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Simeon took up the child Jesus in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word.” Amen. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints, I think the first time I was able to connect a liturgical dot, it was with this song of Simeon, which we sing after the Lord’s Supper every service. I remember growing up at Zion Lutheran Church in Kerrville, Texas, and they had the old green hymnal. We would sing the liturgy, and I remember at some point I knew that when we were singing those words, “Lord now let your servant depart in peace,” it was almost time for the service to be over. That was a joy to me. In fact, that’s what I thought the words meant. “Lord, let your servant depart in peace” meant now we can leave church. In fact, it might as well have been singing, “Lord, now you are letting us go to Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
I thought that the departing was leaving the service. That was wrong. This departing in peace that Saint Simeon sings of is departing this life. It means to die. That’s what he says. “Lord, I am ready to die.” And that’s what we say when we sing these words. We also are ready to die. The Holy Spirit had come to Simeon and had given him this particular gift that he had the promise that he wouldn’t die until he had seen the presence of the Messiah. And so on this day, 40 days after Christmas, when Mary and Joseph are bringing Jesus into the temple and offering the sacrifices required by the Law of Moses for the purification of mothers, of little boys, the Holy Spirit says to Simeon, “It’s time.”
He brings him up into the temple in Jerusalem and shows him the baby Jesus, and Simeon recognizes this baby as the Messiah and takes him in his arms. He says these most beautiful words, “Lord now I’m ready to die.” And look what he calls death. This is one of those sweet names of death, the dulce nomine mortem that’s all through the Bible, the sweet candy names of death that the prophets and apostles give to our own dying. That death is gained, that death is sleep, that death is joining our fathers, that death here now, according to Simeon, is a departure in peace. How beautiful.
Simeon, Saint Simeon had one thing on his bucket list, to behold the gracious presence of the Messiah. And now he’s done it. Now he’s ready. Now, and this is the point, now we are ready as well. It’s one of the marks of the Christian. I don’t know if this is hard for you. I’m just going to preach it and look at your faces to see how hard it is. One of the marks of the Christian is this: we are ready to die. We’re ready for the Lord to call us home. We’re ready for our heart to stop. We’re ready to breathe our last. We’re ready for the last moment of our life. We’re ready for the Lord’s return; we’re ready for the end.
Now, now we are set in this life to live without the fear of death. Now, this might be hard; it seems like it’s hard, because it’s easy to be afraid of death. If you want to be afraid of death, I’ll tell you how to do it. Are you ready? Turn on the news. That’s all it takes. That’s what is being taught, I think. Every minute of every day, we’re being trained to be afraid of dying, to be afraid of suffering, to be afraid of danger, but here we stand with Simeon, not afraid.
Now, a lot of people have told me this; they say, “Well, Pastor, I’m not afraid of dying itself. I’m just afraid of all the stuff leading up to it. All the suffering and agony and whatever else happens on the way to that last moment.” Well, you’re not supposed to be afraid of that either. In fact, if you want to, I’ll tell you a secret. The frightful thing is not the suffering; the frightful thing is not the pain; the frightful thing is not death itself. The frightful thing is what happens right after death. Hebrews says this: “It is appointed for man once to die and then to be judged.”
Paul tells us that we will have to give an account of ourselves for all that we’ve done, for all that we’ve said, for all that we’ve thought, for all of the commandments of God that we’ve broken, for all the good that we have failed to do. We will have to be judged for it; we will have to give an account of it. Now that’s frightful, because which one of us can stand on the judgment day? Which one of us can go before the glory of God and the holiness of God and offer some evidence for reason that we should be with Him forever? None of us can. No one is righteous; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The real frightful thing is, dear Saints, to be judged by God in His holiness as we are in our sin.
This is why Christmas is such good news. Listen to the preaching of Paul from the Epistle text. It’s one of my favorite verses, Ephesians chapter 4, where St. Paul says, “You are no longer slaves, but sons.” All of us are born with a theological slave mentality. We think that we ought to be God’s slaves, either because of our sin or even in our pride. I think the best place that this is preached to us is in the parable of the prodigal son, remember?
Both sons thought of themselves as slaves of the father. The first is the prodigal who goes off and he spends his father’s inheritance, and he says, “Boy, I’m not worthy to be called a son anymore.” He rehearses the whole speech as he’s coming back to his father. “I’m not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your slaves.” And the father sees him and he starts that little slave speech, and the father won’t even have him. He cuts him off. He says, “Get the ring and the fatted calf and the robe and put shoes on his bare feet. This son of mine was lost and is back.”
The father doesn’t want slaves; he wants sons. But there’s the older brother, too, who thought, it’s amazing to think that the younger son and the older son, who we think of as polar opposites, really have the same problem. The older son hears the music and the dancing, and he says, “What’s the deal?” They say, “It’s your brother; he’s back. Your father’s having a party for him.” He can’t believe it, and he stays out in the field. The father goes and finds him as well, “Why are you so grumpy? Come and join the feast.” This son says, “Father, all these years I’ve slaved for you.” It’s the word that he uses. “I’ve been your slave. I’ve done everything you’ve asked. I’ve never done anything wrong, and you never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends.” In other words, this older boy also thinks of himself as a slave of the father, earning the father’s love by his works.
These are the two sides to slavery: the despair side that knows that we have not earned God’s love, that we are not worthy to be His children, and the pride side that thinks that we have earned His love by doing enough. But both of them are a slave theology, and Jesus came to set you free. That’s the picture that Paul uses in this verse. Paul always preaches in pictures, and this is the picture of Galatians chapter 4, that we are all slaves; we are all bound up in the chains of sin and death, and Jesus comes to be a fellow slave with us. He binds Himself up to our flesh, He binds Himself up to our death, to our grave, to our trouble in this life. He even takes upon Himself our own sin so that He might rescue us and redeem us and adopt us.
God sent forth a son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons. I remember one time in college, I had all these atheist friends, and one of them said to me, “Brian, I got a contradiction in the Bible.” There’s a lot of… they always love to find these contradictions in the Bible for me. “I’ve got a contradiction in the Bible, so you should stop believing it, and here’s the contradiction. The Bible says that God has one son, and then it says that we are all God’s sons. It says that God only has one son in that most famous verse, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That means that there’s only one, and yet you say that the Christians are all sons of God. How do you make sense of it?”
I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure that out, noodling it over, until this verse came along, and also in Galatians, earlier in Galatians chapter 3, that we are God’s children by adoption. Jesus is the only begotten of the Father, but the Lord has adopted us into His family, and that’s exactly what He’s done in baptism, when He puts His name on us, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, calling us to be part of His holy and blessed family.
And that’s why Jesus was born of woman, so that we might be born of God, the children of God, no longer a slave, but a son. Even you women are called the sons of God in this text, and that’s important here, because the son is the one who gets the inheritance, and you, every one of you, are getting this inheritance of eternal life. Your names are written on God’s will. Can you imagine it?
So that you are set free, you are forgiven, and you are ready then for the judgment day. This is the preaching of Isaiah. We’re going backwards, I know, but this is glorious. When you go to appear before the judgment seat of God, how will you appear to God? Clothed in the filth and the stench of your own sinfulness? The answer from Isaiah the prophet is no; you will be clothed with God’s own righteousness. Look at what it says, chapter 61, verse 10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exalt in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and a bride adorns herself with jewels.”
On the judgment day, you will be ready for it, dressed like it was your wedding day, clothed in the beauty of Christ, His glory, His perfection, His works, the Father’s delight in Him. You will wear that to the Judgment Day. You can imagine it. It’s really quite wonderful. I remember one time I went to see Linda. You’ll meet Linda in the Resurrection. I went to see Linda; she was in the hospital heading towards death, and I went to see her. She said, “Oh, pastor, you shouldn’t have come to this. I’m not ready for you.” She was embarrassed because her hair wasn’t on, and she looked terrible.
I said, “Linda, I’m gonna sing you a song.” And I sang her the hymn based on these words, “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, my glory are, my beauteous dress.” And she said, she always said this to me, “Oh you got me, Pastor.” Your glory, your beauty, is the righteousness of Christ, His blood. It clothes you so that when you stand on Judgment Day, you stand not with a handful of your good works or not even with a handful of your sins. No, you stand clothed in the perfection of Jesus.
This is serious business, every one of you. Your sins are not held to your account. They’re washed away. They’re forgiven. That’s what Jesus was doing. That’s why He was born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that you would no longer be slaves, but sons, and ready to depart in peace.
So, there is nothing to be afraid of. You might have a lot of things on your own bucket list, and I suppose there’s a lot of good things to do in this world, good things to see, and good things to experience, all that sort of stuff, but there is one thing that matters: the gracious presence of the Messiah. And once you have that, you have everything.
So Jesus comes to us today and says, “Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood.” Jesus comes today to you and says that He forgives you all of your sins, and now you are ready to sing and confess with Simeon, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation.” Amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.