Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's Your Significance? | Christmas | Luke 2:36-40

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

What do you spend most of your time doing or thinking about? How does that shape who you're becoming? In today's episode, https://twitter.com/TanyaWillmeth (Tanya) looks at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202%3A36-40&version=NIV (Luke 2:36-40) to discover who we become when we spend time in God's presence. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast) Passages https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202%3A36-40&version=NIV (Luke 2:36-40) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're in our Christmas series. We're exploring the stories around Jesus' birth and the prophecies pointing forward to it. Sometimes my head gets cluttered with good noise. I listen to podcasts on how to make good decisions, sometimes new technology or how to organize my closet in my life.

I usually have an audiobook in the car on some sort of improved. or awareness topic, unless it's a long drive and then I listen to something related to a beach or a good love story. I look at product reviews and gift guides and I check in on Twitter to see what's happening in the world for the better and the worse. We have access to lots of good information. And unless we work at it, silence is hard to come by. But can we have so many experts and voices that we're listening to that we clutter our brains away from listening to the best thing. What I've loved about doing this series and the birth of Christ and the prophecies is that we're looking at verses and passages that we might have heard many,

many times so much so that we know the words better than we know the significance. But surely each detail and each person was incredibly significant in God's story. And it's been so fun and refreshing to look at how beautiful and intricate God's story really is. After Jesus was born, his family needed to take him to the temple for his dedication, a required custom for the Jewish people. But there was a special woman at the temple that day, a woman whose life mattered greatly in God's story. Listen to Luke chapter 2, verses 36 to 38,

and take note of the details Luke gives about her life. There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Pinal of the tribe of Asher. She was very old. She had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was 84. She never left the temple but worship night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Now, it's interesting that Luke takes the time to tell us about Anna for a few reasons. First, she was a woman. Now, we have seen that Luke actually includes women and even emphasizes the roles of women in his birth narrative. She was a widow, and she had been for a very long time. Her husband only lived for seven years after they were married, and now she's 84. She wasn't a member of the family or a special guest of the family. She just happened to be there at the temple when Jesus was brought in because, well,

she was always there. Her significance in society and culture was nil. She was probably fairly invisible to the people who were coming and going in the temple. but when she saw Jesus, as she had probably seen many other babies going through this same tradition, she knew he was different. She knew who he was and what his birth meant. And she began praising God and telling others, all those who were to use Luke's words waiting for the redemption of Jesus. I think there are a couple of things for us to note about Anna and this story right away. There was something about the way she lived her life that led her ability to recognize

the Messiah. And there were people who were willing to listen to her and able to recognize the truth in her claims because they were also waiting and looking for the Messiah. Now, if we take this story of Anna and bring it into our modern world, it may sound a little too religious for our palates. We could read it and think it's unrelatable because who has the time to be in the temple day and night. Who can feasibly raise kids or go to college or play a sport and be fasting and praying all the time? And if you did spend all your time in the temple or if you were constantly praying or reading your Bible at school and work, would people even be able to relate to you or like you? So let's look at it this way. And if there were three verses dedicated to you and how

you spend your time, what would they say? And what would be the result of what you were able to see and know and share about God as the conclusion to those verses. Here's how mind might sound. She dedicated herself to being in the car, driving her kids to school and activities so they never missed out or felt left out trying to make their lives as good as possible. Or she dedicated herself to thoughts about how to get better, what to do next, how she was perceived, etc., etc. Now, I don't think those details are the only ones about my life.

but I do think there are times when they consume me, when I let them consume me. But what Luke reveals about Anna is that when you look at the big picture of her life, you see a woman who had dedicated herself to wanting to be in God's presence. Her dedication and desire for Jesus is what made her part of the Christmas story. Because of Jesus, common people become significant people. and common people are able to do significant things. So let's look at this story and two questions we can use to predict our own significance. First, who are you becoming by what you do today?

Anna had spent decades becoming a woman who would recognize and announce the true Messiah. There was nothing culturally significant about her life that would have grabbed the attention of people around her. that God would have known before she was born, when she was widowed, when she prayed to him at the age of 35 and 52 and 77, that when she was 84 years old, she would see the face of his son and know him. God was writing her story, but Anna was an active participant in her story. She was making a daily choice to put God at the center of her life. If you are following Jesus, there's an answer to who, who you're becoming. You're becoming more like Christ. First John 3, 2 through 3 describes it like this.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. We are becoming like him today, and when he returns, we will be fully like him, because according to John, we shall all be like him, because we shall see him as he is. So this is a promise we already have on who we are becoming. Yet, what we do today matters in that promise, because Paul tells us to be imitators of Christ, just as he is in 1 Corinthians 1. And he spells that out in Ephesians 5 when he says,

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us. So we know we will be fully like Christ, but today we imitate Christ as we walk in love. How are you actively participating by your daily life and how you spend your time in who God is making you to be? As you follow him, are you seeing ways to be less of you and more like him? And if so, isn't he so good to reveal that to you? So that first question was, who are you becoming today by what you're doing today? And then the second one is, and what are you seeing today because of what you're looking for?

Now, I don't know if he just made this up, but Eric talks about the purple car phenomenon. And basically it goes like this. You assume there are no purple cars. But then you start looking for or wanting a purple car and you realize there are actually purple cars everywhere. Now, in truth, there are no more purple cars today than yesterday, but your eyes are open to them and you notice them now. I think a beautiful takeaway from the story of Anna is that she's able to see Jesus as the Messiah because that's who she was looking for.

And God does this repeatedly in the Bible. He reveals himself to his humble servants who are living life in his presence. He shows the fulfillment of his promises to those who are looking for him. When we spend time in God's presence, he does this for us. He opens our eyes to see him in our situations. We see how people reflect his love and generosity. We see how conversations have good outcomes because he provided wisdom. We see how we used a time we were left out or passed over to prepare us for something different or better.

Now, you can't probably put your work or responsibilities on permanent hold to sit in the temple all night and day most likely. And most likely you shouldn't do that because it would probably make life really hard for someone else who's depending on you. But you can think about how you spend your time each day, your active time and your head time. What are you looking at?

What are you thinking about? And what do those things lead to more of? We have the promise that each minute and each thought we take captive for Jesus produces unending dividends of fulfillment that will not disappoint. He won't disappoint us and he won't let others down through us. When we search for him, we will grow and flourish as we become more fully who he is molding us to be. Thanks for listening.

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