We already talked about circumcision when John the Baptist was born. If you haven't already read that, go here.
If you are curious, this is the passage that God established circumcision.
In Luke 2, it says that Mary and Joseph had to take two doves or two young pigeons with them to be sacrificed when Jesus was named and circumcised. Man, I hate typing that word. but in that passage I just linked to you, it talks about nothing to do with sacrifice while you snip. So I looked up where in the bible it talks about sacrificing birds.
I came up with Leviticus 1, and Leviticus 14.
The hard thing about reading Leviticus is that you can easily get bogged down with the detailed rules that the Israelites had. One could look at the rules and compare it to other religions saying, "Look! He's just like any other God who makes His people do the hokey pokey before gaining access to Heaven!" but that is absolutely not true.
In those days, back when He established the rules with Abraham and that era of time, He didn't mean for it to become a hokey pokey. He wanted the people to constantly be reminded of the promises He had fulfilled in their past, and the promises he would keep in the future. The rituals that consumed their time and energy were so that they wouldn't get distracted by other things or other gods. Also, when it came to circumcision and the other practices they had, it was God's way of setting his people apart from the others. It sounds bad, but it was his way of branding them, except you chose to be branded, as opposed to Him forcing you to follow. God never forced His people to believe in Him, to love Him, or to obey Him. He showed them how to believe, love and obey, and gave them the choice to follow.
These rules are what evolved into what Jesus hated about the temple, the priests, and the pharisees. They followed the rituals and practices of Judaism, but they did not have the love in their heart. They did not have the blind faith.
We need to look at these rules as a piece of history, not as something to do. Because of Jesus being the God-human sacrifice, the old rules are null and void.
That being said, let's move on.
In comes this man, Simeon. And I love Simeon's enthusiasm. He was a righteous and devout man, meaning he had followed all the laws and was pure of heart. But he was waiting for the Messiah and he was growing weary in heart waiting. So God spoke to Him and said, "Don't worry, you won't die until you see Christ." So Simeon went to the temple and behold(!) there was Jesus with his parents! So the man held Jesus and praised God thanking Him for fulfilling His promise to see the Messiah. Not many people at this time know exactly what to expect of the Messiah, as I've already said in previous posts. They expected a conquering king. They did not expect their savior to be a humble carpenter, able to die. They (the Israelites) know their savior would save them, they didn't know he would save the Gentiles (non-Jewish people) too. Mary and Joseph filled with wonder at what he said, and then he continued to talk to Mary about what Jesus would do, and that His salvation would even reach her. That just gives me chills, that Mary carried Jesus, gave birth to Him, raised Him, but His salvation was for her too.
Then there's Anna, a prophetess. It says she was of the tribe of Asher. As you can see in the picture, Asher was the northern-most tribe of Israel. (That green thing next to Nephtali) The tribe of Asher isn't really talked about much. Not because it is unimportant, but I think it is because it is so far north of our normal "setting". Jerusalem is in the tribe of Benjamin, near the border of the tribe of Judah.
So Anna travelled far to be there. I don't know if she had always lived in Asher (it says she was 84 years old) or if she and her husband had moved south in her younger years. Either way, she has been a widow for decades and so she spends all of her time in the temple, worshipping God 24/7. (You go, Anna!)
In those days (yes, this will be a common phrase in this blog, get used to it) when a man died, his wife was given to his brother. Women had the purpose of bearing children, so if a man were to die and the woman was still of child-bearing age, the would be wed or given as a second wife to the brother. The fact that she has been a widow for decades means her husband probably had no brothers. Without a brother to marry, Anna was without a purpose. (Hey, hey! Guess what, her purpose was praising God)
So, Awesome Anna, who has been praising God 24/7 even though she has no purpose in society's eyes, she is able to see any Jesus, and from then until the day she died, she spoke with words of hope to fellow Israelites who had been looking forward to Christ.
Mary and Joseph return home to Nazareth with Jesus.
He grew and became strong. This can be both physical strength and strength in God. We know Joseph was a carpenter because it is told to us, but honestly, I hadn't read it in the bible so i had to look it up. In Matthew 13:55, it talks about Jesus' earthly family. A carpenter has to be strong to build. Joseph taught Jesus his skills before Jesus went on his evangelical travels.
He was filled with wisdom. Remember that Jesus is God in human form. Remember that God is omniscient, which means He is all-knowing. So the full knowledge of God was in the human brain of Jesus.
The grace of God was upon Him. We've talked about grace before. The favor of God. And let's be honest, Jesus is God's son/God's flesh. Of course He would be in good favor. God would do whatever he could to protect His son from harm before His purpose was fulfilled.
Tomorrow we will finish up chapter 2 and in my opinion, it is a funny story. I'm excited :)
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