate Jesus.
That temple was a place where humans in the divine could interact. So here to make their sacrifice. And just think about that, you were a dean of Jesus. He's very spiritual.
And you know, very Joseph, they couldn't know what Jesus was too. But they were getting a bolt over their eyes. Like, there's still in the middle of every single thing that's happened to be. Maybe Joseph's a little crazy in them too.
I mean, you have to do it to go through this. So think about it. But here they are, four days after Jesus was born. Four days after the show.
And they're here to dedicate Jesus as their firstborn. To buy him back from God's actual, what's happened? To buy him back with two gods or two pigeons. And while they're there, they need some grace and grace.
There's 25 of them. At that time, there was a manager of Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and without, was usually waiting for the side of common rescue his return. The Holy Spirit was calling him and he revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
That day spirit led him to the temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord, as the Lord acquired, Simeon was there. He took the child and his arms and braised God, saying, Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in Jesus as he promised. I have seen your salvation when she was prepared for all people.
He is a light to reveal God to the nations. And he is the glory of your people, Israel. And Jesus' parents were amazed at what was being said about. Then Simeon blessed him.
And he said, the Mary, the baby's brother, his child is destined to call him in Israel at the fall. But he will be a joy to many others. He is the same as the sign from God, but many will oppose him as a result of the deepest thoughts of many hearts we reveal as soul will be here, so very soul. So there's also stuff going on in temple geography.
So we're familiar with everything kind of forward in the story of Jesus. Jesus like overturns the tables and this sort of thing. Like a temple had very inquisives where people could go and where anybody could go. So the front door is called like the core of the gentiles.
Anybody could go in there. So when Jesus returns tables over and it's bad, the money changers and stuff, it's happening in the temple. The temple where it sits in Jerusalem is interesting because this discord of the gentiles almost like a cut through. If you want to get a shortcut across town, you go to the temple and you cut through the core of gentiles.
Does anybody get a good go there? No matter what you believe in religion, if you're a man or if you're a child or not a child, it's not that it's a shell station that changes your world where they seem to have the two steel habeams up. So you can't cut into the parking lot, you don't go, but that's what happened in the court of the gentiles. And it's like seeming to sitting there and waiting for it.
That's all this happens before the sacrifices made. Like Mary, exactly the core of the gentiles, there's the place where people who were Hebrew women could go and then deeper in the place where Hebrew men can go and make the sacrifices and deeper into the priests could go. This is the front door where they get mobbed by some crazy old man who like baby nasties. I thought to read this all week long, I think it was prophecy, it was like the lion king, he's holding him up and saying it was a sovereign ward.
It's all like scripture tell us how the language here is old old. I'm going to about that night in the beginning of Jones in the last crusade. You're talking about it because 800 years old, what is this argument? Look, everybody had a talk about him.
Like, you can see that guy's an agent at 200 years? I mean, I'm sorry for themselves how old he was. He's old beyond old and old beyond old. And he's grabbing his name and saying things.
My mom's looking to do some crazy, like super super old guy that grabbed a baby and started saying, my uncle's going to get married. But this is what we can infer about scripture we're singing. Just for these few verses. He was the fountain.
He sees the big picture. This promise got something wrong. You're going to stay with this earth until you imagine what had to happen in his life and get to that place. He's not just a random guy who got pulled in that.
Everything we have in scripture by Simeon, we see that he is a faceful son. He is a mature disciple. He is a mature, a mature, age, a mature, and wisdom and spirituality is mature. And Simeon deeply believes in redemption and that he is expected.
So all of this is going on and then they meet yet another crazy person. We pick her up in verse 36. This is a anum, a prophet. Was also there in the temple.
She was a daughter, a fanny well from the tribe of Asher and she was very old. Her husband died and they've been married only seven years. Then she lived the widow to the age of 84. She never left the temple to stay there day at night where she was God but fasted in prayer.
And so she came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expected for God to rescue Jerusalem. Waiting and then for God to rescue Jerusalem. A couple of things went on.
She overhears this. That's it. She's just like in there. And she over years old since she's been living in the temple for 40, 40 years.
Fastened for eggs. So in that second layer where women could go she just camped out for 80, 40 years. If you do like the math was wild is that that temple had only been there for 60 years. So she had been worshiped and fasting for eight or a week and the brotherly of the temple was a riverbella around 20 years before that.
Do you want to live in old burnout building? What do you imagine would happen with that? Well just because telling everyone's ghosted. Taking on a call on a van.
Everyone they see she's telling about what she has seen, what's happening in her. But her face shows exemplary faithfulness and short hair of faith. She's very Joseph and Simeon and Anna. They all had a little bit different of the same going on with them.
All beyond the ordinary. They all had a little bit of good crazy. But the lesson that she's just what we want to think about for a moment is that they were expecting experience. They were expecting to experience God in three different ways.
And three ways all of us can learn from. All of us can think about it for Sunday. The first thing we're very Joseph is pretty simple. They are coming to do what their people have done for hundreds of years.
Now what's happening is we want to start something new. We want to jump off into new things. We're going to ride off into this old. But what we see them doing is like this is what our people have done for hundreds of years.
This is what we do. This is where we are going. We're engaging our faith is our fathers who gauge our faith is their fathers engage their faith is their father engages their faith. Sometimes we respect them.
It means that we trust others. We trust other stories. We trust where they would trust how they can handle things down to us. For us to be expected followers of Jesus means that we realize that we are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.
They were the first person that I've talked to you about Jesus. They are told you about that grandparent. That's Sunday school teacher. That person that you were in church with when you were a kid or somebody who ever you were standing on in church you were here.
You believe in Jesus because they believe in Jesus. You're here because somebody else. But then also they came to the temple where God's people did this. This is interesting like this is where God is where they thought.
And the Keltic Christianity is really interesting. The Romans got to the British Isles in the 2nd century and they were there for a few hundred years and they got to receive it back. But they had brought Christianity with them. So for five or six hundred years around 800 AD, 1300 AD, you see this really interesting form of Christianity developed isolated in the British Isles and Wales and Ireland.
It's the Keltic Christianity. It's fantastic for many things. But one of my favorite parts about this idea of Keltic Christianity is they have this theology of thin spaces. They believe that the distance between heaven and earth is free to do.
But these thin spaces that that distance has been showing that heaven and the kingdom of God breaks into reality in certain places. And it's not there because it's magical or it's mumbo jumbo and it's there because God's people have prayed and have worshipped and have sought after him spaces for hundreds of years. There's just something special about that place. Not as a seminary.
I was privileged to lead the chapel team. It has been four years of designing and reading and running worship for about a thousand people a week. And we were in this sanctuary and there for 50 years. And I'll tell you what, it was weird because this is the way to my office.
But you never walked in the door to that place without knowing something special about it. A friend of mine was called at the lake of the Holy Spirit. I often wondered, even found her, we stand on the shoulders of our friends at Fairbanks down the road worship in this room for three and a half years before we were here. We've been here for two and a half years.
What is special? What is special? What is different about this room right now? It's had seven years of church and worship.
Pray here and talk about agencies. It's a very public space. We stand on the shoulders of others. Expecting to experience God means that we realize what has happened for us and how we are part of something much better than us.
A much bigger share. Simeon comes in his body. What would you have God said if you're not going to die until you see something? Now for some of us that were younger than I could go.
For some of us that are older than I could go. That might be like my hand. God doesn't say that you're at least be great the whole time. I'm 37.
My knee is shut. The Simeon says, God told me to somehow believe it. But not only am I going to believe it, but I'm going to believe it and do it proactively. He's here to tell me.
I imagine he went to Temple that day that he's in random area just because he's with the Temple every day. Scripture tells us that he was righteous. That he was the path that he was following him deeply after God. God calls up people.
But he also calls us as a divisionist apart of his archer mission. Simeon, all these words that he said had to be true. He said, everything that he was going to do. He realized that God kept him alive to see this so he could testify to others and for others about what is going on.
Some use very public language. He's making sure everyone knows that this baby, this one redemption of the whole world, the entire world, not just one person. The people we're expecting to experience God is seed of self as part of the biggest. The last person, Anna.
And it just comes in this whole situation and says, I'm just going to posture myself in the presence of God. I want to go live in this place. I'm going to pray. I want to fast.
I want to do just whatever it takes to just surround myself with the environment that God is in. I'm going to set myself up so God can decrease my vision in the world and can increase his vision. And respecting means to expect to experience God because we realize that we're in his space and we're doing his thing. We're not forcing God to live inside of our boundaries, but we're willfully placing ourselves with what he has done.
For instance, self limit yourself. The times I know that I've been frustrated, I've had the most agony of what's going on in my life. It's going on in my spiritual life where I see God's not doing his everything that I think he should be doing. More often, I'm not the over again.
The more I realize I'm just trying to put him in my box that I'm self limited. What he's trying to do because my mind is just not big enough to contain. He has going on. Jesus is doing big things all around us.
He's praying. How he's very poor. Poor after presence on us gathered here is this bread juice. But that be for us, the body blood of Christ that we may be through the whole body.
I try to do him by his blood, by your spirit, make us one with each other and one to all the world. So your son Jesus comes. Final thing, community. Feast together.