Testifying to Jesus: Joseph & Mary

Luke 2:21-24

     Let's open our Bible to Luke chapter 2...Luke chapter 2.  We have gone through the first 20 verses of this wonderful chapter which details for us the birth of Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, the Messiah, Savior of the world.  And, you know, we're so very familiar with the story, the story of the birth of Jesus, familiar with Joseph and Mary, familiar with Bethlehem, familiar with shepherds, angels, a manger, a stable. Those are very familiar parts to the story.  And Luke has taken us through those familiar elements.

     And were we to study the gospel of Matthew, we would meet some more familiar elements that Luke doesn't bring up, such as the wise men.  Luke doesn't tell us about the wise men but Matthew does.  And those mysterious and wonderful men from the east who followed the star looking for the great King that had been born, that incredible account of their arrival and the gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And then there was the wonderful and fascinating story of Herod who hearing about the birth of the rival king, as he saw Him, and decided that he had to save his own throne and so he massacred all the little baby boys in the area.  Matthew tells us about that familiar story.

And then there is the very brief account of the family of Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus fleeing for their lives into Egypt to be protected from Herod. 

     Familiar and beloved scenes that get retold every Christmas season. They sort of go into an eleven-month fade every year and then they're brought back to vivid color around Christmas season. And we hear them oft repeated with all their beauty and wonder is restored for us in the vivid color of the retelling.  Those are very familiar, very familiar stories.

     Far less familiar, however, is the account that we're about to read in Luke.  And for that we are the poorer, frankly.  As a kid growing up, I have memories of just about all of the moments of the Christmas story that I've mentioned to you.  In fact, I was in a number of Christmas pageants which sort of find a vivid place into your mind, often because your mother took pictures and keeps showing them to you through the years. And so the memories are kind of cemented.  We are familiar with things I've mentioned, the wise men, the shepherds and Herod and Bethlehem and all of that.

     But perhaps not familiar with two names with which we should be familiar, Simeon and Anna.  I don't really remember, as I look back in my childhood, ever giving thought to them, or hearing anything about them.  And yet they play an absolutely critical part in the whole scene of the arrival of the Son of God and the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ.  They are far less familiar to us.  And their story doesn't get told very often and it rarely ever gets repeated around Christmas season.  It seems like the wise men are more dramatic and the shepherds and angels are more dramatic and certainly the story of Herod is dramatic and deadly.  But what we see here from verse 21 to verse 40 is drama at its highest level.  It is impactful.  It is critical, essential testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ.

     There is a principle that is woven into the fabric of our lives.  And it starts out in the Bible back in Deuteronomy and it's this principle, any testimony should be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses.  Even today in the jurisprudence of western civilization, a story corroborated by two or three witnesses is considered to be credible and believable and true.  That goes back to that biblical affirmation, that testimony had to be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses.  And the testimony of Luke has been that Jesus has been born "Son of God, Son of Man, Son of Abraham, Son of David."  The testimony has been born that Jesus came into the world as a child of a virgin, having no human father, being fathered by God Himself through the power of the Holy Spirit, being planted in Mary's womb without a human father, thus the child born of a virgin. And Luke has given testimony to the fact that this child is God in human flesh, that this child is the eternal King who will reign on the throne forever and ever, that this child is the Savior of the world.  This is the child who will save people from their sins.  This is the singular and the greatest child ever to be born in the history of the universe.

     That testimony needs to be confirmed. And so Luke in this section brings in the testimony of witnesses.  First, there is the testimony of Joseph and Mary, the parents' testimony.  Secondly, there is the testimony of a man named Simeon.  And thirdly, there is the testimony of a woman named Anna. And finally, there is the testimony of God Himself.  Four testimonies are given...the testimony of His parents, the testimony of Simeon, the testimony of Anna, and the affirmation and testimony of God Himself as to the identity of this child.  And so the passage confirms the credibility of Luke's account that this child is indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, the anointed Christ and the Savior of the world.

     Now there's something you want to know about a witness.  There's something you want to know about someone called to testify.  You want to know that they're honest. And so you want some indication of their character.  Luke is careful in this passage to let us know that the witnesses that are called to give affirming testimony to Jesus Christ are righteous people.  They are credible witnesses because they are righteous.  Their testimony we can believe because of the character of their lives. And so we find here that Luke majors on letting us in on the character of all of these witnesses.

     The first thing we find out about has to do with the parents of Jesus.  Now we already know they are righteous because in Matthew 1:19 it says, "Joseph, being a righteous man." And that is to say he was right with God, that's what Scripture means.  He was right with God.  Joseph was one of a small remnant in Israel, he was just a boy thirteen, fourteen-years-old when he...when he came together to take Mary as his wife after she had given birth to the child and Mary was just a girl of thirteen or fourteen.  But Joseph was righteous.  It says it in Matthew 1:19 he was a righteous man.

     Now in Israel the righteous were a very small remnant, a very small remnant.  There were liberals, theologically, in the nation Israel having been influenced by the Sadducees who didn't believe in a real resurrection and didn't believe in angels.  They denied the supernatural and they were the theological liberals of the time and they had great influence on a lot of people. 

     And there were the legalists as well as the liberals.  They were the Pharisees and everybody they influenced who believed that they could work their way to heaven by their own righteousness and their own adherence to Jewish ceremony, that they could be good enough on their own. And those legalists commanded a large following. 

     And then there were those that we could say were the politicizers, the people who had reduced Judaism to a political thing.  They were nationalists.  They were zealous for the preservation of the nation Israel and its political autonomy and independence and their goal in life was to overthrow Rome and get back their autonomy as a people and they're often identified as Zealots, sometimes called the Sikarii because they carried little daggers and stabbed Romans, they were the terrorists. 

     There was another group of Jews that one could adhere to and those would be the Essenes who were ascetics, they were hermits.  They lived out in the wilderness and they were out there in a monkish kind of life, isolated from all society contemplating their theology.  And in the midst of this mix in a...in a nation that had fallen far away from God, there was a very, very small remnant, a very small remnant, in fact even after the three-year ministry of Jesus, after His death and resurrection when all the believers of Jerusalem gathered in the Upper Room there were only 120 of them. 

     But there were in Israel some. There was a remnant of righteous ones.  Zacharias and Elizabeth, the father and mother of John the Baptist, introduced to us in chapter 1 verse 6, are introduced as being righteous.  They were a part of that remnant.  God was working the coming of His Messiah and the forerunner to the Messiah, the prophet, John, He was working that all out through righteous people, people who belonged to Him, who believed in Him, who were right with God because they had come to grips with their sinfulness, knew they couldn't save themselves and repented of their sins and cast themselves on the mercy of God. And God had forgiven them and saved them from their sin.  They were the righteous remnant.

     And it's important to have testimony from righteous people.  First of all, we find that Joseph and Mary were righteous and the evidence of that comes because it is said of Joseph that he was righteous, Matthew 1:19.  And secondly, we know that Mary was righteous because of what came out of her mouth in chapter 1 verse 46, she said, "My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God, my Savior."  God was her Savior.  She too was a righteous girl.

     Their commitment to God, the devotion of their lives is indicated...let me show you how it's indicated.  It tells us in verse 21 here that they circumcised Jesus.  Now that according to the law...that according to the law of God. They followed the law.  It tells us in verse 22 that according to the law of Moses they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord...I should say, according to the law of Moses she had her purification, it says in the beginning of the verse, "When the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem."  Verse 23 says, "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 says, "To offer sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord."  Down in verse 27 it says, "When the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for Him the custom of the law," again the law of the Lord, verse 39 says, "When they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own city of Nazareth."  Five times it mentions that they were committed to the law of the Lord.

     You know, James, I guess, has a good insight into this.  James says, "Faith without works is...what?...is dead."  And true saving faith shows up in obedience.  And these people were obedient.  They were compliant with the law of the Lord.  They delighted in the law of the Lord and they did the will of the Lord, as revealed in His law. 

     So here is a righteous young couple.  They're just...they're just kids by our definition, but they were righteous before God. They were saved. Their sins had been forgiven and they were devout and they were committed to the obedience of the law of God as an expression of their love and their worship toward God. And they are incredible witnesses.

     And then in introducing Simeon to us, we'll see him next week, but in introducing Simeon to us, Luke takes great pains to establish how righteous he is.  And then introducing Anna to us, the way Luke introduces Anna, we can't imagine that there was any woman in all of Israel who was as righteous as Anna was.  And, of course, the fourth testimony is given by God who is righteous in His nature.

     So what you have here is confirming testimony by parents, Simeon, and Anna.  And then a final word from God Himself is indicated here.  Incredible witnesses to Luke's account that this in fact Jesus, the Son of God, Savior of the world.

     Now the setting here is tied to two things.  It's tied to Mosaic law because you're in the temple.  And what's going to go on here is all connected to the Mosaic law and to temple sacrifices and temple offerings.  Also, this entire passage borrows richly from the writings of Isaiah. That shouldn't surprise us because from chapter 40 of Isaiah through 66, Isaiah unfolds the Messiah.  So you're going to see a very Jewish background, very Jewish setting for the scene that unfolds.  It is tied to the Old Testament law and prophets...Mosaic law and the prophecies of Isaiah.  Righteous people giving testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ.  This is critical so that His ascertations(?) concerning Christ are confirmed in the mouth of two, yes three witnesses who are righteous and trustworthy.

     For this morning, let's look at the testimony of Joseph and Mary.  This is the testimony of His parents.  Verse 21, "When eight days were completed 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 up 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 turtledoves or two young pigeons." 

     Now you read that at first and maybe you can't quite catch the depth of it, so let me unpack it a little bit for you and show you the treasures that are inside.  Five times, as I mentioned earlier, the law of the Lord is mentioned in reference to the behavior of Joseph and Mary.  Their devotion to obey the will of God is clear. They wanted to do what God had revealed for them to do and they did it with joy and faithfulness.  The whole passage really features their dedication, it features their obedience. And as I said, in Luke's continuing effort to mold the readers' understanding of who Christ is, he shapes his narrative around the testimony of these uniquely righteous people. And, first of all, Jesus' earthly family lead out in giving testimony.

     Now they give testimony to the identity of the child as the Messiah and Savior of the world in two ways.  One, at the circumcision and naming.  Two, at the purification and presenting.  We're going to see the circumcision and naming in verse 21, the purification and presenting in verses 22 to 24.  These two ways become testimony from Joseph and Mary and validates the claim that this is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

     Let's look at verse 21, here is the first, circumcision and naming.  Now we all understand that the eight-day circumcision was what was prescribed by Mosaic law.  It is clearly recorded that this is to be done in Leviticus chapter 12 verse 3, which we'll look at in a moment, says on the eighth day the child is to be circumcised.  Every male child born into Israel was to be circumcised on the eighth day.  The circumcision was introduced by God to Abraham in Genesis 17:1 to 14, Abraham was circumcised, he, however, was circumcised as an adult when God identified him as the father of the race.  He was circumcised as an adult. And then every male that came from him and from those who came from him throughout all the Hebrew people, every male child was to be circumcised on the eighth day.  That was the sign and symbol of God's covenant.  Back in chapter 1 verse 59 regarding John, the prophet born to Zacharias and Elizabeth, "It came about on the eighth day they came to circumcise him," that was just standard operating procedure on the eighth day. ss

     Circumcision, just to give you a brief recap, circumcision was a sign of God's covenant.  It was a sign of God's covenant.  It identified a Jew.  But God was saying something in circumcision.  In the cutting away of that skin, God, first of all, was doing something physical, He was protecting the Jewish man from passing on infections and bacteria to his wife. That's why in ancient times, not today because we have so much hygiene, but in ancient times Jewish women had the lowest rate of cervical cancer in the world and it was better when men and women came together circumcised in terms of cleanliness and protection than not.  And therefore God preserved His people that way.  He was definitely committed to preserving His people since they are the center of redemptive history clear to the end of the world.  And so God protected them and that was one way physically that God protected them from illness.  He also protected them, of course, by giving them monogamous laws and calling for their purity and sanctifying one man/one woman for life so that they were not subject to the devastating plagues of venereal disease which destroyed whole peoples.

     But circumcision was more than a physical protection.  It was a symbol of a need for spiritual cleansing.  And that's why the Bible talks about circumcise your hearts.  God was showing them through this symbol that they needed to be cleansed because they not only passed on sin potentially physically, they passed on sin heart to heart, soul to soul.  When they had a child they got a sinner because they were sinners. They needed a cleansing at a deep, deep level of their souls.  That's why God said circumcise your heart...circumcise your heart.  Every circumcised male child then, every time that operation took place, it was a symbol of how deeply sinful people were and how greatly they needed a heart cleansing.

     If you look at Judaism, just look at Judaism, the message that God was sending to His people was about their sin.  You could take the Law of God and all the Law of God did was break them and crush them. The Law of God laid out before for the Jew rendered him a sinner.  And last Sunday night we talked about the Sabbath.  The Jew would look at the Sabbath which is the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," and when he looked at the Sabbath in the middle of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, he would focus on that Sabbath.  He would not work.  He would not leave his house.  He would not cook anything, not carry a load, not do anything. But he would sit, he would contemplate that day.  And as he looked at the Law of God and as he considered the worship of God, what he would become aware of was that everything above the fourth commandment, one, two and three, had to do with God.  Everything below had to do with man.  And he would look at that day and he would remember that day in the middle of the Decalogue, look up and see how he had violated all the laws against God.  Look down and see how he violated all the laws against man.  In other words, he had sinned against God, he had sinned against his fellow man.  So the Sabbath then became a contemplation point for violation of the Law of God.

     He would then look at the whole complexity of the Law that sort of came out of the Ten Commandments and would realize how he had violated that law as well. The Sabbath day then became a day for man to contemplate his sinfulness.

     On top of the Sabbath day, every seventh day, there were Sabbaths and Sabbaths and Sabbaths, all kinds of Sabbaths.  Every time there was a feast of Passover, every time Yom Kippur came, the Day of Atonement, Rosh Hashana, every time there was a Feast of Lights, every time there was a Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths, every time there was Pentecost, there were many other things.  All of those Sabbaths came and came and just cluttered the calendar, were times to contemplate God and in contemplating God and His commandments, you contemplated your own sinfulness and how you had broken the commands that related to Him, and broken the commands that related to men. And then life was just filled with that contemplation.

     On top of that, life was a bloody mess because all those violations called for sacrifice.  That's why we've said, the priests were nothing but butchers.  They were, you know, chin deep in blood slaughtering animals because sin just kept coming and coming and with it came sacrifice and sacrifice.  And the whole of Judaism, the whole of Judaism was one massive effort on God's part to call those people to a recognition of how sinful they were.  Every time a baby was born into the world, circumcision on the eighth day was a reminder of the depth of sin, that they were so deep in sin they needed a cleansing at the deepest level.

     Everything that happened in their life.  I mean, you just take Judaism, lay it out and what you've got is a system designed to make people feel the burden of their sinfulness.  By the time you get to the time of Jesus, you've got only a few honest righteous Jews who are willing to think like that.  And the rest have fired off into one or another direction.  You've got the liberal ones who don't even want to think about the letter of the Law.  You've got the Pharisees, the legalists, who have exchanged the heart for the head and it's all external and nothing is internal.  You've got the politicizing Zealots who have just abandoned all of that and gone for a political end. And you've got the Essenes who are out there contemplating their navel, trying to think themselves to a higher level and are not concerned with the obedience to the Law of God in Scripture.

     Same thing today.  You've got a very small little group of righteous Jews today, most Jews are either what you call liberal Jews or quote/unquote conservative Jews, or reformed Jews, very few orthodox who are careful and thoughtful about the Law of God.  And there are among them very few who really believe God and know God through their Messiah.  But the whole Jewish system...I know why there are liberal Jews, and I know why there are reformed Jews and conservative Jews today because they want to get rid, they want to keep the traditions of Judaism they're comfortable with, but you can't keep Judaism in its biblical form without constantly facing your sin.  That's why it's not popular.  It's fine to be a traditional sort of ethnic Jew, but let's not get carried away.  If you buy the whole system, you're literally swept away in your sinfulness.  That's its intent.  Now you can avoid it a lot of ways.  You can become a Pharisee and content yourself with your externals.  That doesn't please God.  Or you can just run from it, become liberal like the Sadducees did, bail out all together and question whether the Scripture is even the Scripture.

     There's a lot of popularity in hanging around to the ethnicity and some of the cultural aspects and traditions of Judaism.  But I can understand why they want to shed Judaism as a system because it's relentless in hammering home the sinfulness of sin.  And so babies were circumcised. That was just one among many signs of the need for cleansing of the heart.

     Now the question could be asked...but why circumcise Jesus because He didn't need His heart cleansed?  That's right, He was holy, harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners, it says in Hebrews.  He didn't need His heart cleansed from sin.  He was sinless.  He was numbered with the transgressors, it says in Isaiah 53:9, even though there was no deceit found in His mouth.

     In fact, when He died on the cross He was bruised for OUR iniquities, punished for OUR transgressions.  He is called in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "Him who knew no sin."  He is absolutely sinless.  So why was He being circumcised?

     There's one answer, very good answer.  Because that's what the Law of God required.  And Galatians 4:4 says, Paul writing, "Jesus was born of a woman, born under the Law."  Whatever the Law of God prescribed in the covenant at that time, He would do.

     I mean, I could understand if His parents said, "You know, this is God in human flesh."  And I wonder what it was like, I wonder if you...I mean, you certainly care for a baby just because he's a baby.  But if you knew your baby was God, you might have a discussion that said, "I don't know if we ought to do this circumcision.  What if something goes wrong here?  What if some bleeding, or what if some infection...this is the Son of God, this is the virgin born, this is...  And plus, if this is God in human flesh, is this necessary?" 

     I mean, I could understand that kind of thinking.  I mean, I've thought often about raising Jesus as a baby.  I mean, how you would have treated Him.  Talk about being protective...  But no, His parents came the eighth day and they had Him circumcised. And I'm sure God prompted their hearts to do that and the reason was because Jesus was born under the Law and Jesus was going to obey every aspect of God's Law whether He obeyed it as a baby passively or whether He obeyed as an adult actively when He went to the river Jordan and He said to John, "You need to baptize Me."  And John said, "I don't need to baptize You, You've got to be kidding me.  You need to baptize me."  And John was saying...You don't need cleansing so why the symbol?  And Jesus responded in Matthew 3:15 and said, "I must fulfill all righteousness." Whatever the law requires, I do that...I do that.  And I've told you why that's the case.

     I'll give you a little scenario just to help you remember.  It would have been conceivable that the Father could have said to the Son, "Now You have to go down and redeem humanity.  And I know that's a tough thing, but I really only need You for a weekend...You know, go down Friday morning, we'll crucify You Friday evening, actually You can come out of the grave Sunday morning, be back late Sunday afternoon, I really only need the weekend."

     This is true.  I mean, that is the issue, isn't it?  It's the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ that purchases our justification. The Father could have said that and you ask the question...Well why the 33 years?  I mean, if you only need a weekend, what's the 33 years of being mocked and resented and embattled with the Pharisees and hated by the Sadducees and all the fuss and hassle?  His own brothers don't believe Him and He has to deal with a bunch of blockheads called the disciples.  Why all that?  Why does He...why does He have to be there 33 years?  And besides, we don't know anything about Him.  All we know about His own childhood is in verse 40, that's all we know...one verse, "He grew."  That's all we know.   Became strong, increased in wisdom.  That's all we know.  That's His whole childhood.  And when He gets to be 12 and reaches, you know, 12 when He's a son of the law and He's entering adulthood, He's a 12-year-old now.  He's in the temple and He's asking questions of the doctors and then the story ends and we never hear anything again until He's 30 years old.  What happened to all the years in between?  What was going on by the time...between 12 and 30?  That's 18 years.  What was that all about?  And there's no record of that, that's pretty...that seems to me to be a pretty interesting story to tell.  I don't know what was going on, but I have a pretty fertile imagination.  What would it be like to be the brother of God?  Would you like to have a perfect brother?  That could get a little irritating.  How would you like to be the father of a perfect child?  That would be a little hard to cope with.  I mean, what went on?  I mean, when Joseph was making a table over here, was Jesus over here..."Table".(laughter)...did He ever have to remake anything?

     That's interesting to think about.  I...I can't give you any answer cause there's no record of it.  So you say, "Why all these 33 years?  What's it for, You don't even report on it, don't even tell us anything about it, why is it there?"

     Answer...listen carefully...because He had to live an entire righteous life.  He had to come into this world and live as a child, as a young person and as an adult under the law so that He could live a perfect life, an entire perfect life into His adulthood, an entire perfect life. 

     Why did He have to do that?  So that perfect life could be credited to your account.  You see, in the doctrine of substitution, on the cross God treats Jesus as if He lived your life so He could treat you as if you lived His.  And there has to be a perfect life to put to your account, and His is it.  That's why He was circumcised and everything else. 

     He was born of a woman, born under the law.  And His parents took Him and they had Him circumcised.  Now at the point that they had Him circumcised it says, "His name was then called Jesus."  Apparently it was the circumcision that they did the official naming, they called Him Jesus.  That wasn't a hard choice to make.  That was the name given by the angel before He was ever conceived in the womb.  You remember that Joseph was approached by an angel and the angel says, "When the child is born...Matthew 1:21...call His name Jesus for He'll save His people from their sins."  Mary is approached by the same angel, Gabriel, and she is told the very same thing.  Chapter 1 of Luke verse 31, "You're going to bear a Son and You are to name Him Jesus."  You know what Jesus means?  It means Yahweh saves, God saves...God saves. 

     We saw that naming and circumcision went together when John was born back in chapter 1 verse 59 to 63, here we see it again.  That was the Jewish custom that that occurred at the same time. And so they gave Him the name "Yahweh saves."  The Old Testament equivalent is Joshua.  You can read Numbers 13 around verse 16 where it says Joshua's name was changed from Hoshea to Joshua and he was named "Jehovah saves."  And it's that same name.  Joshua was a deliverer, wasn't he?  He led the people of Israel into the conquering of the promised land.  But this is a greater deliverer than Joshua, this is the Savior, Jehovah saves, this is God in human flesh.

     I resent the fact that some people think that God is a reluctant Savior.  He is not at all.  He is by nat