Category: Luke Chapter 2

These verses should always be deeply interesting to a reader of the Bible. They record the only fact which we know about our Lord Jesus Christ during the first thirty years of His life on earth, after His infancy. How many things a Christian would like to know about the events of those thirty years, and the daily history of the house at Nazareth! But we need not doubt that there is wisdom in the silence of Scripture on the subject. If it had been good for us to know more, more would have been revealed.

Let us first, draw from the passage a lesson for all married people. We have it in the conduct of Joseph and Mary, here described. We are told that “they went to Jerusalem every year, at the feast of the passover.” They regularly honoured God’s appointed ordinances and they honoured them together. The distance from Nazareth to Jerusalem was great. The journey, to poor people without any means of conveyance, was, doubtless, troublesome and fatiguing. To leave house and home for ten days or a fortnight was no slight expense. But God had given Israel a command, and Joseph and Mary strictly obeyed it. God had appointed an ordinance for their spiritual good, and they regularly kept it. And all that they did concerning the passover they did together. When they went up to the feast, they always went up side by side.

The verses we have now read introduce us to a servant of God whose name is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testament. The history of Anna, like that of Simeon, is related only by Luke. The wisdom of God ordained that a woman as well as a man should testify to the fact that Messiah was born. In the mouth of two witnesses it was established that Malachi’s prophecy was fulfilled, and the messenger of the covenant had suddenly come to the Temple. (Malachi 3:1)

Let us observe, in these verses, the character of a holy woman before the establishment of Christ’s Gospel. The facts recorded about Anna are few and simple. But we shall find them full of instruction.

We have in these verses the history of one whose name is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testament, “a just and devout man” named Simeon. We know nothing of his life before or after the time when Christ was born. We are only told that he came by the Spirit into the temple, when the child Jesus was brought there by His mother, and that he “took him up in his arms and blessed God ” in words which are now well-known all over the world.

We see, in the case of Simeon, how God has a believing people even in the worst of places, and in the darkest times. Religion was at a very low ebb in Israel when Christ was born. The faith of Abraham was spoiled by the doctrines of Pharisees and Sadducees. The fine gold had become deplorably dim. Yet even then we find in the midst of Jerusalem a man “just and devout,”–a man “upon whom is the Holy Ghost.”

The first point which demands our attention in this passage, is the obedience which our Lord rendered, as an infant, to the Jewish law. We read of His being circumcised on the eighth day. It is the earliest fact which is recorded in His history.

It is a mere waste of time to speculate, as some have done, about the reason why our Lord submitted to circumcision. We know that “in Him was no sin,” either original or actual. (1 John 3:5) His being circumcised was not meant in the least as an acknowledgment that there was any tendency to corruption in His heart. It was not a confession of inclination to evil, and of need of grace to mortify the deeds of His body. All this should be carefully borne in mind.

We read, in these verses, how the birth of the Lord Jesus was first announced to the children of men. The birth of a king’s son is generally made an occasion of public revelling and rejoicing. The announcement of the birth of the Prince of Peace was made privately, at midnight, and without anything of worldly pomp and ostentation.

Let us mark who they were to whom the tidings first came that Christ was born. They were “shepherds abiding in the field near Bethlehem, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” To shepherds,–not to priests and rulers,–to shepherds–not to Scribes and Pharisees, an angel appeared, proclaiming, “unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

We have, in these verses, the story of a birth,–the birth of the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Every birth of a living child is a marvellous event. It brings into being a soul that will never die. But never since the world began was a birth so marvellous as the birth of Christ. In itself it was a miracle,–“God was manifest in the flesh.” (1 Tim. 3:16) The blessings it brought into the world were unspeakable:–it opened to man the door of everlasting life.

In reading these verses, let us first notice the times when Christ was born. It was in the days when Augustus, the first Roman emperor, made “a decree that all the world should be taxed.”