If you can turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 2, and we will be looking at verses 21 through 38, but I'm just going to be reading the first four verses for the sake of time. Again I encourage you as I put up the passage that we're going to be going over on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, I just encourage you to at least take a look at it, look over the questions so that you'll know what we'll be covering and I think you'll be able to understand better because the text art we're looking at is not just two or three verses so it'll be easier if you kind of had some idea of what's going on in the text.

So I encourage you to do that Saturday before you come. Luke chapter 2 verse 21 to 24, "And when eight days had passed before his circumcision, his name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

As it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons." Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray for your blessing. We pray that you would guide us and lead us and lead us into a deeper understanding of why these holy scriptures have these events and things, Lord God, in here for us. Help us to glean what you have intended and to mold our hearts, our thoughts, our hopes completely upon your desires and upon Christ.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I think we all know that whatever it is that you are coveting changes how you behave and how you live and how you spend your money. It kind of shows what we long for, what we value. If you are waiting for something that's important, you will adjust your life, spending, habits so that you can eagerly wait for that.

If you have a trip in mind that you really, really desire to go, you're saving money, maybe you're saving points, looking at airlines and hotels and saving up your vacation time and planning for whatever needs to be taken care of so that you can be gone for that period.

Whatever we have in our hearts that we're longing for, it changes our behavior, changes how we spend money, changes how we spend our time. We go through different phases of this when we're young. Maybe a toy or something promised at Christmas. We get older, we want to get our driver's license or get a car because it means freedom for us.

Then you get obsessed about that or you want a certain job or maybe you want to get married, maybe you're praying to have children. Whatever it is, it causes you to change your behavior because whatever is in our heart eventually gets played out in our life. When I was thinking about this, it automatically took me back before I met Christ.

Me and my friends, we decided that we want to make the baseball team at Burbank High School. We spent a whole year practicing. I wanted to be an outfielder. I had a friend who wanted to be a catcher. We had another guy who wanted to shortstop. We all took turns.

If it was my turn to practice, I would stand outside and these guys would hit me like a thousand balls just outside. I would learn to chase it down. They would deliberately hit it far from me so I would see how much distance I can cover. Probably the same shot, thousands of times that summer.

Then it was time for shortstop and we would just take turns just hitting it as hard as we can in different places. The guy who was trying out for shortstop would run and try to get it and see how much space he can cover. Our catcher, he was there.

We just threw it in the ground, threw it on the side, threw it as hard as we could and see how much of space he could cover, what kind of balls that he can catch. We probably spent that whole year, every opportunity we got, we got out in the Burbank baseball field because that's where the tryouts would be.

Probably at least a year, maybe more than that, just preparing ourselves to join this baseball team. As I mentioned before, right in the middle of that tryout, I ended up going to a retreat and I became a Christian. You just completely, it's not that I lost interest in baseball.

It's just what I coveted, I coveted more to be able to be at that Bible study that they were having on Friday than I did baseball. All of a sudden, all that time and effort that I spent to try to get on this team, it just didn't seem as important.

I just didn't want to miss what was happening on Friday nights and the prayer meetings that they had. Again, I share all that because that's the first thing I think of. What is something that I poured all my energy and thought and because I wanted that so bad and I can't think of anything else that I put that kind of devotion to.

And then to have it just instantaneously, my value changed overnight when I met Christ. I know a lot of you, and I'm not saying there's anything bad, innately wrong about baseball itself, it's just that I just put so much time and effort to prepare for that. All of a sudden, it just didn't seem as important.

It just seemed like a silly game, whether I made the team or not made the team. I'm not sure if I would have made the team because the Burbank High School baseball team was a really good baseball team at that time. And among my friends, the catcher made the team.

And he was good enough where he was in the varsity when he was in 10th grade. And so we kind of lived our life vicariously through him. So I'm not sure if I would have made the team anyway, but I just remember very vividly when my heart and my desire changed, how much that changed the trajectory of what was important, what wasn't important.

I say all of this because as Christians, we are to eagerly wait and long for the coming of Christ more than anything else. And from time to time, we have to ask ourselves, how much of our longing for Christ is affecting your daily life today? Now I know you're here at church on Sunday.

I know you're participating in Bible study and maybe you're a faithful giver, but the question goes beyond just a superficial, how much of your longing for the second coming of Christ actually affects the career decision that you're making? How does it affect the person that you may be dating?

How does it affect the person that you may marry? What you do with your finance? What do you do on vacation? Like how does it affect the way you raise your children? Or is that somehow compartmentalized where you see secular and then religious and you kind of live two separate lives?

Whatever is in your heart, truly in your heart that you really covet, whether we like it or not, it affects our life. How you spend your money, I think there's a good indicator of how you spend your money, how you spend your time, is a good indicator of what's in your heart.

Now I say all of this because there's two people that are mentioned in the birth and the early years of Jesus Christ. Simeon and Anna is mentioned to us, the two people who eagerly waited all their life of the coming of Christ. Now there was no guarantee when they were eagerly waiting for him that Christ was going to come.

And yet they knew that the answer to whatever suffering of Israel or whatever longing that they had in their own heart, that Christ would be the answer. So the scripture tells us that Simeon, as he is introduced to us in verse 25, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon and this man was righteous man and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel.

Looking, the word looking isn't simply just watching to see, "Hey, is he going to come or not?" It means to eagerly search that this was consuming in his heart. And the reason why we know that this was consuming, as soon as he meets the infant Christ, he recognizes that that's the Messiah.

That's the one he's been praying for. That's what he's been eagerly waiting for. And so he responds in verse 29, says, "Now Lord, you are releasing your bond servant to depart in peace according to your word." In other words, everything that he desired and coveted so much in the coming of Christ, desired for Christ to come.

And as soon as he sees him, he says, "Everything that I want in life is done. Now I can go to the Lord." He's lived a full life. There's nothing that he is longing for anymore because that was at the core of his desire. We see Job do the same thing.

Remember all of his life, right? Because he's a righteous man, he suffers and he's asking God, "Where are you? How come you are allowing this to happen?" And then God shows up. And then remember what Job says? You know, up to this point, "I've heard of you from a distance, but now I see you face to face." Now he can go in peace.

That's exactly what Job says. His greatest longing, he realized, was meeting God. And that's exactly what Simeon says. He was longing, looking for the coming of the Messiah. Now that he's here, he says, "Now I can depart in peace." When our heart is not fixated upon Christ, we have a tendency.

It's like, "Yeah, Christ is going to come." And that's a theological truth. It's a theological truth that this is what Christians believe, this is what the Bible says, but it's not the reality of our life. I think many of us would be, if we're honest enough, we'll confess, if you have something that you have planned in the next year or you're coveting something, maybe your promotion's coming up or maybe you're preparing for a wedding or maybe you have this great trip that you've been saving up for.

If I told you that Christ was coming tomorrow, maybe in our hearts, we say, "Wait, can you wait a month? I want to experience marriage. Can you wait a month? Because I want to take this trip. And if I go to Machu Picchu, then I could die in peace." If our heart is coveting anything else besides Christ, the coming of Christ will actually seem like an interference of what we're longing for.

He's actually getting into it. It's something like, "Well, not yet, not yet, because we have this. We have this set up. And so I've been longing. I put so much time and effort into this. Would you just wait a month? Would you wait six months?" Simeon is mentioned here outside of the fact that he was just a random guy.

I mean, he doesn't play any significant role. We understand why Elizabeth and Zacharias and Mary and Joseph is in this story, right? Because they're mothers and fathers of two significant people. But the only reason why Simeon is even mentioned here is because God answered his prayer. That's it. There's no other significant – he's not mentioned in any prophecies, right?

He doesn't play any specific role. If Simeon is never mentioned in this story, it would have no significant change in the narrative of Jesus' birth and what he did. Only reason why he's there is as an example for us, for our own longing. That even though this was God-ordained, God had promised this, he tells us God fulfilled his own promise, his own covenant through the fervent watching and looking of this righteous man.

You know, sometimes we wrestle with God's sovereignty and man's responsibility and say, "Well, if God is sovereign, what does it matter if we pray? If God is sovereign, why do we need to be righteous?" He's going to fulfill his promise anyways. But it tells us here that though this was God's plan and everything is happening according to God's plan, he tells us that this was also in response to this man's fervent seeking and looking and praying.

We don't know how this works, but we know that the Bible clearly tells us that this is how things unfold. Another lady named Anna, who's 84 years old, tells us that she was married for seven years and then her husband passes away and she never marries. And she devotes herself to prayer and fasting until she's 84 years old, waiting for the redemption of Israel, in other words, the Messiah to come.

You know, whenever I read this story, it reminds me of this old lady that I remember when I was in my early 30s when I was teaching ESL to Korean elderly. There was this one lady in her late 70s, right? She would come into class almost every single morning and say, "Oh, I guess I didn't die another day.

The Lord did not take me." And as a young man, it sounded pretty morbid. Like every day she would walk in, "Oh, another day." And then she would sit there and say, "Clearly she's a committed Christian," because she would always bring her Bible, open it up and read it in between break.

And I said, "Why do you keep saying that?" So one day I decided to ask her. You know, it's kind of curious. Like every day you're like eager to die, right? So she told me her story, what happened. She said she was married right before the Korean War broke out.

And so she was only married a few months. And during her honeymoon stage, when the North Korean soldiers came to the South and forcefully recruited her husband into the North Korean army, which happened to a lot of South Korean young men at that time. And so she lost her husband and she never knew what happened.

She just assumed that he died in the war. And after a couple of months of that, she said she never remarried. And she said she just stayed as a widow and she devoted herself to serve the Lord. And then all day long, when I knew her, all she did was copy the Korean Bible, right?

By hand, every day, that was her. She would finish the classroom, learn probably the same lesson. I taught the same lesson every year for four years, right? And she would learn the same lesson every week, but in between times she would just copy the Bible. And she told me that she was almost done with the Bible.

And then when she is done, she repeats it over and over again. And she literally is waiting for her to go to the Lord. Every time I read the story of Anna, it reminds me of that lady because this lady, one, was eagerly waiting to be reunited with her husband that she lost when she was young.

But along with that, she spent all her life devoted to serve the Lord. So I can see why she is eagerly waiting, because she didn't see death as an end to life. She saw death as an opportunity to get to the place that she really wanted to go to.

It says Anna, when she lost her husband, she lived the rest of her life until she was 84 years old at the temple. And all she did was devote herself to prayer and to fasting, waiting for the redemption of Israel to come, for the Messiah to come. It is not by accident that Simeon and Anna is in the Bible.

It's not just random people that just kind of threw in there for no reason. They're in there because their faithful prayer, even though they seem insignificant in this redemptive timeline, we're told that because of their prayer, because of their longing, God answers their prayer. Now, what specifically were they longing for?

Anna says that she was praying for the redemption of Israel to appear. Simeon specifically says that he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. Consolation. You know, in English, when we say consolation, we often think of game shows that if you don't win, you get the consolation prize. Right?

So it's a runner up prize. That's consolation. Well, the word consolation basically means the one who consoles, the one who encourages, the one who comforts. So it's interesting here because prior to chapter 2, 21, we've been introduced to the Son of God. We were introduced to the rightful King of Israel, the Savior.

But here it says Simeon was longing, looking for the consolation of Israel to come. Consolation. The one who's going to comfort. Now, that's an interesting way to describe the Son of God. Right? The one who's going to come to console. What is he coming to console? What was the position of Israel?

Was he consoling them because they were under oppression of their enemies? Were they consoling them because economic trials? Were they consoling them because they were having hardships of life? What is it exactly that the Messiah is going to come and to console and to encourage? Well, Paul describes our salvation with the same term, that word consoling.

And so as he writes 2 Corinthians, the beginning of that letter, 2 Corinthians, he basically describes salvation. And listen to the way he describes salvation. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same suffering which we also suffer.

And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering, so also you are sharers of our comfort. In those four verses, he mentions the word comfort ten separate times. And the reason why this is significant, he's just describing our salvation. He says, "God of all comfort, who has comforted us in order that with the comfort that we have received with him, that we will be able to give comfort to other people." He's not simply talking about comfort as in, you know, you have trials, hardship, or you're hurt, or maybe you're having marriage problems, and so Christ comes to comfort you.

It may be true that that is also comforting, but the comforting he is describing is our salvation itself. The one who will save. And another way to describe that is describing comfort, right? Now those who don't feel the need for a Savior, cannot understand what he means by comfort.

Like Jesus saves us, he forgives us, right? He gives us hope, he gives us power by the Holy Spirit, but is he actually our comfort? When's the last time you viewed your salvation as being comforted? But that's exactly how the Bible describes it. In Isaiah chapter 41 through 4, "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak kindly to Jerusalem and call out to her that her warfare has ended." He's describing that because of their sins, they fell into captivity. Babylonians are going to come and destroy your nation, and as a result of your sin, judgment is coming. But at the end of that, he says, "I will not forget you.

You are the apple of my eye." And then he describes a restoration that's going to come when the Messiah comes, and he says, "Comfort, comfort, says our Lord, comfort." Why does he describe our salvation as comfort? And again, let me ask you, when was the last time you've considered the forgiveness of your sins as comforting?

God bringing comfort. Isaiah 49 verse 13 says, "Shout for joy, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth. Break forth into joyful shouting, O mountains, for the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted." So what is the comfort, and what is the affliction? Is he simply talking about those who have been afflicted by their enemies, persecuted?

Because of the Romans, because of the Persians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, that he's coming to comfort them, to deliver them? What does he mean by comfort? This is the distinction between somebody who recognizes what he has in Christ, who is longing for the coming of Christ, versus people who just see him as a figurehead.

It's like a ticket. I don't want to go to hell. I believe just enough to make sure that I have the right ticket, and I confess the right thing so that when I die, that I won't go to hell and I go to heaven. Meanwhile, in this life, I'm going to try to get as much as I can, just like everybody else in the world, and then when I die, just as I had a good life here, I want to make sure that I have a good eternity also.

The distinction between somebody who is genuinely longing for the coming of Christ is the one who recognizes the need for comfort. Let me give you an example. Have you ever tried to comfort somebody that just cannot be consoled? Think of a situation that maybe it was a friend or a family member or something that they were going through something horrible, and you try to console them and comfort them, and there are no words.

There's nothing you could possibly do. Now, again, being in ministry through the years, there's been many situations where we try to, "Here's what the Bible says," and we try to come around, encourage them, deliver food. I'm encouraged that we have a food team in our church when people are going through trials.

We send food just to let them know we're there. But there's a kind of suffering and pain that no amount of human comfort, no amount of words, no amount of encouragement would get you out of that. I've been in situations, many of you guys know, the young families who lose their child.

There's no amount of words, no amount of money that can be given, no amount of community can take away that pain. With many of you guys, counsel so many people who have been abused growing up, sometimes by people that they trusted, and no amount of counseling. There's no passage that I can open up.

No amount of love you can pour upon them is enough. You can't just turn that off, and that pain is there for the rest of their lives. I remember as a young pastor trying to figure out, "Maybe I need to learn how to do counseling better. Maybe there's some words.

Maybe there's a book that I can read, and I could be a better comforter." And I realized through time and through frustration that there are some situations that maybe some of you have experienced. There are some situations that maybe people around you, that you realize that you are completely helpless.

The reality is you are helpless, because we do not have the ability. And at the end of the day, the hope of the gospel is, the only comfort that can be given, is that one day Christ is going to come, and He's going to make all things new. Whatever was broken, whatever heartache, whatever hardship, whatever excruciating pain that you may go through because of your sin, and because of being in a sinful and fallen world.

The only true comfort is when the Comforter comes. When we meet the Comforter. And no matter how broken this world is, no matter how broken our relationship, no matter how broken our families, that when the Comforter comes, that He and He alone can make all things new. And that's what He means, the Comforter.

Simeon was waiting for the Comforter, because he recognized that only the Messiah. He wasn't looking for friends. He wasn't looking for anybody else. Because he recognized that only the Messiah can fulfill this longing in a sinner's heart. See, there's one thing that you and I cannot do. Our own sins.

The damage that you've done because of your flesh cannot be reversed simply by adding good works. You can't break something and then say, "You know, I'm going to make this better by putting glue and then making it look okay." See, every sinner, when he recognizes his sins and the damage of the sin, it puts us in a place where we are desperate.

No amount of hard work, no amount of hearing sermons, no amount of counseling, no amount of comfort that you hear from other people. Only Christ and Christ alone can take that burden upon Himself. And that's why Simeon wasn't simply waiting for the Messiah to come so that He can deliver us from this bondage of these foreign agents.

That's why the Scripture says, "Behold, the child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel and for the sign to be opposed." Why is it the fall and the rise of Israel? The same gospels, the same hope that we have in Christ causes some to rise.

Rise meaning to have hope in Christ and then it would be the source of stumbling block and destruction for some. There's a reason why the Bible says the cross is what? Foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God for those who are being saved.

If you, again every single one of us as sinners, we recognize that the poverty of our sins and we recognize the destructive nature of the sin, every single sinner is in a position before God in desperation that my only hope is Christ. It's not better economy, it's not better friends, it's not if I find a better church or better situation.

My only hope is Christ. So it causes me to go and to be anywhere that draws me closer to Christ. That's the whole giving of the law. The whole giving of the law is so that we can see sin as utterly sinful. And once we recognize sin as utterly sinful and how desperate we are, we are put in the same position as Simeon, longing and eagerly waiting for the only one who can truly console us, to comfort us and to deliver us for him to come.

See that's why they're highlighted. It's not because they were something special and they're more righteous than others, it's because of their longing. God answers their prayer. What would cause a rise and fall? You know what's interesting is I posted up last night, I said look at verses 21 all the way down to 29.

What is the unifying theme, right? And hopefully some of you who looked at that, that you found what I was trying to get at, right? If you look at verse 21 to 29 repeatedly over and over again, there's a phrase, a similar phrase, maybe not exact wording, but in almost every verse that describes Jesus' birth and his childhood after circumcision, what does it say?

According to the law, according to the law, as God commanded, as God commanded, according to the law, every single one of those verses. Verse 21, he was circumcised on the eighth day according to the law that was given in Genesis chapter 17. Verse 22, and when the days for the purification according to the law of Moses was completed.

Verse 23, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. Verse 24, and the offer of sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord. Verse 27, and he came into the spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law.

Verse 29, now the Lord you are releasing your bond servant to depart in peace according to your word. So every part of the introduction of Jesus' childhood says everything was done according to the law. Now why was this important? What is Luke trying to convey by telling us that everything that was happening was happening according to the law?

What was the purpose? One, his parents were righteous people and they were very faithful Jews who raised him according to the law. But there's something more happening here. It's something more happening just pointing out the righteousness of the parents. Why was this necessary to point out? Because of why Jesus came.

The whole reason why Jesus came was to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. If Jesus disobeyed the law in any commandment, he would have been disqualified, even from birth. So everything from the get-go, it says it was according to the law, according to the law, according to the law, according to the law.

Even as an infant, everything that God prescribed a faithful Jew to do, he said Jesus performed that perfectly, even through his parents. There's a reason why Jesus lives 30 years before he comes on the scene. Why didn't he do it when he was 20? Why didn't he do it when he was 25?

The reason why he waits until he's 30 years old, according to Levitical law, a priest was considered an intern until he turned to age 30, because they considered at 30 that you live long enough to serve on your own. So prior to the age of 30, you would have to have a supervisor supervising you and then when you're able, as a full-grown adult at the age of 30, you were independently able to serve.

So 30 was the marker that was given in the law where you've experienced the totality of life. Obviously, there's people who live to 60, 70, but 30 was the marker where it's like now you're a full-grown adult, you've experienced, you've lived long enough to experience life. Jesus waits 30 years, because what was the 30 years for?

To prove that he was sinless. And you notice when Jesus comes to get baptized at the age of 30, to get baptized by John the Baptist, remember what John the Baptist says? Why am I baptizing you? You're greater than me. My whole ministry is to prepare for you. You should baptize me.

I should be baptizing you. Remember what Jesus says? To fulfill all righteousness. To be obedient to everything that God has established. And then right after he gets baptized, what happens? He gets led into the wilderness and what happens to him? He gets tested by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights.

Why is he being tested? Because everything that he was doing was proving ground of his worthiness to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. So even from his birth, every part of what he has experienced, even through his parents, he was completely obedient, perfect substitution for our sins. In Hebrews 4.15 he says, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." Everything Christ did was proving ground.

If he disobeyed any of this, he would have been disqualified. If he failed in any of his testing, if for 30 some years that he lived and he broke any commandment of God, everything that he came to do would have been disqualified because he would no longer be perfect.

Hebrews 2.17, "Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people." And again in 2 Corinthians 5.21, "He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him." We read Jesus' infinite count, right?

Now I know many of you guys have children that are young. And when we go to your birthdays or you know, hundred day celebration, it's usually a huge celebration, right? What's the potential of this child? What is he going to grow up to be? When is he going to read?

When is he going to walk? Naturally there's life and hope that somehow, some way that God's going to bless his life, that he's going to be a great person of influence, he's going to have great education, he's going to be possibly wealthy and man of influence and so we have great hope.

But when we look at the infancy of Christ, every part of what they did was to prepare him for the cross. Used to prepare him for the cross. Even from birth, every part of that was necessary to confirm that he was going to be the perfect sacrifice. That he was going to replace Isaac as a sacrifice for our sins.

It puts a completely different spin when you look at this chapter with that perspective. To know that Christ didn't just randomly go to the cross. He didn't just wait 30 years and live the normal carpenter's life and experience the joys and all that comes with being a human being.

All of that is maybe true, but every single part of his life was ordained, willfully chosen, where Christ laid down his life for us. That's why it says in 1 John 3, 2-3, it says, "Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.

We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is. Everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure." Sometimes we get so entangled with the affairs of this world, job, raising children, buying a house, and none of these things are innately evil, but we get so entangled in these things and we don't realize at times that how much of our hope and desire and how much of our life is consumed coveting things that don't matter.

We confess it doesn't matter because we're here, because it contradicts what we believe. God willfully is building house upon sand because we know when the storm comes, the sand disappears and everything you built on it is going to be gone. We confess that, we believe that, we study that, we memorize that, we teach that to our children, yet how often do we see our life pattern, the things that we choose and where we're headed is building a bigger house upon the sand that when Christ comes, it will all just be wiped out because we forget sometimes.

And so it's necessary for us from time to time to take a step back and examine our own hearts. What is it exactly we are coveting today? What are we longing for? What's the desire that's controlling you? What is the desire in your heart that causes you to invest money a certain way or buy a certain house or go somewhere or do something?

What is the central thing in your heart that's driving you? Is it a longing for the Comforter to come? Is it for eternity? Is it to invest for what can't be destroyed? Or have we become entangled with things that ultimately don't matter? You have it, it's good. If you don't have it, it's also good.

But as Simeon and as Anna devoted their lives for the coming of the redemption of Christ, redemption of Israel, the comfort of Israel, they are here for us that we are to follow their example, to long, to pray, to fast, to know that the true problem in our lives and our society can only be found, the answer can only be found in Christ and Christ alone.

Again, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, do you believe that? Do you actually believe that? Or is that just a doctrinal statement you sign or something that you were taught in Sunday school? So you just memorize and regurgitate it, but in actual practice, that may not be the case.

Our prayer as we continue to study the Word of God is to calibrate our hearts, calibrate our thoughts, that in our pain and our struggle, to long for the coming of Christ because true answer, true freedom, true restoration can only be found in Christ and Christ alone. I pray that we would believe that with all our heart and that our lives would be consistent with that faith.

Let's pray. Gracious and loving Father, we come before you confessing our weakness, how easily we get distracted, how easily, Lord, we get entangled with civilian affairs, longing for things that the world longs for, seeking comfort more than anything else, willing to compromise what you have called in order that we can have some of the things in this world.

Help us, Lord God, open our eyes that we may continue to see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we will be sanctified, that we will live each day longing and hoping and praying for the coming of Christ to deliver us. So we pray, Father God, that you would give us soberness, that as Simeon and as Anna long for your coming, that we would live each day longing for that as well.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.